Recent fossil finds suggest that big brains weren’t an evolutionary asset to our ancestors but evolved by accident – and are likely to shrink again in the near future.
By Colin Barras
Recent fossil finds suggest that big brains weren’t an evolutionary asset to our ancestors but evolved by accident – and are likely to shrink again in the near future.
By Colin Barras
Scientists have connected two organoids together with an axon bundle, to study how brain areas communicate. They sent signals back and forth and responded to external stimulation. This could be a step toward biocomputing.
Learn about: axons, white matter, re-entry, optogenetics, myelination, entrainment, short-term potentiation.
CORRECTIONS/CLARIFICATIONS:
As the pinned comment points out, there are many different kinds of neurons, and two pairs of organoids may not have the same cellular makeup. This natural variation between neurons might also account for the different post-stimulation behavior of the organoids from different cell lines.
Greg dunn’s neuro art: USE CODE \
Eexxeccellent.
Human brains outperform computers in many forms of processing and are far more energy efficient. What if we could harness their power in a new form of biological computing?
In this Frontiers Forum Deep Dive session on 21 June 2023, Professor Thomas Hartung, Dr Lena Smirnova and other renowned researchers, explored the future of organoid intelligence and the scientific, technological and ethical steps required for realizing its full potential.
The session brought together the authors of the Frontiers in Science lead article ‘Organoid intelligence (OI): the new frontier in biocomputing and intelligence-in-a-dish’ which presents a roadmap for the strategic development of organoid intelligence as a scientific discipline. It was attended by hundreds of representatives from science, policy, and business across the world.
Links:
“Machine-Learning Assisted Directed Evolution of Viral Vectors and Microbial Opsins for Minimally Invasive Neuroscience.” AI-4-Science Workshop, October 25, 2019 at Bechtel Residence Dining Hall, Caltech. Learn more about: — AI-4-science: https://www.ist.caltech.edu/ai4science/ — Events: https://www.ist.caltech.edu/events/ Produced in association with Caltech Academic Media Technologies. ©2019 California Institute of Technology.
Summary: Researchers have discovered how glial cells can be reprogrammed into neurons through epigenetic modifications, offering hope for treating neurological disorders. This reprogramming involves complex molecular mechanisms, including the transcription factor Neurogenin2 and the newly identified protein YingYang1, which opens chromatin for reprogramming.
The study reveals how coordinated epigenome changes drive this process, potentially leading to new therapies for brain injury and neurodegenerative diseases.
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How to explain our inner awareness that is at once most common and most mysterious? Traditional explanations focus at the level of neuron and neuronal circuits in the brain. But little real progress has motivated some to look much deeper, into the laws of physics — information theory, quantum mechanics, even postulating new laws of physics.
Watch more videos on consciousness as all physical: https://shorturl.at/PKpOk.
Sean Carroll is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and fractal faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. His research focuses on fundamental physics and cosmology.
Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdv7r2JSokIPlease support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:- HiddenLayer: https://…
Consciousness is comprised of arousal (i.e., wakefulness) and awareness. Substantial progress has been made in mapping the cortical networks that modulate awareness in the human brain, but knowledge about the subcortical networks that sustain arousal is lacking. We integrated data from ex vivo diffusion MRI, immunohistochemistry, and in vivo 7 Tesla functional MRI to map the connectivity of a subcortical arousal network that we postulate sustains wakefulness in the resting, conscious human brain, analogous to the cortical default mode network (DMN) that is believed to sustain self-awareness. We identified nodes of the proposed default ascending arousal network (dAAN) in the brainstem, hypothalamus, thalamus, and basal forebrain by correlating ex vivo diffusion MRI with immunohistochemistry in three human brain specimens from neurologically normal individuals scanned at 600–750 µm resolution. We performed deterministic and probabilistic tractography analyses of the diffusion MRI data to map dAAN intra-network connections and dAAN-DMN internetwork connections. Using a newly developed network-based autopsy of the human brain that integrates ex vivo MRI and histopathology, we identified projection, association, and commissural pathways linking dAAN nodes with one another and with cortical DMN nodes, providing a structural architecture for the integration of arousal and awareness in human consciousness. We release the ex vivo diffusion MRI data, corresponding immunohistochemistry data, network-based autopsy methods, and a new brainstem dAAN atlas to support efforts to map the connectivity of human consciousness.
One sentence summary We performed ex vivo diffusion MRI, immunohistochemistry, and in vivo 7 Tesla functional MRI to map brainstem connections that sustain wakefulness in human consciousness.
BF has a financial interest in CorticoMetrics, a company whose medical pursuits focus on brain imaging and measurement technologies. BF’s interests were reviewed and are managed by Massachusetts General Hospital and Mass General Brigham HealthCare in accordance with their conflict-of-interest policies.
Is consciousness a scientific problem to be solved? Or a philosophical problem that will remain a mystery? What do scientists who study the brain think? And why do they think the way they do? These leading brain scientists share their intimate ideas about how the brain generates consciousness.
Free access to Closer to Truth’s library of 5,000 videos: http://bit.ly/376lkKN
Watch more interviews on neuroscience and the hard problem of consciousness: https://bit.ly/3NZ2gn5
Arnold B. Scheibel was a Professor of Neurobiology and Psychiatry and former Director of the Brain Research Institute (BRI) at UCLA.
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Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.