Lifeboat Foundation

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Stanford University.

The research was published in Nature Nanotechnology in August.

Anosmia, or the inability to smell, can be caused not only by head injuries but also by exposure to certain toxins and by a variety of medical problems—including tumors, Alzheimer’s, and viral diseases, such as COVID. The sense of smell also commonly atrophies with age; in a 2012 study in which more than 1,200 adults were given olfactory exams, 39 percent of participants age 80 and above had olfactory dysfunction.

The loss of smell and taste have been dominant symptoms of COVID since the beginning of the pandemic. People with COVID-induced anosmia currently have only three options: Wait and see if the sense comes back on its own, ask for a steroid medication that reduces inflammation and may speed recovery, or begin smell rehab, in which they expose themselves to a few familiar scents each day to encourage the restoration of the nose-brain nerves. Patients typically do best if they seek out medication and rehab within a few weeks of experiencing symptoms, before scar tissue builds up. But even then, these interventions don’t work for everyone.

In April 2020, researchers at VCU’s smell and taste clinic launched a nationwide survey of adults who had been diagnosed with COVID to determine the prevalence and duration of smell-related symptoms. They’ve followed up with those people at regular intervals, and this past August they published results from people who were two years past their initial diagnosis. The findings were striking: Thirty-eight percent reported a full recovery of smell and taste, 54 percent reported a partial recovery, and 7.5 percent reported no recovery at all. “It’s a serious quality of life issue,” says Evan Reiter, director of the VCU clinic.

Can scientists read your mind and figure out what you’re thinking just by looking at your brain? Well, sort of.

In this episode of The Social Brain with Taylor Guthrie (@The Cellular Republic) and I (@Sense of Mind) talk about a fascinating new area of cognitive neuroscience, called “brain decoding” as well as its counterpart, “brain encoding,” and related topics. It all centers on the question posed above and the future applications, some of which are scary while others are inspiring.

Continue reading “The Social Brain Ep.4: Brain Decoding: The Science of ‘Mind Reading’” »

Tiny single-celled critters obviously don’t have room for a brain to tell them how to move in complex ways, so to get about, they usually roll, slither or swim.

But microscopic pond dwellers called Euplotes eurystomus have mastered a way to walk brainlessly – scurrying about like insects, with their 14 little appendages.

Continue reading “Clockwork-Like ‘Computer’ Discovered Inside Brainless Microscopic Organism” »

The mechanisms underlying decision-making have been a long-standing focus of neuroscience research. But now, researchers from Japan have found new information about how the reward system in the brain processes risky decisions.

In a study recently published in Nature Communications, researchers from the University of Tsukuba have revealed that individual neurons in the neural circuit that processes reward information fire in accordance with a well-established theory used to describe the decision-making process.

First proposed in the 1970s, prospect theory is a highly influential concept used to describe how people and animals make choices. Although this theory has been supported by thousands of studies, limitations in the temporal and spatial resolution of human neuroimaging techniques have prevented researchers from determining whether the activity of individual neurons follows this pattern, something that the researchers at the University of Tsukuba aimed to address.

Summary: Proteins associated with motor neuron disease, or ALS are present in the gut many years before disease pathologies can be found in the brain. A stool sample or gut biopsy could help identify the presence of MND-associated proteins years before symptoms appear.

Source: University of Aberdeen.

The same proteins thought to contribute to motor neuron disease can be found in the gut many years before any brain symptoms occur, a new study by the University of Aberdeen has found.