Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: neuroscience – Page 807

A research team has shown that a key difference between neurogenic and non-neurogenic tissues is cross-linking proteins causing stiffness, a discovery that could be used to create new brain injury therapies.

Researchers compared the proteomes of regions in the brain that are neurogenic (neural stem cell niches) and those that are not (cerebral cortex). The scientists hope that by establishing how these tissues are different, future therapies for brain injury may be able to activate tissues to produce new neurons to repair the brain.

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Antidepressant-soil.

Soil microbes have been found to have similar effects on the brain as prozac, without the negative side effects and potential for chemical dependency and withdrawal.

It turns out getting in the garden and getting dirty is a natural antidepressant due to unique microbes in healthy organic soil. Working and playing in soil can actually make you happier and healthier.

What gardeners and farmers have talked about for millennia is now verifiable by science. Feeling like your garden or farm is your happy place is no coincidence!

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Bernardeta Gómez has been blind for 16 years. But using a bionic eye developed by Spanish neuroengineer Eduardo Fernandez, she was able to see again — without using her biological eyes at all.

The system, which Fernandez is honing at his University of Miguel Hernandez lab, comprises a few different parts, as detailed in a newly-published story in MIT Technology Review.

First, there’s a pair of glasses fitted with a camera that connects to a computer. The computer translates the camera’s live video feed into electronic signals. Those signals are then sent via a cable to a port that Fernandez surgically embedded in the back of Gómez’s skull. That port connects to an implant in the visual cortex of Gómez’s brain.

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Imagine then, the emancipatory potential of genome editing for these millions.

Realizing this potential, however, will require that genome editing meet with societal approval. The typical response right now when you talk to someone about genetic engineering or reproductive technology is a reference to ‘designer babies,’ eugenics, Nazism, and other evils. These arguments have a very powerful emotional hold over many people, but in my opinion, they simply don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Numerous traits, both physical and mental, are too complex to ever be able to engineer, and a Gattaca-like future of ‘designer babies’ is probably just as improbable as time-travel. No serious scientist or ethicist is advocating for government mandated ‘genetic correction’ of the sort Nazism or eugenics implies. As for physical appearance, everyone has their own ideas about the ‘physical ideal.’ Not every visitor to a cosmetic surgeon comes out looking Northern European.

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Let’s face it, getting older sucks, and not because of all the extra candles on the birthday cake. Getting cake and presents every year is great, but the loss of health and independence isn’t a particularly good birthday present. (Wow, what’d I get this year? Just what I didn’t want: sarcopenia and hearing loss!)

Given the downsides of aging, it really is surprising how little people talk about it beyond the odd grumble or even as a joke. Normally, it’s to complain about the aches and pains that gradually appear as the years roll by, as we find it harder to walk up the stairs and “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed” turns into “cloudy-eyed and with an aching back”.

That’s not even the serious side of aging, which involves the gradual loss of independence and the age-related diseases that first rob us of our quality of life before they get around to killing us. The serious part is the horror of Alzheimer’s and the loss of self that it brings, the heart disease that cripples us, the frailty that steals our independence, and the lurking threat of cancer that rises dramatically as we age.

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