Reverse the aging process and live decades longer? Transfer your brain onto a database and achieve digital immortality? Humans one day may have such options.
The concept of Boltzmann Brain — a self-aware entity that emerges from random fluctuations in the fabric of reality— is intriguing. Perhaps God emerges from the evolution of a cosmic society of Boltzmann Brains?
I am referring to a generic “fabric of reality” but the concept can be formulated more precisely. For example, imagine a conscious, thinking being arising from random quantum fluctuations in the vacuum.
In the delightful “The Gravity Mine” short story, Stephen Baxter imagines the birth of a Boltzmann Brain:
I’m quite happy with this resolution of the conflict between determinism and free will…
Continue reading “Computational irreducibility in Wolfram’s digital physics, and free will” »
Here’s another thing I have changed my mind on. Well, sort of. I used to make fun of “vitalism” and trade insults with my favorite archenemy Dale Carrico. Now I must repent or at least add important qualifications.
Vitalism is currently defined by Wikipedia as “the belief that living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things.”
If we eliminate a few words from this definition we are left with a statement that I don’t disagree with:
Recent advances in human stem cell-derived brain organoids promise to replicate critical molecular and cellular aspects of learning and memory and possibly aspects of cognition in vitro. Coining the term “organoid intelligence” (OI) to encompass these developments, we present a collaborative program to implement the vision of a multidisciplinary field of OI. This aims to establish OI as a form of genuine biological computing that harnesses brain organoids using scientific and bioengineering advances in an ethically responsible manner. Standardized, 3D, myelinated brain organoids can now be produced with high cell density and enriched levels of glial cells and gene expression critical for learning. Integrated microfluidic perfusion systems can support scalable and durable culturing, and spatiotemporal chemical signaling.
Reducing the methylation of a key messenger RNA can promote migration of macrophages into the brain and ameliorate symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in a mouse model, according to a new study publishing March 7 in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Rui Zhang of Air Force Medical University in Xian, Shaanxi, China. The results illuminate one pathway for entrance of peripheral immune cells into the brain, and may provide a new target for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
A presumed trigger for the development of Alzheimer’s disease is the accumulation of proteinaceous, extracellular amyloid-beta plaques in the brain. High levels of amyloid-beta in mice leads to neurodegeneration and cognitive symptoms reminiscent of human Alzheimer’s disease, and reduction of amyloid-beta is a major goal in development of new treatments.
One potential pathway for getting rid of amyloid-beta is the migration of blood-derived myeloid cells into the brain, and their maturation into macrophages, which, along with resident microglia, can consume amyloid-beta. That migration is a complex phenomenon controlled by multiple interacting players, but a potentially important one is the methylation of messenger RNA within the myeloid cells.
New technologies can greatly advance research in various fields, including medicine and neuroscience. In recent years, for instance, engineers have created increasingly sophisticated devices to record brain activity and other biological signals with high precision.
A multi-disciplinary research team at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and other institutes in the U.S. have recently developed the Neuro-stack, a new wearable technology that can record the activity of single neurons in the brain as a human being is walking or moving. This device, presented in a paper published in Nature Neuroscience, could help to gather valuable insight about neuronal activity during walking, while also potentially improving treatments for brain disorders.
“Our study was motivated by the need for smaller size and more flexible devices for clinical neuroscience,” Dejan Markovic, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Medical Xpress. “Our primary objectives were to make a device that is small enough to be wearable, for mobile experiments, and to provide broadband recordings including local field potentials and single units.”
To try everything Brilliant has to offer—free—for a full 30 days, visit http://brilliant.org/ArtemKirsanov/.
The first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant’s annual premium subscription.
My name is Artem, I’m a computational neuroscience student and researcher. In this video we talk about the concept of critical point – how the brain might optimize information processing by hovering near a phase transition.
Continue reading “Brain Criticality — Optimizing Neural Computations” »
Recently, Scientists have outlined a plan for a potentially revolutionary new area of research called “organoid intelligence”, which aims to create “biocomputers”, where brain cultures grown in the lab are coupled to real-world sensors and input/output devices.
The term now covers all types of technology and innovation designed to address health issues that solely, or disproportionately, impact women’s health, from menstrual cycle tracking apps and sexual wellness products to cardiovascular medical devices and mental health therapies.
Giving FemTech its own name helped the community of people working in the sector to find each other, but also gave investors reassurance about where they were putting their money, Tin said.
“It’s a little easier to say you’re invested in FemTech than, you know, a company that helps women not pee their pants … It kind of bridged the gap over to men as well, which was important, still is important, because so many investors are men.”
