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PHILADELPHIA—Trying to finish your homework while the big game is on TV? “Visual-movement” neurons in the front of your brain can help you stay focused, according to a new study from neuroscientists in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

In the study, published recently in Neuron, the scientists sought to illuminate the neural mechanism that helps the brain decide whether to focus visual attention on a rewarding task or an alluring distraction. By analyzing neuron activity in animal models as they faced this kind of attentional conflict, the researchers discovered that a pattern of coordinated activity called “beta bursts” in a set of neurons in the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC)—a section in the front of the brain responsible for motivation and rewards—appears to have a major role in keeping attention task-focused, essentially by suppressing the influence of the distracting stimulus.

“Our research suggests that while all brains have the ability to focus on a rewarding task and filter out distractions, some are better at it than others,” said senior author Bijan Pesaran PhD, the Robert A Groff II Professor of Neurosurgery at Penn Medicine. “By understanding how our brains process rewarding stimuli, we hope to be able to also understand failures to do so in a variety of cognitive and psychiatric disorders, including attention deficit disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

Every day we encounter circumstances we consider wrong: a starving child, a corrupt politician, an unfaithful partner, a fraudulent scientist. These examples highlight several moral issues, including matters of care, fairness and betrayal. But does anything unite them all?

Philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists have passionately argued whether moral judgments share something distinctive that separates them from non-moral matters. Moral monists claim that morality is unified by a common characteristic and that all moral issues involve concerns about harm. Pluralists, in contrast, argue that moral judgments are more diverse in nature.

Fascinated by this centuries-old debate, a team of researchers set out to probe the nature of morality using one of moral psychology’s most prolific theories. The group, led by UC Santa Barbara’s René Weber, intensively studied 64 individuals via surveys, interviews and brain imaging on the wrongness of various behaviors.

Similarly, allowing the MyoLegs to flail around for a while in a seemingly aimless fashion gave them better performance with locomotion tasks, as the researchers described in another paper presented at the recent Robotics Science and Systems meeting. Vittorio Caggiano, a Meta researcher on the project who has a background in both AI and neuroscience, says that scientists in the fields of neuroscience and biomechanics are learning from the MyoSuite work. “This fundamental knowledge [of how motor control works] is very generalizable to other systems,” he says. “Once they understand the fundamental mechanics, then they can apply those principles to other areas.”

This year, MyoChallenge 2023 (which will also culminate at the NeurIPS meeting in December) requires teams to use the MyoArm to pick up, manipulate, and accurately place common household objects and to use the MyoLegs to either pursue or evade an opponent in a game of tag.

Emo Todorov, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington, has worked on similar biomechanical models as part of the popular Mujoco physics simulator. (Todorov was not involved with the current Meta research but did oversee Kumar’s doctoral work some years back.) He says that MyoSuite’s focus on learning general representations means that control strategies can be useful for “a whole family of tasks.” He notes that their generalized control strategies are analogous to the neuroscience principle of muscle synergies, in which the nervous system activates groups of muscles at once to build up to larger gestures, thus reducing the computational burden of movement. “MyoSuite is able to construct such representations from first principles,” Todorov says.

Cells hidden in the skull may point to a way to detect, diagnose and treat inflamed brains.

A detailed look at the skull reveals that bone marrow cells there change and are recruited to the brain after injury, possibly traveling through tiny channels connecting the skull and the outer protective layer of the brain. Paired with the discovery that inflammation in the skull is disease-specific, these new findings collectively suggest the skull’s marrow could serve as a target to track and potentially treat neurological disorders involving brain inflammation, researchers report August 9 in Cell.

New observations of skull cell signals and skull tunnels suggest bone marrow there could be used to monitor neurological diseases.

How brain enhancements can correct disabilities is an important question. But not a Closer To Truth question. What happens to personal identity? Would “I” still be me? What about moral standing? Would it change? Could my mind be uploaded? Would “I” live on?

Featuring interviews with Michio Kaku, Antonio Damasio, Leonard Mlodinow, V.S. Ramachandran and David Chalmers.

Continue reading “What Would Transhuman Brains Mean? | Episode 2113 | Closer To Truth” »

Another excellent paper from Johann G. Danzl’s research group. They develop methods that combine novel negative staining techniques, deep learning, and super-resolution STED microscopy or expansion microscopy to facilitate nanoscale-resolution imaging of brain tissue volumes. They also show semi-automated (and some fully automated) segmentation of neuron morphology and identification of synapses. Very cool work and I’m excited to see how it influences connectomics in the future! #brain #neuroscience #imaging #microscopy #neurotech

Mapping fixed brain samples with extracellular labeling and optical microscopy reveals synaptic connections.

The development of your baby’s brain could be influenced by the microbes in their belly, scientists have found.

The trillions of microbes that live inside our guts play essential roles in a range of bodily processes, from digestion to mental health. The gut contains more than 100 million nerve cells—the highest concentration in any part of the body other than the brain. Now, we are also beginning to learn about the roles of these microbes in the earliest stages of our lives.

“The microbiome plays an important role in the early development of several systems, such as the nervous and immune system, as well as providing another layer of protection against pathogens [disease],” Sebastian Hunter, a researcher from the University of British Columbia who led a study on the subject published Wednesday in the scientific journal PLOS One, told Newsweek.

And appeared in everything from mythology to comic books, but the future might offer technologies that turn these dreams into reality.
Today we’ll explore some of those options, from superstrength and speed to options like telepathy.

Visit our sponsor, Brilliant: https://brilliant.org/IsaacArthur/

Continue reading “Superpowers: The dream of having superhuman abilities is as old as humanity” »

You could be walking around with an unruptured brain aneurysm. But don’t panic – the Brain Aneurysm Foundation estimates that about 1 in 50 people in the U.S. has an unruptured brain aneurysm. Director of Endovascular Neurosurgery Koji Ebersole, MD, says people are surprised to learn that the majority of aneurysms don’t cause any symptoms.

An aneurysm develops when a vessel in the brain has a thin spot, which then fills with blood, creating a bulge or balloon shape. Most brain aneurysms are small, about the size of a pea. Because the brain itself has no sensory fibers, there is no pain and the brain doesn’t register that the aneurysm is there.

“Most patients find out they have an aneurysm for a completely unrelated reason,” Dr. Ebersole says. “Maybe they’re having trouble with their sinuses and have a CT scan and the doctors find an aneurysm. When you learn you have an aneurysm, it’s important to meet with a physician who’s practiced in neurology to talk about the implications.”