If you reward a monkey with some juice, it will learn which hand to move in response to a specific visual cue—but only if the cerebellum is functioning properly. So say neuroscientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Columbia University, who recently published findings in Nature Communications that show the brain region plays a crucial role in reward-based learning.
A combination of advances in magnetic resonance imaging to help track the movement of fluids in the brain and supercomputer-powered simulations are modifying our understanding of cognitive decline.
Pittsburgh biotech grows second liver in-body:
As per Nature, the experimental procedure was conducted in Houston on March 25. The report also states that the patient is “recovering well” after receiving the treatment. However, the formation of the new liver-like organ in the lymph node may take several months.
Moreover, the individual will be kept on immunosuppressive drugs to prevent any initial rejection of the donor cells.
The physicians will continue to monitor the patient’s health closely.
Company eyes clinical trials of mRNA therapy targeting intracellular free cholesterol after receiving ‘favorable’ pre-IND feedback.
USA: Using an electronic health record (EHR)-based algorithm plus practice facilitators embedded in primary care clinics did not reduce hospitalization at one year, according to a pragmatic trial involving patients with the triad of chronic kidney disease, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes.
“The hospitalization rate of patients in the intervention group at one year was about the same as that with usual care (20.7% vs 21.1%),” the researchers reported in the ICD-Pieces study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), type 2 diabetes (T2D), and hypertension (the kidney-dysfunction triad) are at high risk for multiple complications, end-stage kidney disease, and premature death. Despite the availability of effective therapies for these patients, there is a lack of results of large-scale trials examining the implementation of guideline-directed therapy to reduce death and complications risk in this population.
The world’s most powerful MRI machine has started proving its worth, by scanning living human brains. The resulting images give an ultra high resolution glimpse into the brain, which will help us better understand the nature of consciousness and treat neurodegenerative diseases.
Developed by the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), the Iseult MRI machine packs a magnetic field strength of 11.7 Teslas (T). By comparison, conventional MRI machines in wide use in hospitals today are usually 1.5 or at most 3 T.
The main benefit of that extra power is that much higher resolution images of the brain can be taken, much quicker. In just four minutes, Iseult can capture images down to 0.2 mm (0.008 in) of brain tissue horizontally, in ‘slices’ just 1-mm (0.04-in) thick. That volume is the equivalent of a few thousand neurons at a time.
You’ve probably heard about the gene-editing technology CRISPR. The massive biotech breakthrough, which has emerged in the last decade, has mainly been touted for the ways it will let scientists edit the human genome — hopefully to cure genetic diseases or perhaps, more worryingly, to create “designer babies.” But CRISPR is also being used in another area, the world of food.
Cultural anthropologist Dr. Lauren Crossland-Marr hosts the five-episode podcast A CRISPR Bite. She takes listeners into labs as researchers tinker with the genes in what we eat and drink. What, exactly, are they trying to achieve? And what’s at stake?
Using this natural process as a basis, scientists developed a gene-editing tool called CRISPR/Cas that can cut a specific DNA sequence by simply providing it with an RNA template of the target sequence. This allows scientists to add, delete, or replace elements within the target DNA sequence. Slicing a specific part of a gene’s DNA sequence with the help of the Cas9 enzyme, aids in DNA repair.
This system represented a big leap from previous gene-editing technologies, which required designing and making a custom DNA-cutting enzyme for each target sequence rather than simply providing an RNA guide, which is much simpler to synthesize.
CRISPR gene editing has already changed the way scientists do research, allowing a wide range of applications across multiple fields. Here are some of the diseases that scientists aim to tackle using CRISPR/Cas technology, testing its possibilities and limits as a medical tool.
Recent research published in Nature Communications from the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford has identified 15 modifiable risk factors for dementia, and of those diabetes, alcohol intake, and traffic-related air pollution are the most harmful.
Previous research from this group revealed an area of weakness in the brain of a specific network of higher-order regions that only develop later in adolescence but also display earlier degeneration in old age, and they showed that this brain network is particularly vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia. This study investigated genetic and modifiable influences on these regions by utilizing data from the UK Biobank.
This study examined 161 risk factors for dementia by analyzing brain scans of 40,000 people over the age of 45 years old. The modifiable risk factors were ranked by their impact on the vulnerable brain network over and above the natural effects of aging, classifying them into 15 broad categories: blood pressure, diabetes, weight, cholesterol, smoking, inflammation, hearing, sleep, diet, physical activity, education, socialism, pollution, alcohol consumption, and depressive mood.
Researchers believe they have discovered a new biological mechanism for obesity, pointing to rare variants on two genes that dramatically increase the risk of carrying excess weight.
