A “grand unifying theory” of brain ageing suggests malfunctioning mitochondria might be to blame for Alzheimer’s and other brain conditions. And this new avenue of exploration already has some potential therapies at the ready.
Presented by Madhumita Murgia and John Thornhill, produced by Josh Gabert-Doyon and Edwin Lane. Executive producer is Manuela Saragosa. Sound design by Breen Turner and Samantha Giovinco. Original music by Metaphor Music. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Special thanks to The Hospital for Sick Children.
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A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) analyzes structural brain asymmetries in schizophrenia.
Study: Large-scale analysis of structural brain asymmetries in schizophrenia via the ENIGMA consortium. Image Credit: hutpaza / Shutterstock.com
Donald Hoffman and Hannah Critchlow debate the origins of consciousness.
This excerpt was taken from “The key to consciousness,” featuring Sam Coleman, Donald Hoffman, and Hannah Critchlow. Joanna Kavenna hosts.
One day in the future, we may interact with our electronic devices not with physical input or even voice commands, but simply by thinking about what we want to do. Such brain–computer interfaces (BCIs), combined with machine learning, could allow us to turn our ideas into reality faster and with less effort than ever before — imagine being able to produce a PCB design simply by thinking about how the completed circuit would work. Of course as an assistive technology, BCIs would be nothing less than life-changing for many.
Continue reading “PiEEG Offers Affordable Brain-Computer Interface” »
In the adult brain, synapses are tightly enwrapped by lattices of the extracellular matrix that consist of extremely long-lived molecules. These lattices are deemed to stabilize synapses, restrict the reorganization of their transmission machinery, and prevent them from undergoing structural or morphological changes. At the same time, they are expected to retain some degree of flexibility to permit occasional events of synaptic plasticity. The recent understanding that structural changes to synapses are significantly more frequent than previously assumed (occurring even on a timescale of minutes) has called for a mechanism that allows continual and energy-efficient remodeling of the extracellular matrix (ECM) at synapses. Here, we review recent evidence for such a process based on the constitutive recycling of synaptic ECM molecules. We discuss the key characteristics of this mechanism, focusing on its roles in mediating synaptic transmission and plasticity, and speculate on additional potential functions in neuronal signaling.
An increasing number of studies are showing that synaptic function is strongly influenced by their local environment, including the molecules or cellular components in their vicinity. As a result, the classical synaptic framework (consisting of the pre-and postsynaptic compartments only) has gradually been extended to include the neighboring astrocytic processes (the “tripartite synapse”; Araque et al., 1999) and, ultimately, also the surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM; the “tetrapartite synapse”; Dityatev et al., 2006). Nowadays, the synaptic ECM is recognized to play an essential role in physiological synaptic transmission as well as in plasticity, and its dysregulation has been linked to synaptopathies in a wide variety of brain disorders (Bonneh-Barkay and Wiley, 2009; Pantazopoulos and Berretta, 2016; Ferrer-Ferrer and Dityatev, 2018).
We often imagine that human consciousness is as simple as input and output of electrical signals within a network of processing units — therefore comparable to a computer. Reality, however, is much more complicated. For starters, we don’t actually know how much information the human brain can hold.
The pursuit of a cure for Alzheimer’s disease is becoming an increasingly competitive and contentious quest with recent years witnessing several important controversies.
In July 2022, Science magazine reported that a key 2006 research paper, published in the prestigious journal Nature, which identified a subtype of brain protein called beta-amyloid as the cause of Alzheimer’s, may have been based on fabricated data.
One year earlier, in June 2021, the US Food and Drug Administration had approved aducanumab, an antibody-targeting beta-amyloid, as a treatment for Alzheimer’s, even though the data supporting its use were incomplete and contradictory.
Researchers at Boston University, U.S. report that the flow of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain is linked to waking brain activity. Led by Stephanie Williams, and publishing in the open access journal PLOS Biology on March 30, the study demonstrates that manipulating blood flow in the brain with visual stimulation induces complementary fluid flow. The findings could impact treatment for conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, which have been associated with declines in cerebrospinal fluid flow.
Just as our kidneys help remove toxic waste from our bodies, cerebrospinal fluid helps remove toxins from the brain, particularly while we sleep. Reduced flow of cerebrospinal fluid is known to be related to declines in brain health, such as occur in Alzheimer’s disease. Based on evidence from sleep studies, the researchers hypothesized that brain activity while awake could also affect the flow of cerebrospinal fluid. They tested this hypothesis by simultaneously recording human brain activity via fMRI and the speed of cerebrospinal fluid flow while people were shown a checkered pattern that turned on and off.
Researchers first confirmed that the checkered pattern induced brain activity; blood oxygenation recorded by fMRI increased when the pattern was visible and decreased when it was turned off. Next, they found that the flow of cerebrospinal fluid negatively mirrored the blood signal, increasing when the checkered pattern was off. Further tests showed that changing how long the pattern was visible affected blood and fluid in a predictable way, and that the blood-cerebrospinal fluid link could not be accounted for by only breathing or heart rate rhythms.
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My name is Artem, I’m a computational neuroscience student and researcher. In this video we talk about cognitive maps – internal models of outside world that the brain to generate flexible behavior that is generalized across contexts.
