With each flip you make through a deck of vocabulary word flashcards, their definitions come more quickly, more easily. This process of learning and remembering new information strengthens important connections in your brain. Recalling those new words and definitions more easily with practice is evidence that those neural connections, called synapses, can grow stronger or weaker over time—a feature known as synaptic plasticity.
Annihilationism is the belief that unbelievers will not experience an eternity of suffering in hell, but will instead be “extinguished.” Dr. Bart Ehrman discusses why Jesus and Paul believed in annihilation. Full video: • Exploring Early Christian Narratives…
Dr. Bart Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he has taught thousands of students and won numerous awards.
Bart’s work has been featured in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Times Literary Supplement, the New Yorker, Time, and Newsweek; he has appeared on National Geographic, CNN, the BBC, NBC’s Dateline, the Discovery Channel, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the Sam Harris Podcast, and many other top media outlets. Subscribe to his blog here:
https://ehrmanblog.org/
Delgado Podcast features discussions with academics, authors, artists and people who challenge our thinking and help us grow in more compassion. This season is focused on the ways our spirituality, faith, and/or religious identities impact our understanding of justice, race, gender, sexuality, mental health, and religious texts. More about the show here:
You can also get the podcast here:
Spotify: http://bit.ly/delgadopod.
Scientists put their heads together for an insane medical breakthrough.
Neuroscience and biomedical engineering startup BrainBridge announced that it has created an AI-mechanized system for performing head transplants.
The procedure would graft a head onto the body of a brain-dead donor, maintaining the memories, cognitive abilities and consciousness of the transplanted individual.
New research has shown that frozen human brain tissue can be revived without damage.
Using a new approach, scientists have successfully frozen and thawed brain organoids and cubes of brain tissue from someone with epilepsy, which could enable better research into neurological conditions.
In a pioneering achievement, a research team led by experts at Cincinnati Children’s have developed the world’s first human mini-brain that incorporates a fully functional blood-brain barrier (BBB).
This major advance, published May 15, 2024, in Cell Stem Cell, promises to accelerate the understanding and improved treatment of a wide range of brain disorders, including stroke, cerebral vascular disorders, brain cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington disease, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative conditions.
“Lack of an authentic human BBB model has been a major hurdle in studying neurological diseases,” says lead corresponding author Ziyuan Guo, PhD, “Our breakthrough involves the generation of human BBB organoids from human pluripotent stem cells, mimicking human neurovascular development to produce a faithful representation of the barrier in growing, functioning brain tissue. This is an important advance because animal models we currently use in research do not accurately reflect human brain development and BBB functionality.”
Summary: A new study finds that altered states of consciousness (ASCs), like those experienced during meditation, are more common than previously thought. 45% of respondents reported experiencing ASCs at least once, often leading to positive outcomes.
However, a significant minority also reported negative or even life-threatening suffering, highlighting the need for better support and understanding of these experiences.
The FDA has allowed billionaire Elon Musk’s Neuralink to implant its brain chip in a second person after it proposed a fix for a problem that occurred in its first patient. Correspondent Brooke Shafer joins \.
“Neuralink to implant 2nd human with brain chip as 85% of threads retract. Neuralink’s first patient, 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh, opened up about the roller-coaster experience. ” I was on such a high and then to be brought down that low. It was very, very hard,” Arbaugh said. ” I cried.” What a disaster!
Algorithm tweaks made up for the loss, and Neuralink thinks it has fix for next patient.
How do you define consciousness?
Some theories are even duking it out in a mano-a-mano test by imaging the brains of volunteers as they perform different tasks in clinical test centers across the globe.
But unlocking the neural basis of consciousness doesn’t have to be confrontational. Rather, theories can be integrated, wrote the authors, who were part of the Human Brain Project —a massive European endeavor to map and understand the brain—and specialize in decoding brain signals related to consciousness.
Not all authors agree on the specific brain mechanisms that allow us to perceive the outer world and construct an inner world of “self.” But by collaborating, they merged their ideas, showing that different theories aren’t necessarily mutually incompatible—in fact, they could be consolidated into a general framework of consciousness and even inspire new ideas that help unravel one of the brain’s greatest mysteries.
A hormone already present in the human body could be used to stop Alzheimer’s disease in its tracks, scientists have announced.
Researchers discovered that a small part of an appetite-suppressing hormone called leptin, which is present in everyone, can have dramatic effects on the brain, including stopping the development of Alzheimer’s disease in its earliest stages.
Their tests have shown that leptin can reduce the effects of two toxic proteins in the brain called amyloid and tau, which build up and lead to memory loss and development of Alzheimer’s disease.