Lifeboat Foundation

What it means to be conscious is more than just a philosophical question. Researchers continue to investigate how conscious experience arises from the electrochemical activity of the human brain. The answer has important implications for the way brain health is understood—from coma, wherein a person is alive but unable to move or respond to his or her environment, to surgical anesthesia, to the altered thought processes of schizophrenia.

Recent research suggests that there’s no one location in the brain that causes consciousness, pointing to a network phenomenon. However, tracing the various linkages between regions in the brain networks that give rise to awareness and wakefulness has been elusive.

A new approach using functional MRI, an imaging technique that allows you to see and measure brain activity through changes in blood flow over time, provides new insight into how we describe and study conscious states.

The reason your three-pound brain doesn’t feel heavy is because it floats in a reservoir of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which flows in and around your brain and spinal cord. This liquid barrier between your brain and skull protects it from a hit to your head and bathes your brain in nutrients.

But the CSF has another critical, if less known, function: it also provides immune protection to the brain. Yet, this function hasn’t been well studied.

A Northwestern Medicine study of CSF has discovered its role in cognitive impairment, such as Alzheimer’s disease. This discovery provides a new clue to the process of neurodegeneration, said study lead author David Gate, assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

A new study by Burke Neurological Institute (BNI), Weill Cornell Medicine, finds that activation of MAP2K signaling by genetic engineering or non-invasive repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) promotes corticospinal tract (CST) axon sprouting and functional regeneration after spinal cord injury (SCI) in mice.

RTMS is a noninvasive technique that evokes an electrical field in brain tissue via electromagnetic induction. While an increasing body of evidence suggests that rTMS applied over motor cortex may be beneficial for functional recovery in SCI patients, the molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie rTMS’ beneficial effects remains unclear.

A new study published in Science Translation Medicine showed that high-frequency rTMS (HF-rTMS) activated MAP2K signaling and enhanced axonal regeneration and functional recovery, suggesting that rTMS might be a valuable treatment option for SCI individuals.

One potential application: Enhancing the sensitivity of atomic magnetometers used to measure the alpha waves emitted by the human brain.

Scientists are increasingly seeking to discover more about quantum entanglement, which occurs when two or more systems are created or interact in such a manner that the quantum states of some cannot be described independently of the quantum states of the others. The systems are correlated, even when they are separated by a large distance. Interest in studying this kind of phenomenon is due to the significant potential for applications in encryption, communications, and quantum computing.

Performing computation using quantum-mechanical phenomena such as superposition and entanglement.

It’s an early step forward and needs way more testing. But the potential is high. Cancer vaccines aren’t a new idea. They use the same fundamentals that enable vaccines for infectious pathogens like viruses and bacteria: priming our immune system into recognizing and attacking something that’s harmful to our bodies.

Series — Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease (CTAD) 2022: Part 1 of 14: Dare We Say Consensus Achieved: Lecanemab Slows the Disease Part 2 of 14: Brexpiprazole Eases Agitation in People with AD; So Does Being in a Trial Part 3 of 14: Two New Stabs at Vaccinating People Against Pathologic Tau Part 4 of 14: Cognitive Tests Taken at Home Are on Par with In-Clinic Assessments Part 5 of 14: In Small Trial, Gene Therapy Spurs ApoE2 Production Part 6 of 14: Donanemab Mops Up Plaque Faster Than Aduhelm Part 7 of 14: Gantenerumab Mystery: How Did It Lose Potency in Phase 3? Part 8 of 14: Could Personalizing Multimodal Interventions Give Them Oomph?

If you’ve ever thought your children in elementary school were “smarter” than you, or at least quicker at taking up new skills and knowledge, new research published in the journal Current Biology confirms that you were correct. According to the new study, there are differences in the brain messenger GABA between kids and adults, which may explain why kids often seem to be more capable of learning and retaining new information.

“Our results show that children of elementary school age can learn more items within a given period of time than adults, making learning more efficient in children,” said Takeo Watanabe of Brown University.

According to the study, children experienced a rapid increase in GABA during visual training, which lasted even after the training ended. In contrast, GABA concentrations in adults remained constant during training. These findings suggest that children’s brains are more responsive to training, allowing them to quickly and efficiently consolidate new learning.

Nuclear physicists have found a new way to use the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)—a particle collider at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory—to see the shape and details inside atomic nuclei. The method relies on particles of light that surround gold ions as they speed around the collider and a new type of quantum entanglement that’s never been seen before.

Through a series of quantum fluctuations, the particles of light (a.k.a. photons) interact with gluons—gluelike particles that hold quarks together within the protons and neutrons of nuclei. Those interactions produce an intermediate particle that quickly decays into two differently charged “pions” (π). By measuring the velocity and angles at which these π⁺ and π^- particles strike RHIC’s STAR detector, the scientists can backtrack to get crucial information about the photon—and use that to map out the arrangement of gluons within the nucleus with higher precision than ever before.

“This technique is similar to the way doctors use positron emission tomography (PET scans) to see what’s happening inside the brain and other body parts,” said former Brookhaven Lab physicist James Daniel Brandenburg, a member of the STAR collaboration who joined The Ohio State University as an assistant professor in January 2023. “But in this case, we’re talking about mapping out features on the scale of femtometers —quadrillionths of a meter—the size of an individual proton.”

Scientists at Imperial College London, UK have proved that a modern surgical knife dubbed iKnife can “smell tumours”, effectively detecting womb cancer within seconds. The breakthrough could enable thousands of women to get an earlier cancer diagnosis.

“The iKnife reliably diagnosed endometrial cancer in seconds, with a diagnostic accuracy of 89%, minimising the current delays for women whilst awaiting a histopathological diagnosis,” said the researchers in the finding published in the journal Cancers.

Notably, the iKnife is already being used to treat breast and brain cancers, reported the Guardian, and now it can also accurately detect the presence of endometrial cancer.