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Category: neuroscience – Page 459

Scientists capture clearest glimpse of how brain cells embody thought

This explores how the human brain forms abstract concepts and adapts to changing environments, specifically looking at how neurons in certain brain regions contribute to complex thinking.

It takes brains to infer how any two things in the world relate to each other, whether it’s the way bad weather links to commuting delays or how environmental conditions lead to the evolution of species. A new study based on recordings in the brains of people has yielded a pathbreaking trove of data that researchers now have used to reveal, with more clarity than ever, the neural incarnations of inferential reasoning.

New findings reveal how serotonin shapes behavior in negative situations

In a recent study in Nature Communications, researchers increased synaptic serotonin through a selective serotonin-releasing agent (SSRA), fenfluramine, to investigate its impact on human behavior.

Neuroscience research concentrates on the function of central serotonin (5HT) in human behavior, specifically the impact of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Serotonin is necessary for several actions, including eating, sexual function, and goal-directed cognition.

It is difficult to determine the causal relationship between increased synaptic 5-HT and behavior in humans via SSRIs due to SSRIs’ complicated effects on 5-HT and colocalized neurotransmitter systems. A low dose of fenfluramine, approved for the treatment of Dravet epilepsy in 2020, directly and swiftly elevates synaptic 5-HT without altering extracellular dopamine concentrations in mood control areas.

Quantum Entanglement in Neurons May Actually Explain Consciousness

A silent symphony is playing inside your brain right now as neurological pathways synchronize in an electromagnetic chorus that’s thought to give rise to consciousness.

Yet how various circuits throughout the brain align their firing is an enduring mystery, one some theorists suggest might have a solution that involves quantum entanglement.

The proposal is a bold one, not least because quantum effects tend to blur into irrelevance on scales larger than atoms and molecules. Several recent findings are forcing researchers to put their doubts on hold and reconsider whether quantum chemistry might be at work inside our minds after all.

Discrete and Continuous Processes in Computers and Brains

Theories of computation and theories of the brain have close historical interrelations, the best-known examples being Turing’s introspective use of the brain’s operation as a model for his idealized computing machine (Turing 1936), McCulloch’s and Pitts’ use of ideal switching elements to model the brain (McCulloch and Pitts 1943), and von Neumann’s comparison of the logic and physics of both brains and computers (von Neumann 1958).

Breakthrough molecule reverses Alzheimer’s symptoms

In a new study, a molecule identified and synthesized by UCLA Health researchers was shown to restore cognitive functions in mice with symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease by effectively jumpstarting the brain’s memory circuitry.

If proven to have similar effects in humans, the candidate compound would be novel among Alzheimer’s disease treatments in its ability to revitalize memory and cognition, study authors said.

There is really nothing like this on the market or experimentally that has been shown to do this.

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