Lifeboat Foundation

It’s important in sports and in interpersonal relationships—perfect timing. But how does our brain learn to estimate when events might occur and react accordingly? Scientists at MPI CBS in Leipzig together with colleagues from the Kavli Institute at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim were able to demonstrate in an MRI study that our brain learns best in connection with constructive feedback.

Imagine playing a game with friends, where they throw you a ball that you must catch. The first couple of throws you might miss the ball, but as you keep trying, you become better at estimating the time it takes to reach you and catch it more easily. How does your brain do this? “Fundamental to this process are your abilities to learn from past experiences and to extract time-related information from the environment,” explains Ignacio Polti, who conducted the study now published in the journal eLife together with Matthias Nau and Christian Doeller.

“Every throw of your friend will be slightly different from the previous one. Some balls arrive earlier, some arrive later. During the game, your brain learns the distribution of arrival times, and it uses this information to form expectations for future throws. By combining such prior knowledge with specific information of our friend’s current throw, we can thus improve the timing of our catch attempts.”

Researchers examining post-mortem brains confirm a long-held hypothesis explaining neurotransmitter’s connection to a debilitating disorder.

How does the brain chemical dopamine relate to schizophrenia? It is a question that vexed scientists for more than 70 years, and now researchers at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development (LIBD) believe they have solved the challenging riddle. This new understanding may lead to better treatment of schizophrenia, an often-devastating brain disorder characterized by delusional thinking, hallucinations, and other forms of psychosis.

Through their exploration of the expression of genes in the caudate nucleus – a region of the brain linked to emotional decision-making – the scientists uncovered physical evidence that neuronal cells are unable to precisely control levels of dopamine. They also identified the genetic mechanism that controls dopamine flow. Their findings were published today (November 1) in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

This lecture was recorded on March 25, 2012 as part of the Distinguished Science Lecture Series hosted by Michael Shermer and presented by The Skeptics Society in California (1992–2015).

SAM HARRIS IS THE AUTHOR of the New York Times bestsellers, The Moral Landscape, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. His new book is short (96) pages, to the point, and will change the way we all view free will, as Oliver Sacks wrote: “Brilliant and witty — and never less than incisive — Free Will shows that Sam Harris can say more in 13,000 words than most people do in 100,000.” UCSD neuroscientist V.S, Ramachandran notes: “In this elegant and provocative book, Sam Harris demonstrates — with great intellectual ferocity and panache — that free will is an inherently flawed and incoherent concept, even in subjective terms. If he is right, the book will radically change the way we view ourselves as human beings.”

Continue reading “Sam Harris on ‘Free Will’” »

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In the previous episode we saw how civilizations might not simply survive after all the stars in the Universe had died, but might indeed thrive far better during the Black Hole Era of the Universe. Today, we will go beyond even the Dark Era to examine the concepts or Iron Star Civilizations, Boltzmann Brains, Reversible Computing, and even reversing Entropy itself.

Continue reading “Civilizations at the End of Time: Iron Stars” »

A study of 2,217 kids found that those who played 21 hours of video games per week had greater cognitive abilities than kids who played none.

Mount Sinai researchers have cataloged thousands of sites in the brain where RNA is modified throughout the human lifespan in a process known as adenosine-to-inosine (A-to-I) editing, offering important new avenues for understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms of brain development and how they factor into both health and disease.

In a study published in Cell Reports, the team described how the rate of RNA editing in the brain increases as individuals age, with implications for dissecting the pathology of altered A-to-I editing across a range of neurodevelopmental and aging disorders.

“Our work provides more nuanced and accurate insights into the contribution of RNA modifications by A-to-I editing during human brain development,” says senior author Michael Breen, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, and Genetics and Genomic Sciences, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and a member of the Seaver Center for Autism Research and Treatment.

In a new study, scientists have uncovered the mechanics of the blood-tumor barrier, one of the most significant obstacles to improving treatment efficacy and preventing the return of cancerous cells. The research team, led by Dr. Xi Huang, a Senior Scientist in Developmental & Stem Cell Biology program at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), lays the foundation for more effectively treating medulloblastoma, the most common malignant pediatric brain tumor.

“Despite decades of research on brain cancer, the mechanisms that govern the formation and function of the blood-tumor barrier have remained poorly understood,” says Huang, who is also a Principal Investigator at the Arthur and Sonia Labatt Brain Tumor Research Center and Canada Research Chair in Cancer Biophysics. “Our discoveries represent a breakthrough in the understanding of how the blood-tumor barrier forms and works.”

In a paper published today in Neuron, the research team identifies a way to reduce the impact of the blood-tumor barrier on medulloblastoma treatment.

ARTIFICIAL intelligence has discovered a new life-changing drug and human trials are already underway.

The biotech company behind the breakthrough has dosed its first patient with an AI-developed treatment for ALS patients.

Alice Zhang, 33, is the founder of Verge Genomics and a former neuroscience doctoral student at University of California.

𝐍𝐢𝐜𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐬 𝐄𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐧 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧’𝐬 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙙𝙪𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙛 𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙜𝙚𝙣 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙡𝙖𝙢𝙪𝙨 𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙚 𝙘𝙪𝙧𝙩𝙖𝙞𝙡𝙚𝙙 𝙗𝙮 𝙟𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙙𝙤𝙨𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙣𝙞𝙘𝙤𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙚, 𝙚𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙫𝙖𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝙖 𝙘𝙞𝙜𝙖𝙧𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙚, 𝙧𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙨 𝙖 𝙬𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙚 𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝙖𝙣𝙖𝙡𝙮𝙨𝙞𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙩𝙝𝙮 𝙬𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙣 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙨𝙩 𝙨𝙩𝙪𝙙𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙞𝙩𝙨 𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙙.

“We were surprised to see that this effect could be seen even with a single dose of nicotine, equivalent to just one cigarette, showing how powerful the effects of smoking are on a woman ’ s brain.”

Continue reading “Nicotine Blocks Estrogen Production in Women’s Brains” »