A Personal Perspective: Revolutionizing our understanding of consciousness.
Category: neuroscience – Page 331
Promising results from the very first primate trial looking at the brain-boosting effects of longevity protein klotho has buoyed scientists and opens the door to human trials aimed at restoring cognitive function and other age-related conditions.
Analysis of data from more than 22,000 people with multiple sclerosis helped researchers identify a genetic variant that is associated with the severity of the disease.
By Grace Wade
An early experiment in older rhesus macaques suggests that an injection of klotho improves working memory. Could it one day help people?
Regular physical exercise, such as resistance training, can prevent Alzheimer’s disease, or at least delay the appearance of symptoms, and serves as a simple and affordable therapy for Alzheimer’s patients. This is the conclusion of an article published in Frontiers in Neuroscience by Brazilian researchers affiliated with the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) and the University of São Paulo (USP).
Although older people and dementia patients are unlikely to be able to do long daily runs or perform other high-intensity aerobic exercises, these activities are the focus for most scientific studies on Alzheimer’s. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends resistance exercise as the best option to train balance, improve posture and prevent falls. Resistance exercise entails contraction of specific muscles against an external resistance and is considered an essential strategy to increase muscle mass, strength and bone density, and to improve overall body composition, functional capacity and balance. It also helps prevent or mitigate sarcopenia (muscle atrophy), making everyday tasks easier to perform.
To observe the neuroprotective effects of this practice, researchers in UNIFESP’s Departments of Physiology and Psychobiology, and the Department of Biochemistry at USP’s Institute of Chemistry (IQ-USP), conducted experiments involving transgenic mice with a mutation responsible for a buildup of beta-amyloid plaques in the brain. The protein accumulates in the central nervous system, impairs synaptic connections and damages neurons, all of which are features of Alzheimer’s disease.
Humans split away from our closest animal relatives, chimpanzees, and formed our own branch on the evolutionary tree about seven million years ago. In the time since—brief, from an evolutionary perspective—our ancestors evolved the traits that make us human, including a much bigger brain than chimpanzees and bodies that are better suited to walking on two feet. These physical differences are underpinned by subtle changes at the level of our DNA. However, it can be hard to tell which of the many small genetic differences between us and chimps have been significant to our evolution.
New research from Whitehead Institute Member Jonathan Weissman; University of California, San Francisco Assistant Professor Alex Pollen; Weissman lab postdoc Richard She; Pollen lab graduate student Tyler Fair; and colleagues uses cutting edge tools developed in the Weissman lab to narrow in on the key differences in how humans and chimps rely on certain genes. Their findings, published in the journal Cell on June 20, may provide unique clues into how humans and chimps have evolved, including how humans became able to grow comparatively large brains.
It found that consciousness may emerge from a grid-like interconnection of neurons at the back of the head.
Launched in 2019, the $20 million project, COGITATE, sought to explore an age-old question: how does consciousness arise? The “outlandish” project threw the field into a tizzy for its audacity. But it set up a fair fight: the teams collaborated on specific experiment designs, published them online, and pre-registered predicted results based on each of their championed theories.
Human brain scan data was then collected from six theory-neutral labs around the world, with the results judged by three experts with no money in the game to see how well the measured results matched predicted ones.
Scientists observed sleeping octopuses and saw their brains enter a deep sleep like ours.
Having undergone two aneurysm surgeries, Sandi Rodoni thought she understood everything about the procedure. But when it came time for her third surgery, the Watsonville, California, resident was treated to a virtual reality trip inside her own brain.
Stanford Medicine is using a new software system that combines imaging from MRIs, CT scans and angiograms to create a three-dimensional model that physicians and patients can see and manipulate — just like a virtual reality game.