Circa 2015
Blue Brain Project announces results of a decade’s work.
Category: neuroscience – Page 823
Is This Virtual Worm the First Sign of the Singularity?
Circa 2013
A far-flung team is trying to build the first digital lifeform to work out the basic principles of the brain.
Bacterial metabolism of dietary soy may lower risk factor for dementia
The researchers found that while equol production did not appear to impact levels of amyloid-beta deposited within the brain, it was associated with reduced white matter lesion volumes. Sekikawa’s team also discovered that high levels of isoflavones—soy nutrients that are metabolized into equol—had no effect on levels of white matter lesions or amyloid-beta when equol wasn’t produced.
According to Sekikawa, the ability to produce equol from soy isoflavones may be the key to unlocking protective health benefits from a soy-rich diet, and his team has previously shown that equol production is associated with a lower risk of heart disease. As heart disease is strongly associated with cognitive decline and dementia, equol production could help protect the aging brain as well as the heart.
A metabolite produced following consumption of dietary soy may decrease a key risk factor for dementia—with the help of the right bacteria, according to a new discovery led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.
Their study, published today in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions, reports that elderly Japanese men and women who produce equol—a metabolite of dietary soy created by certain types of gut bacteria—display lower levels of white matter lesions within the brain.
“White matter lesions are significant risk factors for cognitive decline, dementia and all-cause mortality,” said lead author Akira Sekikawa, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of epidemiology at Pitt Public Health. “We found 50% more white matter lesions in people who cannot produce equol compared to people who can produce it, which is a surprisingly huge effect.”
New vaccine could help halt Alzheimer’s progression, preclinical study finds
Our immune system’s capacity to mount a well-regulated defense against foreign substances, including toxins, weakens with age and makes vaccines less effective in people over age 65. At the same time, research has shown that immunotherapy targeting neurotoxic forms of the peptide amyloid beta (oligomeric Aβ) may halt the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, the most common age-related neurodegenerative disease.
A team led by Chuanhai Cao, Ph.D., of the University of South Florida Health (USF Health), has focused on overcoming, in those with impaired immunity, excess inflammation and other complications that interfere with development of a therapeutic Alzheimer’s vaccine.
Now, a preclinical study by Dr. Cao and colleagues indicates that an antigen-presenting dendritic vaccine with a specific antibody response to oligomeric Aβ may be safer and offer clinical benefit in treating Alzheimer’s disease. The vaccine, called E22W42 DC, uses immune cells known as dendritic cells (DC) loaded with a modified Aβ peptide as the antigen.
Does Consciousness Create Reality? Double Slit Experiment may show the Answer
The double slit experiment — Does consciousness create reality? Quantum mechanics shows us that particles are in superposition, meaning they can exist in different states and even multiple places at the same time. They are nothing more than waves of probabilities, until the moment that they are measured. One interpretation of this phenomenon is that the measurement being made requires a measurer, or a conscious observer. If this is correct, then it implies that consciousness has to be is an integral part of creating the world that we observe. Could this consciousness then be required for creating reality? Does this mean that there would be no reality without consciousness?
Experiments can show that what we think of as particles behave like waves. Waves of probabilities. This is the foundation of Quantum mechanics. The famous double slit experiment illustrates this. What is bizarre is that when you try to find out what’s going on at the slits by placing a detector at the two slits to try to figure out which slit the individual atoms are going through – the “WHICH WAY” information, they all of a sudden stop behaving like waves, and behave like particles.
Why do atoms and other particles behave this way? There are many interpretations of this phenomenon.
The most widely accepted interpretation, called the Copenhagen interpretation, was devised in 1925 by Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg at the University of Copenhagen. Their theory proposed that the atom when it is not measured, is not distinct. But the Copenhagen interpretation does not say anything about consciousness. But what is measurement after all?
Does measurement take place at the instrument that measures it? Does measurement necessarily require a consciousness? This is called the “measurement problem of quantum mechanics.” Physicists do not universally agree on a resolution. There are various interpretations.
One such interpretation is called the von Neumann–Wigner interpretation. This says that in the long chain of measurement, the collapse occurs at the moment that a consciousness interprets the measurement. The consciousness of the physicist is making the particle distinct. And without this consciousness, the atom would just be a wave of probabilities.
New Research Claims That Consciousness Itself Is an Energy Field
Dualism Reborn
McFadden’s hypothesis veers away from most neuroscientists, who generally see consciousness as a narrative that our brain constructs out of our senses, perceptions, and actions. Instead, McFadden returns to a more empirical version of dualism — the idea that consciousness stems from something other than our brain matter — in this case energy.
“How brain matter becomes aware and manages to think is a mystery that has been pondered by philosophers, theologians, mystics and ordinary people for millennia,” McFadden said in a press release. “I believe this mystery has now been solved, and that consciousness is the experience of nerves plugging into the brain’s self-generated electromagnetic field to drive what we call ‘free will’ and our voluntary actions.”
Caltech Develops a Way to Map Brain Circuits in Real Time
Current optical techniques can image neuron activity only near the brain’s surface, but integrated neurophotonics could unlock circuits buried deep in the brain. Credit: Roukes et. al.
But current optogenetic studies of the brain are constrained by a significant physical limitation, says Laurent Moreaux, Caltech senior research scientist and lead author on the paper. Brain tissue scatters light, which means that light shone in from outside the brain can travel only short distances within it. Because of this, only regions less than about two millimeters from the brain’s surface can be examined optically. This is why the best-studied brain circuits are usually simple ones that relay sensory information, such as the sensory cortex in a mouse—they are located near the surface. In short, at present, optogenetics methods cannot readily offer insight into circuits located deeper in the brain, including those involved in higher-order cognitive or learning processes.
Integrated neurophotonics, Roukes and colleagues say, circumvents the problem. In the technique, the microscale elements of a complete imaging system are implanted near complex neural circuits located deep within the brain, in regions such as the hippocampus (which is involved in memory formation), striatum (which controls cognition), and other fundamental structures in unprecedented resolution. Consider the similar technology of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the scanning technique currently used to image entire brains. Each voxel, or three-dimension pixel, in an fMRI scan is typically about a cubic millimeter in volume and contains roughly 100,000 neurons. Each voxel, therefore, represents the average activity of all of these 100,000 cells.
Could cold water hold a clue to a dementia cure?
“In a world first, a “cold-shock” protein has been found in the blood of regular winter swimmers at London’s Parliament Hill Lido.”
“The protein has been shown to slow the onset of dementia and even repair some of the damage it causes in mice.”
“Prof Giovanna Mallucci, who runs the UK Dementia Research Institute’s Centre at the University of Cambridge, says the discovery could point researchers towards new drug treatments which may help hold dementia at bay.”
Swimmers at a London lido aid understanding of what cold does to the body.
Elon Musk’s Neuralink May Offer us Symbiosis With AI — Part 2
Elon Musk has warned many times about the dangers of AI. He sees strong artificial intelligence as an existential risk. Musk therefore wants to develop a brain machine interface or BMI device so we can merge with AI and hopefully develop a symbiotic relationship with artificial intelligence thus solve the AI control problem. Elon Musk has founded the neurotechnology company Neuralink. the company is focused on developing implantable brain machine interfaces. Neuralink has made recent headlines for its newest BMI device presented by Elon Musk.
In the short term, Neuralink’s BMI may be used to fix neurological problems and disorders. As Elon Musk has pointed out, over time, virtually everyone who gets old will suffer at least one if not multiple common neurological issues such as: Memory loss, hearing loss, seizures, strokes, brain damage etc.
With the development of Neuralink’s device, these problems may be a thing of the past. Better yet, the integration of Neuralink’s device with the human brain may advertently solve the artificial intelligence alignment problem by achieving a symbiotic relationship between humans and machines.
This is because there are many cases where an AI and a biological intelligence could benefit from each other’s actions; the AI receiving data from the human brain and the human brain receiving data from the AI. The benefits of this relationship would greatly outweigh the costs to both humans and AI systems; however, it is also very likely that AI systems and biological intelligences will at some point be in conflict.
Elon Musk has commented on the dangers of AI saying it is the greatest risk we face as a civilization. However, in order to prove that Neuralink can solve this problem, two things will need to become clear: how does Neuralink achieve symbiosis with the human brain? And what are the side effects and potential drawbacks of this symbiosis?
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