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Category: neuroscience – Page 548

Brain Cells Inspire New Computer Components

Summary: Researchers have developed a more powerful and energy-efficient memristor, based on the structure of the human brain, that combines data storage and processing. The new technology, made from nanocrystals of halogenated perovskite, is not yet ready for use as it is difficult to integrate with existing computer chips, but it has the potential for parallel processing of large amounts of data.

Source: Politecnico di Milano.

Inspired by the brain’s energy efficiency, copying its structure to create more powerful computers, a team of researchers from Politecnico di Milano, Empa and ETH Zurich has developed a memristor that is more powerful and easier to produce than its predecessors: the results have been published in Science Advances.

A 53-year-old longevity researcher says his ‘biological age’ is a decade younger thanks to 4 daily habits — but the science behind them is mixed

“That’s got molecules in it that will prevent cancer, among other things” like anti-inflammatory properties, he said. Some older research has shown, for example, that green tea consumption might be linked to a lower risk of stomach cancer.

Sinclair also said he takes supplements (like those sold on the Tally Health website) that contain resveratrol, which his team’s research has shown can extend the lifespan of organisms like yeast and worms.

While the compound, famously found in red wine, is known to have anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, heart health, and brain health benefits, the research is mixed on if or how well such benefits can be achieved in humans through a pill.

Developing nanoprobes to detect neurotransmitters in the brain

The animal brain consists of tens of billions of neurons or nerve cells that perform complex tasks like processing emotions, learning, and making judgments by communicating with each other via neurotransmitters. These small signaling molecules diffuse—move from high to low concentration regions—between neurons, acting as chemical messengers.

Scientists believe that this diffusive motion might be at the heart of the brain’s superior function. Therefore, they have aimed to understand the role of specific neurotransmitters by detecting their release in the brain using amperometric and microdialysis methods. However, these methods provide insufficient information, necessitating better sensing techniques.

To this end, scientists developed an optical imaging method wherein protein probes change their fluorescence intensity upon detecting a specific . Recently, a group of researchers from Shibaura Institute of Technology in Japan led by Professor Yasuo Yoshimi has taken this idea forward. They have successfully synthesized fluorescent molecularly imprinted polymeric nanoparticles (fMIP-NPs) that serve as probes to detect specific neurotransmitters–serotonin, dopamine, and acetylcholine.

Your brain is moving along the surface of the torus 🤯

Shortform link:
https://shortform.com/artem.

In this video we will explore a very interesting paper published in Nature in 2022, which describes the hidden torus in the neuronal activity of cells in the entorhinal cortex, known as grid cells.

Place cell video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV-EMA5g288&t=158s.

Neural manifolds video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHj9uVmwA_0

My name is Artem, I’m a computational neuroscience student and researcher.
Socials:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArtemKRSV

REFERENCES:

Continue reading “Your brain is moving along the surface of the torus 🤯” | >

Logarithmic nature of the brain 💡

Shortform link:
https://shortform.com/artem.

My name is Artem, I’m a computational neuroscience student and researcher.

In this video we will talk about the fundamental role of lognormal distribution in neuroscience. First, we will derive it through Central Limit Theorem, and then explore how it support brain operations on many scales — from cells to perception.

REFERENCES:

1. Buzsáki, G. & Mizuseki, K. The log-dynamic brain: how skewed distributions affect network operations. Nat Rev Neurosci 15264–278 (2014).
2. Ikegaya, Y. et al. Interpyramid Spike Transmission Stabilizes the Sparseness of Recurrent Network Activity. Cerebral Cortex 23293–304 (2013).
3. Loewenstein, Y., Kuras, A. & Rumpel, S. Multiplicative Dynamics Underlie the Emergence of the Log-Normal Distribution of Spine Sizes in the Neocortex In Vivo. Journal of Neuroscience 31, 9481–9488 (2011).
4. Morales-Gregorio, A., van Meegen, A. & van Albada, S. J. Ubiquitous lognormal distribution of neuron densities across mammalian cerebral cortex. http://biorxiv.org/lookup/doi/10.1101/2022.03.17.480842 (2022) doi:10.1101/2022.03.17.480842.

OUTLINE:

Continue reading “Logarithmic nature of the brain 💡” | >

Simple Math Predicts Electrical Activity in The Brain, Study Shows

Through a vast network of nerve fibers, electrical signals are constantly traveling across the brain. This complicated activity is what ultimately gives rise to our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors – but also possibly to mental health and neurological problems when things go wrong.

Brain stimulation is an emerging treatment for such disorders. Stimulating a region of your brain with electrical or magnetic pulses will trigger a cascade of signals through your network of nerve connections.

However, at the moment, scientists are not quite sure how these cascades travel to impact the activity of your brain as a whole – an important missing piece that limits the benefits of brain stimulation therapies.

An Introduction to Neuroinformatics

Details

The goal of brain imaging is to provide in-vivo measures of the human brain to better understand how the brain is structured, connected and functions.
In this talk, we will discuss how to analyze brain imaging data in order to make sense of the large amount of data that comes out of the scanner.

👤 **About the speaker**

[Dr. Camille Maumet](https://twitter.com/cmaumet) is a research scientist in neuroinformatics at Inria, Univ Rennes, CNRS, Inserm in Rennes, France.
Her research focuses on the variability of analytical pipelines and its impact on our ability to reuse brain imaging datasets.
She obtained her PhD in computer science at the University of Rennes on the analyses of clinical neuroimaging datasets in functional magnetic resonance imaging and.
arterial spin labelling. She was then a postdoctoral research fellow in the Institute of Digital Healthcare at the University of Warwick and the University of Oxford.
where she focused on meta-analyses and standards for neuroimaging data sharing. She is also an open science advocate.
involved in the development of more inclusive research practices and community-led research and participates in many collaborative efforts including Brainhack.
the INCF, and the Open Science Special Interest Group of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping that she chaired in 2020.
–
[Nipype Tutorial](https://miykael.github.io/nipype_tutorial/)
–
Annual Brain Imaging Events:

[OHBM Brainhack (Brain Hackathon) June 16–18](https://ohbm.github.io/hackathon2022/)[registration via](https://www.humanbrainmapping.org/i4a/ams/meetings/index.cfm…ageID=4073)

- [OHBM Open Science Room (Discussions around open science practices & brain imaging)](https://ohbm.github.io/osr2022/)

Continue reading “An Introduction to Neuroinformatics” | >

The First-Ever Complete Map of an Insect Brain Is Truly Mesmerizing

After 12 years of work, a huge team of researchers from the UK, US, and Germany have completed the largest and most complex brain map to date, describing every neural connection in the brain of a larval fruit fly.

Though nowhere near the size and complexity of a human brain, it still covers a respectable 548,000 connections between a total of 3,016 neurons.

The mapping identifies the different types of neurons and their pathways, including interactions between the two sides of the brain, and between the brain and ventral nerve cord. This brings scientists closer to understanding how the movements of signals from neuron to neuron lead to behavior and learning.

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