Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: neuroscience – Page 51

Brain scans reveal what happens in the mind when insight strikes

Have you ever been stuck on a problem, puzzling over something for what felt like ages without getting anywhere, but then suddenly the answer came to you like a bolt from the blue?

We’ve all experienced that “aha! moment,” that sudden clarity or magical epiphany you feel when a new idea or perspective pops into your head as if out of nowhere.

Now, new evidence from brain imaging research shows that these flashes of insight aren’t just satisfying—they actually reshape how your brain represents information, and help sear it into memory.

Music Does Something Amazing to Your Brain’s Own Natural Rhythms

Ever felt like a song really resonates with you? That may be more true than you think.

A new theory suggests that we don’t just listen to it; our bodies physically resonate with music, as our brains’ natural oscillations synchronize with structures like rhythm and pitch.

Music is often thought of as a ‘universal language’ – people across cultures will bust out similar moves, and young kids will instinctively bop to a beat.

Neuroscientists reveal insights into how the brain forms habits and why they are so hard to break

Neuroscientists at the Sainsbury Wellcome Center (SWC) at UCL have discovered that the brain uses a dual system for learning through trial and error. This is the first time a second learning system has been identified, which could help explain how habits are formed and provide a scientific basis for new strategies to address conditions related to habitual learning, such as addictions and compulsions.

Published in Nature, the study in mice could also have implications for developing therapeutics for Parkinson’s. The study is titled “Dopaminergic action prediction errors serve as a value-free teaching signal.”

“Essentially, we have found a mechanism that we think is responsible for habits. Once you have developed a preference for a certain action, then you can bypass your value-based system and just rely on your default policy of what you’ve done in the past. This might then allow you to free up cognitive resources to make value-based decisions about something else,” explained Dr. Marcus Stephenson-Jones, Group Leader at SWC and lead author of the study.

Energy and memory: A new neural network paradigm

Listen to the first notes of an old, beloved song. Can you name that tune? If you can, congratulations—it’s a triumph of your associative memory, in which one piece of information (the first few notes) triggers the memory of the entire pattern (the song), without you actually having to hear the rest of the song again. We use this handy neural mechanism to learn, remember, solve problems and generally navigate our reality.

“It’s a network effect,” said UC Santa Barbara mechanical engineering professor Francesco Bullo, explaining that aren’t stored in single brain cells. “Memory storage and are dynamic processes that occur over entire networks of neurons.”

In 1982, physicist John Hopfield translated this theoretical neuroscience concept into the artificial intelligence realm, with the formulation of the Hopfield network. In doing so, not only did he provide a mathematical framework for understanding memory storage and retrieval in the human brain, he also developed one of the first recurrent artificial neural networks—the Hopfield network—known for its ability to retrieve complete patterns from noisy or incomplete inputs. Hopfield won the Nobel Prize for his work in 2024.

Coming Soon to Apple Devices: Brain Control Accessibility Features

Apple is making progress on a standard for brain implant devices that can help people with disabilities control devices such as iPhones with their thoughts. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, Apple has plans to release that standard to other developers later this year.

The company has partnered with Synchron, which has been working with other companies, including Amazon, on ways to make devices more accessible. Synchron makes an implant called a Stentrode that is implanted in a vein on the brain’s motor cortex. Once implanted, the Stentrode can read brain signals and translate that to movement on devices including iPhones, iPads and Apple’s Vision Pro VR headset.

As we saw last year, a patient with ALS testing the Synchron technology was able to navigate menus in the Vision Pro device and use it to experience the Swiss Alps in VR. The technology could become more widely available to people with paralysis. The company has a community portal for those interested in learning about future tests.

Sugar-coated nanotherapy dramatically improves neuron survival in Alzheimer’s model

Scientists at Northwestern University have developed a new approach that directly combats the progression of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

In these devastating illnesses, proteins misfold and clump together around brain cells, which ultimately leads to cell death. The innovative new treatment effectively traps the proteins before they can aggregate into the toxic structures capable of penetrating neurons. The trapped proteins then harmlessly degrade in the body.

The “clean-up” strategy significantly boosted the survival of lab-grown human neurons under stress from disease-causing proteins.

How the tiny microbes in your mouth could be putting your health at risk

Current dental implants can work well, but they’re not perfect. They don’t attach to bones and gums in the same way that real teeth do. And around 20% of people who get implants end up developing an infection called peri-implantitis, which can lead to bone loss.

It is all down to the microbes that grow on them. There’s a complex community of microbes living in our mouths, and disruptions can lead to infection. But these organisms don’t just affect our mouths; they also seem to be linked to a growing number of disorders that can affect our bodies and brains. If you’re curious, read on.

The oral microbiome, as it is now called, was first discovered in 1670 by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, a self-taught Dutch microbiologist. “I didn’t clean my teeth for three days and then took the material that had lodged in small amounts on the gums above my front teeth … I found a few living animalcules,” he wrote in a letter to the Royal Society at the time.