Society For Neuroscience Assists Scientists Denied U.S. Visas : Shots — Health News Scientists from nations including Iran, Mexico, and India were refused visas to attend this year’s Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago. Some researchers got stand-ins to present their work.
Many advanced artificial intelligence projects say they are working toward building a conscious machine, based on the idea that brain functions merely encode and process multisensory information. The assumption goes, then, that once brain functions are properly understood, it should be possible to program them into a computer. Microsoft recently announced that it would spend US$1 billion on a project to do just that.
So far, though, attempts to build supercomputer brains have not even come close. A multi-billion-dollar European project that began in 2013 is now largely understood to have failed. That effort has shifted to look more like a similar but less ambitious project in the U.S., developing new software tools for researchers to study brain data, rather than simulating a brain.
Some researchers continue to insist that simulating neuroscience with computers is the way to go. Others, like me, view these efforts as doomed to failure because we do not believe consciousness is computable. Our basic argument is that brains integrate and compress multiple components of an experience, including sight and smell – which simply can’t be handled in the way today’s computers sense, process and store data.
MINIATURE brains which have been grown in the lab could have some form of consciousness and could be suffering as a result, scientists have worryingly claimed.
Say this about the kinds of molecular mayhem that we know underlie aging: Mechanisms like whether the ends of chromosomes fray (bad) and whether genes’ on-off status breaks down (really bad) at least sound like plausible ways to impair vital organs, from skin to brains and hearts, and produce the whole sorry mess known as aging.
On Wednesday, scientists reported a driver of aging that, in contrast, even the lead researcher diplomatically calls “counterintuitive”: neuronal activity. Aging, of course, affects the brain. But the brain seems to affect aging, too, they found: In creatures from worms to mice to people, high levels of neuronal firing spell a shorter life span. Lower levels — naturally, or due to drugs that dampen neurons’ activity — increase longevity.
The discovery4 was so surprising that it’s taken two years to be published (in Nature) because of how much additional data the outside scientists reviewing the study requested. Geneticist Bruce Yankner of Harvard Medical School, who led the research, understood their skepticism. “If you say you have a cat in your backyard, people believe you,” he said. “If you say you have a zebra, they want more evidence.”
Drug company says it will seek permission in the US to start marketing the potentially ‘life-changing’ new drug.
Scientists have discovered that resident bacteria of the intestine, collectively known as the gut microbiome, can influence the ability to overcome fear.
New study expands understanding of the ‘gut-brain axis’. Paul Biegler reports.
“If you are not convinced by the idea of reductive materialists that consciousness magically emerges from complexity in material structures or processes or if you are not satisfied with the viewpoint of idealists that matter is a mere thought form, then the present hypothesis may be something for you,” writes Dr. Antonin Tuynman when presenting his new book The Ouroboros Code. https://www.ecstadelic.net/top-stories/the-ouroboros-code-se…f-the-game #OuroborosCode
In “The Ouroboros Code” I will address the cybernetic dynamics of consciousness. Starting from the premise that Consciousness is the Ontological Primitive, I will propose mechanisms which may explain how a digital mathematical and material existence can be generated. Digging into Category Theory, Computational Simulacra and Quantum Computing, I will explore the mechanics of self-sustaining self-referential feedback loops as the Modus Operandi of Consciousness.
Let’s dive in the vortex of kaleidoscopic reflections, the wormhole of a dazzling “mise-en abyme” of recursiveness and the roller-coaster of the quantum non-locality. Explore the map which is the territory simultaneously by drawing your map of maps. Discover the non-dual bridge closing the gap between Science and Spirituality.
-Antonin Tuynman, PhD
After almost two years mired in extensive peer review, a landmark new study just published in the prestigious journal Nature is strongly associating excessive neural activity with shorter lifespans. The study suggests a protein known to suppress neural excitation affects a number of longevity pathways, effectively slowing the aging process.
The impressive research started several years ago with a gene expression study of post-mortem human brain tissue from hundreds of subjects. All the subjects were cognitively normal at the time of death. Bruce Yankner, senior author on the new study, says one thing quickly stood out to his team – the longer a person lived, the lower their expression of genes connected to neural excitement.
More specifically, the researchers identified upregulation of a protein called REST in the brains of those longest-lived subjects. REST first came to the attention of the research team back in 2014. The protein’s role in the brain was generally thought to only play a part in prenatal neurodevelopment, regulating the expression of genes in a developing brain.
Marine geophysicist discovered a depression, likely a volcanic caldera twice the size of Yellowstone, hidden in the Philippine Sea.
