Summary: Using monoclonal antibodies instead of conventional immunosuppressant drugs preserves stem cells in mouse brains.
Source: University of Michigan.
A new approach to stem cell therapy that uses antibodies instead of traditional immunosuppressant drugs robustly preserves cells in mouse brains and has potential to fast-track trials in humans, a Michigan Medicine study suggests.
It holds an enigmatic result regarding connectivity between the hippocampus and other parts of the brain.
Researchers have created the most detailed map ever made of the human brain — specifically the communication links between the hippocampus. This part of the brain is the section that controls memory, particularly long-term and short-term memory, along with spatial memory, a type of memory that allows for the recollection of location. The research team consisted of scientists from the University of Sydney’s Brain and Mind Center in Australia.
“What we’ve created is a highly detailed map of white matter pathways connecting the hippocampus with the rest of the brain. It’s essentially a roadmap of brain regions that directly connect with the hippocampus and support its important role in memory formation,” said Dr. Marshall Dalton, a research fellow in the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney.
All they need is electrical stimulation, and once activated, they re-establish the lost connection between different regions of the spinal cord.
Imagine you are stuck inside a room, you want to get out, but your body is not moving. No matter how hard you try, you are unable to move your body parts. You are not even able to move your finger, how would you feel? Well, that’s what chronic paralysis feels like.
Unfortunately, there is no known permanent cure for this neurological disorder, and this is what makes the situation worse. The physical and mental struggle that a patient with chronic paralysis goes through is unimaginable.
Ozgu Arslan/iStock.
However, a team of international researchers has recently made nine patients with severe spinal cord injuries (SCIs) walk again. They claim to have identified neurons that can restore mobility in patients with SCI. This new and interesting development raises great hopes for people suffering from chronic paralysis.
Human Brain Project researchers have trained a large-scale model of the primary visual cortex of the mouse to solve visual tasks in a highly robust way. The model provides the basis for a new generation of neural network models. Due to their versatility and energy-efficient processing, these models can contribute to advances in neuromorphic computing.
Modeling the brain can have a massive impact on artificial intelligence (AI): Since the brain processes images in a much more energy-efficient way than artificial networks, scientists take inspiration from neuroscience to create neural networks that function similarly to the biological ones to significantly save energy.
In that sense, brain-inspired neural networks are likely to have an impact on future technology, by serving as blueprints for visual processing in more energy-efficient neuromorphic hardware. Now, a study by Human Brain Project (HBP) researchers from the Graz University of Technology (Austria) showed how a large data-based model can reproduce a number of the brain’s visual processing capabilities in a versatile and accurate way. The results were published in the journal Science Advances.
A paralyzed man who cannot speak or type was able to spell out over 1,000 words using a neuroprosthetic device that translates his brain waves into full sentences, US researchers said Tuesday.
“Anything is possible,” was one of the man’s favorite phrases to spell out, said the first author of a new study on the research, Sean Metzger of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).
Last year the team of UCSF researchers showed that a brain implant called a brain-computer interface could translate 50 very common words when the man attempted to say them in full.