Lifeboat Foundation

In the middle of the night, the world can sometimes feel like a dark place. Under the cover of darkness, negative thoughts have a way of drifting through your mind, and as you lie awake, staring at the ceiling, you might start craving guilty pleasures, like a cigarette or a carb-heavy meal.

Plenty of evidence suggests the human mind functions differently if it is awake at nighttime. Past midnight, negative emotions tend to draw our attention more than positive ones, dangerous ideas grow in appeal and inhibitions fall away.

Some researchers think the human circadian rhythm is heavily involved in these critical changes in function, as they outline in a new paper summarizing the evidence of how brain systems function differently after dark.

Circa 2018

New research has opened doors to using the gene-editing tool CRISPR to stop cancer cells from dividing indefinitely.

Innovative Solutions For Unmet Needs Of Older Adults & Their Caregivers — Keith Camhi, Managing Director, Techstars Future of Longevity Accelerator — A Partnership With Melinda Gates Pivotal Ventures.

Keith Camhi is Managing Director, Techstars Future of Longevity Accelerator (https://www.techstars.com/accelerators/longevity), a program, run in partnership with Pivotal Ventures (https://www.pivotalventures.org/), an investment and incubation company created by Melinda French Gates, focusing on innovative solutions to address the unmet needs of older adults and their caregivers. The longevity accelerator core program themes include: Caregiver Support, Care Coordination, Aging in Place, Financial Wellness and Resilience, Preventive Health (both Physical and Cognitive), and Social Engagement.

Continue reading “Keith Camhi — Techstars Future of Longevity Accelerator — Innovative Solutions For Older Adults” »

Unlike existing treatments that focus on rehabilitation or reducing the risk of an additional stroke, the experimental drug targets the “stickiness” that can prevent injured brain tissue from functioning as it should.

Researchers who previously revived some brain cells in dead pigs succeeded in repeating the process in more organs.

Block et al. show that combined exposure to air pollution and maternal stress during pregnancy activates the maternal immune system and induces male-specific impairments in social behavior and circuit connectivity in offspring. Cellularly, prenatal stressors diminish microglia phagocytic function,…

The serotonin hypothesis of depression is still influential. We aimed to synthesise and evaluate evidence on whether depression is associated with lowered serotonin concentration or activity in a systematic umbrella review of the principal relevant areas of research. PubMed, EMBASE and PsycINFO were searched using terms appropriate to each area of research, from their inception until December 2020. Systematic reviews, meta-analyses and large data-set analyses in the following areas were identified: serotonin and serotonin metabolite, 5-HIAA, concentrations in body fluids; serotonin 5-HT1A receptor binding; serotonin transporter (SERT) levels measured by imaging or at post-mortem; tryptophan depletion studies; SERT gene associations and SERT gene-environment interactions. Studies of depression associated with physical conditions and specific subtypes of depression (e.g.

In order to cover the different areas and to manage the large volume of research that has been conducted on the serotonin system, we conducted an ‘umbrella’ review. Umbrella reviews survey existing systematic reviews and meta-analyses relevant to a research question and represent one of the highest levels of evidence synthesis available [23]. Although they are traditionally restricted to systematic reviews and meta-analyses, we aimed to identify the best evidence available. Therefore, we also included some large studies that combined data from individual studies but did not employ conventional systematic review methods, and one large genetic study. The latter used nationwide databases to capture more individuals than entire meta-analyses, so is likely to provide even more reliable evidence than syntheses of individual studies.

We first conducted a scoping review to identify areas of research consistently held to provide support for the serotonin hypothesis of depression. Six areas were identified, addressing the following questions: Serotonin and the serotonin metabolite 5-HIAA–whether there are lower levels of serotonin and 5-HIAA in body fluids in depression; Receptors — whether serotonin receptor levels are altered in people with depression; The serotonin transporter (SERT) — whether there are higher levels of the serotonin transporter in people with depression (which would lower synaptic levels of serotonin); Depletion studies — whether tryptophan depletion (which lowers available serotonin) can induce depression; SERT gene – whether there are higher levels of the serotonin transporter gene in people with depression; Whether there is an interaction between the SERT gene and stress in depression.

We searched for systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and large database studies in these six areas in PubMed, EMBASE and PsycINFO using the Healthcare Databases Advanced Search tool provided by Health Education England and NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence). Searches were conducted until December 2020.

However, the research which was published in PLoS Medicine found that noise levels in the house had no effect on the results of working memory and attention tests.

Road traffic noise is a common issue in cities, but its effects on children’s health are still not fully known. According to recent research done at 38 schools in Barcelona, road noise has a negative impact on how well working memory and attention are developed in young children. The results of this investigation, which was conducted under the direction of the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a facility supported by the “la Caixa” Foundation, were released in the journal PLoS Medicine.

2,680 kids between the ages of 7 and 10 participated in the study, which was part of the BREATHE initiative and directed by researchers Maria Foraster and Jordi Sunyer. The researchers focused on attention and working memory, two skills that grow quickly throughout preadolescence and are crucial for learning and academic success, in order to gauge the potential effects of traffic noise on cognitive development.

Basically what this article says that schizophrenia is hard to pin down on the actual source of the symptoms so as of now the dsm 5 has it as a illness type but it is no longer on the dsm 5 essentially. This can relieve the stigma relating to it because it’s actually source of the disease is still not truly know. There are still medications for it but the actual source seems to be kinda unknown as it seems like other diseases aswell.

As human beings and scientists, we can think about phenomena in terms of categories and continuities. The distinction between light “particles” and “waves,” discovered by 20th-century quantum mechanics, is a case in point. Just as the particle-wave duality necessitated revisions in the understanding of the basic concepts and fundamental methods of theoretical physics, the revolution in psychiatric classification seems to bring with it the end of the fixed and fateful category of schizophrenia.

Still, most clinicians agree that some individuals do experience delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized speech that make them sound irrational. They attest that they have seen individuals who clearly exhibit disorganized or catatonic behavior, flat affect, or the failure to maintain basic self-care. Yet a growing number of psychiatrists maintain that, as a presumed disease entity, as an identifiable state, with clear subtypes, schizophrenia simply does not “exist.” Some consider schizophrenia no more than an “end stage” of other untreated mental disorders (in the same way that heart failure is the terminal stage of various heart diseases); others propose to abolish the diagnosis altogether.