Lifeboat Foundation

Teams of researchers are developing sesame seed-size neuro-implants that detect brain activity that signals depression and then deliver targeted electrical zaps to elevate your mood. It’s very early days in the science and technology but recent studies suggest that we’re on the path. Links to scientific papers below. Fortunately, the goal is to develop tools and a methodology more precise than the horrifically blunt “shock therapy” of last century. From Science News:

Turns out it is smarter than we think.

It is well known that the circuits in this part of our nervous system, which travel down the length of our spine, control seemingly simple things like the pain reflex in humans, and some motor control functions in animals.

Now, new research from Western University has shown that the spinal cord is also able to process and control more complex functions, like the positioning of your hand in external space.

“This research has shown that a least one important function is being done at the level of the spinal cord and it opens up a whole new area of investigation to say, ‘what else is done at the spinal level and what else have we potentially missed in this domain?’” said the study’s senior and supervising researcher Andrew Pruszynski, PhD, assistant professor at Western’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and Canada Research Chair in Sensorimotor Neuroscience.

Read more

As powerful as the human brain is, once it’s damaged it can’t really recover completely. Now researchers at Penn State may have found a way to boost the brain’s regenerative abilities, using certain molecules to convert neighboring cells into new neurons. The technique could eventually lead to pills that treat brain injuries, stroke or Alzheimer’s disease.

Psychiatry as a field, meanwhile, quivers with theoretical uncertainty. It has not become a sub-speciality of neurology, as one might have expected if mental illness mapped directly to neural behaviour. And common genetic variations with large effects on mental disorders are elusive. The various incarnations of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) have enabled diagnostic consistency and the objectification of mental illnesses. But the DSM has resulted in overlapping diagnoses, and contrived symptom-cluster checklists. At times, it impinges on the territory of healthy mental function. Allen Frances, chair of the task force that wrote the manual’s fourth edition in 1994, revolted against out-of-control mental diagnosis in his 2013 book DSM: Saving Normal.

Adrian Woolfson weighs up a study on the role of evolution in conditions such as depression and anxiety.

A new drug cocktail could turn cells near damaged neurons into fully functional new ones.

Researchers posted more preprints to the bioRxiv server in 2018 alone than in the four previous years, according to an analysis of the 37,648 preprints posted on the site in its first 5 years.

More than 1 million studies are now downloaded from the site every month, mostly in neuroscience, bioinformatics and genomics.

Two information-processing systems determine the human emotional response: the affect ive and cognitive processing systems. The affect ive system operates outside of conscious thought and is reactive, in that a series of psychophysiological events are initiated automatically following the receipt of sensory information. In contrast, the cognitive processing system is conscious and involves analysis of sensory information to influence and even counteract the affect ive system. Affects (i.e. things that induce some change to the affect ive system) are divided into positive and negative groups. Positive affect has the potential to improve creative thinking, while negative affect narrows thinking and has the potential to adversely affect performance on simple tasks. Emotions are the product of changes in the affect ive system brought about by sensory information stimulation. Research suggests positive emotions—such as happiness, comfort, contentedness, and pleasure—help us make decisions, allow us to consider a larger set of options, decide quicker, and develop more creative problem-solving strategies. These findings suggest attractive things really do work better (Norman 2005), even if this is only the case because they make us feel better when we are using them.

Much of the work into how users and customers behave focuses on the emotional responses elicited by a product. However, emotions are the product of complex processing systems, which essentially convert sensory information into the psychophysiological and behavioral changes that we refer to as emotional responses. According to Don Norman, cognition and affect are in charge of these emotional responses. Cognition and affect are information-processing systems, which help us convert information from our environment into accurate representations of the world and make value judgments that determine how we respond and behave.

Norman distinguishes the cognitive and affect ive systems, and defines emotion, thusly: “The cognitive system interprets and makes sense of the world. Affect is the general term for the judgemental system, whether conscious or subconscious. Emotion is the conscious experience of affect, complete with attribution of its cause and identification of its object”. The affect ive and cognitive systems are thought to work independently, but they influence one another, with the former operating unconsciously while the latter operates at the conscious level. For example, imagine you are about to make a speech in front of a room full of people; the affect ive system is immediately called into action, with chemicals released in your body in response to the situation automatically and without your ability to control this physiological response.

Continue reading “How Emotions Impact Cognition” »

Ignorance is bliss, until it isn’t…,and it becomes experience.

“We fail our most cognitively talented students when we set them up for adult expectations that they must be high achieving, or we don’t help them find their own unique path to self-actualization and contribution to society. In today’s polarized world, with a general lack of nuance and open and honest critical discussions, I also think a very large number of intellectually gifted children are growing up knowing they are bright, but wondering: what for?”

What is the relationship between intellectual giftedness and meaning in life?

Continue reading “Are Intellectuals Suffering a Crisis of Meaning?” »