A trial of donanemab, an experimental drug, found it modestly slowed the worsening of memory and thinking and worked better in patients at earlier stages and those under 75.
More than a quarter of all stroke victims develop a bizarre disorder—they lose conscious awareness of half of all that their eyes perceive.
After a stroke in the brain’s right half, for example, a person might eat only what’s on the right side of the plate because they’re unaware of the other half. The person may see only the right half of a photo and ignore a person on their left side.
Surprisingly, though, such stroke victims can emotionally react to the entire photo or scene. Their brains seem to be taking it all in, but these people are consciously aware of only half the world.
Abstract: A scientific theory of consciousness could be merely descriptive, nothing more than a kind of empirical, statistical phenomenology. We already have a lot of data which fit into this kind of modest theorizing. Better would be a theory which reveals the nature of consciousness. Here a famous gap looms between any such theory of consciousness and a theory of the conscious brain, neither of which are actually in our possession. The gap is so serious and so immense that it has led to remarkable responses, such as the illusionist view that consciousness does not exist. I think the gap suggests there are lurking assumptions about the nature of both consciousness and matter which are fundamentally at odds with one another. A ‘neutral monist’ view may be able to avoid these assumptions to find a place in nature for consciousness and scientific theorizing about it.
USDA found Neuralink to be in compliance with animal safety and welfare standards after an isolated incident of using an unapproved sealant to close a monkey’s skull in a surgery triggered an investigation. FDA granted a request to begin testing it’s implant device in humans.
July 19 (Reuters) — The head of the U.S. agency responsible for animal welfare has told lawmakers that it did not find any violations of animal research rules at Elon Musk’s Neuralink beyond a 2019 incident the brain implant company had already reported.
Officials with the Department of Agriculture (USDA) conducted a “focused” inspection in response to a complaint about the company’s handling of animal experiments, but identified no compliance breaches, the agency’s secretary Thomas Vilsack wrote to Congressman Earl Blumenauer in a July 14 letter reviewed by Reuters.
More than a quarter of all stroke victims develop a bizarre disorder -; they lose conscious awareness of half of all that their eyes perceive.
After a stroke in the brain’s right half, for example, a person might eat only what’s on the right side of the plate because they’re unaware of the other half. The person may see only the right half of a photo and ignore a person on their left side.
Surprisingly, though, such stroke victims can emotionally react to the entire photo or scene. Their brains seem to be taking it all in, but these people are consciously aware of only half the world.
A common theme among parents and family members caring for a child with the rare Batten disease is “love, hope, cure.” While inspiring levels of love and hope are found among these amazing families, a cure has been more elusive. One reason is rooted in the need for more basic research. Although researchers have identified an altered gene underlying Batten disease, they’ve had difficulty pinpointing where and how the gene’s abnormal protein product malfunctions, especially in cells within the nervous system.
Now, this investment in more basic research has paid off. In a paper just published in the journal Nature Communications, an international research team pinpointed where and how a key cellular process breaks down in the nervous system to cause Batten disease, sometimes referred to as CLN3 disease [1]. While there’s still a long way to go in learning exactly how to overcome the cellular malfunction, the findings mark an important step forward toward developing targeted treatments for Batten disease and progress in the quest for a cure.
The research also offers yet another excellent example of how studying rare diseases helps to advance our fundamental understanding of human biology. It shows that helping those touched by Batten disease can shed a brighter light on basic cellular processes that drive other diseases, rare and common.
Gum disease and tooth loss are linked to shrinkage of the hippocampus, an area of the brain crucial for memory. The corresponding study was published in Neurology.
Previous studies suggest that tooth loss and periodontitis may be linked to Alzheimer’s disease. However, recent studies have not found a significant link between tooth loss and periodontitis, and hippocampal atrophy. In the current study, researchers sought to understand more about how oral health affects hippocampal volume-and, thus, memory. To do so, they examined the relationship between number of teeth present and hippocampal atrophy in light of periodontitis severity among middle-aged and older adults.
For the study, the researchers included 172 people with an average age of 67 years old who did not have cognitive decline. At the start of the study, each underwent dental exams and memory tests. They also underwent MRI brain scans at the beginning of the study and four years later to assess their hippocampal volume.
There may soon be another option for an Alzheimer’s drug capable of slowing the progression of the devastating disease.
An experimental Alzheimer’s drug from drugmaker Eli Lilly helped slow cognitive decline in patients in the early stages of the illness, according to the results of a late-stage clinical trial. Side effects of the drug, called donanemab, however, were serious in some cases, and included brain swelling and brain bleeds.
Lilly representatives presented the results at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Amsterdam on Monday. The research was published simultaneously in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Both A4 and LEARN suffered from several methodological hiccups, to the extent that one might consider A4, at least, a failed study. In 2017, after A4 was well underway, the leaders decided to up the solanezumab dosage substantially, from 400 mg to 1,600 mg per dose, and also to extend the follow-up period from the originally planned 3.2 years to 4.5 years, so that effects of the dosage increase could be captured adequately.
Meanwhile, LEARN commenced at about the same time. That meant that less than 3 years later, both studies were hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated disruptions. Many study sites shut down, and the investigators had to resort to home infusions in some places to keep the study going. Aisen and Sperling acknowledged that these issues complicated data collection, analysis, and interpretation. But there was no suggestion that these problems might have obscured a genuine beneficial effect from solanezumab.
Taken together, said Sperling, the results from A4 and LEARN indicate that “amyloid reduction may be necessary to slow progression even at the stage of preclinical [Alzheimer’s disease].”
Advantageously, the fabrication of OECTs, in particular of the conductive channel, is compatible with solution-based fabrication methods and additive manufacturing, enabling cost-efficient manufacturing and rapid prototyping on flexible substrates10. This opens new possibilities in terms of the combination of materials that can be used in the manufacturing of OECTs, in particular the use of degradable materials. Degradable electronics refer to electronic systems and components that can degrade in an environment of interest spontaneously, in a controlled amount of time, and without releasing byproducts that are harmful to that environment18. With concerning amounts of electronic waste being generated, as well as exploding numbers of connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices19, there is growing interest in transient electronic systems with a service life of a few days to a few months. Although advances have been made in the manufacturing of fully degradable functional devices, i.e. antennas20, batteries21 and physical as well as environmental sensors22,23, investigations into degradable biosensors remain relatively limited24.
Advances have been made in proposing new materials for the OECT terminals, in particular the gate electrode, as its properties play a key role in modulating the transistor’s behavior. While Ag/AgCl gates offer the advantage of being non-polarizable, Au gates present little electrochemical activity in the range of voltages typical for OECT-based biosensing. Au and PEDOT: PSS gates have been explored for OECT-based biosensors, with the advantage of expanding the possibilities for bio-functionalizing the gate electrode6,25. PEDOT: PSS gates and contacts have been investigated, simplifying notably their manufacturing26. An all-PEDOT: PSS OECT was presented and shown to measure dopamine concentrations reliably and specifically27. Various forms of carbon have also been investigated for the realization of gate electrodes for OECTs8. Activated carbon gates, for example, showed increased drain current modulation due to the large specific surface area of the carbon material9. Recently, screen-printed carbon-gated OECTs were shown to be suitable for the detection of uric acid after functionalization of the carbon gate with platinum and Uricase28. Transient or recyclable materials such as paper26 have been proposed as substrates for OECTs. Polylactic acid (PLA)24 and Poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid)29 (PLGA) have been studied as degradable substrates for OECTs30, as well as diacetate cellulose31. These studies, however, relied on non-degradable contacts for the operation of the printed OECTs. More recently, Khan et al.32 proposed a fully printed OECT on cellulose acetate (CA) for the selective detection of glucose. The OECT is made of degradable materials and CA is a biocompatible material that is suitable as a substrate for transient biosensors.
In this work, we present disposable and biocompatible OECTs based on carbon, PEDOT: PSS and PLA as substrate. Challenges in the fabrication of transient electronic devices come from the low-temperature tolerance18 of biopolymeric substrates and reaching adhesion of the PEDOT: PSS channel material on the biopolymer33, which is often deposited from an aqueous solution. A fully additive fabrication process is developed to address these challenges, leveraging screen and inkjet printing. The influence of the gate material choice, as well as the gate geometry, are studied, and these parameters are optimized for the fabrication of transient OECTs for ions and metabolite sensing. The transistor characteristics of the devices as well as their sensing behavior and reproducibility are characterized. Finally, the degradable OECTs are integrated with highly conductive transient zinc metal traces, which are of interest for interconnection with other degradable electronic circuits and could allow, for example, the wireless operation of the biochemical chemical sensors34.
