Lifeboat Foundation

Summary: Researchers have identified a protein that could be leveraged to help microglia in the brain stave off Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Source: The Conversation.

Many neurodegenerative diseases, or conditions that result from the loss of function or death of brain cells, remain largely untreatable. Most available treatments target just one of the multiple processes that can lead to neurodegeneration, which may not be effective in completely addressing disease symptoms or progress, if at all.

Entry for the #3Blue1Brown Summer of Math Exposition 2022 (#SoME2)byRodrigo Coin Curvo& Alexander Maier.

Our default intuition when it comes to consciousness is that humans and some other animals have it, whereas plants and trees don’t. But how sure can we be that plants aren’t conscious? And what if what we take to be behavior indicating consciousness can be replicated with no conscious agent involved? Annaka Harris invites us to consider the real possibility that our intuitions about consciousness might be mere illusions.

Our intuitions have been shaped by natural selection to quickly provide life-saving information, and these evolved intuitions can still serve us in modern life. For example, we have the ability to unconsciously perceive elements in our environment in threatening situations that in turn deliver an almost instantaneous assessment of danger — such as the intuition that we shouldn’t get into an elevator with someone, even though we can’t put our finger on why.

But our guts can deceive us as well, and “false intuitions” can arise in any number of ways, especially in domains of understanding — like science and philosophy — that evolution could never have foreseen. An intuition is simply the powerful sense that something is true without having an awareness or understanding of the reasons behind this feeling — it may or may not represent something true about the world.

In a new study published by Alzheimer’s & Dementia, scientists from Rush University and Tufts University were the first to compare cognitive decline factors to vitamin D concentrations not only in the blood, but in the brain as well.

Researchers analyzed participants of the Rush Memory and Aging Project (MAP)—an ongoing longitudinal study that aims to identify risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and other cognitive decline disorders—before and after death to see how their vitamin D levels impacted cognitive function in their later years.

Free of known dementia at the time of enrollment, all MAP participants agreed to participate in annual evaluations and organ donation when they died. In this study, the average age of participants was 92 at the time of death.

Summary: Tracking eye movements as a person views an image of a face in different lights provides vital clues about visual perception and consciousness overall.

Source: Yale.

Since he was a kid Hal Blumenfeld has wondered about the nature of human consciousness.

Summary: Researchers discover changes to the brain’s salience network occur when a person experiences trauma.

Source: University of Rochester.

Exposure to trauma can be life-changing—and researchers are learning more about how traumatic events may physically change our brains. But these changes are not happening because of physical injury; rather, the brain appears to rewire itself after these experiences.

Summary: A new optogenetics-based technique allows researchers to control neuron excitability.

Source: MIT

Nearly 20 years ago, scientists developed ways to stimulate or silence neurons by shining light on them. This technique, known as optogenetics, allows researchers to discover the functions of specific neurons and how they communicate with other neurons to form circuits.

— Impact of ultra-processed foods is small but important, prospective study suggests.

One of the most enduring human mysteries is why we possess sentient awareness, a paradox known to science as the “hard problem of consciousness.”

At the physiological level, we have a good understanding that consciousness is driven by electrical impulses and chemical signals between neurons in the brain. Though precisely what regions of the brain are responsible for thoughtful experience is still a matter of debate.

However, scientists still do not understand why the same essential elements of the universe can come together to form an inanimate object like a rock or a highly complex organic structure like the human brain.