Genetic Brain-Mapping of Autism.
The Brain Initiative is combining neuroscience with nanotechnology in the world’s biggest project to understand the mind. By Katharine Sanderson.
Category: neuroscience – Page 1,233
Brain disease found in Australian rugby league players
Sydney — Post-mortem examinations have found a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated blows to the head in two elite Australian rugby league players, the first cases found in the sport, researchers said on Thursday.
The researchers said the players both had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which has been widely diagnosed among former US National Football League (NFL) players but is little studied elsewhere.
The Sydney-based study said the condition, once known as ‘punch drunk syndrome’ occurred when repeated brain trauma led to a long-term decline in cognitive function.
Syringe-Injectable Electronics with a Plug-and-Play Input/Output Interface
Nano Lett. 2017 Sep 13;17:5836–5842. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b03081. Epub 2017 Aug 14.
Syringe-injectable mesh electronics represent a new paradigm for brain science and neural prosthetics by virtue of the stable seamless integration of the electronics with neural tissues, a consequence of the macroporous mesh electronics structure with all size features similar to or less than individual neurons and tissue-like flexibility. These same properties, however, make input/output (I/O) connection to measurement electronics challenging, and work to-date has required methods that could be difficult to implement by the life sciences community. Here we present a new syringe-injectable mesh electronics design with plug-and-play I/O interfacing that is rapid, scalable, and user-friendly to nonexperts. The basic design tapers the ultraflexible mesh electronics to a narrow stem that routes all of the device/electrode interconnects to I/O pads that are inserted into a standard zero insertion force (ZIF) connector.
Air Force Wants Neuroweapons to Overwhelm Enemy Minds
It sounds like something a wild-eyed basement-dweller would come up with, after he complained about the fit of his tinfoil hat. But military bureaucrats really are asking scientists to help them “degrade enemy performance” by attacking the brain’s “chemical pathway[s].” Let the conspiracy theories begin.
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Scientists track Parkinson’s journey from gut to brain in mice
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore, MD, conducted their investigation in a new mouse model of Parkinson’s disease.
The new model replicates a number of early and late signs and symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, including some that are not movement-related.
Scientists are testing new drugs that could prevent migraine attacks!
Individuals that are experiencing frequent migraines, may soon receive access to a new class of medications.
A pair of large studies showed that two drugs have the ability to reduce the frequency of the migraine attacks, without any side effects. The researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine that the drugs offer the first ever migraine treatment that is aimed at the disorder itself, instead of the symptoms.
Current migraine treatments consist of drugs that are designed to treat epilepsy, depression and high blood pressure. Peter Goadsby, an author of one of the studies in question and a professor at King’s College in London says that they give the patients a choice between antidepressants that will make them sleepy, and a beta blocker, which will make them feel tired.
Brain study reveals type of schizophrenia similar to neurodegenerative disease
Research from Johns Hopkins Medicine has revealed some cases of schizophrenia can be associated with abnormal protein buildup in the brain similar to that seen in cases of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative disorders. It’s hoped the discovery will lead to better diagnostic strategies identifying specific types of schizophrenia.
What happened to cognitive science?
More than a half-century ago, the ‘cognitive revolution’, with the influential tenet ‘cognition is computation’, launched the investigation of the mind through a multidisciplinary endeavour called cognitive science. Despite significant diversity of views regarding its definition and intended scope, this new science, explicitly named in the singular, was meant to have a cohesive subject matter, complementary methods and integrated theories. Multiple signs, however, suggest that over time the prospect of an integrated cohesive science has not materialized. Here we investigate the status of the field in a data-informed manner, focusing on four indicators, two bibliometric and two socio-institutional. These indicators consistently show that the devised multi-disciplinary program failed to transition to a mature inter-disciplinary coherent field. Bibliometrically, the field has been largely subsumed by (cognitive) psychology, and educationally, it exhibits a striking lack of curricular consensus, raising questions about the future of the cognitive science enterprise.
How to live forever: meet the extreme life-extensionists
A very good article on the life and ideas of life extensionists/immortalists/longevity’s: “… Strole is now 70. He lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, a desert town. In the life-extensionist mode, he avoids dairy and rarely touches bread, though he devours a whole heap of other things. Recently his diet has included pills, branded ”Cognitive”, which he takes twice a day and claims have all sorts of nourishing effects on his brain. (What good is maintaining the body if not the mind?) The pills are part of a self-directed anti-ageing process that requires a lot of swallowing. On some days, Strole takes 70 supplements, including a tablet that ”energises the mitochondria” (mitochondria produce energy) and whose effects resemble ”a shot of coffee, minus the jitters”, as well as vitamins, multi-nutrients and metformin, a diabetes drug that has become so popular among life extensionists that one referred to it as ”the aspirin of anti-ageing”. In the early mornings, when the Arizona air is still brisk, he takes a cold dip in his pool to shock his immune system into better function, and at some point or another he lies face-up on an electromagnetic mat that whirs silently against his body and ”opens up the veins”, and engages in a breathing regime that, he says, ”balances the hormones”.
Some sleep on electromagnetic mats, others pop up to 150 pills a day. But are ‘life extensionists’ any closer to finding the key to longevity? Alex Moshakis meets some of the people determined to become immortal.