Lifeboat Foundation

Boltzmann brains are perhaps one of the spookiest ideas in physics. A Boltzmann brain is a single, isolated human brain complete with false memories that spontaneously fluctuates into existence from the void. They’re the kind of thing you’d find in a campfire horror story. The big problem, however, is that a range of plausible cosmological models (including our current cosmology) predict that Boltzmann brains will exist. Even worse, these brains should massively outnumber “ordinary” conscious observers like ourselves. At every moment of your existence, it is more likely that you are an isolated Boltzmann brain, falsely remembering your past, than a human being on a rocky planet in a low-entropy universe.

In this video I explain where the idea of Boltzmann brains originated, and why they haunt modern cosmology.

Continue reading “Boltzmann Brains: A Cosmological Horror Story” »

While shedding and symptom may not be closely linked in general, we found total shedding and symptom severity to be highly correlated (Pearson 0.81, Supplementary Fig. S1). Furthermore, with one exception, low shedding implied low symptom severity and vice versa. Thus associations found between shedding and pre-inoculation biomarkers like the CPV are also present in symptom severity, although to a lesser degree. Therefore in the rest of this section we report associations for the less noisy shedding measurements. The total variance explained (\(R^2\) ) by a linear model relating CPV score to shedding titers is \(R^2=0.77\) (ratio of residual variance of linear regression to variance of titers). Furthermore, a logistic regression of total shedding onto the CPV score yielded a perfect discriminant between high and low shedders, respectively defined as those whose total shedding is below versus above the population median.

The correlation between shedding titers and CPV scores is robust to reductions in the number of NCPT variables composing the score. In fact the correlation between shedding and CPV increases to greater than 0.9 when only 6 NCPT measures are incorporated: digSym-time, digSym-correct, reaction-time, posner-tutorialTime, trail-time and trail-tutorialTime. Furthermore, the CVP score incorporating only the three basic NCPT measures digSym-time, digSym-correct, trail-time achieves a correlation level of approximately 0.7 (Fig. S2). We find that adding a fourth basic NCPT variable reaction time to the CPV score computation does not appreciably affect this level of correlation. On the other hand, replacing replacing either digSym-time or digSym-correct with posner-tutorialTime produces an increase in correlation to a level greater than 0.85.

To illustrate the role of the 18 individual NCPT variables in the CPV, we plot in Fig. 1e the univariate CPV scores for the two lowest shedding and the two highest shedding participants. This figure is extracted from Fig. S3 in the Supplementary that shows the sequence of univariate CPV scores for all 18 study participants. Superimposed on the plot of these variables is a boxplot indicating score sensitivity to session perturbation, determined by leave-one-out analysis where the univariate CPV was recomputed after successively leaving a single NCPT session out of each participant’s sequence (sans screening session). Figure 1e clearly shows that certain NCPT variables have significantly higher variability for the high shedders (lower two panels) than for the low shedders (top two panels). Note that the NCPT variable with highest variability (variable achieving peak score in each panel of Fig. 1e) differs across study participants.

Summary: Findings reveal how a person’s cognitive performance prior to viral exposure can predict the severity of symptoms once the virus develops.

Source: University of Michigan.

If your alertness and reaction time is see-sawing more than usual, you may be more at risk of a viral illness.

For the first time, a new study has identified enlarged perivascular spaces in the brains of migraine sufferers. Results of the study were presented recently at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

“In people with chronic migraine and episodic migraine without aura, there are significant changes in the perivascular spaces of a brain region called the centrum semiovale,” said study co-author Wilson Xu, an M.D. candidate at Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “These changes have never been reported before.”

Migraine is a common, often debilitating condition, involving a severe recurring headache. Migraines may also cause nausea, weakness, and light sensitivity. According to the American Migraine Foundation, over 37 million people in the U.S. are affected by migraine, and up to 148 million people worldwide suffer from chronic migraine.

The proteins can record histories of cellular events.

Researchers from MIT developed a technique to induce cells to record the history of cellular events in a long protein chain that can be imaged using a light microscope. The technique could help understand the critical steps involved in the processes, such as memory formation, response to drug treatment, and gene expression.

Studying the molecular processes within cells can provide important insights into their function and how they contribute to the overall functioning of an organ.

Continue reading “MIT researchers developed self-assembling proteins that can store ‘cellular memories’” »

“No other study has been able to record optically and electrically at the same time.”

Engineers and neuroscientists at the University of California, San Diego have shown for the first time that mice implanted with human brain organoids have functional connectivity to their cortex and respond to external sensory stimuli.

A novel experimental setup that combines transparent graphene microelectrode arrays and two-photon imaging allowed researchers to make this observation over a period of months in real time. The implanted organoids responded to visual stimuli in the same manner as surrounding tissues, according to the press release.

Minor tweaks could expand its scope of applications to other conditions, such as autism.

Researchers used virtual reality (VR) games to diagnose attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) through differences in eye movements, according to a press release published by Aalto University. This method could potentially be utilized as a basis for ADHD treatment and, with minor tweaks, to assess other conditions like autism.

Continue reading “Researchers use virtual reality games to detect ADHD symptoms in children” »

Adenosine, a neurotransmitter, has been found to act as a brake on dopamine, another neurotransmitter involved in motor control, by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University. The findings, which were published in the journal Nature, reveal that adenosine and dopamine operate in a push-pull dynamic in the brain.

“There are two neuronal circuits: one that helps promote action and the other that inhibits action,” said senior author Haining Zhong, Ph.D., a scientist with the OHSU Vollum Institute. “Dopamine promotes the first circuit to enable movement, and adenosine is the ‘brake’ that promotes the second circuit and brings balance to the system.”

The discovery has the potential to immediately suggest new avenues for drug development to treat the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease is a movement disorder that is believed to be caused by the loss of dopamine-producing cells in the brain.

Dynamic systems theory of neural systems.

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