Lifeboat Foundation

If a free-floating brain could feel pain or ‘wake up,’ how would we know? That’s an important ethical question — and it’s one we need to ask more often as labs around the world create new organoids, or miniature human organs. To answer it we talked to Jay Gopalakrishnan at his ‘mini brain’ lab for centrosome and cytoskeleton biology in Düsseldorf, Germany.

STUDY: https://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/fulltext/S1934-5909(21)00295-2

Continue reading “Inside a mini-brain (with eyes?) lab” »

A paralyzed individual controls a neuroprosthetic without daily recalibration.

As big pharma interest grows in bioelectronics medicine, Astellas swoops in for a startup developing wireless, grain-sized devices powered by ultrasound for CNS disease monitoring and intervention.

Analysis and insight on brain-computer interfaces (BCI). Stay updated as Singularity Hub discusses the most important trends and research related to BCIs.

Brain-computer interface technology is moving fast and Silicon Valley is moving in. Will we all soon be typing with our minds?

For a while now, we’ve known there’s a complex interplay between our hormones, guts, and mental health, but untangling the most relevant connections within our bodies has proved challenging.

New research has found a single enzyme that links all three, and its presence may be responsible for depression in some women during their reproductive years.

Wuhan University medical researcher Di Li and colleagues compared the blood serum of 91 women aged between 18 and 45 years with depression and 98 without. Incredibly, those with depression had almost half the serum levels of estradiol – the primary form of estrogen our bodies use during our fertile years.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FuzoLdrRX5Q

The technology I want to talk about today is something out of this world, but also a bit controversial There is a startup in Australia who are actually growing live human neurons and then integrating it into traditional computer chips… mind-blowing stuff!

My Gear:
Camera Sony Alpha 7 III: https://amzn.to/3dmv2O6
Lens Sony 50mm F1.8: https://amzn.to/3weJoJo.
Mic Sennheiser: https://amzn.to/3IKW5Ax.
Music from my videos: https://www.epidemicsound.com/referral/908oe4

Continue reading “This Computer Chip is alive 🤯” »

Growing brains can be a tricky process, but growing ones that can make muscles move? That’s an incredible feat. Here’s how scientists did it.

How Close Are We to Farming Human Body Parts? — https://youtu.be/oRHxX9OW9ow.

Continue reading “This Lab-Grown Brain Made a Muscle TWITCH, Here’s How” »

Researchers at Texas A&M University have developed the first molecular therapeutic for Angelman syndrome to advance into clinical development.

In a new article, published today in Science Translational Medicine, Dr. Scott Dindot, an associate professor and EDGES Fellow in the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences’ (VMBS) Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, and his team share the process through which they developed this novel therapeutic candidate, also known as 4.4.PS.L, or GTX-102. Dindot is also the executive director of molecular genetics at Ultragenyx, which is leading the development of GTX-102.

Angelman syndrome (AS) is a devastating, rare neurogenetic disorder that affects approximately 1 in 15,000 live births per year; the disorder is triggered by a loss of function of the maternal UBE3A gene in the brain, causing developmental delay, absent speech, movement or balance disorder, and seizures.