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Category: neuroscience – Page 1,249

Brain imaging show that patients with Alzheimer’s disease can still remember and enjoy their favorite songs

Not surprising and yet fascinating to actually see — “The researchers found that music activates the brain, causing whole regions to communicate. By listening to the personal soundtrack, the visual network, the salience network, the executive network and the cerebellar and corticocerebellar network pairs all showed significantly higher functional connectivity.”

“Ever get chills lis­ten­ing to a par­tic­u­lar­ly mov­ing piece of music? You can thank the salience net­work of the brain for that emo­tion­al joint. Sur­pris­ing­ly, this region also remains an island of remem­brance that is spared from the rav­ages of Alzheimer’s dis­ease. Researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah Health are look­ing to this region of the brain to devel­op music-based treat­ments to help alle­vi­ate anx­i­ety in patients with demen­tia. Their research will appear in the April online issue of The Jour­nal of Pre­ven­tion of Alzheimer’s Disease…

Prosthetic Memory System Successful in Humans, Study Finds

Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and the University of Southern California (USC) have demonstrated the successful implementation of a prosthetic system that uses a person’s own memory patterns to facilitate the brain’s ability to encode and recall memory.

In the pilot study, published in today’s Journal of Neural Engineering, participants’ short-term memory performance showed a 35 to 37 percent improvement over baseline measurements. The research was funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

An Introductory Guide to Understand how ANNs Conceptualize New Ideas (using Embedding)

Here’s something you don’t hear everyday – everything we perceive is just a best case probabilistic prediction by our brain, based on our past encounters and knowledge gained through other mediums. This might sound extremely counter intuitive because we have always imagined that our brain mostly gives us deterministic answers.

We’ll do a small experiment to showcase this logic. Take a look at the below image:

Stem Cell Implants in the Brain Could Delay Aging

Scientists at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine have conducted experiments and found that stem cell implants in the brains of mice can stop aging and help the treated animals remain fitter for longer.

What part of the brain controls aging?

The experiments have helped researchers identify that a part of the brain called the hypothalamus is intimately involved in the aging process. The investigators hope to launch trials in humans to see whether similar treatments with neural stem cells can prolong the life of treated individuals.

Older people still grow new brain cells as young people, study shows

Older people can still grow new brain cells like young people, new study shows. Reference: surg.ws/2GYVXOU

Researchers show for the first time that healthy older men and women can generate just as many new brain cells as younger people.

There has been controversy over whether adult humans grow new neurons, and some research has previously suggested that the adult brain was hard-wired and that adults did not grow new neurons. A new study counters that notion. Lead author Maura Boldrini, associate professor of neurobiology at Columbia University, says the findings may suggest that many senior citizens remain more cognitively and emotionally intact than commonly believed.

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