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Category: neuroscience – Page 1,084

We are happy to announce Dr. Ruth Itzhaki as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference

“Ruth is a shining example of one of the qualities I most admire in a scientist: dogged perseverance in pursuit of one’s thesis, in spite of near-universal rejection of it by the mainstream community, until one finally wins them round.

It’s only an admirable quality if you’re likely to be right, of course, so you’d better be a really good scientist in other ways too — and she sure is. Ruth spoke at a couple of my Cambridge conferences and I was always dismayed that such solid data and logic concerning the involvement of herpes simplex virus in Alzheimer’s disease was so widely ignored or dismissed for what seemed to be totally flimsy reasons. That’s not happening any more!”, says Aubrey de Grey.

https://www.undoing-aging.org/news/dr-ruth-itzhaki-to-speak-…aging-2019

A single transistor process that can create connections

A single transistor process that can create connections, and encode short and long term memories. The transistor is based on organic versus inorganic technology. The project relies on a form of transistor that uses ion injection from an electrolyte solution, which changes the storage and connectivity of the transistor.

The end result, a simple learning circuit to replicate neuronal action.

News Article: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190205102537.htm

Autism spectrum disorders may stem from multiple factors

Diagnosed cases of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in California rose by 600 percent from 1990 to 2003. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, Ph.D., director of the Environmental Health Sciences Core Center at the University of California-Davis, published this statistic in the journal Epidemiology a decade ago.

The esteemed epidemiologist told the audience during the Jan. 8 NIEHS Distinguished Lecture that she and her colleagues have only been able to explain a third of the increase.

“No single factor accounts for all autism cases, nor is there one event or exposure that can be responsible for the rapid increase in diagnoses,” said Hertz-Picciotto. “Each child’s path to altered brain development may be different.” Her talk was hosted by NIEHS and National Toxicology Program (NTP) Director Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D.

Finding Differences in Brain Connectivity May Aid in Autism Diagnosis

New research looks at distinctive differences in brain connectivity that may underlie autism spectrum disorders (ASD) — and possibly provide much-needed biomarkers to aid in identifying the disorder.

Diagnosis for ASD is still behaviorally based. But getting a diagnosis can take longer due to several factors, including lack of resources and trained clinicians. This delays autism diagnosis, on average, until age 5 or 6.

“Within ASD, two important research questions are: How can we minimize the delay in diagnosis, and what kind of intervention can we give the child?” said Rajesh Kana, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences.

No Chemo, No Cancer: Trial Eradicates All Signs of Breast Tumors in Only 11 Days

Despite unbelievable advances in medical science in recent decades, breast cancer kills. Approximately 1 in 8 American women will develop breast cancer cells during the course of their lifetime.

Finding a cure is imperative, and as such, fervent research continues. At the European Breast Cancer Conference in Amsterdam, scientists presented a pair of drugs with an astounding claim: this treatment can eradicate some types of breast cancer in only 11 days, eliminating the need for chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy, whilst an amazing feat of medical-scientific engineering, is known for its uncomfortable and sometimes debilitating side effects. Women undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer treatment may lose their hair, suffer extreme fatigue, and even loss of cognitive function.

Listening to the music you love will make your brain release more dopamine, study finds

A new study has found that dopamine — a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in our cognitive, emotional, and behavioral functioning — plays a direct role in the reward experience induced by music. The new findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“In everyday life, humans regularly seek participation in highly complex and pleasurable experiences such as music listening, singing, or playing, that do not seem to have any specific survival advantage. Understanding how the brain translates a structured sequence of sounds, such as music, into a pleasant and rewarding experience is thus a challenging and fascinating question,” said study author Laura Ferreri, an associate professor in cognitive psychology at Lyon University.

“In the scientific literature, there was a lack of direct evidence showing that dopamine function is causally related to music-evoked pleasure. Therefore in this study, through a pharmacological approach, we wanted to investigate whether dopamine, which plays a major role in regulating pleasure experiences and motivation to engage in certain behaviors, plays a direct role in the experience of pleasure induced by music.”

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