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Category: neuroscience – Page 53

The brain is sometimes called the most complex machine in the known universe. But the thoughts that it outputs putter along at a trifling 10 bits per second, the pace of a conversation.

By Rachel Nuwer

People tend to have the sense that their inner thoughts and feelings are much richer than what they are capable of expressing in real time. Elon Musk has spoken publicly about this “bandwidth problem,” as he described it to podcaster Joe Rogan. Musk is so bothered by this, in fact, that he has made it one of his long-term goals to create an interface that allows the human brain to communicate directly with a computer, unencumbered by the slow speed of speaking or writing.

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PHOENIX — Mayo Clinic announces the results of an innovative treatment approach that may offer improvement in overall survival in older patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma while maintaining quality of life. Glioblastoma is the most lethal type of primary brain cancer due to its aggressive nature and its treatment-resistant characteristics. It is the most common form of primary brain cancer. Each year an estimated 14,500 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with the disease. Results of Mayo Clinic’s phase 2, single-arm study are published in The Lancet Oncology.

Sujay Vora, M.D., radiation oncologist at Mayo Clinic, led a team of researchers investigating the use of short-course hypofractionated proton beam therapy incorporating advanced imaging techniques in patients over the age of 65 with newly diagnosed World Health Organization (WHO) grade 4, malignant glioblastoma.

Results showed that 56% of participants were alive after 12 months and the median overall survival was 13.1 months.” As compared to prior phase 3 studies in an older population having a median survival of only six to nine months, these results are promising,” says Dr. Vora. “In some cases, patients with tumors that have favorable genetics lived even longer, with a median survival of 22 months. We are very excited about these results.”

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Microgravity is known to alter the muscles, bones, the immune system and cognition, but little is known about its specific impact on the brain. To discover how brain cells respond to microgravity, Scripps Research scientists, in collaboration with the New York Stem Cell Foundation, sent tiny clumps of stem-cell derived brain cells called “organoids” to the International Space Station (ISS).

Surprisingly, the organoids were still healthy when they returned from orbit a month later, but the cells had matured faster compared to identical organoids grown on Earth—they were closer to becoming adult neurons and were beginning to show signs of specialization. The results, which could shed light on potential neurological effects of space travel, appear in Stem Cells Translational Medicine.

“The fact that these cells survived in space was a big surprise,” says co-senior author Jeanne Loring, Ph.D., professor emeritus in the Department of Molecular Medicine and founding director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at Scripps Research. “This lays the groundwork for future experiments in space, in which we can include other parts of the brain that are affected by neurodegenerative disease.”

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Caltech researchers have quantified the speed of human thought: a rate of 10 bits per second. However, our bodies’ sensory systems gather data about our environments at a rate of a trillion bits per second, which is 100 million times faster than our thought processes. This new study raises major new avenues of exploration for neuroscientists, in particular: Why can we only think one thing at a time while our sensory systems process thousands of inputs at once?

The research was conducted in the laboratory of Markus Meister, the Anne P. and Benjamin F. Biaggini Professor of Biological Sciences, and it was led by graduate student Jieyu Zheng. A paper describing the study appears in the journal Neuron.

A bit is a basic unit of information in computing. A typical Wi-Fi connection, for example, can process 50 million bits per second. In the new study, Zheng applied techniques from the field of information theory to a vast amount of scientific literature on human behaviors such as reading and writing, playing video games, and solving Rubik’s Cubes, to calculate that humans think at a speed of 10 bits per second.

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Pain is meant to be a defense mechanism. It creates a strong sensation to get us to respond to a stimulus and prevent ourselves from further harm. But, sometimes injuries, nerve damage, or infections can cause long-lasting, severe bouts of pain that can make daily life unbearable.

What if there was a way to simply turn off ? UNC School of Medicine researchers Bryan L. Roth, MD, Ph.D., the Michael Hooker Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, and Grégory Scherrer, PharmD, Ph.D., associate professor of cell biology and physiology and the UNC Neuroscience Center, have just proven that it is possible.

Using a tool designed by Roth in the early 2000s, the labs have created a new system that reduces acute and tissue-injury-induced inflammatory in mouse models. Hye Jin Kang, Ph.D., an alumnus of the Roth Lab and now associate professor at Yonsei University in Korea, was first author on the research paper. The results were published in Cell.

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Could complex beliefs like paranoia have roots in something as basic as vision? A new Yale study finds evidence that they might.

When completing a visual perception task, in which participants had to identify whether one moving dot was chasing another moving dot, those with greater tendencies toward paranoid thinking (believing others intend them harm) and teleological thinking (ascribing excessive meaning and purpose to events) performed worse than their counterparts, the study found. Those individuals more often—and confidently—claimed one dot was chasing the other when it wasn’t.

The findings, published in the journal Communications Psychology, suggest that in the future, testing for illnesses like schizophrenia could be done with a simple eye test.

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World renowned neurophysiologist and computational neuroscientist Christof Koch joins Brian Greene to discuss how decades of experimental and theoretical investigation have shaped his understanding of consciousness and the brain — and how recent psychedelic experiences have profoundly reshaped his perspective on life and death.

This program is part of the Big Ideas series, supported by the John Templeton Foundation.

Participant: Christof Koch.
Moderator: Brian Greene.

00:00 — Introduction.

Continue reading “Consciousness, Free Will, and Psychedelics: Exploring Mysteries of the Mind” | >

Dr. Ethell’s groundbreaking research serves as the foundation for Leucadia Therapeutics’ work. A PhD in Neuroscience, he has studied Alzheimer’s disease for 20 years. He was a Human Frontiers of Science Long-term Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Germany and a Research Associate at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Dr. Ethell ran Alzheimer’s disease research at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, served on the faculty at the University of California Riverside, and later founded the Molecular Neurobiology Group at the Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California, where he also chaired the Department of Neuroscience. He has authored more than 85 papers and presentations.

The Coalition for Radical Life Extension and Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation are bringing together the best in longevity research with the best in anti-aging and age-reversal practices.
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Bringing together cutting-edge science, inspiration, entertainment and fun, RAADfest is more than just a conference – it’s a celebration of life. RAADfest provides the information and inspiration to enable people to take charge of their longevity. Produced by the Coalition for Radical Life Extension, whose mission is to align people, resources and policies to our shared vision of curing aging.
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Unlocking The Potential Of Blood — Dr. Jackie Kunzler Ph.D. — Senior Vice President, Global R&D, Terumo Blood and Cell Technologies.

Dr. Jackie Kunzler, Ph.D. is Senior Vice President and Global Head of Research and Development (R&D), and member of the Executive Management Committee, of Terumo Blood and Cell Technologies (https://www.terumobct.com/), where she focuses on innovation and development leading the way for unlocking the potential of blood and cell collections in varied sectors, including blood banking, plasma-based therapies and cell and gene therapies.

Dr. Kunzler joined Terumo from Baxter Healthcare where she held successive leadership roles in their business, including as Baxter Healthcare’s Senior Vice President for Quality and Regulatory and Head of Global Life Sciences.

Continue reading “Dr. Jackie Kunzler, Ph.D. — Senior Vice President, Global R&D, Terumo Blood and Cell Technologies” | >

Just as a conductor coordinates different instruments in an orchestra to produce a symphony, breathing coordinates hippocampal brain waves to strengthen memory while we sleep, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.

This is the first time breathing rhythms during sleep have been linked to these hippocampal brain waves—called slow waves, spindles and ripples—in humans. Scientists knew these waves were linked to memory but their underlying driver was unknown. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“To strengthen memories, three special neural oscillations emerge and synchronize in the hippocampus during sleep, but they were thought to come and go at random times,” said senior study author Christina Zelano, professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “We discovered that they are coordinated by breathing rhythms.”

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