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Category: neuroscience – Page 9

The Cyborg Child: SCP-191 and the Ethics of Human Evolution

What happens when the pursuit of perfection forgets compassion?
SCP-191, known as The Cyborg Child, is one of the most haunting examples of speculative bioengineering ever documented. This essay examines the anatomy, psychology, and philosophy of a child transformed into a machine — a being caught between humanity and technology.

In this episode, we explore:

How cybernetic modification redefines the human body.

The science behind hybrid consciousness and neural integration.

The moral cost of evolution without empathy.

What SCP-191 reveals about the posthuman future.

Continue reading “The Cyborg Child: SCP-191 and the Ethics of Human Evolution” | >

Scientists reverse anxiety by rebalancing the brain

Researchers have discovered a specific set of neurons in the amygdala that can trigger anxiety and social deficits when overactive. By restoring the excitability balance in this brain region, they successfully reversed these symptoms in mice. The results point toward targeted neural therapies for emotional disorders. This finding could reshape how anxiety and depression are treated at the circuit level.

Rare side effects of antipsychotic medications provide new evidence for safer global prescribing

Patients with severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, often require long-term use of antipsychotic medications. Some of these drugs, however, can pose potential risks, such as elevated prolactin levels and compromised immune function. Previous studies have relied mostly on small or single-center data, making it difficult to accurately assess the true incidence of rare adverse effects.

Researchers from the LKS Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed), through multidisciplinary collaboration and rigorous epidemiological methods, leveraged territory-wide data from the Hospital Authority to conduct two internationally impactful studies. The findings were published in the journals World Psychiatry and The Lancet Psychiatry. These discoveries provide solid evidence for drug regulation and and establish Hong Kong as a global leader in big data research on psychiatric safety.

‘Young’ Immune Cells Partly Reverse Alzheimer’s Symptoms in Mice

Specially engineered ‘young’ immune cells could help to reverse the effects of aging and the damage to brain cells caused by diseases such as Alzheimer’s, according to a new study in mice.

In their natural state, these immune cells are known as mononuclear phagocytes, and they flow around the body, cleaning up waste.

As we get older, however, these immune-cell cleaners get a bit sloppy, clearing away less cellular debris and triggering more inflammation than before. Inflammation and protein aggregation are features of many age-related diseases, including Alzheimer’s.

Women better protected against early neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s disease

A large international study involving nearly 700 participants reveals that women with a precursor condition to Parkinson’s disease show significantly less brain atrophy—decreased cortical thickness in the brain—than men, despite similar clinical severity. This discovery, published in the journal Nature Communications, could lead scientists to explore the role that hormones might play in treating the disease.

Isolated REM sleep behavior disorder is characterized by violent movements during sleep, where people literally “act out” their dreams. Far from being harmless, this disorder is the most reliable early warning sign of neurodegenerative diseases caused by the accumulation of a toxic protein in the brain: more than 70% of affected individuals will eventually develop Parkinson’s disease, Lewy body dementia, or, more rarely, multiple system atrophy (a disease affecting multiple body systems).

“This sleep disorder offers a unique window of opportunity to study the mechanisms of neurodegeneration before major motor or cognitive symptoms appear,” explains the leader of this study.

H. P. Lovecraft

What if H.P. Lovecraft didn’t just imagine the Old Ones… what if he documented them?

In this speculative science analysis of SCP-4315: S.C.P. Lovecraft, we explore a Foundation case that blurs the line between fiction and physics — where imagination itself becomes a containment hazard. Discover how stories can bend probability, how consciousness shapes reality, and why Providence might be the thinnest spot between worlds.

We’ll unpack the Quantum Fictionalization Hypothesis, the Dreamlands as a collective cognitive field, and the terrifying idea that the human mind might be the real breach site.

If you love the SCP Foundation, cosmic horror, or mind-bending science philosophy, this is your next rabbit hole.

🔬 Topics Covered:

Lovecraft as Vector Zero.

Continue reading “H. P. Lovecraft” | >

Neural implant smaller than a grain of salt can wirelessly track brain

Cornell University researchers and collaborators have developed a neural implant so small that it can rest on a grain of salt, yet it can wirelessly transmit brain activity data in a living animal for more than a year.

The breakthrough, detailed Nov. 3 in Nature Electronics, demonstrates that microelectronic systems can function at an unprecedentedly small scale, opening new possibilities for neural monitoring, bio-integrated sensing and other applications.

Development of the device, called a microscale optoelectronic tetherless electrode, or MOTE, was co-led by Alyosha Molnar, professor in the school of electrical and , and Sunwoo Lee, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University who first began working on the technology as a postdoctoral associate in Molnar’s lab.

Brains and stock markets follow the same rules in crisis, study finds

What do brains and the stock market have in common? While this might sound like a set-up for a joke, new research from U-M researchers reveals that the behaviors of brains and economies during crises can be explained using observations common in the realm of physics. Their work is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

UnCheol Lee, Ph.D. of the U-M Department of Anesthesiology and his collaborative team came up with the idea upon observing that some patients under anesthesia recover faster than others.

“Anesthetic drugs can be considered as introducing a controlled crisis in the brain, interrupting the brain’s network to induce unconsciousness,” explained Lee.

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