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Category: neuroscience – Page 465

Spike Mutations that Help SARS-CoV-2 Infect the Brain Discovered

Scientists have discovered a mutation in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, that plays a key role in its ability to infect the central nervous system. The findings may help scientists understand its neurological symptoms and the mystery of “long COVID,” and they could one day even lead to specific treatments to protect and clear the virus from the brain.

The new collaborative study between scientists at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois-Chicago uncovered a series of mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (the outer part of the virus that helps it penetrate cells) that enhanced the virus’s ability to infect the brains of mice.

“Looking at the genomes of viruses found in the brain compared to the lung, we found that viruses with a specific deletion in spike were much better at infecting the brains of these animals,” said co-corresponding author Judd Hultquist, assistant professor of medicine (infectious diseases) and microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “This was completely unexpected, but very exciting.”

Using machine learning to uncover predictors of well-being

Irrespective of their personal, professional and social circumstances, different individuals can experience varying levels of life satisfaction, fulfillment and happiness. This general measure of life satisfaction, broadly referred to as “well-being,” has been the key focus of numerous psychological studies.

Better understanding the many factors contributing to well-being could help to devise personalized and targeted interventions aimed at improving people’s levels of fulfillment. While many past studies have tried to delineate these factors, few have done so leveraging the advanced machine learning models available today.

Machine learning models are designed to analyze large amounts of data, unveiling hidden patterns and making . Using these tools to analyze data collected in previous studies in neuroscience and psychology could help to shed light on the environmental and influencing well-being.

Loss of the Primal Eye, R.E.M as Phasic Transients, and the origins of Dreaming

NEW PAPER — Loss of the Primal Eye in evolution, REM explained as phasic transients, and the emergence of DREAMING in E1 animals. MA dissertation Philosophy, University of Leeds 1995/1996.

There are a number of reasons why dreaming has been, and remains, an important area to philosophy. Dreams are ‘pure’ experiential phenomena not (seemingly) requiring input from the outside world via the special senses. As Aristotle puts it, “If all creatures, when the eyes are closed in sleep, are unable to see, and the analogous statement is true of the other senses, so that manifestly we perceive nothing when asleep; we may conclude that it is not by sense-perception we perceive a dream”. A major part of this dissertation is concerned with issues raised in Owen Flanagan’s (1995) article, Deconstructing Dreams: The Spandrels of Sleep. The Primal Eye/MVT account of consciousness gives p-dreaming a more central explanatory role, and I argue that p-dreams are not epiphenomena in the way Flanagan claims. An important omission from Flanagan’s account is any discussion of important dreaming-related phenomena. I look at lucid dreaming, hypnosis and other mental phenomena in relation to the evolutionary loss of the primal/ median/ parietal eye, and postulate that REM rapid eye movements are ‘phasic transients’ considering the E1 brain which includes the lateral eyes, as a consciousness-producing circuit. A brief account of Primal Eye/ Median Vision Theory is that capacity for abstract/ centrally evoked mentation is a direct result of the evolutionary loss of the primal eye. E2 (earlier hardwired brains with both primal and lateral eyes) have evolved over millions of years into E1 brain circuits analog(ous to infinite-state) types of self-regulating plastic circuits, with no primal/pineal eye, but retaining lateral eyes and the pineal gland. Loss of this ‘lockstep mechanism’ median/primal/ parietal/pineal eye not only allowed new sleeping mental phenomena such as dreaming; but also heralded in new types of waking mental abstraction freed from E2 involuntary primal eye direct (electro-chemical) responses to changes in the physical environment. These include daydreams, visualisation with both lateral eyes closed, self-volition or self-determined choices, and so on.

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