In patients with mild cognitive impairment, taking lipophilic statins more than doubles their risk of developing dementia compared to those who do not take statins. According to research presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2021 Annual Meeting, positron emission tomography (PET) scans of lipophilic statin users revealed a highly significant decline in metabolism in the area of the brain that is first impacted by Alzheimer’s disease.
Statins are medications used to lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke. They are the most commonly used drugs in the developed world, and nearly 50 percent of Americans over age 75 use a statin. Different types of statins are available based on a patient’s health needs, including hydrophilic statins that focus on the liver and lipophilic statins that are distributed to tissues throughout the body.
Lipophilic statins include simvastatin, fluvastatin, pitavastatin, lovastatin and atorvastatin. Hydrophilic statins include rosuvastatin and pravastatin.
Flexible thinking is key to creativity – in other words, the ability to think of new ideas, make novel connections between ideas, and make new inventions. It also supports academic and work skills such as problem solving. That said, unlike working memory – how much you can remember at a certain time – it is largely independent of IQ, or “crystallised intelligence”.
IQ is often hailed as a crucial driver of success, particularly in fields such as science, innovation and technology. In fact, many people have an endless fascination with the IQ scores of famous people. But the truth is that some of the greatest achievements by our species have primarily relied on qualities such as creativity, imagination, curiosity and empathy.
Many of these traits are embedded in what scientists call “cognitive flexibility” – a skill that enables us to switch between different concepts, or to adapt behaviour to achieve goals in a novel or changing environment. It is essentially about learning to learn and being able to be flexible about the way you learn. This includes changing strategies for optimal decision-making. In our ongoing research, we are trying to work out how people can best boost their cognitive flexibility.
Cognitive flexibility provides us with the ability to see that what we are doing is not leading to success and to make the appropriate changes to achieve it. If you normally take the same route to work, but there are now roadworks on your usual route, what do you do? Some people remain rigid and stick to the original plan, despite the delay. More flexible people adapt to the unexpected event and problem-solve to find a solution.
CRISPR gene editing already promises to fight diseases that were once thought unassailable, but techniques so far have required injecting the tools directly into affected cells. That’s not very practical for some conditions. However, there’s just been a breakthrough. NPRreports that researchers have published results showing that you can inject CRISPR-Cas9 into the bloodstream to make edits, opening the door to the use of gene editing for treating many common diseases.
The experimental treatment tackled a rare genetic disease, transthyretin amyloidosis. Scientists injected volunteers with CRISPR-loaded nanoparticles that were absorbed by the patients’ livers, editing a gene in the organ to disable production of a harmful protein. Levels of that protein plunged within weeks of the injection, saving patients from an illness that can rapidly destroy nerves and other tissues in their bodies.
The test involved just six people, and the research team still has to conduct long-term studies to check for possible negative effects. If this method proves viable on a large scale, though, it could be used to treat illnesses where existing CRISPR techniques aren’t practical, ranging from Alzheimer’s to heart disease.
Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the early state of our Universe. At the beginning of the universe, ordinary space and time developed out of a primeval state, where all matter and energy of the entire visible universe was contained in a hot, dense point called a gravitational singularity. A billionth the size of a nuclear particle.
While we can not imagine the entirety of the visible universe being a billion times smaller than a nuclear particle, that shouldn’t deter us from wondering about the early state of our universe. However, dealing with such extreme scales is immensely counter-intuitive and our evolved brains and senses have no capacity to grasp the depths of reality in the beginning of cosmic time. Therefore, scientists develop mathematical frameworks to describe the early universe.
Neil deGrasse Tyson also mentions that our senses are not necessarily the best tools to use in science when uncovering the mysteries of the Universe.
It is interesting to note that in the early Universe, high densities and heterogeneous conditions could have led sufficiently dense regions to undergo gravitational collapse, forming black holes. These types of Primordial black holes are hypothesized to have formed soon after the Big Bang. Going from one mystery to the next, some evidence suggests a possible Link Between Primordial Black Holes and Dark Matter.
In modern physics, antimatter is made up of elementary particles, each of which has the same mass as their corresponding matter counterparts — protons, neutrons and electrons — but the opposite charges and magnetic properties.
A collision between any particle and its anti-particle partner leads to their mutual annihilation, giving rise to various proportions of intense photons, gamma rays and neutrinos. The majority of the total energy of annihilation emerges in the form of ionizing radiation. If surrounding matter is present, the energy content of this radiation will be absorbed and converted into other forms of energy, such as heat or light. The amount of energy released is usually proportional to the total mass of the collided matter and antimatter, in accordance with Einstein’s mass–energy equivalence equation.
The results of the study demonstrated that the mechanisms for visual perception change drastically in the second half of the first year of life, from the bottom-up system to the system incorporating top-down processing.
Summary: Study reveals very young infants can perceive objects that older infants, children, and adults can not see due to a phenomenon called visual backward masking.
Source: Chuo University
We can generally recognize an object, even if it is presented for a very brief time. However, if another object appears immediately following the first object, the perception on the first object is impaired such that we do not notice its existence.
This perceptual phenomenon, called “visual backward masking,” is used in vision science to study how visual perception is processed in the brain. Interestingly, this phenomenon occurs even if the second object does not spatially overlap the first object, such as a contour or four dots surrounding the object.
STANFORD, Calif. — A groundbreaking “superhero” vaccine inspired by the DNA code of Olympic athletes could help transform society over the next decade, a top genetic scientist claims.
The vaccine would provide lifelong protection against three of the top ten leading causes of death, according to Euan Ashley, professor of medicine and genetics at Stanford University. The so-called “superhero” jab could offer simultaneous, long-term protection against heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and liver disease, thanks to advances in genetic engineering.
This breakthrough treatment would deliver the blueprint of “ideal” cells from men and women whose genes are more disease-resistant than those of the average person, together with an “instruction manual” to help the body “repair, tweak and improve” its own versions. A single dose could lead to a “body-wide genetic upgrade” that would cut the risk of premature death in some adults by as much as 50 percent.
To better understand the role of bacteria in health and disease, National Institutes of Health researchers fed fruit flies antibiotics and monitored the lifetime activity of hundreds of genes that scientists have traditionally thought control aging. To their surprise, the antibiotics not only extended the lives of the flies but also dramatically changed the activity of many of these genes. Their results suggested that only about 30% of the genes traditionally associated with aging set an animal’s internal clock while the rest reflect the body’s response to bacteria.
“For decades scientists have been developing a hit list of common aging genes. These genes are thought to control the aging process throughout the animal kingdom, from worms to mice to humans,” said Edward Giniger, Ph.D., senior investigator, at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the senior author of the study published in iScience. “We were shocked to find that only about 30% of these genes may be directly involved in the aging process. We hope that these results will help medical researchers better understand the forces that underlie several age-related disorders.”
The results happened by accident. Dr. Giniger’s team studies the genetics of aging in a type of fruit fly called Drosophila. Previously, the team showed how a hyperactive immune system may play a critical role in the neural damage that underlies several aging brain disorders. However, that study did not examine the role that bacteria may have in this process.
These results suggest that IL-12 and IFN-γ could one day be measured along with other biomarkers to predict future brain health in cognitively normal people–a tool that doesn’t yet exist in medicine.
Summary: Higher levels of two cytokines were associated with slower cognitive decline in aging adults, a new study reports.
Source: Mass General
Research has previously linked inflammation to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), yet scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Harvard Aging Brain Study (HABS) have made a surprising discovery about that relationship.
In a new study published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, they report that elevated levels of two chemical mediators of inflammation, known as cytokines, are associated with slower cognitive decline in aging adults.
COVID-19 was linked to brain tissue loss in a U.K. brain imaging study, according to early findings published June 15 in the preprint server medRxiv.
The study involved 782 participants, with researchers comparing brain scans from before and after COVID-19 infection. Researchers pulled data from the U.K. Biobank, which scanned more than 40000 participants before the pandemic hit the region, allowing them to invite participants back for a second imaging visit.
Findings showed tissue loss in certain parts of the brain.
