Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: neuroscience – Page 491

Our Wolfram Physics Project has provided a surprisingly successful picture of the underlying (deeply computational) structure of our physical universe. I’ll talk here about how our perception of that underlying structure is determined by what seem to be key features of our consciousness—and how this leads to detailed laws of physics as we experience them. Our Physics Project has led to the concept of the ruliad—the entangled limit of all possible computations—which seems to represent a common underlying structure from which both physics and mathematics emerge. I’ll talk about the comparison between physical and mathematical observers, and how their common features in consciousness lead to implications for general laws of “bulk mathematics”.

Read more | >

The use of smartphones has become an increasingly popular behaviour in people’s lives. However, an increased number of people find it difficult to minimise the use of smartphones, leading to the emergence of smartphone-addictive behaviours (Panova and Carbonell, 2018; Busch and McCarthy, 2021). In particular, the rapid spread of coronavirus disease 2019 around the world has led to a dramatic increase in the number of smartphone addicts due to home isolation (Caponnetto et al., 2021). Smartphone addiction is an emerging behavioural addiction, which refers to excessive dependence on and abuse of smartphones by individuals (Kwon et al., 2013; Billieux et al., 2015). Notably, smartphone addiction has been reported to have negative impacts on individuals’ cognitive functions, such as attention (Choi et al., 2021; Lee et al., 2021), perception (Dong et al., 2014) and memory (Hartanto and Yang, 2016; Tanil et al., 2020). Nevertheless, the influence of smartphone addiction on individuals’ advanced cognition is still unclear. Smartphone addiction may impair flexible cognitive processes (Dong et al., 2014), such as those that contribute to creative cognition. However, to our knowledge, the influence of smartphone addiction on creative cognition has not been explored.

Given the negative effects and high incidence of smartphone addiction (Zou et al., 2021), it is essential to uncover the underlying mechanisms, especially the neural mechanisms, by which smartphone addiction affects creative cognition. Creative cognition is defined as the ability to generate original and useful products (Sternberg and Lubart, 1999). It is a core cognitive element that allows for daily flexible problem solving and the generation of new ideas. The main components of creative cognition are (i) overcoming the semantic constraints of existing knowledge, which involves goal-directed behaviour through cognitive control, and (ii) building unusual associations to expand the existing structure of knowledge, which involves the spontaneous and unconstrained generation of novel associations (Ward et al., 1997; Abraham, 2014; Marron and Faust, 2019).

According to the problematic mobile phone use model (Billieux et al., 2015), the lack of planning or reduced cognitive control is a crucial contributor to smartphone addiction behaviour. Previous studies have also indicated that impaired cognitive control is a prominent feature of smartphone addicts, characterised by an inability to focus on task-related information and an inability to suppress dominant, automatic responses (Van Deursen et al., 2015; Li et al., 2021). In fact, previous studies have emphasised the contribution of cognitive control to the generation of creative ideas (Beaty et al., 2016; Benedek and Fink, 2019). During creative idea generation, known ideas are often initially retrieved, which acts as a source of interference allowing the retrieval process to focus on familiar and dominant ideas (Abraham, 2014). In this context, cognitive control is needed to drive the retrieval process of novel and remote information.

Read more | >

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – At a conference Wednesday afternoon, a UCSF researcher presented the results of a two-year study that found strong evidence that the risk factors for dementia can be reduced up to 30% with a modified lifestyle.

Dr. Kristine Yaffe, a professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Epidemiology, presented her findings from a two-year randomized pilot study of nearly 200 older adults at the annual Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease conference in San Francisco.

She told KPIX 5 that it’s still a complex puzzle as to why some people get Alzheimer’s Disease and others don’t. That’s why her team of researchers joined forces with some colleagues at Kaiser Washington in Seattle and proceeded with the two-year study.

Read more | >

The formation of amyloid plaques in the brain is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. But drugs designed to reduce accumulations of these plaques have so far yielded, at best, mixed results in clinical trials.

Yale researchers have found, however, that swelling caused by a byproduct of these plaques may be the true cause of the disease’s debilitating symptoms, they report Nov. 30 in the journal Nature. And they identified a biomarker that may help physicians better diagnose Alzheimer’s and provide a target for future therapies.

According to their findings, each formation of plaque can cause an accumulation of spheroid-shaped swellings along hundreds of axons — the thin cellular wires that connect the brain’s neurons — near amyloid plaque deposits. The swellings are caused by the gradual accumulation of organelles within cells known as lysosomes, which are known to digest cellular waste, researchers found. As the swellings enlarge, researchers say, they can blunt the transmission of normal electrical signals from one region of the brain to another.

Read more | >

Tiny antenna-like organelles once thought to be holdovers from our ancient past appear to play a crucial role in keeping track of time, according to a recent study on mice by researchers from the University of California, Irvine (UCI), in the US. Known as cilia, the microtubule projections can be found throughout the more complex branches of the tree of life, including on many of our own cells.

Read more | >

Laser light therapy has been shown to be effective in improving short term memory in a study published in Science Advances.

Scientists at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. and Beijing Normal University in China, demonstrated that the therapy, which is non-invasive, could improve short term, or working memory in people by up to 25%.

The treatment, called transcranial photobiomodulation (tPBM), is applied to an area of the brain known as the right prefrontal cortex. This area is widely recognized as important for working memory. In their experiment, the team showed how working memory improved among research participants after several minutes of treatment. They were also able to track the changes in brain activity using electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring during treatment and testing.

Read more | >

Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University have discovered a key molecule that contributes to understanding and treating neurological diseases like epilepsy and autism.

Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University have discovered a long-sought gene-encoded protein that allows the brain to communicate a number of signals across synapses, or gaps between neurons.

The discovery was recently published in the journal Nature.

Read more | >