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Category: neuroscience – Page 513

Throughout life, cells of the body acquire somatic mutations. In frozen post-mortem human brains, researchers from Yale University have found that somatic, or non-inherited, mutations are considerably more likely to accumulate in roughly 6% of brains, and these “hypermutable” brains are typically 40 years of age or older.

The behavior, comparable to clonal hematopoiesis in the bone marrow that can result in blood cancer in elderly people, is attributed to cell lines with mutations that outcompete other cell lines.

This is the first large-scale study of somatic mutations in human brains. Scientists were not expecting to find this hypermutability in older populations.

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A team of researchers at the University of Geneva has found that ketamine is unlikely to be addictive to people who use it for extended periods of time. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes their study of the impact of the synthetic compound on the brains of mice and what they learned about its impact on different brain regions. Rianne Campbell and Mary Kay Lobo, with the University of Maryland School of Medicine have published a News and Views piece in the same journal issue outlining the work done by the team in Switzerland.

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A research team led by Rice University neuroengineers has created wireless technology to remotely activate specific brain circuits in fruit flies in under one second.

The team – an assemblage of experts in genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and electrical engineering – used magnetic signals to activate targeted neurons that controlled the body position of freely moving fruit flies in an enclosure.

The researchers first created genetically modified flies bred to express a special heat-sensitive ion channel in neurons that cause flies to partially spread their wings, a common mating gesture. They then injected magnetic nanoparticles that could be heated with an applied magnetic field.

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SYNOPSIS: Will a computer ever be more creative than a human? In this compelling program, artists, musicians, neuroscientists, and computer scientists explore the future of artistry and imagination in the age of artificial intelligence.

PARTICIPANTS: Sougwen Chung, Jesse Engel, Peter Ulric Tse, Lav Varshney.
MODERATOR: John Schaefer.
Original program date: MAY 31, 2017

WATCH THE TRAILER: https://youtu.be/O6t7I_iVim8
WATCH THE LIVE Q&A W/JESSE ENGEL: https://youtu.be/UXyMiSURQ7Y

FULL DESCRIPTION: Today, there are robots that make art, move like dancers, tell stories, and even help human chefs devise unique recipes. But is there ingenuity in silico? Can computers be creative? A rare treat for the senses, this thought-provoking event brings together artists and computer scientists who are creating original works with the help of artificially intelligent machines. Joined by leading experts in psychology and neuroscience, they’ll explore the roots of creativity in humans and computers, what artificial creativity reveals about human imagination, and the future of hybrid systems that build on the capabilities of both.

Continue reading “AI and the Art of Ingenuity: Computational Creativity” | >

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst.
Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB

The field of Artificial Intelligence was founded in the mid 1950s with the aim of constructing “thinking machines” — that is to say, computer systems with human-like general intelligence. Think of humanoid robots that not only look but act and think with intelligence equal to and ultimately greater than that of human beings. But in the intervening years, the field has drifted far from its ambitious old-fashioned roots.

Dr. Ben Goertzel is an artificial intelligence researcher, CEO and founder of SingularityNET. A project combining artificial intelligence and blockchain to democratize access to artificial intelligence. Ben seeks to fulfil the original ambitions of the field. Ben graduated with a PhD in Mathematics from Temple University in 1990. Ben’s approach to AGI over many decades now has been inspired by many disciplines, but in particular from human cognitive psychology and computer science perspective. To date Ben’s work has been mostly theoretically-driven. Ben thinks that most of the deep learning approaches to AGI today try to model the brain. They may have a loose analogy to human neuroscience but they have not tried to derive the details of an AGI architecture from an overall conception of what a mind is. Ben thinks that what matters for creating human-level (or greater) intelligence is having the right information processing architecture, not the underlying mechanics via which the architecture is implemented.

Ben thinks that there is a certain set of key cognitive processes and interactions that AGI systems must implement explicitly such as; working and long-term memory, deliberative and reactive processing, perc biological systems tend to be messy, complex and integrative; searching for a single “algorithm of general intelligence” is an inappropriate attempt to project the aesthetics of physics or theoretical computer science into a qualitatively different domain.

Continue reading “#58 Dr. Ben Goertzel — Artificial General Intelligence” | >

𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐰𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐫𝐮𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐣𝐮𝐫𝐲

Scientists from the University of Birmingham have shown that a brain-penetrating candidate drug currently in development as a cancer therapy can foster regeneration of damaged nerves after spinal trauma.

The , published today in Clinical and Translational Medicine, used cell and animal models to demonstrate that when taken orally the candidate drug, known as AZD1390, can block the response to DNA damage in and promote of damaged nerves, so restoring sensory and after .

The announcement comes weeks after the same research team showed a https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-05-spinal-cord-injury-treatment.html">different investigational drug (AZD1236) can reduce damage after spinal cord injury, by blocking the inflammatory response. Both studies were supported by AstraZeneca’s Open Innovations Program, which shares compounds, tools, technologies and expertise with the scientific community to advance drug discovery and development…

Continue reading “Research shows investigational drug fosters nerve repair after injury” | >

People who have at least two of the conditions type 2 diabetes, heart disease, or stroke are twice as likely to develop dementia. Research from Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet that was published in the journal Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer’s disease is a disease that attacks the brain, causing a decline in mental ability that worsens over time. It is the most common form of dementia and accounts for 60 to 80 percent of dementia cases. There is no current cure for Alzheimer’s disease, but there are medications that can help ease the symptoms.

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