A new study suggests that two of Alzheimer’s disease’s most debated players may be more closely connected than they first appear.
Category: neuroscience – Page 7
Abstract: A new mouse disease model for parkinsonism with psychiatric features 👇
https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI169297 Freja Herborg & team explore the behavioral consequences and dopaminergic dysfunction that arise from patient-derived mutations in the dopamine transporter associated with parkinsonism and co-morbid neuropsychiatric disease, establishing a new mouse disease model.
The images show striatal slices with decreased immunolabeling intensity of both DR1 and DR2 in DAT-I312F/D421N+/+ mice compared with WT mice.
1Molecular Neuropharmacology and Genetics Laboratory, Department of Neuroscience, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
2CNS Research Group, Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, Department of Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Quebec, Canada.
3Centre for Neuroscience and Stereology, Copenhagen University Hospital Bispebjerg-Frederiksberg, Copenhagen, Denmark.
The brain region associated with moral inconsistency
Though previous studies have identified brain regions that are involved in moral behavior and moral judgement, little is known about how brain activity underpins moral inconsistency.
To identify brain regions associated with moral inconsistency, the researchers used fMRI imaging to scan people’s brains during a task that required them to weigh honesty and profit. Participants could earn more money by being dishonest, but they were also asked to rate their own behavior on a 10-point scale from “extremely immoral” to “extremely moral.” The team also monitored the participants’ brain activity while they judged the morality of other people undertaking the same task.
In people who were morally consistent—meaning, they judged themselves and others by the same moral standards—the vmPFC was activated similarly during both the behavioral and judgement tasks. However, in morally inconsistent participants—those who judged other people’s cheating as immoral but rated their own cheating more leniently—the vmPFC was less active during the behavioral task and less connected to other brain regions involved in decision making and morality.
To examine whether vmPFC activity plays a causal role in moral inconsistency, the researchers stimulated some participants’ vmPFCs via a non-invasive method called transcranial temporal interference stimulation (tTIS) before they undertook the behavioral and judging tasks. They showed that vmPFC stimulation resulted in higher levels of moral inconsistency compared to participants who received mock stimulation.
These results suggest that people who are morally inconsistent don’t make use of their vmPFC to integrate information when making behavioral decisions, the researchers say. “Individuals exhibiting moral inconsistency are not necessarily blind to their own moral principles; they are just biologically failing to consider and apply them in their own moral behavior,” says the author. ScienceMission sciencenewshighlights https://sciencemission.com/Moral-inconsistency
Rocky Is Weirder Than You Think (ft. Andy Weir!)
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Project Hail Mary opened in theaters last week, introducing the world to Rocky, the alien creature whose friendship with the main character, Ryland Grace, forms the heart of the story. Rocky quickly became a fan favorite of readers of the book, partly because of the extensive research and imagination put into the creature by the author, Andy Weir. In today’s video, I have Andy Weir join me to break down everything you could possibly want to know about Rocky, from his (not so) fictional planet to his crazy anatomy. It’s a masterclass in speculative biology that will amaze amaze amaze you.
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/ answerswithjoe TIMESTAMPS 0:00 — Intro 3:15 — About The Eridani System 7:10 — Morphology 18:04 — Crystal Brain 20:44 — Digestion 24:19 — Circulation/Musculature/Dormancy 28:37 — Communication 35:00 — How They Brought Rocky to Life 38:16 — Sponsor — Incogni.
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Sean M. Carroll
“I like to say that physics is hard because physics is easy, by which I mean we actually think about physics as students.”
Up next, The Multiverse is real. Just not in the way you think it is. ► • The Multiverse is real. Just not in the wa…
Physics seems complicated, until you realize why it works so well, says physicist Sean Carroll, revealing the basis of the field’s greatest successes: Radical simplicity.
Carroll takes us from Newton’s clockwork universe to Laplace’s demon, to Einstein’s spacetime revolution, exploring the historical shockwaves each breakthrough caused. If you’ve wondered how stripping the world down to its simplest parts can reveal deeper truths, this is where that story begins.
00:00:00 Radical simplicity in physics.
00:00:55 Chapter 1: The physics of free will.
00:04:55 Laplace’s Demon.
00:06:27 The clockwork universe paradigm.
00:07:41 Determinism and compatibilism.
00:08:45 Chapter 2: The invention of spacetime.
00:17:30: Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
00:24:27 Chapter 3: The quantum revolution.
00:28:05 The 2 biggest ideas in physics.
00:32:27 Visualizing physics.
00:38:17 Quantum field theory.
00:46:51 The Higgs boson particle.
00:47:28 The standard model of particle physics.
00:52:53 The core theory of physics.
01:02:03 The measurement problem.
01:13:47 Chapter 4: The power of collective genius.
01:16:19 A timeline of the theories of physics.
Could ChatGPT be conscious? | Roger Penrose, Sabrina Gonzalez, Max Tegmark
Roger Penrose, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, and Max Tegmark discuss consciousness, quantum physics, and the possibility of a sentient superintelligent A.I.
Could ChatGPT be conscious?
With a free trial, you can watch the full debate NOW at https://iai.tv/video/cracking-the-code-for-thought?utm_sourc…ed-comment.
The idea that the brain is computational has, from the outset, been central to neuroscience. Like a computer, the brain is a problem-solving machine that stores memories and processes information. But despite the advances in AI, many challenge whether this analogy captures the essence of the mind. Computers use transistors to build elementary logic gates, enabling them to store files exactly, in 0s and 1s. They are precise and repeatable. Human brains, in contrast, are biological—the neurons do not operate as simple logic gates, but have thousands of inputs, and their output is dependent on past activity and their current internal state. Remove a computer’s processor, and it breaks. But humans can survive with only one brain hemisphere. Fundamentally, brains think, they have perception, and are conscious.
Is it a mistake to see the mind as computational? Are computers, at root, limited machines with little in common with the sophistication of living things? Or have computers and mathematics uncovered the essential character of thought—and perhaps even the cosmos itself?
#consciousness #quantum #neuroscience #quantumphysics #ai #artificialintelligence.
A lysosome switch could reshape research on cancer and neurodegenerative disease
An international research team from Bielefeld University and the Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP) has uncovered a previously unknown regulatory mechanism in human cells. For the first time, they demonstrate how a key molecular switch regulates the cell’s “recycling centers.” The findings, published in Nature Communications, provide important insights into the understanding of cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.
Lysosomes are the control centers for the metabolism of cells and tissues, including the brain. They break down defective proteins and other macromolecules into their basic building blocks. At the same time, they determine whether a cell grows or switches into an energy-saving mode. In doing so, they play a key role in health and disease.
A research team led by Prof. Dr. Markus Damme of Bielefeld University and Prof. Volker Haucke, Director of the Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP), has now jointly elucidated a key mechanism underlying this regulation.
Researchers design a pioneering drug capable of reversing cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease in animal models
A team from the Institute of Neurosciences of the University of Barcelona (UBneuro) has designed and validated in animal models an innovative compound with a pioneering mechanism of action for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Unlike current drugs, which mainly remove beta-amyloid plaques that accumulate in the brain, this new experimental drug reprogrammes the neuronal epigenome by correcting alterations in gene expression that contribute to the progression of the disease. The results of this study, published in Molecular Therapy, open the door to an epigenetic-based therapeutic strategy to fight Alzheimer’s disease.
“The compound FLAV-27 represents an innovative and promising approach to Alzheimer’s disease, with the potential to modify the disease process, as it acts not only on its symptoms or a single pathological biomarker, but directly on its underlying molecular mechanisms,” says Aina Bellver, a researcher at the UB Institute of Neurosciences (UBneuro) and first author of the paper.
The study was led by Christian Griñán and Mercè Pallàs, UBneuro researchers and Professors from the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences. Th work was performed with the participation of researchers from the CIBER Area for Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIBERNED), as well as the UB Institute of Biomedicine (IBUB), the Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety (INSA-UB), the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBAPS) and other national and international institutions.
CARTA: Human Brain Specializations Related to Language and Theory of Mind with James Rilling
Humans excel at transmitting ideas, skills, and knowledge across generations, and at building on those competencies in a cumulative manner. James Rilling, Professor of Psychology at Emory University, explores how the transmission of our cumulative culture is assumed to depend on both language and mental perspective-taking, or theory of mind. If humans have specialized abilities in these domains, we must have neurobiological specializations to support them. Our research has used comparative primate neuroimaging to attempt to identify such specializations. The arcuate fasciculus is a white matter fiber tract that links Wernicke’s and Broca’s language areas. It is known to be involved in multiple, high level linguistic functions such as lexical semantics, complex syntax, and speech fluency. Using diffusion weighted imaging and tractography, we have demonstrated human specializations in the size and trajectory of the arcuate fasciculus that may partially explain human linguistic abilities. Theory of Mind depends on a set of cortical regions that belong to a neural network known as the default mode network that is functionally connected, highly active at rest, and deactivated by attention-demanding cognitive tasks. We and others have used functional neuroimaging to show that chimpanzees and other primates appear to have a default mode network that is similar to that of humans. However, the non-human primate default mode network seems to have weaker connectivity between certain key nodes, suggesting that these connections could play a role in human theory of mind specializations. Recorded on 02/27/2026. [3/2026] [Show ID: 41329]
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Learn more about anthropogeny on CARTA’s website:
https://carta.anthropogeny.org/
More videos from: CARTA — The Idea Organ.
(https://www.uctv.tv/carta-idea-organ)
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