Biophysical Therapeutics, a drug discovery platform company that leverages computational biology, has emerged from stealth. The primary targets of the Delaware-based company are cancer, the diseases of aging (including Alzheimer’s disease) and – excitingly – aging itself.
Founded by Dr Michael Forrest, a Cambridge University biochemistry graduate with a PhD in computer science, Biophysical Therapeutics boasts renowned biotech entrepreneur Professor George Church (of Harvard Medical School) as an advisor to the company. Professor Bruno Conti of the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California is also an advisor.
Longevity. Technology: Back in 2006, Conti and his team reported an exciting result in the prestigious journal Science. They showed (in female mice) that slightly reducing the metabolic rate by slightly reducing metabolic heat generation (decreasing body temperature by 0.34°C) increased lifespan by 20%.
Summary: Researchers investigate brain region synchronization in order to assist control of brain-machine interfaces.
Source: UPF Barcelona.
Just a few decades ago, the possibility of connecting the brain with a computer to convert neural signals into concrete actions would have seemed like something from science fiction.
How long is the present? The answer, Cornell researchers suggest in a new study, depends on your heart.
They found that our momentary perception of time is not continuous but may stretch or shrink with each heartbeat.
The research builds evidence that the heart is one of the brain’s important timekeepers and plays a fundamental role in our sense of time passing—an idea contemplated since ancient times, said Adam K. Anderson, professor in the Department of Psychology and in the College of Human Ecology (CHE).
Because it CAN be done does not mean it SHOULD be done.
We humans have not yet developed a strong understanding of unintended consequences.
Human neurons can survive — and even develop — after being transplanted into newborn rats. But are they still rats?
Understanding the brain is one of the greatest goals of modern science. But parts of what we find out are more curious than we could have ever imagined. A new paper highlights one such discovery.
Researchers at the University of Stanford report that human neurons transplanted into newborn rats can grow and develop with the animal.
There’s an excessive amount of innovation embedded in right now’s cutting-edge pc chips, however not a lot of it’s as out-of-the-box because the considering that’s driving Australian startup Cortical Labs. The corporate, like so many startups with synthetic intelligence in thoughts, is constructing pc chips that borrow their neural community inspiration from the organic mind. The distinction? Cortical is utilizing precise organic neurons, taken from mice and people, to make their chips.
“We’re constructing the primary hybrid pc chip which entails implanting organic neurons on silicon chips,” Hon Weng Chong, CEO and co-founder of Cortical Labs, informed Digital Tendencies.
That is completed by first extracting neurons in two other ways, both from a mouse embryo or by remodeling human pores and skin cells again into stem cells and inducing these to develop into human neurons.
Dr Jordan B Peterson and Dr. Del Paulhus delve deep into the Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy, and the newly added Sadism. From these four traits, researchers can quantify much of the darkness of humanity, and begin to study it in a way that yields numerical results, and the potential to make substantial predictions.
Dr. Delroy Paulhus is a personality researcher whose work in dark personality traits, via a variety of psychometric methods, has yielded measures of the Dark Tetrad. His work has also validated measures of socially desirable responding, perceived control, free will and determinism, and over-claiming. His work has been published in over 150 articles and books, and his current citation count exceeds 43,000.
Dr Peterson’s extensive catalog is available now on DailyWire+: https://utm.io/ueSXh.
One of the most concerning outcomes following surgery and anesthesia among older adults is a condition known as postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD). Often, patients and their family members report feeling very fearful that the patient will suffer permanent cognitive deficits after anesthesia. Unfortunately, this pre-emptive fear may contribute to the complex array of symptoms associated with POCD and further complicate the ability to fully understand the subjective experience of this postoperative complication.
About the study
The current study published in the British Journal of Anesthesia involved the collection of data from the comments section of the published article titled ‘The hidden long-term risks of surgery.’ The comments were given an alphanumeric code to maintain chronological order and structure, while the username, submission date, and time were kept anonymous.
To ensure your survival, your brain evolved to avoid one thing: uncertainty. As neuroscientist Beau Lotto points out, if your ancestors wondered for too long whether that noise was a predator or not, you wouldn’t be here right now. Our brains are geared to make fast assumptions, and questioning them in many cases quite literally equates to death. No wonder we’re so hardwired for confirmation bias. No wonder we’d rather stick to the status quo than risk the uncertainty of a better political model, a fairer financial system, or a healthier relationship pattern. But here’s the catch: as our brains evolved toward certainty, we simultaneously evolved away from creativity—that’s no coincidence; creativity starts with a question, with uncertainty, not with a cut and dried answer. To be creative, we have to unlearn millions of years of evolution. Creativity asks us to do that which is hardest: to question our assumptions, to doubt what we believe to be true. That is the only way to see differently. And if you think creativity is a chaotic and wild force, think again, says Beau Lotto. It just looks that way from the outside. The brain cannot make great leaps, it can only move linearly through mental possibilities. When a creative person forges a connection between two things that are, to your mind, so far apart, that’s a case of high-level logic. They have moved through steps that are invisible to you, perhaps because they are more open-minded and well-practiced in questioning their assumptions. Creativity, it seems, is another (highly sophisticated) form of logic. Beau Lotto is the author of Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently.
BEAU LOTTO:
Beau Lotto is a professor of neuroscience, previously at University College London and now at the University of London, and a Visiting Scholar at New York University.
His work focuses on the biological, computational and psychological mechanisms of perception. He has conducted and presented research on human and bumblebee perception and behavior for more than 25 years, and his interest in education, business and the arts has led him into entrepreneurship and engaging the public with science.
In 2001, Beau founded the Lab of Misfits, a neuro-design studio that was resident for two years at London’s Science Museum and most recently at Viacom in New York. The lab’s experimental studio approach aims to deepen our understanding of human nature, advance personal and social well-being through research that places the public at the centre of the process of discovery, and create unique programmes of engagement that span the boundaries between people, disciplines and institutions. Originally from Seattle, with degrees from UC Berkeley and Edinburgh Medical School, he now lives in Oxford and New York.
Why do some people love Impressionist paintings like Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies” (1906) while others can’t understand the hype? The question of aesthetic taste has stumped scholars for centuries. Now, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) say they have come closer to decoding how the brain decides which artworks it deems good or attractive.
In a study published in the scientific journal Nature Communications, CalTech Professor John O’Doherty and other researchers propose that the mind creates an opinion of an artwork after dissecting it into discrete elements. Basic features, such as color and texture, and complex qualities, like style, are ranked and weighed individually to make a judgment.
