Lifeboat Foundation

The year is 2050 and researchers have developed an advanced method of replacing 99% of your brain’s functions for digital software/hardware. The process is slow to ensure individuals aren’t simply making copies of themselves. But in return, “digital immortality” has been achieved.

In a future of mind-uploaded “immortals,” will we achieve unlimited freedom or will we simply become slaves to a private entity which owns the data that makes up our own digital minds?

Continue reading “In a Future of Mind Uploading, Who Will Own the Data That is You?” »

Published in Scientific Reports, this study is the first to provide evidence of new neuron formation—and the presence of stem cells—in the leopard gecko brain.

University of Guelph researchers have discovered the type of stem cell allowing geckos to create new brain cells, providing evidence that the lizards may also be able to regenerate parts of the brain after injury.

This finding could help in replacing human brain cells lost or damaged due to injury, aging or disease.

Continue reading “Study finds evidence that leopard geckos can make new brain cells” »

A new way of administering drugs for wet age-related macular degeneration might be close.

Two studies by researchers at the University of Birmingham have shown that delivering drugs against the wet form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in the form of eyedrops might soon be possible in humans [1, 2].

What is age-related macular degeneration?

Continue reading “Wet AMD Drugs Might Soon Be Self-Administered” »

Dreaming is one of the strangest things that happens to us, and for as long as we have been recording history, we have been puzzling over why our minds are so active while we sleep.

Finally, new research claims to have evidence as to what dreaming is all about — and it will probably surprise no one.

According to a team from The Swansea University Sleep Lab in the UK, dreaming really does help us process the memories and emotions we experience during our waking lives.

Continue reading “Scientists Are Finally Figuring Out Why We Dream, And It’s Probably Exactly What You’d Think” »

Brain Injuries And Shoulder-Launched Assault Weapons : Shots — Health News The military is trying to figure out whether troops can sustain brain injuries from firing certain powerful weapons. A pair of Marines who used to shoot these weapons think they already know.

A fascinating study from scientists at Rockefeller University has shed new light on a deep brain mechanism that can stimulate awareness and cognition. The research homes in on a collection of giant neurons in the brain that seem to be able to modulate stimulation of the entire central nervous system.

A new study shows that mice reprogram their gut tissues to repair injury rolling them from an aged state back to a more fetal-like one.

Getting old is one thing; getting old in a healthy way is another. Many elderly people suffer from all kinds of diseases and disorders, ranging from cardiovascular problems and diabetes to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could keep the body young as we grow older to prevent disease associated with old age? For instance, would it be possible to slow down or reverse the aging processes in the cells of our body?

This question has gained a lot of interest from scientists, and their research has led to the discovery of the important role that the shortening of telomeres, the protective caps on our DNA, plays in aging. While this has been described in recent posts on the LEAF blog, I would like to address another mechanism that has seen an interesting leap forward, more or less by accident: rejuvenation of tissue.

Continue reading “Mice Reprogram Gut Tissue to a Fetal State to Heal Injury” »

Designer babies are on the horizon after an influential group of scientists concluded that it could be ‘morally permissible’ to genetically engineer human embryos.

In a new report which opens the door to a change in the law, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, said that DNA editing could become an option for parents wanting to ‘influence the genetic characteristics of their child.’

Although it would be largely used to cure devastating genetic illnesses, or predispositions to cancers and dementia, the experts said they were not ruling out cosmetic uses such as making tweaks to increase height or changing eye or hair colour, if it would make a child more successful.

Continue reading “Designer babies on horizon as ethics council gives green light to genetically edited embryos” »

Think you’re totally in control of your thoughts? Maybe not as much as you think, according to a new San Francisco State University study that examines how thoughts that lead to actions enter our consciousness.

While we can “decide” to think about certain things, other information—including activities we have learned like counting—can enter our subconscious and cause us to think about something else, whether we want to or not. Psychologists call these dispositions “sets,” explains SF State Associate Professor of Psychology Ezequiel Morsella, one of four authors on a new study that examines how sets influence what we end up thinking about.

Morsella and the other researchers conducted two experiments with SF State students. In the first experiment, 35 students were told beforehand to not count an array of objects presented to them. In 90 percent of the trials, students counted the objects involuntarily. In a second experiment, students were presented with differently colored geometric shapes and given the option of either naming the colors (one set) or counting the shapes (a different set). Even though students chose one over the other, around 40 percent thought about both sets.