Our world and the self are constructions of the brain, a pioneering neuroscientist argues.
Category: neuroscience – Page 713
Genes for Alcohol Use Disorder and Alzheimer’s Risk Overlap: Study
ABOVE: MAPT, one of the genes linked to both heavy drinking and neurodegenerative diseases, codes for the protein tau (blue in this illustration) inside a neuron. NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON AGING/ NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
Some genetic risk factors for alcohol use disorder overlap with those for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, scientists reported in Nature Communications on August 20. The study, which relied on a combination of genetic, transcriptomic, and epigenetic data, also offers insight into the molecular commonalities among these disorders, and their connections to immune disfunction.
“By meshing findings from genome wide association studies… ith gene expression in brain and other tissues, this new study has prioritized genes likely to harbor regulatory variants influencing risk of Alcohol Use Disorder,” writes David Goldman, a neurogenetics researcher at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), in an email to The Scientist. “Several of these genes are also associated with neurodegenerative disorders—an intriguing connection because of alcohol’s ability to prematurely age the brain.”
Mental Phenomena Don’t Map Into the Brain as Expected
Neuroscientists are the cartographers of the brain’s diverse domains and territories — the features and activities that define them, the roads and highways that connect them, and the boundaries that delineate them. Toward the front of the brain, just behind the forehead, is the prefrontal cortex, celebrated as the seat of judgment. Behind it lies the motor cortex, responsible for planning and coordinating movement. To the sides: the temporal lobes, crucial for memory and the processing of emotion. Above them, the somatosensory cortex; behind them, the visual cortex.
Not only do researchers often depict the brain and its functions much as mapmakers might draw nations on continents, but they do so “the way old-fashioned mapmakers” did, according to Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychologist at Northeastern University. “They parse the brain in terms of what they’re interested in psychologically or mentally or behaviorally,” and then they assign the functions to different networks of neurons “as if they’re Lego blocks, as if there are firm boundaries there.”
But a brain map with neat borders is not just oversimplified — it’s misleading. “Scientists for over 100 years have searched fruitlessly for brain boundaries between thinking, feeling, deciding, remembering, moving and other everyday experiences,” Barrett said. A host of recent neurological studies further confirm that these mental categories “are poor guides for understanding how brains are structured or how they work.”
Prozac Changes Fat Composition of the Brain
Lipids are abundant in the brain, where they are found not just in the cell membranes of neurons, whose properties they modulate, but also in the so-called myelin sheaths insulating axons — the brain’s ‘wiring.’ The brain is therefore a surprisingly ‘fat’ organ — in fact, it is nearly 60% fat, the study’s first author, Anna Tkachev from Skoltech, said.
Summary: Prozac reduced polyunsaturated fatty acid lipid concentrations in the brains of juvenile macaque monkeys.
Source: Skoltech
Skoltech researchers and their colleagues from Russia, Germany, and the U.S. have found Prozac to reduce lipid concentrations in juvenile macaques who received the antidepressant for two years, compared to a control group of untreated animals.
While none of the monkeys in the study were depressed, the findings still offer a plausible biochemical explanation for the drug’s side effects, particularly in young patients. The paper was published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
Mahabbah: I am pleased to announce that my science fiction story “Mahabbah” has been published by After Dinner Conversation
My story centers on the concept of a genetically modified virus (named) which infects the brain and gives people enhanced empathy. The narrative takes place in a fictional middle eastern city called Fakhoury and explores bioethical themes. Love acts as a central motif which ties the story together. Note that this piece will be available online for a limited time, after which you will need to pay for the magazine. I encourage you to check out my story!
Read Philosophy Ethics Short Stories with your friends, family, book club, and students. Each story comes with suggested discussion questions.
Sudden Death From Deep in the Brain?
Dravet syndrome (DS) is a developmental and epileptic encephalopathy with an increased incidence of sudden death. Evidence of interictal breathing deficits in DS suggests that alterations in subcortical projections to brainstem nuclei may exist, which might be driving comorbidities in DS.
Summary: Researchers have identified a circuit within the brain that may be responsible for respiratory dysfunction and sudden death associated with Dravet syndrome.
Source: Vanderbilt University
Risk of sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is among comorbidities present in Dravet Syndrome (DS), a rare, catastrophic form of epilepsy in which seizures begin in infancy, with most cases due to mutations in a single gene, SCN1A.
Breathing issues have been reported in patients and in mouse models of DS, and a recent study implicated respiratory decline in SUDEP in DS mice.
Earbuds That Read Your Mind
Summary: Retrofitting wireless earbuds to detect neural signals and relaying the data back to smartphones via Bluetooth, researchers say the new earEEG system could have multiple applications, including health monitoring.
Source: UC Berkeley.
From keypads to touch screens to voice commands – step by step, the interface between users and their smartphones has become more personalized, more seamless. Now the ultimate personalized interface is approaching: issuing smartphone commands with your brain waves.
Northwestern scientists discover remarkable longevity in a subset of mitochondrial proteins
Northwestern Medicine investigators have discovered that a subset of proteins in mitochondria of brain and heart cells are long-lived, supporting the long-term stability of mitochondrial complex architecture.
The study, published in the Journal of Cell Biology, was led by Jeffrey Savas, PhD, assistant professor in the Ken & Ruth Davee Department of Neurology’s Division of Behavioral Neurology, of Medicine the in Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, and of Pharmacology.
Previous work led by Savas discovered that nuclear pore complex proteins in post-mitotic neurons are exceptionally long-lived and persist for months in mouse and rat brains. These proteins, termed long-lived proteins, or LLPs, provide long-term stability and structure to the nuclear pore and subsequently to the nuclear envelope of neurons; however, this concept had never been considered for other intracellular organelles, until now.
DARPA Announces Research Teams to Develop Intelligent Event-Based Imagers
FENCE program selects researchers to develop low-power, low-latency neuromorphic camera technologies to enable future military applications.
DARPA today announced that three teams of researchers led by Raytheon, BAE Systems, and Northrop Grumman have been selected to develop event-based infrared (IR) camera technologies under the Fast Event-based Neuromorphic Camera and Electronics (FENCE) program. Event-based – or neuromorphic – cameras are an emerging class of sensors with demonstrated advantages relative to traditional imagers. These advanced models operate asynchronously and only transmit information about pixels that have changed. This means they produce significantly less data and operate with much lower latency and power.
“Neuromorphic refers to silicon circuits that mimic brain operation; they offer sparse output, low latency, and high energy efficiency,” said Dr. Whitney Mason, the program manager leading the FENCE program. “Event-based cameras operate under these same principles when dealing with sparse scenes, but currently lack advanced ‘intelligence’ to perform more difficult perception and control tasks.”
Today’s state-of-the-art (SOTA) cameras work well with scenes that have few changes to track and the imagery is relatively simple. Take, for example, a scene of a plane moving through a clear blue sky. SOTA imagers could easily track the movement of the plane. Their capabilities fail, however, in highly cluttered and dynamic scenes, limiting their use among many military applications.