Lifeboat Foundation

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Every business is becoming a technology business and nowhere is that truer than in the financial services industry, now as banks try to compete with start ups and established technology companies for tech talent they could find themselves getting into warm water…

This could be a huge deal, a game changer even.

Definitely research to follow closely.

Continue reading “Immune cells in covering of brain discovered; may play critical role in battling neurological diseases” »

Some of the most famous artists in history may have left subtle clues to brain disease in their work, scientists have found.

A man with deadly brain cancer that had spread to his spine saw his tumors shrink and, for a time, completely vanish after a novel treatment to help his immune system attack his disease — another first in this promising field.

The type of immunotherapy that 50-year-old Richard Grady received already has helped some people with blood cancers such as leukemia. But the way he was given it is new, and may allow its use not just for brain tumors but also other cancers that can spread, such as breast and lung.

Grady was the first person to get the treatment dripped through a tube into a space in the brain where spinal fluid is made, sending it down the path the cancer traveled to his spine.

Continue reading “Cells dripped into brain help fight a deadly cancer” »

Summary: A new study explores how neural activity influences CREB dynamics.

Source: Osaka University.

Neuronal activity mediates the formation of neuronal circuits in the cerebral cortex. These processes are regulated by the transcription factor CREB, which regulates gene expression in neuronal activity-dependent processes. Neuronal activity enhances CREB-mediated transcription but the mechanisms remain unclear. CREB binds to a cAMP response element (CRE) in the promoter region of its target genes. Assembly and disassembly of CREB-CRE interactions control spatiotemporal gene expression in the nucleus. However, how CREB interacts with CRE in activity-dependent mechanisms is not known.

In Brief

• A study of 36 patients with brainstem lesions revealed that the majority of those in comas had damage in a specific area of the brainstem, while most conscious patients did not.
• The identification of the areas of the brain responsible for consciousness could lead to new treatment options for patients in comas or vegetative states.

Human consciousness has been defined as awareness, sentience, a person’s ability to experience and feel, but despite the important role it plays in our lives and making us who we are, we actually know very little about how consciousness works.

Scientists currently believe that consciousness is composed of two components: arousal and awareness. The first is regulated by the brainstem, but the physical origins of the latter were always a mystery. Now, a team of researchers at Harvard think they may have discovered the regions of the brain that work with the brainstem to maintain consciousness.

Continue reading “Harvard May Have Pinpointed the Source of Human Consciousness” »

You might wonder, at some point today, what’s going on in another person’s mind. You may compliment someone’s great mind, or say they are out of their mind. You may even try to expand or free your own mind.

But what is a mind? Defining the concept is a surprisingly slippery task. The mind is the seat of consciousness, the essence of your being. Without a mind, you cannot be considered meaningfully alive. So what exactly, and where precisely, is it?

Traditionally, scientists have tried to define the mind as the product of brain activity: The brain is the physical substance, and the mind is the conscious product of those firing neurons, according to the classic argument. But growing evidence shows that the mind goes far beyond the physical workings of your brain.

Continue reading “Scientists say your ‘mind’ isn’t confined to your brain, or even your body” »

Excellent read on the brain’s inhibitory circuits v. excitatory circuits when involving the processing of smells.

Summary: Inhibitory neurons form neural networks that become broader as they mature, a new study reports.

Source: Baylor College of Medicine.

Continue reading “New Mechanism of How Brain Networks Form Identified” »

Nice; using gene regulatory protein from yeast as a method for reducing the work required for making cell-specific perturbations.

The human brain, the most complex object in the universe, has 86 billion neurons with trillions of yet-unmapped connections. Understanding how it generates behavior is a problem that has beguiled humankind for millennia, and is critical for developing effective therapies for the psychiatric disorders that incur heavy costs on individuals and on society. The roundworm C elegans, measuring a mere 1 millimeter, is a powerful model system for understanding how nervous systems produce behaviors. Unlike the human brain, it has only 302 neurons, and has completely mapped neural wiring of 6,000 connections, making it the closest thing to a computer circuit board in biology. Despite its relative simplicity, the roundworm exhibits behaviors ranging from simple reflexes to the more complex, such as searching for food when hungry, learning to avoid food that previously made it ill, and social behavior.

Understanding how this dramatically simpler nervous system works will give insights into how our vastly more complex brains function and is the subject of a paper published on December 26, 2016, in Nature Methods.