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Category: neuroscience – Page 129

Scientists in China have managed to revive brain activity in pigs nearly an hour after circulation ceased, thanks to the surprising involvement of the liver.

If translatable to humans, this finding could have significant implications for extending the critical window in which doctors can resuscitate patients following sudden cardiac arrest.

The research team, led by Dr. Xiaoshun He at Sun Yat-Sen University, experimented with the brains of 17 Tibetan minipigs to investigate how the liver might influence brain recovery.

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Researchers at REMspace, a startup based in California, have reported that two people were able to communicate in their dreams.

The experiment is an example of the potential that lucid dreams have to create new communication methods, pushing the limits of what scientists thought humans were capable of.

The company claimed that two individuals managed to induce lucid dreams with success and shared a simple message using specially designed equipment.

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Researchers connecting pieces of the massive Alzheimer’s puzzle are closer to slotting the next one in place, with yet another link between our guts and brain.

Animal studies have demonstrated Alzheimer’s can be passed on to young mice through a transfer of gut microbes, confirming a link between the digestive system and the health of the brain.

A 2023 study adds further support to the theory that inflammation could be the mechanism through which this occurs.

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Richard Scolyer was fully engaged in the business of living when he suddenly received a death sentence. A person more alive would be hard to find. As an endurance athlete competing across the globe, he was in peak physical condition. As one of the world’s leading pathologists on melanoma whose pioneering research has saved thousands of lives, he was in demand. At 56, Prof Richard Scolyer was flying along. His life, he says, was “rich”. And then, on the morning of 20 May 2023, he found himself losing consciousness and convulsing on the floor in a hotel room in Poland, panicking and scared.

After this grand mal seizure, he went for an MRI scan at University hospital in Krakow. It found a mass in his temporal lobe. Scolyer knew immediately it had delivered very bad news.

Related: When I found out about the brain tumour that would kill me, I faced my worst fears – but I chose to take it on.

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Metaphysics and the Matter with Things: Thinking with Iain McGilchrist was a collaborative conference put on by the Center for Process Studies (CPS) and the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in March of 2024. This three-day conference brought leading process thinkers across various disciplines, including physics, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and theology into critical dialogue with McGilchrist’s work in a collegial effort to assess, question, extend, and apply it. For more information on the conference and to purchase recordings, please visit https://ctr4process.org/mcgilchrist-conference/

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Wearable devices like smartwatches and fitness trackers interact with parts of our bodies to measure and learn from internal processes, such as our heart rate or sleep stages.

Now, MIT researchers have developed that may be able to perform similar functions for inside the body.

These battery-free, subcellular-sized devices, made of a soft polymer, are designed to gently wrap around different parts of neurons, such as axons and dendrites, without damaging the cells, upon wireless actuation with light. By snugly wrapping neuronal processes, they could be used to measure or modulate a neuron’s electrical and metabolic activity at a subcellular level.

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