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Category: neuroscience – Page 208

Cleaning up the aging brain

Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurological disorders can be seen as “dirty brain” diseases, where the brain struggles to clear out harmful waste. Aging is a key risk factor because, as we grow older, our brain’s ability to remove toxic buildup slows down. However, new research in mice demonstrates that it’s possible to reverse age-related effects and restore the brain’s waste-clearing process.

“This research shows that restoring cervical lymph vessel function can substantially rescue the slower removal of waste from the brain associated with age,” says Douglas Kelley, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Rochester. “Moreover, this was accomplished with a drug already being used clinically, offering a potential treatment strategy.”

Kelley is one of the lead authors of the study, which appears in the journal Nature Aging, along with Maiken Nedergaard, codirector the University’s Center for Translational Neuromedicine. The study is one of many collaborations carried out by researchers at Rochester’s Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences and the Medical Center.

How the brain’s inner chamber governs our state of consciousness

In hospital operating rooms and intensive care units, propofol is a drug of choice, widely used to sedate patients for their comfort or render them fully unconscious for invasive…

Propofol works quickly and is tolerated well by most patients when administered by an anesthesiologist.

But what’s happening inside the brain when patients are put under and what does this reveal about consciousness itself?

Investigators at Michigan Medicine, who are studying the nature of consciousness, have successfully used the drug to identify the intricate brain geometry behind the unconscious state, offering an unprecedented look at brain structures that have traditionally been difficult to study.

How context-specific factors control gene activity

Every cell in our body contains the same DNA, yet liver cells are different from brain cells, and skin cells differ from muscle cells. What determines these differences? It all comes down to gene regulation; essentially how and when genes are turned on and off to meet the cell’s demands. But gene regulation is quite complex, especially because it is itself regulated by other parts of DNA.

Alzheimer’s drug may save lives through ‘suspended animation’

Could buy patients more time to survive critical injuries and diseases, even when disaster strikes far from a hospital.

Donepezil, an FDA-approved drug to treat Alzheimer’s, has the potential to be repurposed for use in emergency situations to prevent irreversible organ injury, according to researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.

Using donepezil (DPN), researchers report that they were able to put tadpoles of Xenopus laevis frogs into a hibernation-like torpor.

Why Your Brain Isn’t the Creator, But the Consumer

(video 19min) What if everything you know about consciousness is wrong?

What if everything you know about consciousness is wrong? This video challenges the long-standing belief that the brain creates consciousness, revealing a bold new theory: the brain is not the creator but the *consumer*—a filter limiting your access to an infinite, boundless consciousness that exists beyond it. We’ll explore David Chalmers’ \.

Panpsychism and Alfred North Whitehead

The wave dimension is crucial. Without the time-binding wave of consciousness established by actual entities remembering their past instant(s), experiencing, choosing, and acting in their present instants, and anticipating and then passing their inheritance on to their future instant(s), it would not be possible to begin a sentence and then go on to complete it in a way that has meaning. It would not be possible to interact with ourselves or other people in a way that has meaning. We couldn’t begin, continue, and complete a meal. We would forget where we were and what we were doing. We couldn’t begin, continue, and complete a walk. We would forget where we were and what we were doing. We couldn’t undertake any complex task and remember what we were doing. We certainly couldn’t drive a car or even cross a street.

If we pay attention to our own consciousnesses closely, we find that, as each moment of our experience transpires, we take in sensations from outside in the world and inside in our bodies and then we layer feelings and thoughts and images on top of these sensations to form a moment of experience with some coherence and meaning. And this moment of experience passes its sensations and feelings and thoughts and images on to the next moment of experience with some relative coherence.

Now, with an untrained mind, our sensations and feelings and thoughts and images kind of jump around outside of our control. But with a relatively trained mind, we can focus in a way that allows us to maintain a constant stream of sensations and feelings and thoughts and images and choose what we want to focus that stream on in an expansion of our consciousnesses. That is the gift of mindfulness and meditation. Using Whitehead’s language, we can say that we can work to shift our mental prehensions to embrace a different and more powerful form or idea of what it is to be human.

A Reply to Strawson: Physicalism Does Not Entail Panpsychism

Why a blog post and not a proper response in a philosophy journal? My very first journal submission is still in the review process, close to two months later, for one. Secondly, blogging allows me to be pedantic, to be human, that is, to express frustration, to show anger, to be candid; in other words, blogging allows me to be myself. Probably of highest priority is the fact that I do not want my first publication in the philosophy of mind to be a response. I want to eventually outline my own theory of consciousness, which is strongly hinted at here, and I prefer for that to be my first contribution to the philosophy of mind. I do not find panpsychism convincing and I think there is another theory of consciousness, similar to panpsychism in ways, that is much more cogent. I have outlined some qualms I have with panpsychism before; to people new to the blog, you can read here.

Picking up good vibes from a stranger? That might be your neurons aligning

Imagine you’re sitting across from a friend, having a conversation.

I’m a die-hard Beach Boys fan. In one of their most famous songs, they sing about “pickin’ up good vibrations” from a girl. We’ve all felt those “good vibes” when we’re connecting with someone new. I used to think that feeling was a mysterious, mystical experience — something I couldn’t fully explain that bonded me with some friends and strangers more easily than others.

It turns out that “good vibes” aren’t as mysterious as I thought.

Pioneering neuroscientists have begun investigating how the brain works when we are interact ing with others — a technique they call hyperscanning. Neuroscientists have been using existing scanning methods, like MRI and EEG, to monitor the brain activity of two or more people as they do something together: for example, performing music, learning a poem, or having a conversation.