The human brain contains a little over 80-odd billion neurons, each joining with other cells to create trillions of connections called synapses.
The numbers are mind-boggling, but the way each individual nerve cell contributes to the brain’s functions is still an area of contention.
In fact, a study published in 2017 has overturned a 100-year-old assumption on what exactly makes a neuron ‘fire’, posing new mechanisms behind certain neurological disorders.
Quality sleep is foundational to good health — and a key strategy for anti-aging. In this video, best-selling wellness author Dave Asprey explains how you can hack your sleep and, in doing so, stave off diabetes, cancer, and even Alzheimer’s.
Researchers examining the brains of 324 men and women with a special form of magnetic resonance imaging called diffusion tensor imaging have identified interesting differences in the wiring of general knowledge buffs’ brains.
“Something happened to them. These findings of the inner ear disorder cannot be faked,” he said. “It is not hysteria. It is not crickets.”
Could a dog’s brain offer any clues to the mysterious concussion-like syndrome affecting Canadian and American diplomats who were posted to Cuba?
That is one of the many threads being pulled in an effort by researchers and scientists — and those affected — to better understand the condition referred to as Havana Syndrome, which has been blamed for debilitating some Canadian diplomats and their families.
The brains of those diplomats and their spouses are being tested at Dalhousie’s Brain Repair Centre. Officials there were unavailable for interviews, but one of the diplomats involved told this newspaper that early findings have amazed researchers.
As mentioned by H. Girard in the article at the link http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BW.php&h=AT2S6vfN4BKfFUss7oiAPJJ…w2jb-y0arw, in 1960, the CIA approved a proposal for a very sophisticated electroencephalography instrument that could be used to interpret brain activity, decipher thought content and obtain information whether a person would wish to disclose it or not. They also added to this a bibliography search with five objectives, the fifth termed Techniques for Activating the Human Organism by Remote Electronic Means . This study became known later as MKULTRA subproject 119, with MKULTRA being the CIA s mind control program.
Documents that are related to MKULTRA were obtained by a FOIA request by John Marks who conducted research for his book “The Search For The Manchurian Candidate — The CIA and Mind Control, The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences” (1979) published by W. Norton — paperback 1991, ISBN 0−393−30794−8. The author donated the documents to the National Security Archive of the George Washington University (http//www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive.html).
Researchers are still optimistic about finding disease-altering medicines—just not anytime soon.
For the past quarter century, scientists battled Alzheimer’s disease under a single guiding principle: that protein clumps—beta-amyloid—deposited outside sensitive brain cells gradually damage neuronal functions and trigger memory loss. The solution seems simple: remove junk amyloid, protect the brain.
They could be completely wrong.
Last month, Alzheimer’s disease defeated another promising near-market drug that tried to prevent or remove amyloid deposits, adding to the disease’s therapeutic “graveyard of dreams.” Although the drug removed toxic amyloid, the patients didn’t get better. The failure is once again spurring scientists to confront an uncomfortable truth: targeting amyloid clumps when patients already show memory symptoms doesn’t work. Wiping out soluble amyloid—fragments of proteins before they aggregate into junk—also dead ends.
One of the most dangerous but thankfully rare mosquitoborne diseases has been spotted again in Florida, state health officials say. According to a public advisory issued this month by the Florida Department of Health in Orange County, the Eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV) was found in the state. The virus is capable of causing severe brain damage that can kill up to a third of its human victims.
EEEV can be spread by several species of mosquitoes, including those that make their home along the warmer areas of the U.S. Though many people infected with EEEV either develop no or only flu-like symptoms, around 5 percent go on to experience serious brain swelling (the titular encephalitis). This swelling can then lead to headaches, drowsiness, convulsions, and coma, with death coming as quickly as two days after symptoms start. And even if you’re lucky enough to survive the experience, you’ll probably be left with lifelong neurological impairment.
Working with mouse and human tissue, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report new evidence that a protein pumped out of some—but not all—populations of “helper” cells in the brain, called astrocytes, plays a specific role in directing the formation of connections among neurons needed for learning and forming new memories.
Using mice genetically engineered and bred with fewer such connections, the researchers conducted proof-of-concept experiments that show they could deliver corrective proteins via nanoparticles to replace the missing protein needed for “road repairs” on the defective neural highway.
Since such connective networks are lost or damaged by neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s or certain types of intellectual disability, such as Norrie disease, the researchers say their findings advance efforts to regrow and repair the networks and potentially restore normal brain function.
