A young mother from Anchorage, Alaska, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) more than 10 years ago says an experimental stem-cell treatment has left her “practically symptom-free.”
Amanda Loy was 27 years old when she was first diagnosed with the disease, which typically affects the brain and spinal cord, also known as the central nervous system. MS can be debilitating and there is currently no cure, according to the Multiple Sclerosis International Federation.
Neuroscientists have for the first time discovered differences between the ‘software’ of humans and monkey brains, using a technique that tracks single neurons.
They found that human brains trade off ‘robustness’ — a measure of how synchronized neuron signals are — for greater efficiency in information processing. The researchers hypothesize that the results might help to explain humans’ unique intelligence, as well as their susceptibility to psychiatric disorders. The findings were published in Cell on 17 January.
Scientists say that this type of unusual study could help them to better translate research in animal models of psychiatric diseases into the clinic.
| Local | http://idahostatejournal.com/ Cutting calories (dieting) and increasing caloric expenditure (exercise) cause your brain to activate neurons that will not allow you to utilize fat or lose weight.
Recently, and at a most appropriate time, another study published in the journal eLife has given explanation as to why your current New Year’s Resolution diet will not work.
Cutting calories (dieting) and increasing caloric expenditure (exercise) cause your brain to activate neurons that will not allow you to utilize fat or lose weight.
Evolutionarily, when our ancestors living in what we now call Pocatello were hard pressed to find food, their brains stopped energy expenditure (using energy to move, be active, play, etc.) to slow them down to keep them alive.
More effective treatments for Multiple Sclerosis on the horizon?
Dr. Metcalfe and her company are already looking to take down other severe diseases as well.
“Psoriasis is high up on our list, and diabetes is another. Downstream there are all the dementias because a LIF is a major health factor for the brain. So if we can get it into the brain we can start protecting against dementia.”
In this talk from SAND 2018, Robert Sapolsky considers the unlikely realms where humans are merely on a continuum with other species…until you look closely. With a host of surprising and fascinating examples and illustrations he spells out the case that humans are a type of ape, operating on the same basic types of neurons found throughout the animal kingdom. So is there any behavior that we can say for certain is unique to humans?
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It’s now possible to image an entire fly brain in just a few days, according to a new study—this might sound like a long time, but is in fact an incredible accomplishment, when you consider that the process would otherwise take weeks.
Brains aren’t easy to study—the human brain, for example, contains over 80 billion cells linked via 7,000 connections each, according to the new study published in Science. Even the far smaller fly brains are an incredible challenge to study comprehensively. The new research combines two microscopy methods to image and examine brains like never before.
This was the first part in an interview series with Scott Aaronson — this one is on quantum computing — other segments are on Existential Risk, consciousness (including Scott’s thoughts on IIT) and thoughts on whether the universe is discrete or continuous.
First part in an interview series with Scott Aaronson — this one is on quantum computing — future segments will be on Existential Risk, consciousness (including Scott’s thoughts on IIT) and thoughts on whether the universe is discrete or continuous.
Bio : Scott Aaronson is a theoretical computer scientist and David J. Bruton Jr. Centennial Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. His primary areas of research are quantum computing and computational complexity theory.
Interview with Scott Aaronson — covering whether quantum computers could have subjective experience, whether information is physical and what might be important for consciousness — he touches on classic philosophical conundrums and the observation that while people want to be thorough-going materialists, unlike traditional computers brain-states are not obviously copyable. Aaronson wrote about this his paper ‘The Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine’ (found here https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159). Scott also critiques Tononi’s integrated information theory (IIT).
Scott discusses whether quantum computers could have subjective experience, whether information is physical and what might be important for consciousness — he touches on classic philosophical conundrums and the observation that while people want to be thorough-going materialists, unlike traditional computers brain-states are not obviously copyable. Aaronson wrote about this his paper ‘The Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine’ (found here https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159). Scott also critiques Tononi’s integrated information theory (IIT).
Questions include: - In “Could a Quantum Computer Have Subjective Experience?” you speculate that a process has to ‘fully participate in the arrow of time’ to be conscious, and this points to decoherence. If pressed, how might you try to formalize this?
- In “Is ‘information is physical’ contentful?” you note that if a system crosses the Schwarzschild bound it collapses into a black hole. Do you think this could be used to put an upper bound on the ‘amount’ of consciousness in any given physical system?
- One of your core objections to IIT is that it produces blatantly counter-intuitive results. But to what degree should we expect intuition to be a guide for phenomenological experience in evolutionarily novel contexts? I.e., Eric Schwitzgebel notes “Common sense is incoherent in matters of metaphysics. There’s no way to develop an ambitious, broad-ranging, self- consistent metaphysical system without doing serious violence to common sense somewhere. It’s just impossible. Since common sense is an inconsistent system, you can’t respect it all. Every metaphysician will have to violate it somewhere.”
“We wanted to be more precise here and identify the region and the cells that are responsible for pain unpleasantness,” Scherrer tells Inverse. “We thought if we could find the center, or the cells in the brain that make pain unpleasant, perhaps acting on these cells could be a good strategy to reduce pain in chronic pain patients.”
It’s already established that the amygdala plays a role in the emotional component of pain, but this team actually found the exact cells in the amygdala responsible for those unpleasant pain messages by using a “miniscope,” a tool created by Schnitzer, and observing how mice responded to painful stimuli.
When mice in their experiment were exposed to a drop of scalding water, a given a pinprick, or asked to run along unpleasantly hot tracks, these cells in the amygdala were highly active. Importantly, Schnitzer adds, they didn’t light up when the mice were exposed to other stimuli like sugar water or a bad smell. “Every time mice were unpleased with the stimulation, we saw that these cells were turned on,” he adds.
