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Category: neuroscience – Page 396

New method tracks how psychedelics affect neurons in minutes

Researchers at the University of California, Davis have developed a rapid, noninvasive tool to track the neurons and biomolecules activated in the brain by psychedelic drugs. The protein-based tool, which is called Ca2+-activated Split-TurboID, or CaST, is described in research published in Nature Methods.

There has been mounting interest in the value of psychedelic-inspired compounds as treatments for brain disorders including depression, and . Psychedelic compounds like LSD, DMT and psilocybin promote the growth and strengthening of neurons and their connections in the brain’s prefrontal cortex. The new tool could help scientists unlock the benefits of psychedelic treatments for patients with brain disorders.

“It’s important to think about the that these psychedelics act upon,” said Christina Kim, an assistant professor of neurology at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience and School of Medicine, and an affiliate of the UC Davis Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics. “What are they? Once we know that, we can design different variants that target the same mechanism but with fewer side effects.”

The Paradox of Cognition: Why Thinking Too Hard Can Make You Miserable

Mental effort is generally unpleasant, as confirmed by a meta-analysis involving over 4,600 participants across various tasks and demographics. People often pursue challenging activities for the rewards, not the pleasure of the task. Credit: SciTechDaily.com.

A meta-analysis of 170 studies revealed that regardless of the task or population, increased mental effort correlates with feelings of frustration and stress. This phenomenon is less pronounced in Asian populations, possibly due to different educational experiences. Despite this, people still engage in mentally challenging tasks like chess, driven by the rewards rather than enjoyment of the effort itself.

New Quantum Experiments to Test Simulation Hypothesis and its Connection to Consciousness

Science: Physicists Will conduct experiments to verify if we live in the real reality or if we live in a virtual reality. In a computer simulation. In a dream. Or if not.

Researchers at California State Polytechnic University (CalPoly), Pomona are carrying out a series of quantum physics experiments expected to provide strong scientific evidence that we live in a computer simulated virtual reality. — PR13031782.

Time’s Secrets Unveiled: Study Challenges How We Perceive Time

Our brain measures time by counting experiences, not by following a strict chronological order.

A new study by a team of UNLV researchers suggests that there’s a lot of truth to the trope “time flies when you’re having fun.”

In their study, recently published in the journal Current Biology, the researchers discovered that our perception of time is based on the number of experiences we have, not on an internal clock. Additionally, they found that increasing speed or output during an activity appears to affect how our brains perceive time.

How Your Brain Remembers: How Episodic Memories Form

Summary: Researchers developed a computer model that mimics how the hippocampus stores new episodic memories without erasing old ones. This model demonstrates that the CA3 region of the hippocampus serves as an anchor point for memories, allowing efficient storage in surrounding regions.

The findings reveal insights into how the brain organizes personal experiences and maintains stability despite constant updates. The model shows promise for enhancing our understanding of memory retention and cognitive processing.

Cell-type specific epigenetic clocks to quantify biological age at cell-type resolution

The ability to accurately quantify biological age could help monitor and control healthy aging. Epigenetic clocks have emerged as promising tools for estimating biological age, yet so far, most of these clocks have been developed from heterogeneous bulk tissues, and are thus composites of two aging processes, one reflecting the change of cell-type composition with age and another reflecting the aging of individual cell-types. There is thus a need to dissect and quantify these two components of epigenetic clocks, and to develop epigenetic clocks that can yield biological age estimates at cell-type resolution. Here we demonstrate that in blood and brain, approximately 35% of an epigenetic clock’s accuracy is driven by underlying shifts in lymphocyte and neuronal subsets, respectively. Using brain and liver tissue as prototypes, we build and validate neuron and hepatocyte specific DNA methylation clocks, and demonstrate that these cell-type specific clocks yield improved estimates of chronological age in the corresponding cell and tissue-types. We find that neuron and glia specific clocks display biological age acceleration in Alzheimer’s Disease with the effect being strongest for glia in the temporal lobe. The hepatocyte clock is found accelerated in liver under various pathological conditions. In contrast, non-cell-type specific clocks do not display biological age-acceleration, or only do so more marginally. In summary, this work highlights the importance of dissecting epigenetic clocks and quantifying biological age at cell-type resolution.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

The Illumina DNA methylation datasets analyzed here are all freely available from GEO (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo).

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