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Category: neuroscience – Page 359

Consciousness is usually ascribed to a specific set of mechanisms and functional capabilities of the complex brain. Importantly, those mechanisms (ion channels, electrical networks, neurotransmitter machinery) long pre-date the evolutionary innovation of nervous systems. Moreover, the algorithms and competencies such as memory, decision-making, and information integration likewise have an ancient evolutionary origin: before they controlled moving the body through 3D space, electrical networks moved body configurations through anatomical morphospace. In this talk, I will describe how we view the morphogenesis during embryonic development and regeneration as the behavior of a collective intelligence, which has many problem-solving capacities. I will describe the tools we have developed, paralleling neuroscientists’ attempts to read and write mental content by control of electrophysiology, to decode and re-write the pattern memories of the body. This has significant implications not only for biomedicine and evolutionary biology, but also for questions about consciousness and the scaling of coherent Selves from agential materials. I will conclude with some conjectures about what this new field offers the science of consciousness, in the form of new embodied living creatures that are outside the natural evolutionary stream of Earth, and the quest for theories of consciousness.-https://www.drmichaellevin.org/ Participate in our online research survey-Survey on Diverse intelligence-https://tufts.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eE51vKE34q3hexo (takes 9 minutes). Thank you.

Edited by Emilio Manzotti.
https://github.com/emilim/

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Conclusions: Most studies demonstrated the use of VR to be effective for supporting the treatment of anxiety or depression in a range of settings and recommended its potential as a tool for use in a clinical environment. Even though standalone headsets are much easier to work with and more suitable for home use, the shift from tethered VR headsets to standalone headsets in the mental health environment was not observed. All studies that looked at the use of CBT either in vivo or in a virtual environment found it to be effective in supporting the treatment of anxiety or depression.

Keywords: CBT; anxiety; depression; mental health; virtual reality.

©Nilufar Baghaei, Vibhav Chitale, Andrej Hlasnik, Lehan Stemmet, Hai-Ning Liang, Richard Porter. Originally published in JMIR Mental Health (https://mental.jmir.org), 23.09.2021.

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Like this video about how Viva Vita addresses loneliness and depression in the elderly using VR. Subscribe here: https://freeth.ink/youtube-subscribe-depressionintheelderly.

Watch the next video in our series on virtual reality therapy: https://youtu.be/IZE41KejIBw.

In the United States, about six million people over the age of 65 experience late life depression and about one-third of seniors feel lonely.

Viva Vita is taking a novel approach to addressing both loneliness and depression in the elderly population.

The organization provides virtual reality excursions for seniors to help them break through personal limitations and find enjoyment exploring new settings.

At first glance, virtual reality for seniors might seem like a gimmick, but early studies of VR for depression, chronic pain, and other ailments are quite promising.

Continue reading “VR Trips Help Treat Depression in the Elderly” | >

The Conversation Weekly podcast is taking a short break in August. In the meantime, we’re bringing you extended versions of some of our favourite interviews from the past few months.

This week, how researchers discovered a biological switch that could turn on and off neuroplasticity in the brain – the ability of neurons to change their structure. We speak to Sarah Ackerman, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Neuroscience and Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Oregon, about what she and her team have found and why it matters.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly features an extended version of an interview first published on April 29. The Conversation Weekly is produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware, with sound design by Eloise Stevens. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. You can sign up to The Conversation’s free daily email here. Full credits for this episode available here.

Further reading: Astrocyte cells in the fruit fly brain are an on-off switch that controls when neurons can change and grow, by Sarah DeGenova Ackerman, University of OregonSwimming gives your brain a boost – but scientists don’t know yet why it’s better than other aerobic activities, by Seena Mathew, University of Mary Hardin-BaylorWhat is brain plasticity and why is it so important?, by Duncan Banks, The Open University.

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How does the research conducted by Lige Leng at the Institute of Neuroscience of Xiamen University in China (I link it to you here)? It all starts with the study of the “inflamed brain”: many diseases of old age are associated with low-level chronic inflammation in the brain, organs, joints and circulatory system. A phenomenon sometimes called “inflammaging”.

You know it: over time all of our body’s repair systems deteriorate, our DNA and proteins accumulate damage, metabolism stumbles and cells stop doing their job. That’s life, beauty.

We’re all on our way to the exit, but research on worms, flies, mice and monkeys show that going at this speed isn’t inevitable. Diet and lifestyle changes (and, perhaps, upcoming anti-aging drugs) can curb decay and give us many more years of life, especially healthy life.

A new discovery suggests that a protein in the brain could be a switch to control inflammation and, with it, many symptoms and consequences of aging. If scientists can figure out how to distribute it safely in humans, we will finally put the first major brake on the aging process.

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Aude Oliva is a prominent Cognitive and Computer Scientist directing the MIT Computational Perception and Cognition group at CSAIL while also leading the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and co-leading the MIT AI Hardware Program. With research spanning computational neuroscience, cognition, and computer vision, she pioneers the integration of human perception and machine recognition. Her contributions extend across academia, industry, and research, making her a distinguished figure at MIT.

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A biological pathway through which myelin, the protective coating on nerve fibers, can be repaired and regenerated has been discovered in a new study. The ramifications of this finding could be far-reaching for those with neurological diseases affecting myelin, many of which are currently untreatable.

If the axons that shoot out from the cell bodies of neurons are like electrical wires, you can think of the myelin sheath as the insulating plastic outer coating. In the brain, these sheathed nerve fibers make up most of the tissue known as white matter, but axons throughout the body are also coated in myelin.

The myelin sheath’s main functions are to protect the axon, to ensure electrical nerve impulses can travel quickly down it, and to maintain the strength of these impulses as they travel over what can be very long distances.

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Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have found how stem cells’ surrounding environment controls them to differentiate into functional cells, a breakthrough critical for using stem cells to treat various human diseases in the future.

Stem cells play a crucial role in supporting normal development and maintaining tissue homeostasis in adults. Their unique ability to replicate and differentiate into specialized cells holds great promise in treating diseases like Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and type I diabetes by replacing damaged or diseased cells with healthy ones.

Despite their potential therapeutic benefits, one of the major challenges for cell therapies lies in efficiently differentiating stem cells into functional cells to replace damaged cells in degenerative tissue. This task is particularly difficult due to the limited understanding of the underlying molecular mechanism by which the tissues around stem cells, known as the stem cell niche, guide stem cell progeny to differentiate into proper functional cell types.

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