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Category: biotech/medical – Page 787

This research topic consists of 148 articles on various aspects of brain augmentation contributed by more than 600 authors. At the time of writing, the articles have been viewed online more than 1.3 million times and received plentiful citations in the scientific literature. The topic won the 2017 Frontiers Spotlight Award.

The topic theme, “Augmentation of brain function,” is an umbrella term for the approaches from different disciplines, aimed at the improvement of brain performance in both healthy people and patients suffering from neurological disabilities. Functions of the brain that scientists hope to augment belong to sensory, motor and cognitive domains. Brain enhancements could be achieved pharmacologically or using neurostimulation. Functional improvements can be also achieved with brain training techniques that employ modern technologies like computer games and virtual reality. Furthermore, brain performance can be augmented using brain-machine interfaces (BMIs), the pathways that connect neuronal circuits to external assistive devices, such as limb prostheses, exoskeletons, and communication aids. In addition to sending commands to external devices, BMIs can enable bidirectional communications, where artificial sensory signals are delivered to the brain while information is being decoded from neural recordings.

Even though many of the brain-augmenting ideas sound like science fiction, the topic authors feel optimistic about most of them. The overall consensus is that brain performance can be improved with artificial components, and this approach will lead to practical applications in the not-too-distant future. Many of the techniques covered in the topic, for example BMIs and noninvasive stimulation, have already experienced an explosive development. While expectations are high for the augmentation approaches, philosophers are warning about the ethical issues related to technologies that interfere with the mind, possibly in unpredictable ways. Although some of these concerns seem far-fetched, it is important that ethical standards are kept high as these revolutionary brain-augmenting methods are being developed.

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A new project is using cutting-edge levitation techniques to make bioprinting heart models and other complex tissues a reality.

Dubbed PULSE, the project combines the recently developed techniques of acoustic levitation and magnetic levitation to manipulate individual components without actually touching them. It’s a process that the researchers involved hope will one day facilitate the bioprinting of organs and other human tissues in much greater detail and complexity than what is achievable with current techniques.

If perfected, the researchers also hope this type of bioprinting could even help on long-term space missions as more accurate organ models can create more accurate defenses against radiation and other stresses of space travel.

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Rotifers are multicellular, microscopic marine animals that live in soils and freshwater environments. They are transparent and can be easily grown in large numbers. As such, they have been used in some laboratories as research subjects for many years. Now scientists have found a way to manipulate the rotifer genome, which can make them far more useful for many different research applications.

In new work reported in PLOS Biology, scientists used the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tool to alter two rotifer genes. These edits were then passed down to future generations of rotifers. This effort can now help others use these organisms in their laboratories.

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Disclaimer: It’s important to note that this article is solely intended for educational and informational purposes, and no affiliate links are included. The outline for this article was written with the help of AI. All information is open and available to the public.

Emerging Threat: EG.5 Variant Raises Global Concerns

A new and fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus, known as EG.5, is causing worries worldwide. This variant is contributing to at least 8% of new COVID-19 cases, a significant increase from the previous month. To help us understand this situation, we’re joined by Dr. Bob, the Director of the Institute for Autoimmune and Rheumatic Diseases at St. Joseph Health, and an expert in this field.

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The fight against deadly diseases has always been a tough one. While vaccines have been the gold standard in warding off threats like diphtheria, tetanus, and measles, ensuring everyone gets a dose is no small feat. The answer to this might lie in an audacious new approach: transmissible vaccines.

It’s like using fire to combat fire – but can we control it?

When a large portion of a community gets vaccinated, we achieve herd immunity. However, ensuring global vaccination, especially in areas with inadequate health facilities, is an uphill task.

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Scientists may have successfully spotted the brain center for the male libido responsible for sexual interest and mating in mouse models. The discovery may lead to improved drugs for sexual function.

This is according to a report by Medical Xpress published on Friday.

Senior researcher Dr. Nirao Shah, a professor of psychiatry and neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine, in California, said in the article that the newly-discovered region is responsible for recognizing the sex of other mice.

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Researchers led by a team at UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified cellular and molecular features of the brain that set modern humans apart from their closest primate relatives and ancient human ancestors. The findings, published in Nature, offer new insights into human brain evolution.

“Most on the have focused on neurons because this cell type was thought to be responsible for our intelligence and enhanced . This study gives us a renewed appreciation for other cells involved in and the role they have played both in advancing cognition and our susceptibility to a number of cognitive diseases,” said study leader Genevieve Konopka, Ph.D., Professor of Neuroscience and a member of the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute at UT Southwestern.

Since , people have been curious about what gives humans abilities that other animals don’t have, such as speech and language, Dr. Konopka explained. A range of previous studies have sought to answer this question by examining anatomy or performing genetic or on whole brains or sections, experiments that provide a view of thousands of cells at a time.

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Talk kindly contributed by Michael Levin in SEMF’s 2022 Spacious Spatiality.

https://semf.org.es/spatiality.

TALK ABSTRACT
Life was solving problems in metabolic, genetic, physiological, and anatomical spaces long before brains and nervous systems appeared. In this talk, I will describe remarkable capabilities of cell groups as they create, repair, and remodel complex anatomies. Anatomical homeostasis reveals that groups of cells are collective intelligences; their cognitive medium is the same as that of the human mind: electrical signals propagating in cell networks. I will explain non-neural bioelectricity and the tools we use to track the basal cognition of cells and tissues and control their function for applications in regenerative medicine. I will conclude with a discussion of our framework based on evolutionary scaling of intelligence by pivoting conserved mechanisms that allow agents, whether designed or evolved, to navigate complex problem spaces.

TALK MATERIALS
· The Electrical Blueprints that Orchestrate Life (TED Talk): https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_levin_the_electrical_bluep…trate_life.
· Michael Levin’s interviews and presentations: https://ase.tufts.edu/biology/labs/levin/presentations/
· Michael Levin’s publications: https://ase.tufts.edu/biology/labs/levin/publications/
· The Institute for Computationally Designed Organisms (ICDO): https://icdorgs.org/

MICHAEL LEVIN
Department of Biology, Tufts University: https://as.tufts.edu/biology.
Tufts University profile: https://ase.tufts.edu/biology/labs/levin/
Wyss Institute profile: https://wyss.harvard.edu/team/associate-faculty/michael-levin-ph-d/
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Levin_(biologist)
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=luouyakAAAAJ
Twitter: https://twitter.com/drmichaellevin.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-levin-b0983a6/

SEMF NETWORKS

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