In three patients with Alzheimer’s disease, focused ultrasound was applied with aducanumab therapy. Reduction in amyloid was greater in treated regions than in matched contralateral regions over 6 months. Read the full report:
Original Article from The New England Journal of Medicine — Ultrasound Blood–Brain Barrier Opening and Aducanumab in Alzheimer’s Disease.
“Rather than seeing the organization as a machine, we need to see it as a collection of clever apes.” Psychologist Robin Dunbar’s latest book argues companies are social groups that can’t be perfected like a machine.
What is it about working life that can make us feel so alienated and isolated, and what can we do to prevent it? In The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups, the evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar joins forces with Tracey Camilleri and Samantha Rockey, associate fellows at Oxford’s Saïd Business School, to apply Dunbar’s own scientific discoveries about human cooperation to our work lives. The idea is that, in order to perform our jobs more effectively, we need to go with, and at times go against, the grain of human nature. The authors home in on what makes us best work together, given the central importance of groups throughout our evolutionary history.
Dunbar spent the better part of two decades, starting in the 1970s, studying wild monkeys in Africa to understand why some species develop their own societies. His close contact with our primate cousins gave him a new perspective from which to approach questions about human nature, and that led him, in 1998, to propose the “social brain hypothesis”—the idea that keeping track of who’s who, and cooperating effectively, takes considerable brain power.
Dementia and stroke often have devastating consequences, so patients want to know what they can do to protect themselves against these diseases. A team of clinicians in partnership with patients developed a Brain Care Score (BCS) based on modifiable risk factors identified in past epidemiological studies. In the BCS, weights are assigned to four physical components (i.e., blood pressure, glycosylated hemoglobin, cholesterol, and body-mass index), to five lifestyle elements (i.e., nutrition, alcohol intake, smoking, aerobic activities, and sleep), and to three social factors (i.e., stress, relationships, and purpose in life). Lower scores on the BCS (range, 0–19) predict higher risk.
The team then validated whether the BCS predicted new dementia or stroke in the U.K. Biobank cohort, which consisted of 398,900 people (age range at baseline, 40–69). During average follow-up of nearly 13 years, new dementia or stroke occurred in ≈3% of the cohort. The BCS identified people who were at highest risk for these outcomes. For example, among those who were younger than 50 at baseline, a 5-point higher score predicted 59% lower risk for dementia and 48% lower risk for stroke.
This score could be computed automatically from information already in electronic health records and used to identify risk factors and to engage patients in modifying those risk factors. Whether such scoring would actually lead to lower incidences of dementia and stroke remains to be seen.
Almost exactly one year ago at CES 2023, Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon Ride Flex system-on-chip (SoC) product family. As an expansion of the company’s Snapdragon Digital Chassis product portfolio, the new SoC family is meant to support advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) as well as digital cockpit and infotainment applications spanning from entry level to premium vehicles. At the time, Qualcomm announced that the Ride Flex SoC was sampling with an expected start of production in early 2024. It’s now early 2024 and CES is about to kick off again. Tirias Research is expecting to hear an update on the product family next week. We anticipate the update will include, at the very least, some of the partners who will be bringing the Ride Flex SoCs to market in production volumes this year and into 2025. Given Qualcomm’s track record for hitting their estimated timelines, we felt that a re-cap of the product family is warranted leading up to next week’s anticipated update.
“Flex-ing” Resources to Support Mixed Criticality and Multiple Tiers
The Snapdragon Ride Flex is actually two monolithically integrated 4nm SoCs – a primary SoC and what Qualcomm are calling a Safety Island SoC. The primary SoC consists of a Kryo Gen 6 Arm v8.2 central processing unit (CPU) with integrated L3 cache, an Adreno 663 graphics processing unit (GPU), a Hexagon neural processing unit (NPU), a Spectra 690 image signal processing (ISP), two Adreno display processing units (DPUs) for multiple high-resolution display support and associated memory and I/O interconnects. This part of the SoC is Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL) B certified. The Safety Island SoC, which is ASIL-D certified, consists of a multi-core real-time CPU with enhanced error managements support and isolated memory and peripherals. ASIL is a risk classification methodology established under ISO 26,262 from the International Organization for Standardization which defines functional safety for road vehicles.
Emerging evidence implicates the gut microbiome in cognitive outcomes and neurodevelopmental disorders, but the influence of gut microbial metabolism on typical neurodevelopment has not been explored in detail. Researchers from Wellesley College, in collaboration with other institutions, have demonstrated that differences in the gut microbiome are associated with overall cognitive function and brain structure in healthy children.
This study—published Dec. 22 in Science Advances—is a part of the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcome (ECHO) Program. This study investigates this relationship in 381 healthy children, all part of The RESONANCE cohort in Providence, Rhode Island, offering novel insights into early childhood development.
The research reveals a connection between the gut microbiome and cognitive function in children. Specific gut microbial species, such as Alistipes obesi and Blautia wexlerae, are associated with higher cognitive functions. Conversely, species like Ruminococcus gnavus are more prevalent in children with lower cognitive scores. The study emphasizes the role of microbial genes, particularly those involved in the metabolism of neuroactive compounds like short-chain fatty acids, in influencing cognitive abilities.
Super Humanity — This documentary examines breakthroughs in neuroscience and technology. Imagine a future where the human brain and artificial intelligence connect.
Super Humanity (2019)
Director: Ruth Chao.
Writers: Ruth Chao, Paula Cons, Alphonse de la Puente.
Genre: Documentary, Sci-Fi.
Country: Portugal, Spain.
Language: English.
Release Date: December 27, 2019 (Spain)
Also Known As (AKA):
(original title) O Futuro da Mente.
El futuro de la mente.
Netherlands O Futuro da Mente.
Poland O Futuro da Mente.
Portugal O Futuro da Mente.
South Korea O Futuro da Mente.
Spain El futuro de la mente.
United States Mind Forward.
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Sitting alongside the neurons in your enteric nervous system are underappreciated glial cells, which play key roles in digestion and disease that scientists are only just starting to understand.
I post this especially because we use our minds and healthy body, healthy mind.
For people looking to start 2024 with a new routine to feel fitter and happier, a new study from the University of Bath suggests that combining mindfulness with exercise could be your key to success.
A study, published in the academic journal Mental Health and Physical Activity, suggests that life changes which combine both physical activity and mindfulness are most effective at lifting mood and improving health and wellbeing.
Both physical activity and mindfulness practice have well established psychological benefits. However, by reviewing existing research studies, this is one of the first to show how the positive effects can be increased when the two are combined.
Synaptic engineering involves the synthetic insertion of new synapses between neurons in vivo. In this Perspective, Rabinowitch, Colón-Ramos and Krieg explore this emerging approach for studying neural circuits, describing the different methods that have been used and how they have been implemented.
Since their discovery in the 1990s, the head-direction cells in the brain have been referred to as its “internal compass.” These cells are activated when the head of an animal or human points in a certain direction, and are thought to be important for spatial orientation and navigation.
Now a team of neuroscientists at the University of Tübingen has discovered that head-direction cells in mice do more than this. They may be involved in relaying sensory and emotional information that is used to form memories of experiences, called “episodic memory.”
The research team, led by Professor Andrea Burgalossi from the Institute of Neurobiology and the Werner Reichardt Center for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN), have published their study in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
