Researchers say they’ve found the answer to competing hypotheses about how the brain functions in a “flow state.”
Research involving mice and samples from patients with multiple sclerosis reveals how anti-CD20 antibodies such as ocrelizumab protect neurons in gray matter, and ties the treatment’s effects to elevated levels of BAFF.
Our nervous systems are naturally wired to sense fear. Whether prompted by the eerie noises we hear alone in the dark or the approaching growl of a threatening animal, our fear response is a survival mechanism that tells us to remain alert and avoid dangerous situations.
“For 12 years I’ve been trying to get back my feet. Now I have learned how to walk normal, natural.”
A paralyzed man is walking again thanks to a “digital bridge” researchers created between his brain and a spinal stimulator.
“For 12 years I’ve been trying to get back my feet,” the 40-year-old Dutch man, Gert-Jan Oskam, told reporters on May 23. “Now I have learned how to walk normal, natural.”
Continue reading “Paralyzed man walks again using only his thoughts” »
Globally, the number of people living with, or dying from, neurological conditions such as stroke, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, and meningitis has risen substantially over the past 30 years due to the growth and aging of the global population as well as increased exposure to environmental, metabolic, and lifestyle risk factors. In 2021, 3.4 billion people experienced a nervous system condition, according to a major new analysis from the Global Burden of Disease, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021, published in The Lancet Neurology.
The analysis suggests that worldwide, the overall amount of disability, illness, and premature death —a measurement known as disability-adjusted life years (DALYs)—caused by neurological conditions increased by 18% over the past 31 years, rising from around 375 million years of healthy life lost in 1990 to 443 million years in 2021.
The absolute number of DALYs is increasing in large part due to aging and growing populations worldwide.
Scientists have discovered a universal pattern of brain waves in multiple primate species, including humans.
This pattern of electrical activity is seen in the six layers of tissue that cover the outside of mammals’ brains, known as the cerebral cortex. In primates, higher frequency waves of electrical activity dance through the most superficial layers while slower waves bubble in layers below.
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Implicit neural representations (INRs) recently achieved great success in image representation and compression, offering high visual quality and fast rendering speeds with…
There’s a lot to like about brain-computer interfaces, those sci-fi-sounding devices that jack into your skull and turn neural signals into software commands. Experimental BCIs help paralyzed people communicate, use the internet, and move prosthetic limbs. In recent years, the devices have even gone wireless. If mind-reading computers become part of everyday life, we’ll need doctors to install the tiny electrodes and transmitters that make them work. So if you have steady hands and don’t mind a little blood, being a BCI surgeon might be a job for you.
Shahram Majidi, a neurosurgeon at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, began operating in clinical trials for a BCI called the Stentrode in 2022. (That’s “stent” as in a tube that often sits inside a vein or artery.) Here he talks about a not-too-distant future where he’s performing hundreds of similar procedures a year.
Brain-computer interfaces have been around for a few decades, and there are different kinds of implants now. Some have electrodes attached to your brain with wires sticking out of your head and connecting to a computer. I think that’s great as a proof of concept, but it requires an engineer sitting there and a big computer next to you all the time. You can’t just use it in your bedroom. The beauty of a BCI like the Stentrode, which is what I’ve worked with, is that nothing is sticking out of your brain. The electrodes are in blood vessels next to the brain, and you get there by going through the patient’s jugular. The receiver is underneath the skin in their chest and connected to a device that decodes the brain signals via Bluetooth. I think that’s the future.
Only 3% to 5% of people who are diagnosed with this type of brain tumor will be alive three years later. On average, patients live about 14 months after diagnosis.
Now, an experimental therapy that reprograms a person’s own immune cells to attack these tumors is showing some exciting promise.
Three studies published within the past week have reported dramatic results with a therapy called CAR-T delivered directly to the brain. In some cases, tumors have seemingly melted away on brain scans by the next day.
Scientists are unraveling how our organs talk to the brain—and how the brain talks back.
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Studies of interoception challenge distinctions between disorders of the brain and body—and may hold clues to the basis of consciousness.
