Lifeboat Foundation

Dogs are amazing, and we all know it.

Dogs do a lot for us. They sniff out diseases, lead those who are blind or visually impaired, and search for humans in disaster areas. And it would come as no surprise if we told you that they could detect stress through humans’ sweat and breath, as well.

Researchers from Queen’s University, Belfast, collected sweat and breath samples of 36 participants before and after they handled a tense mental arithmetic task.

Continue reading “It’s official: Dogs can sniff out stress on humans’ breath and sweat” »

In adult mice with loss of CHD8 gene function, FDA-approved drug partially restores disrupted brain cell production

CINCINNATI, Sept. 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Research led by a scientist at Cincinnati Children’s who primarily studies brain tumors may open doors for improved treatment of autism.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affects about one in 40 children between ages 3 and 17, according to the National Survey of Children’s Health. Those affected often experience difficulty socializing, impaired language development, repetitive behaviors, and other symptoms. Of those tested for various genes linked to the condition, nearly everyone with disruptive mutations of the gene CHD8 has autism.

A California university is refusing to release a cache of grisly photos of monkeys reportedly injured during experiments testing Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain implant technology, in spite of a lawsuit aiming to force the school’s hand.

In a press release, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) advocacy group said that it had learned that the University of California, Davis is in possession of 371 photos of the experimented-upon monkeys that were subjected to Neuralink tests, which took place at the school’s veterinary lab facilities.

Earlier this year, Neuralink admitted that a fifth of the 23 rhesus macaques monkeys it used to test its brain-hacking implants had been euthanized after developing infections and malfunctions. Bolstering PCRM’s credibility, that admission came in the wake of its a complaint it filed against Neuralink.

Research and blogs talk a lot about the health benefits of green tea. It’s rich in antioxidants and flavonoids, which have positive influences on our physical and mental well-being. Some studies show that green tea can boost metabolism, reduce inflammation and improve cognitive function.

But what’s less talked about are the side effects of green tea. They may be uncommon, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve discussion! This is of particular importance to those who have caffeine sensitivity or who may be taking certain medications which interact with caffeine and other bioactive components in green tea.

So before you brew yourself a cup, read on about the potential side effects of drinking green tea so you’re fully educated about what you’re consuming.

A new field of science has been emerging at the intersection of neuroscience and high-performance computing — this is the takeaway from the 2022 BrainComp conference, which took place in Cetraro, Italy from the 19th to the 22nd of September. The meeting, which featured international experts in brain mapping, machine learning, simulation, research infrastructures, neuro-derived hardware, neuroethics and more, strengthened the current collaborations in this emerging field and forged new ones.

Now in its 5th edition, BrainComp first started in 2013 and is jointly organised by the Human Brain Project and the EBRAINS digital research infrastructure, University of Calabria in Italy, the Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf and the Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany. It is attended by researchers from inside and outside the Human Brain Project. This year was dedicated to the computational challenges of brain connectivity. The brain is the most complex system in the observable universe due to the tight connections between areas down to the wiring of the individual neurons: decoding this complexity through neuroscientific and computing advances benefits both fields.

Hosted by the organising committee of Katrin Amunts, Scientific Research Director of the HBP, Thomas Lippert, Leader of EBRAINS Computing Services from the Juelich Supercomputing Centre and Lucio Grandinetti from the University of Calabria, the sessions included a variety of topics over four days.

Scientists at the Krembil Brain Institute, part of the University Health Network, have proposed a new mechanistic model (AD²) for Alzheimer’s, looking at it not as a brain disease, but as a chronic autoimmune condition that attacks the brain.

This novel research is published today, in Alzheimer’s & Dementia.

“We don’t think of Alzheimer’s as fundamentally a disease of the brain. We think of it as a disease of the immune system within the brain,” says Dr. Donald Weaver, co-Director of the Krembil Brain Institute and author of the paper.

Additionally, epigenetic changes were suggested to be a possible link [30, 31] between adverse childhood experiences and mortality as well as higher morbidity burden in late life [32]. It was proposed that this link could be mediated by health-adverse coping mechanisms (activated as a result of high levels of anxiety and depression) that are associated with adverse childhood experiences [33]. Some of these coping strategies, such as smoking, alcohol abuse and and a high BMI resulting from unhealthy eating habits, were shown to be associated with DNAmAA in some studies [34,35,36]. However, these results were not unequivocally replicated [37,38,39] (reviewed in ref. [40]).

Previous studies that examined the relationship between DNAmAA and stress operationalized stress as low socioeconomic status (SES) [41, 42], (childhood) trauma [26, 43,44,45], racial discrimination [46], or exposure to violence [47]. Many previous studies on the topic focused on changes in DNAm age during childhood as this period is known to be particularly prone to stress-related epigenetic changes [29].

In contrast, in this work we focus on older age which was shown to be the second most vulnerable phase in a person’s life in terms of epigenetics [29]. As epigenetic modifications remain even after the psychological stimulus has ceased there is the possibility of cumulating effects on the epigenome exerted by repeated psychological stressors [29]. Specifically, we analyzed the association between the amount of experienced stress (measured by Cohen’s Perceived Stress Scale [PSS] [48]) and several DNAm age estimators (i.e. the 7-CpG clock [49], Horvath’s clock [50], Hannum’s clock [51], PhenoAge [34], GrimAge [52]) in 1,100 older adults. While the PSS represents a well-established marker of perceived stress [48], to our knowledge it has not been investigated in the context of epigenetic aging before. While we were able to replicate well-established associations with perceived stress, none of the five epigenetic clocks analyzed in the current study were associated with the perception of stress.

There are many ways one can hurt themselves.

When we feel lonely or sad, we may tend to retreat to our shelves or surround ourselves with the people we trust just to put a temporary band-aid on the sorrow we experience. However, finding no cure to being actually alone and unhappy for a long time can have devastating effects not only on our mental health but also on our physical health, hence our appearance.

Scientists just confirmed that prolonged loneliness and unhappiness could accelerate the aging process of an individual, according to a study published in the journal Aging-US.

Is science destined to crack the code of—and how would we even go about it?