Lifeboat Foundation

The gurus of the psychedelic era of American pop culture extolled the experience of the “acid trip.” But the U.S. government and much of the public remained leery of LSD, with President Nixon declaring it and assorted other drugs “public enemy No. 1.” Now, half a century after Nixon launched the War on Drugs, a Miami-area private research clinic has kicked off a federally approved clinical trial to test LSD as a possible treatment for generalized anxiety disorder.

Summary: The neural circuitry that connects olfactory information about another mouse’s sex to decision-making in the brain determines the behavioral outcome as to whether aggression or affection is expressed.

Source: CalTech.

Dog owners whose pets meet during a walk are familiar with the immediate sniffing investigation that typically ensues. Initially, the owners cannot tell whether their dogs will wind up fighting, playing, or trying to mount each other. Something is clearly happening in the dog’s brain to make it decide how to behave toward the other dog—but what is going on?

Summary: Understanding how changes in the brain relate to changes in well-being is key to developing new targets for the treatment of mental health disorders.

Source: University of Oxford.

Associate Professor Miriam Klein-Flügge and colleagues looked at brain connectivity and mental health data from nearly 500 people. In particular, they looked at the connectivity of the amygdala—a brain region well known for its importance in emotion and reward processing.

Mild, persistent inflammation in tissue is considered one of the biological hallmarks of the aging process in humans—and at the same time is a risk factor for diseases such as Alzheimer’s or cancer. Prof. Francesco Neri and Dr. Mahdi Rasa of the Leibniz Institute on Aging—Fritz Lipmann Institute (FLI) in Jena have succeeded for the first time in describing at the molecular level the regulatory network that drives the general, multiple-organ inflammatory response. Moreover, they were able to show that dietary restriction can influence this regulatory circuit, thereby inhibiting inflammation.

Inflammation is an immune response of the body that is, in itself, useful: our immune system uses it to fight pathogens or to remove damaged cells from tissue. Once the immune cells have done their work, the inflammation subsides: the infection is over, the wound is healed. Unlike such acute inflammations, age-related chronic inflammation is not local. The innate immune system ramps up its activity overall, resulting in chronic low-grade inflammation. This aging-related inflammation is also known as inflammaging.

Summary: In mice genetically more susceptible to PTSD following a stressful event, researchers found an increased expression of cortisol receptors on neurons in the CA1 region of the dorsal hippocampus. Those increased receptors enabled an elevated expression of the HCN1 protein and TRIP8b, reducing neural excitability.

Source: medical college of georgia at augusta university.

Social avoidance is a common symptom of PTSD, and scientists working to better understand why have laboratory evidence that while stress hormone levels consistently increase in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic event, there can be polar opposite consequences in parts of the brain down the line.

Most of us consider nightmares pretty harmless, but apparently, they can be a bad sign. According to research at the University of Birmingham, people who experience frequent bad dreams in middle age are more likely to be diagnosed with dementia later in life.

New research suggests nightmares may become common several years or even decades before the characteristic memory and thinking problems of dementia set in. The study will be published today (September 21, 2022) in The Lancet.

Founded in 1,823 by Thomas Wakley, The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is one of the world’s oldest, most prestigious, and best known general medical journals. The journal publishes original research articles, review articles (“seminars” and “reviews”), editorials, book reviews, correspondence, as well as news features and case reports. The Lancet has editorial offices in London, New York, and Beijing.

Emmanuel Mignot and Masashi Yanagisawa won the 2023 Breakthrough Prize in life sciences for their discovery of the molecular mechanisms in the brain that cause the sleep disorder narcolepsy.

Summary: New research in cloned pigs with a mutation of the SORL1 sheds light on Alzheimer’s development. The findings could pave the way for new treatments for the neurodegenerative disorder.

Source: Aarhus University.

For decades, researchers from all over the world have been working hard to understand Alzheimer’s disease. Now, a collaboration between the Department of Biomedicine and the Department of Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University has resulted in a flock of minipigs that could lead to a major step forward in the research and treatment of Alzheimer’s.

Summary: The Allen Institute is launching a new global collaboration to map approximately 200 billion cells in the human brain by type and function.

Source: Allen Institute.

Scientists at the Allen Institute are launching the brain equivalent of the Human Genome Project, leading a new global collaboration to map the approximately 200 billion cells in the human brain by their type and function.