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Category: neuroscience – Page 673

Scientists Discover How To Generate New Neurons in the Adult Brain

A team of biologists has discovered how to awaken neural stem cells and reactivate them in adult mice.

Some areas of the adult brain contain quiescent, or dormant, neural stem cells that can potentially be reactivated to form new neurons. However, the transition from quiescence to proliferation is still poorly understood. A team led by scientists from the Universities of Geneva (UNIGE) and Lausanne (UNIL) has discovered the importance of cell metabolism in this process and identified how to wake up these neural stem cells and reactivate them. Biologists succeeded in increasing the number of new neurons in the brain of adult and even elderly mice. These results, promising for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, are to be discovered in the journal Science Advances.

<em>Science Advances</em> is a peer-reviewed, open-access scientific journal that is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). It was launched in 2015 and covers a wide range of topics in the natural sciences, including biology, chemistry, earth and environmental sciences, materials science, and physics.

AGI Soon? 1 AI Using 2 Modalities Solves Visual IQ Test w/ 1,600,000,000 Parameters | Kosmos-1

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A new multimodal artificial intelligence model from Microsoft called Kosmos-1 is able to process both text and visual data to the point of passing a visual IQ test with 26 percent accuracy, and researchers say this is a step towards AGI. Stable Diffusion AI can now read brain waves to reconstruct images that people are thinking about. Stanford has created a world record brain computer interface device with the help of AI to allow patients to type 62 words per minute with their thoughts.

AI News Timestamps:
0:00 Microsoft Kosmos-1 AI & AGI
3:34 AI Neuroscience Tech Reads Brain Waves.
5:43 AI & BCI Breaks Record.

#technology #tech #ai

PLEASURE GENERATORS in the Brain: The Neuroscience of Pleasure Explained

Brave new world let’s create happiness for everyone by putting microelectrode arrays in our brains but be careful not to create a situation like death by ecstacy by Larry Niven.

In the brain, pleasure is generated by a handful of brain regions called, “hedonic hotspots.” If you were to stimulate these regions directly, you would likely feel pleasurable sensations. However, not all of the hedonic hotspots are the same–some generate the raw sensations of pleasure whereas others are responsible for consciously interpreting and elaborating on the raw pleasure produced by the other hotspots. In this video, in addition to exploring the neuroscience of pleasure, we’ll see how understanding pleasure, happiness, meaning, and purpose can help us live better lives.

Follow @senseofmindshow for more neuroscience explainers.
Follow on Social Media: https://linktr.ee/senseofmind.

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Chapters.
00:00 Hedonic hotspots: the brain’s pleasure generators.
00:56 The evolution of pleasure.
01:46 How the brain generates pleasure.
03:07 The subcortical (‘core’) pleasure network.
04:08 The cortical (‘higher’) pleasure network.
05:09 The orbitofrontal cortex’ role and the abstract to concrete pleasure gradient.
08:13 How to be happier by understanding the neuroscience of pleasure.
11:40 Summary.

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Continue reading “PLEASURE GENERATORS in the Brain: The Neuroscience of Pleasure Explained” | >

Scientists explain how an infection can produce genetic diversity

As COVID has demonstrated, when pathogens are moving through the population, we adjust, limiting interactions, even isolating, and generally changing the way we associate with one other. Humans are not alone. New research from Harvard scientists provides some insight into how pathogens change animal social behaviors.

“Extreme environmental conditions have a very strong influence on all animals,” said Yun Zhang, a professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. But while this behavior has been seen in animals from simple fruit flies all the way up to primates, researchers have not understood what happens inside an individual animal’s brain that leads to infection-induced changes in .

In their new paper, published in Nature, Zhang and colleagues studied the small roundworm C. elegans, which exists in nature with two sexes: hermaphrodites that produce both eggs and sperm, and males. Under normal conditions, the hermaphrodites are loners, preferring to self-reproduce over mating with males. However, Zhang’s team found that the hermaphrodite worms infected by a pathogenic strain of the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa became more interested in one another and increased their mating with males.

Juggling Morality While We Learn

Summary: Study reveals how the brain juggles morally conflicting outcomes while learning, finding people who opt to make decisions for personal gain at the expense of others can comprehend and empathize with potential negative outcomes, but still ultimately choose to pursue options that benefit them.

Source: KNAW

New research from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience sheds light on how the brain juggles morally conflicting outcomes during learning.

Longevity company Biophysical Therapeutics emerges from stealth

Biophysical Therapeutics, a drug discovery platform company that leverages computational biology, has emerged from stealth. The primary targets of the Delaware-based company are cancer, the diseases of aging (including Alzheimer’s disease) and – excitingly – aging itself.

Founded by Dr Michael Forrest, a Cambridge University biochemistry graduate with a PhD in computer science, Biophysical Therapeutics boasts renowned biotech entrepreneur Professor George Church (of Harvard Medical School) as an advisor to the company. Professor Bruno Conti of the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California is also an advisor.

Longevity. Technology: Back in 2006, Conti and his team reported an exciting result in the prestigious journal Science. They showed (in female mice) that slightly reducing the metabolic rate by slightly reducing metabolic heat generation (decreasing body temperature by 0.34°C) increased lifespan by 20%.

‘Wrinkles’ in time experience are linked to heartbeat, suggest researchers

How long is the present? The answer, Cornell researchers suggest in a new study, depends on your heart.

They found that our momentary perception of time is not continuous but may stretch or shrink with each heartbeat.

The research builds evidence that the heart is one of the brain’s important timekeepers and plays a fundamental role in our sense of time passing—an idea contemplated since ancient times, said Adam K. Anderson, professor in the Department of Psychology and in the College of Human Ecology (CHE).

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