Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: neuroscience – Page 611

Megastructures 10: Matrioshka Brains

In Episode 10 we explore the Matrioshka Brain, a nested Layer type of Dyson Sphere designed to turn stars in to giant computers, and conclude our look at Dyson Spheres and other types of Stellar Engines.

Support the Channel on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IsaacArthur.

Listen or Download the audio of this episode from Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/isaac-arthur-148927746/ms10-matrioshka-brains.

Support the Channel on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/user?ty=h&u=3365828

Original Paper on Matrioshka Brains by RJ Bradbury:
https://www.gwern.net/docs/1999-bradbury-matrioshkabrains.pdf.

More art by Jakub Grygier:

Continue reading “Megastructures 10: Matrioshka Brains” | >

Study shows that ketamine switches neuronal activity in the neocortex

Human beings can sometimes experience dissociative states, moments in which they feel disconnected from their body and the world around them. While these states have been linked to many psychiatric conditions, they can also be elicited by the intake of some legal and illegal drugs.

One of the most renowned dissociation-inducing drugs is ketamine, an anesthetic commonly used to sedate patients or reduce pain resulting from medical procedures. In recent years, ketamine has also been found to be a potentially valuable treatment for some cases of depression.

While several studies have investigated the therapeutic effects of this strong anesthetic, so far very little is known about the cellular and neuronal mechanisms behind the dissociative states it produces. A paper by a team of researchers at University of Pennsylvania, recently published in Nature Neuroscience, might shed some light on these so far elusive processes.

“Brain on Fire” — Doctors Successfully Treat a Child Suffering From a Mysterious Disease

The sick child’s prognosis, who had not responded to conventional treatment, was bleak. Nevertheless, a group of doctors from Rutgers University thought there could be hope despite the conventional wisdom against pursuing any further treatment.

What transpired over the following several weeks in the fall of 2020, described in a case study recently published in the European Medical Journal, was notable and representative of a newer approach to effectively treating a strange disease, the doctors stated.

The study focuses on the medical case of a 5-year-old girl who suffered from anti-NMDAR (N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor) encephalopathy, a rare and difficult-to-diagnose malfunction of the brain. Unresponsive to treatments, the child had been transferred to a rehabilitation center and been in a catatonic state for three months when a team of Rutgers physicians were called in to help.

A genome-wide association study for overlap of 12 psychiatric disorders

A team of researchers from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands and the Veterans Administration in the U.S. has conducted a genome-wide association study looking into genetic overlap between 12 common psychiatric disorders. The group describes profiling pleiotropic genetic incidences to 12 common psychiatric disorders in their paper published in the journal Nature Genetics.

Many years ago, psychiatrists and other preferred to think of psychiatric conditions as separate diseases, unrelated to one another. More recently, genetics findings involved in psychiatric disorders have suggested that not only are some of them related, but some have overlap, which suggests that illnesses such as might have multiple forms, giving rise to a spectrum of diseases.

In this new effort, the research team conducted a cross-examination of 12 , looking specifically for genetic overlap. Their work involved conducting a cross-trait meta-analysis to study the impact of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), genes in general, cells, pathways and tissue types that might be shared by the 12 disorders ADHD, alcoholism, anorexia, anxiety disorder, autism, bipolarism, depression, OCD, PTSD, schizophrenia and Tourette syndrome.

Can science crack the mystery of consciousness? | Bernardo Kastrup, Carlo Rovelli, and more

Bernardo Kastrup, Carlo Rovelli and Patricia Churchland lock horns over the New Science of Consciousness.

00:00 Intro.
01:20 Patricia Churchland | On scientific evidence.
02:50 Bernardo Kastrup | On material idealism.
04:47 Carlo Rovelli | There is no hard problem of consciousness.
07:00 Robert Lawrence Kuhn | Will we ever be able to provide data explaining consciousness?

Watch the full debate at https://iai.tv/video/the-new-science-of-consciousness?utm_so…escription.

We are uncovering a new science of consciousness. A theory that is getting closer to solving the problem of the self once and for all. Or at least so claim leading neuroscientists. Some argue the reality we perceive is a controlled hallucination as a best guess to how the world really is. Others that quantum mechanics or multiple levels of brain organisation are responsible for consciousness. But critics maintain these don’t get to the heart of the problem: how the material stuff of the brain is responsible for the immaterial stuff of experience.

Should we see the ‘new science of consciousness’ as marketing hype? Might we alternatively need to give up our very notion of reality? Or could science be about to crack the ancient problem of the self once and for all?

#TheNewScienceOfConsciousness #IsQuantumTheKey #DataConsciousness.

Continue reading “Can science crack the mystery of consciousness? | Bernardo Kastrup, Carlo Rovelli, and more” | >

Neuralink allegedly rushes research, killing thousands of animals unnecessarily

According to an exclusive report by Reuters, Elon Musk’s Neuralink is facing a federal probe to investigate claims of unnecessary animal welfare violations.

According to an exclusive report by Reuters, the medical device company Neuralink, owned by Elon Musk, is reportedly under federal investigation for possible animal welfare violations. The investigation comes from internal staff complaints that its animal testing is being rushed, resulting in needless suffering and deaths.

However, it is important to note that Neuralink has a robust commitment to animal welfare within its organization.

Traffic Pollution Has Been Associated With an Increased Risk of Dementia

According to a meta-analysis recently published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, higher exposure to a certain type of traffic-related air pollution known as particulate matter may be connected to an increased risk of dementia. Researchers focused on fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, which is made up of airborne pollutants with a diameter of fewer than 2.5 microns. The meta-analysis examined all available studies on the relationship between air pollution and dementia risk.

“As people continue to live longer, conditions like dementia are becoming more common, so detecting and understanding preventable risk factors is key to reducing the increase of this disease,” said study author Ehsan Abolhasani, MD, MSc, of Western University in London, Canada. “Since a report by the World Health Organization showed that more than 90% of the world population is living in areas with higher than recommended levels of air pollution, our results provide more evidence for enforcing regulations for air quality and accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to sustainable energies.”

17 studies were analyzed by the researchers for the meta-analysis. Participants had a minimum age of 40. More than 91 million individuals took part in all the studies. 5.5 million of them, or 6%, developed dementia.

How the Broca’s Area of the Brain Helps Children Easily Learn Grammar

Summary: The development of a child’s general and grammatical linguistic abilities between the ages of 3 to 4 is accompanied by the maturation of brain structures within the “language network”.

Source: RUB

Anyone who has ever learned a foreign language knows how laborious it is to acquire vocabulary and grammar. In contrast, children acquire their first language seemingly effortlessly. By the age of four, many children are already speaking without errors and can draw on a large vocabulary.

How Features of Our Consciousness Seem to Define Our Laws of Physics and Maths (Stephen Wolfram)

Our Wolfram Physics Project has provided a surprisingly successful picture of the underlying (deeply computational) structure of our physical universe. I’ll talk here about how our perception of that underlying structure is determined by what seem to be key features of our consciousness—and how this leads to detailed laws of physics as we experience them. Our Physics Project has led to the concept of the ruliad—the entangled limit of all possible computations—which seems to represent a common underlying structure from which both physics and mathematics emerge. I’ll talk about the comparison between physical and mathematical observers, and how their common features in consciousness lead to implications for general laws of “bulk mathematics”.

/* */