Researchers used multi-ethnic proteomics and genetic data to identify blood proteins linked to Alzheimer’s risk. They found causal roles for immune-related proteins, highlighting potential diagnostic markers and drug targets.
Category: neuroscience – Page 5
Meet Orexin, The Brain Chemical Behind Staying Motivated
Motivation (or a lack of it) shapes our lives in ways large and small every day: From changing careers to changing TV channels, we’re guided by what motivates us and what we find rewarding.
In a new study published in PNAS, researchers led by a team from Nagoya University in Japan have identified neurons that produce the chemical orexin as playing an important role in food-reward motivation in rats.
These neurons are located in the brain’s hypothalamus and have previously been linked to wakefulness, energy expenditure, and indeed motivation. The researchers behind this latest study wanted to look more closely at that link to motivation.
The New World Of Wearables: From Health Monitoring To Human Augmentation
However, the trajectory of wearables is evident. Oura is contributing to the widespread use of continuous health and recovery monitoring. Apple is showcasing how wearable technology can integrate safety, communication, and wellness. Hume is a part of the growing trend for health span and longevity. Garmin specializes in navigation and performance tracking. Fitbit provides data analytics with its interaction with Google’s ecosystem. And by trying to quantify the neurological system and cognitive function itself, Pison is pushing the boundaries.
When taken as a whole, these companies and their products suggest a time when wearables will be more than just clothing. It turns into a conduit between the digital world and our biology. The ultimate promise of this technology is not that doctors, coaches, or human judgment will be replaced by machines. It’s that we’ll know more about ourselves, and that knowledge will be accessible when it counts most.
Therefore, the new world of wearables may be less about watches, rings, and bands and more about a much larger transformation: providing people with previously unheard-of visibility into their skills, performance, and health.
RecordBreaking Human Mini Brains Kept Alive For 5 Years And Appear To Age Like The Real Thing
“We were a little bit shocked by the results,” said the scientist.
Evidence that gamma rhythm stimulation can treat neurological disorders is emerging
A surprising MIT study published in Nature at the end of 2016 helped to spur interest in the possibility that light flickering at the frequency of a particular gamma-band brain rhythm could produce meaningful therapeutic effects for people with Alzheimer’s disease. In a new review paper in the Journal of Internal Medicine, the lab that led those studies takes stock of what a growing number of scientists worldwide have been finding out since then in dozens of clinical and lab benchtop studies.
Brain rhythms (also called brain “waves” or “oscillations”) arise from the synchronized network activity of brain cells and circuits as they coordinate to enable brain functions such as perception or cognition. Lower-range gamma-frequency rhythms, those around 40 cycles a second, or hertz (Hz), are particularly important for memory processes, and MIT’s research has shown that they are also associated with specific changes at the cellular and molecular level. The 2016 study and many others since then have produced evidence, initially in animals and more recently in humans, that various noninvasive means of enhancing the power and synchrony of 40Hz gamma rhythms helps to reduce Alzheimer’s pathology and its consequences.
“What started in 2016 with optogenetic and visual stimulation in mice has expanded to a multitude of stimulation paradigms, a wide range of human clinical studies with promising results, and is narrowing in on the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon,” write the authors including Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT.
Brain changes detect Alzheimer’s seven years before plaques appear
A new study reports that measurable brain changes — such as altered functional connectivity, synaptic activity, or metabolic patterns — can appear up to seven years before amyloid-beta plaques become detectable in Alzheimer’s disease. These early alterations may serve as preclinical biomarkers, enabling earlier diagnosis and opening a critical window for intervention before irreversible neurodegeneration occurs. The findings suggest that Alzheimer’s pathology begins years before plaque formation and support shifting detection and treatment strategies to this pre-plaque stage.
A new study suggests that Alzheimer’s disease may be detected by brain imaging more than seven years earlier than previously assumed. Researchers from the Department of Psychology at the University of Oslo led the study, published in Nature Neuroscience.
The study suggests that the gold standard for imaging in Alzheimer’s disease (amyloid-PET) has not been sensitive enough to detect early brain processes associated with the disease, such as the accumulation of amyloid plaques in the brain. The researchers found signs of Alzheimer’s at least seven years before plaques become visible.
“We found that structural changes in the brain occur many years before high levels of plaque are seen on PET scans, which is the brain scan currently used to identify the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s disease,” says James Michael Roe.
Psychedelic exposure during adolescence disrupts a brain circuit linked to lasting social avoidance in rats
Psychedelics, drugs that alter people’s perceptions, mood and thoughts, have recently shown promise for the treatment of some psychiatric disorders. Yet many psychedelic drugs remain controlled substances in most countries worldwide.
Despite these restrictions, national surveys suggest that millions of people use psychedelics in the United States. Moreover, many people reported that they first used these substances in adolescence, the sensitive developmental stage between childhood and adulthood, when brain circuits are still maturing.
Researchers at Ningbo University and its affiliated hospitals recently studied rats to better understand how repeated exposure to the psychedelic compound 25C-NBOMe during adolescence could influence brain activity and social behavior in adulthood.
Study suggests 40Hz sensory stimulation may benefit some Alzheimer’s patients for years
A new research paper documents the outcomes of five volunteers who continued to receive 40Hz light and sound stimulation for around two years after participating in an MIT early-stage clinical study of the potential Alzheimer’s disease (AD) therapy. The results show that for the three participants with late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, several measures of cognition remained significantly higher than comparable Alzheimer’s patients in national databases. Moreover, in the two late-onset volunteers who donated plasma samples, levels of Alzheimer’s biomarker tau proteins were significantly decreased.
The three volunteers who experienced these benefits were all female. The two other participants, each of whom were males with early-onset forms of the disease, did not exhibit significant benefits after two years. The dataset, while small, represents the longest-term test so far of the safe, noninvasive treatment method (called GENUS, for gamma entrainment using sensory stimuli), which is also being evaluated in a nationwide clinical trial run by MIT-spinoff company Cognito Therapeutics.
“This pilot study assessed the long-term effects of daily 40Hz multimodal GENUS in patients with mild AD,” the authors wrote in an open-access paper in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association. “We found that daily 40Hz audiovisual stimulation over 2 years is safe, feasible, and may slow cognitive decline and biomarker progression, especially in late-onset AD patients.”
Scientists discover learning and memory formation in model membranes
“Science is a conversation,” said John Katsaras, neutron scattering scientist at ORNL’s Spallation Neutron Source, a Department of Energy Office of Science user facility. “Many years ago, Pat [Collier] and I wanted to see what would happen when we combined our scientific interests. He wanted to explore soft matter systems for neuromorphic computing [computing systems designed to mimic how the brain processes information], and I’ve studied the structure and dynamics of lipid membranes over the past 40 years. We are now applying decades of our soft matter experience to a problem neither one of us would have imagined pursuing five years ago.”
Soft matter includes materials that readily change shape, such as membranes, gels and polymers. Although biological membranes vary in complexity, they all share a common foundation: a lipid bilayer, or double layer of molecules. Each lipid contains a hydrophilic (water-attracting) head and a hydrophobic (water-repelling) tail.
To study membrane properties under electrical stimulation, Katsaras and Collier used water droplets suspended in oil, known as a droplet interface bilayer. These early experiments showed unexpected electrical data, prompting them to shift their attention to membranes surrounding neurons, where many memory and learning processes occur.