Year 2015 face_with_colon_three
A brain-computer interface lets a quadriplegic woman pilot an F-35 flight simulator with the power of her mind alone.
Category: neuroscience – Page 254
Protein indicators of subclinical peripheral heath in plasma were linked with markers of Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegeneration, cross-sectional proteomic analyses showed.
Greater protein-based risk for cardiovascular disease, heart failure mortality, and kidney disease was associated with plasma biomarkers of amyloid-beta, phosphorylated tau181 (p-tau181), neurofilament light (NfL, a measure of neuronal injury), and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP, a measure of astrogliosis), even in people without cardiovascular or kidney disease, reported Keenan Walker, PhD, of the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, and co-authors.
Proteomic indicators of body fat percentage, lean body mass, and visceral fat also were tied to p-tau181, NfL, and GFAP, Walker and colleagues wrote in the Annals of Neurology.
You Are When You Eat
Posted in biotech/medical, genetics, neuroscience
The sleep-wake cycle is among the most well-known circadian rhythms in the body and is severely affected in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). “Eighty percent of patients with AD suffer dysregulation or disruption of circadian rhythms, and the obvious clinical manifestations are the sleep-wake reversals,” Desplats said. “These patients are very sleepy during the day, agitated during the night, more confused, and sometimes aggressive.”
The feeding-fasting cycle is one of the strongest signals you can send the body to entrain the circadian clock.-Paula Desplats, University of California, San Diego
In a recent study published in Cell Metabolism, Desplats’s team used mice that are genetically engineered to develop AD to test whether intermittent fasting improves circadian rhythm abnormalities.3 Rather than restricting calories or making dietary changes, they simply limited food access to a defined six-hour daily window. They found that time-restricted eating improved sleep, metabolism, memory, and cognition, and reduced brain amyloid deposits and neuroinflammatory gene expression. “Many of the genes that are affected in AD are rhythmically expressed in the brain, meaning that they are in direct relation with the circadian clock and are involved in functions that are fundamental to AD pathology,” Desplats said. Intermittent fasting restored the rhythmic activity of these genes, but the real surprise was the extent to which it mitigated brain amyloid deposits and improved cognition and sleep-wake behaviors. “I didn’t expect that it will have such a dramatic impact on pathology,” Desplats said.
A first-of-its-kind study led by the University of California, Irvine has revealed a new culprit in the formation of brain hemorrhages that does not involve injury to the blood vessels, as previously believed. Researchers discovered that interactions between aged red blood cells and brain capillaries can lead to cerebral microbleeds, offering deeper insights into how they occur and identifying potential new therapeutic targets for treatment and prevention.
The findings, published online in the Journal of Neuroinflammation, describe how the team was able to watch the process by which red blood cells stall in the brain capillaries and then observe how the hemorrhage happens. Cerebral microbleeds are associated with a variety of conditions that occur at higher rates in older adults, including hypertension, Alzheimer’s disease and ischemic stroke.
“We have previously explored this issue in cell culture systems, but our current study is significant in expanding our understanding of the mechanism by which cerebral microbleeds develop,” said co-corresponding author Dr. Mark Fisher, professor of neurology in UCI’s School of Medicine. “Our findings may have profound clinical implications, as we identified a link between red blood cell damage and cerebral hemorrhages that occurs at the capillary level.”
Advancements in genetic engineering, gene therapies, and anti-aging research may eventually allow for age reversal and the restoration of youthful health and longevity.
What is the key idea of the video?
—The key idea is that advancements in genetic engineering and anti-aging research may eventually allow for age reversal and the restoration of youthful health and longevity.
How can aging be reversed?
—Aging can be reversed through rejuvenating the brain, restoring memories and learning abilities, and addressing the loss of inherited information through genetic engineering and epigenetic reprogramming.
A fundamental question in neuroscience is what are the constraints that shape the structural and functional organization of the brain. By bringing biological cost constraints into the optimization process of artificial neural networks, Achterberg, Akarca and colleagues uncover the joint principle underlying a large set of neuroscientific findings.
Is reality indistinguishable from information? Is consciousness a self-aware, self-modifying information field? Does information have intrinsic meaning? How does meaningfulness arise? How do sentient and non-sentient entities differ in the way they perceive and process information?…
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Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and KU Leuven have discovered a suite of genes that influence head shape in humans. These findings, published this week in Nature Communications, help explain the diversity of human head shapes and may also offer important clues about the genetic basis of conditions that affect the skull, such as craniosynostosis.
By analyzing measurements of the cranial vault —the part of the skull that forms the rounded top of the head and protects the brain—the team identified 30 regions of the genome associated with different aspects of head shape, 29 of which have not been reported previously.
“Anthropologists have speculated and debated the genetics of cranial vault shape since the early 20th century,” said co-senior author Seth Weinberg, Ph.D., professor of oral and craniofacial sciences in the Pitt School of Dental Medicine and co-director of the Center for Craniofacial and Dental Genetics.
In an article published yesterday in MIT Technology Review, Rachel Nuwer wrote a thought provoking piece exploring the boundaries between life and death.
Beyond the brain and brain death itself, related efforts are studying and attempting to develop techniques for restoring metabolic function in a number of organs other than the brain after death, including the heart and kidneys, which could greatly enhance organ donation capabilities.
While these developments are promising, researchers caution against overpromising. The path to these medical advancements is paved with years of research and ethical considerations. The exploration into the dying process will surely challenge not only scientific and medical fields but also societal, theological, and legal considerations, as it reshapes our understanding of one of life’s most profound phenomena. At some point, policy and regulations will need to follow—further adding to the complexity of the topic.
The transition from life to death is becoming increasingly blurred as scientific research uncovers previously unknown or poorly understood complexities about the physiology and reversibility of the dying process. This evolving understanding promises to redefine medical practices, extend the window for organ recovery, and challenge our societal notions of life and death. However, this is a true journey, in the sense that the science and its implications will necessarily involve continuous research, ethical and legal considerations, and a need for realistic expectations. While death is a universal experience, what it is and how we go from living to dying are anything but static.