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Category: neuroscience – Page 561

A proportion of patients experience long-lasting symptoms in the weeks and months after a diagnosis of COVID-19. 1–3 Of those symptoms, cognitive impairment (also referred to as ‘brain fog’) is particularly worrisome: it is one of the most common, 4, 5 can affect those with even relatively mild acute COVID-19 illness 1, 5 and results in the inability to work for many affected patients. 3 While emerging research is starting to characterize the clinical presentation of post-COVID cognitive deficits, 6 its pathogenesis remains elusive. Identifying therapeutic targets is critical to reducing the burden of this COVID-19 complication.

Endotheliopathy has been hypothesized as one potential mechanism underlying post-COVID cognitive deficits. 7 According to recent research, microvascular brain pathology following COVID-19 can be caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) main protease Mpro cleaving nuclear factor-κB essential modulator thus inducing the death of brain endothelial cells. 8 The same study showed that pharmacologically inhibiting receptor-interacting protein kinase (RIPK) signaling prevents the Mpro-induced microvascular pathology. 8

This research leads to the following hypothesis: exposure to a pharmacological inhibitor of RIPK signaling at the time of COVID-19 infection reduces the risk of post-COVID cognitive deficits. In this study, we tested this hypothesis using a retrospective cohort study based on electronic health records (EHRs) data. While many pharmacological agents inhibit RIPK signaling, 9 most are only used in very rare clinical scenarios (e.g. sunitinib for the treatment of advanced renal cell carcinoma or pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors). The exception is phenytoin which is used as an anti-epileptic drug and which, among its other effects, is a RIPK1 inhibitor protecting against necroptosis. 10, 11 In this study, we compared the incidence of post-COVID cognitive deficits between patients exposed to phenytoin and matched cohorts of patients exposed to other anti-epileptic drugs at the time of their COVID-19 diagnosis.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was a recent guest on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, and during the episode, he discussed, among other things, neural technology. During his conversation, Zuckerberg remarked that Elon Musk’s Neuralink would probably not be popular in the next 10–15 years because “normal people” would not want to have devices implanted in their brains that are made of non-mature technology.

Zuckerberg admitted that Meta is researching neural interface tech as part of the company’s push into the metaverse, though he also noted that the tech company is focusing on innovations that can receive signals from the brain but does not send any information back to it.

In later comments, the Meta CEO noted that companies like Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which is developing a device that can be implanted into people’s skulls, is taking neural technology “super far-off.” Neuralink’s implant is designed to record and stimulate brain activity, which Musk has stated could help people address conditions such as obesity.

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In a new medical breakthrough, scientists have successfully grown a synthetic embryo of a mouse without male sperm and a female womb. They used stem cells from mice to recreate the first stage of life and successfully developed an embryo with a brain, beating heart, and vitals for other organs.

The natural process of life was mimicked in the lab without eggs or sperm but with the body’s master cells, which can develop into almost any cell type in the body. The embryo was developed 8 ½ days after fertilization, containing the same structures as a natural one.

The study published in the journal Nature states that their result demonstrates the self-organization ability of embryonic and two types of extra-embryonic stem cells to reconstitute mammalian development. The researchers induced expression of a particular set of genes and established a unique environment for their interactions and got the stem cells to ‘talk’ to each other.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined the company’s approach to neural interface technology — tech which lets you control technology with your mind — in an interview on podcast The Joe Rogan Experience.

Zuckerberg said Meta is researching neural interface tech as part of its push into the metaverse.

He said the company is primarily focused on tech which can receive signals from the brain but does send any information back to it.

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“If cells are dreaming, [these images] are what the cells are dreaming about,” neuroscientist Carlos Ponce told The Atlantic. “It exposes the visual vocabulary of the brain, in a way that’s unbiased by our anthropomorphic perspective.”

Some neurons responded to images that vaguely resembled objects that the scientists recognized, suggesting that the researchers identified the specific neurons that corresponded with particular real-world objects. A blur that resembled a monkey’s face accompanied by a red blotch may have corresponded to another monkey in the lab that wore a red collar. Another blur that resembled a human wearing a surgical mask may have represented the woman who took care of and fed the lab’s monkeys, who wore a similar mask.

Other images that the monkey neurons responded to the most were less realistic, instead taking the form of various streaks and splotches of color, according to The Atlantic.

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Eavesdropping on the earliest conversations between tissues in an emerging life could tell us a lot about organ growth, fertility, and disease in general. It could help prevent early miscarriages, or even tell us how to grow whole replacement organs from scratch.

In a monumental leap in stem cell research, an experiment led by researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK has developed a living model of a mouse embryo complete with fluttering heart tissues and the beginnings of a brain.

The research advances the recent success of a team comprised of some of the same scientists who pushed the limits on mimicking the embryonic development of mice using stem cells that had never seen the inside of a mouse womb.

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