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Category: neuroscience – Page 482

What’s going on in our Brains when we Plan? Study uncovers how Mental Simulations rely on Stored Memories

In pausing to think before making an important decision, we may imagine the potential outcomes of different choices we could make. While this “mental simulation” is central to how we plan and make decisions in everyday life, how the brain works to accomplish this is not well understood.

An international team of scientists has now uncovered neural mechanisms used in planning. Its results, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, suggest that an interplay between the brain’s prefrontal cortex and hippocampus allows us to imagine future outcomes in order to guide our decisions.

“The prefrontal cortex acts as a ‘simulator,’ mentally testing out possible actions using a cognitive map stored in the hippocampus,” explains Marcelo Mattar, an assistant professor in New York University’s Department of Psychology and one of the paper’s authors.

Daniel Dennett on the Evolution of the Mind, Consciousness and AI

Want to join the debate? Check out the Intelligence Squared website to hear about future live events and podcasts: http://www.intelligencesquared.com.
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How come there are conscious minds?
How do language and culture evolve?
Should we still teach children things which computers can do better?
Will our smart electronic devices rob us of our intelligence?
Will human intelligence and AI co-evolve?

These are some of the intriguing questions that Daniel Dennett, one of the most influential and provocative thinkers of modern times, sought to answer when he came to the Intelligence Squared stage to discuss his lifetime’s work on the evolution of the human mind. Dennett’s cross-disciplinary approach – encompassing neuroscience, evolutionary biology and artificial intelligence – has been widely acclaimed and helped redefine the role of the philosopher for our age.

In this exclusive event, Dennett explored the major themes of his forthcoming book, ‘From Bacteria to Bach and Back’, including how our minds came into existence, how our brains work, and how ideas are culturally transmitted. He exploded many of the notions we take for granted about how we think – such as the idea of the individual – offering instead a bold new explanation of human consciousness which views it largely as a product of cultural evolution built up over millennia.

Sharing the stage with Dennett were key figures from the next generation of scientists, AI experts, philosophers and artists, with whom he will engage on what it means to be human.

Epstein-Barr Virus and Brain Cross-reactivity: Possible mechanism for Multiple Sclerosis detected

The role that Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) plays in the development of multiple sclerosis (MS) may be caused by a higher level of cross-reactivity, where the body’s immune system binds to the wrong target, than previously thought.

In a new study published in PLOS Pathogens, researchers looked at blood samples from people with MS, as well as healthy people infected with EBV and people recovering from glandular fever caused by recent EBV infection.

The study investigated how the immune system deals with EBV infection as part of worldwide efforts to understand how this common virus can lead to the development of multiple sclerosis, following 20 years of mounting evidence showing a link between the two.

Psychosocial experiences are associated with human brain mitochondrial biology

Positive life experiences boost brain mitochondrial health, potentially providing protection against certain brain disorders and promoting longevity.

In @MedicalXpress: https://ow.ly/BNn750SrT3c.

In PNAS: https://ow.ly/wT1e50SrT3b.

Mitochondria supply energy to the brain, and the new study shows that…

Psychosocial experiences affect brain health and aging trajectories, but the molecular pathways underlying these associations remain unclear. Normal brain function relies on energy transformation by mitochondria oxidative phosphorylation (OxPhos). Two main lines of evidence position mitochondria both as targets and drivers of psychosocial experiences. On the one hand, chronic stress exposure and mood states may alter multiple aspects of mitochondrial biology; on the other hand, functional variations in mitochondrial OxPhos capacity may alter social behavior, stress reactivity, and mood. But are psychosocial exposures and subjective experiences linked to mitochondrial biology in the human brain?

Divergent landscapes of A-to-I editing in postmortem and living human brain

Adenosine-to-inosine editing is a form of RNA modification observed in the human brain transcriptome. Here the authors question the accuracy of utilizing postmortem samples to reflect the RNA biology of living brains. This is due to significant differences in adenosine-to-inosine editing between living and postmortem brain tissues, with most sites exhibiting higher editing levels postmortem.

Chinese neural probe could be ‘transformative’ advance for brain-computer links

The probe also achieved stable neural recordings in rat brains for up to two years, showing excellent biocompatibility and long-term recording stability, state news agency Xinhua reported.

Cheng Heping, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the National Centre for Biomedical Imaging Science at Peking University, told Xinhua that the achievement provided a powerful tool for high-throughput simultaneous monitoring of activity in multiple brain regions, and for exploring the relationships between neural activity and behaviour.

Study reveals significant differences in RNA editing between postmortem and living human brain

Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have shed valuable light on the nuanced functions and intricate regulatory methods of RNA editing, a critical mechanism underlying brain development and disease.

In a study published June 26 in Nature Communications, the team reported finding major differences between postmortem and living prefrontal cortex brain tissues as they relate to one of the most abundant RNA modifications in the brain, known as adenosine-to-inosine (A-to-I) editing.

This discovery will play a significant role in shaping the development of diagnostics and therapies for .

Researchers find brains can tune their navigation system without landmarks

Johns Hopkins research sheds new light on how mammals track their position and orientation while moving, revealing that visual motion cues alone allow the brain to adjust and recalibrate its internal map even in the absence of stable visual landmarks.

Their results are published in Nature Neuroscience.

“When you move through space, you have a lot of competing telling you where you are and how fast you are going, and your brain has to make sense of that,” said study co-leader Noah Cowan, professor of mechanical engineering at the Whiting School of Engineering and director of the Locomotion in Mechanical and Biological Systems (LIMBS) Laboratory.

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