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Category: neuroscience – Page 877

Blue-Light Therapy Helps Heal the Brain

Early morning exposure to blue wavelength light can help heal the brain following mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), new research suggests.

Results of a small, randomized controlled trial showed blue-light therapy improved brain structure and function, cognition, and sleep in this patient population.

“We found that blue-light therapy improved patients’ daytime sleepiness,” study investigator William D. ‘Scott’ Killgore, PhD, told Medscape Medical News. “So those who got the blue light were less sleepy 6 weeks later than they had been at baseline.”

Overcoming human challenges with transhumanism

Sometimes, being human involves tragedy: unexpected accidents can alter a person’s future, permanently changing how they need to approach their daily lives. Those with traumatic brain injuries suffer long-term mental and physical challenges, such as trouble with their working memory span, which can play a significant role in their education and longevity. However, if used properly, transhuman aids such as prosthetic limbs can provide solutions to human challenges.

Transhumanism, in a nutshell, is the idea that people can use technology to overcome biological limitations. Just as how we use rational means to improve our life experiences and the world around us, we can use such means to improve ourselves as organisms. It is simply a concept, not a tangible characterization of some futuristic cyborg.

There is reasonable fear that using such technologies would be tampering with nature. This is true. However, whether something is good or bad cannot be decided simply by asking whether or not it is natural. Plenty of natural things are horrible, such as diseases and parasites, where our moral interest is to intervene and improve these conditions. The question to ask is not whether the technology is natural, but rather, what are the various possible consequences that would arise from it, both desirable and undesirable, and the likelihood of each. People who are concerned that our species will stray too far away from what it means to be a ‘natural human’ forget how far we have already evolved as a species.

Group membership dictates the neural correlates of social optimism biases

Optimism bias, i.e. expecting the future to hold more desirable than undesirable outcomes, also extends to people that we like or admire. However, it remains unknown how the brain generates this social optimism bias. In this study, respondents estimated the likelihood of future desirable and undesirable outcomes for an in-group and three out-groups: warm-incompetent, cold-competent, and cold-incompetent. We found a strong social optimism bias for the in-group and the warm out-group and an inverted pattern for the cold-incompetent out-group. For all groups, scores of social optimism bias correlated with the brain activity in structures that respondents differentially engaged depending on the target social group. In line with our hypotheses, evaluating the in-group recruited the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex, whereas evaluating the warm out-group engaged the posterior insula, mid cingulate cortex, and somatosensory cortices. These findings suggest different underlying cognitive mechanisms of social optimism bias for these groups, despite similar behavioural patterns. Thinking about the cold out-groups recruited the right anterior temporal lobe, and temporoparietal junction. Evaluating the cold-incompetent out-group additionally recruited the anterior insula, inferior frontal cortex and dorsomedial frontal cortex. We discuss these neuroimaging findings with respect to their putative cognitive functions.

Genomics Pioneer: Travels World To Discover Which Countries’ Healthcare Money Goes Furthest and Why

Genomics and BioPharma Pioneer!! — On this ideaXme (http://radioideaxme.com/) episode, I had the honor of being joined by Dr. William Haseltine — biologist, entrepreneur and philanthropist, known for his groundbreaking work on HIV/AIDS and the human genome, now focusing on the issues of healthcare costs, dementia care, and aging — #Ideaxme #Genomics #RegenerativeMedicine #BillHaseltine #Dementia #Biotechnology #Harvard #JamesWatson #WalterGilbert #DavidBaltimore #MIT #CraigVenter #Health #Wellness #Regeneration #Longevity #Aging #IraPastor #Bioquark #Regenerage

Ira Pastor, ideaXme exponential health ambassador, interviews Dr. William Haseltine, American biologist, entrepreneur and philanthropist, known for his groundbreaking work on HIV/AIDS and the human genome.

Ira Pastor Comments:

On today’s show we have a thought leader who sits amongst a rare group of people who have been responsible for creating many aspects of the modern biopharma / genomics / regenerative medicine system as we know it today.

Continue reading “Genomics Pioneer: Travels World To Discover Which Countries’ Healthcare Money Goes Furthest and Why” | >

Revel Pharma to repair collagen damaged by aging and diabetes using designer enzymes

For the past 10 years, Yale Professors David Spiegel and Jason Crawford have been working on tools to enable the development of glucosepane-cleaving drugs. Kizoo Technology Capital investors say now is the time to advance this groundbreaking research toward the clinic and are leading funding of a new company, Revel Pharmaceuticals Inc., founded by Drs. David Spiegel, Jason Crawford, and Aaron Cravens.

Kizoo leads the seed financing round at Revel, with Oculus co-founder Michael Antonov participating. SENS Research Foundation provided funding to the YaleGlycoSENS group for several years.

The long-lived collagen proteins that give structure to our arteries, skin, and other tissues are continuously exposed to blood sugar and other highly reactive molecules necessary for life. Occasionally, these sugar molecules will bind to collagen and form toxic crosslinks that alter the physical properties of tissues and cause inflammation. As a result, tissues slowly stiffen with aging, leading to rising systolic blood pressure, skin aging, kidney damage, and increased risk of stroke and other damage to the brain.

Stimulating Blood Vessel Growth Using FGF1 May Hold Promise for PD, Company Says

Stimulating the growth of blood vessels in the brain through the use of fibroblast growth factor 1 (FGF1) may hold promise as a strategy for treating Parkinson’s disease, according to a white paper released by Zhittya Genesis Medicine (ZGM). Clinical trials testing this theory are being planned.

The white paper is titled “Parkinson’s Disease: Therapeutic Angiogenesis as a Disease Modifying, Breakthrough Therapy?”

Google publishes largest ever high-resolution map of brain connectivity

Scientists from Google and the Janelia Research Campus in Virginia have published the largest high-resolution map of brain connectivity in any animal, sharing a 3D model that traces 20 million synapses connecting some 25,000 neurons in the brain of a fruit fly.

The model is a milestone in the field of connectomics, which uses detailed imaging techniques to map the physical pathways of the brain. This map, known as a “connectome,” covers roughly one-third of the fruit fly’s brain. To date, only a single organism, the roundworm C. elegans, has had its brain completely mapped in this way.

Connectomics has a mixed reputation in the science world. Advocates argue that it helps link physical parts of the brain to specific behaviors, which is a key goal in neuroscience. But critics note it has yet to produce any major breakthroughs, and they say that the painstaking work of mapping neurons is a drain on resources that might be better put to use elsewhere.