Lifeboat Foundation

The Conversation Weekly podcast is taking a short break in August. In the meantime, we’re bringing you extended versions of some of our favourite interviews from the past few months.

This week, how researchers discovered a biological switch that could turn on and off neuroplasticity in the brain – the ability of neurons to change their structure. We speak to Sarah Ackerman, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Neuroscience and Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Oregon, about what she and her team have found and why it matters.

Continue reading “The biological switch that could turn neuroplasticity on and off in the brain” »

How does the research conducted by Lige Leng at the Institute of Neuroscience of Xiamen University in China (I link it to you here)? It all starts with the study of the “inflamed brain”: many diseases of old age are associated with low-level chronic inflammation in the brain, organs, joints and circulatory system. A phenomenon sometimes called “inflammaging”.

You know it: over time all of our body’s repair systems deteriorate, our DNA and proteins accumulate damage, metabolism stumbles and cells stop doing their job. That’s life, beauty.

We’re all on our way to the exit, but research on worms, flies, mice and monkeys show that going at this speed isn’t inevitable. Diet and lifestyle changes (and, perhaps, upcoming anti-aging drugs) can curb decay and give us many more years of life, especially healthy life.

Continue reading “Discovered an aging ‘brake pedal’?” »

Aude Oliva is a prominent Cognitive and Computer Scientist directing the MIT Computational Perception and Cognition group at CSAIL while also leading the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and co-leading the MIT AI Hardware Program. With research spanning computational neuroscience, cognition, and computer vision, she pioneers the integration of human perception and machine recognition. Her contributions extend across academia, industry, and research, making her a distinguished figure at MIT.

Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:

Continue reading “Building Tools To Learn Human Brain Processes” »

New research finds that the memories useful for future generalizations are held in the brain separately from those recording unusual events.

Neuron devices prospects for recognition and interfaces.

Shared with Dropbox.

A biological pathway through which myelin, the protective coating on nerve fibers, can be repaired and regenerated has been discovered in a new study. The ramifications of this finding could be far-reaching for those with neurological diseases affecting myelin, many of which are currently untreatable.

If the axons that shoot out from the cell bodies of neurons are like electrical wires, you can think of the myelin sheath as the insulating plastic outer coating. In the brain, these sheathed nerve fibers make up most of the tissue known as white matter, but axons throughout the body are also coated in myelin.

The myelin sheath’s main functions are to protect the axon, to ensure electrical nerve impulses can travel quickly down it, and to maintain the strength of these impulses as they travel over what can be very long distances.

Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have found how stem cells’ surrounding environment controls them to differentiate into functional cells, a breakthrough critical for using stem cells to treat various human diseases in the future.

Stem cells play a crucial role in supporting normal development and maintaining tissue homeostasis in adults. Their unique ability to replicate and differentiate into specialized cells holds great promise in treating diseases like Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and type I diabetes by replacing damaged or diseased cells with healthy ones.

Despite their potential therapeutic benefits, one of the major challenges for cell therapies lies in efficiently differentiating stem cells into functional cells to replace damaged cells in degenerative tissue. This task is particularly difficult due to the limited understanding of the underlying molecular mechanism by which the tissues around stem cells, known as the stem cell niche, guide stem cell progeny to differentiate into proper functional cell types.

NIH-funded study suggests reducing exposure to airborne particulates may decrease dementia risk.

Higher rates of new cases of dementia in a population over time — known as incident dementia — are linked to long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution, especially from agriculture and open fires, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in JAMA Internal Medicine. Scientists found that 15% of older adults developed incident dementia during the average follow-up of 10 years.

“As we experience the effects of air pollution from wildfires and other emissions locally and internationally, these findings contribute to the strong evidence needed to best inform health and policy decisions,” said Richard J. Hodes, M.D., director, National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of NIH. “These results are an example of effectively using federally funded research data to help address critical health risks.”

How much time elapses between a blow to the head and the start of damage associated with Alzheimer’s disease?

A device that makes it possible to track the effects of concussive force on a functioning cluster of brain cells suggests the answer is in hours. The “traumatic brain injury (TBI) on a chip” being developed at Purdue University opens a window into a cause and effect that announces itself with the passage of decades but is exceedingly difficult to trace back to its origins.

“We’re basically creating a miniature brain that we can hit and then study,” said Riyi Shi, lead researcher and the Mari Hulman George Endowed Professor of Applied Neuroscience in Purdue University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “We know there’s a link between TBI and Alzheimer’s; that’s well established in clinical observation. But teasing out the basic essential pathway is not easy. With the TBI on a chip, we’re able to test a lot of hypotheses that would be very difficult to do in living animals.”