A neurological “functional fingerprint” allows scientists to explore the influence of genetics, environment and aging on brain connectivity.
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Category: neuroscience – Page 933
This is a must watch video. It tells a painful truth of our real world. It is worth the watch. Please pass this video along if you are so inclined.
Excerpt: You live in a world of drug dealers. Only the drugs can be bought legally, and are perfectly priced to prevent you from inquiring into other areas. Your society exhibits a wealth of negative side effects from these drugs. Yet the bulk of your population still continues to use our products, even after they’ve shown themselves to be harmful. You live in a population that continues to grow more restless, agitated, and depressed, in part from eating our goodies and treats. Treats that are called “superstimuli” as the stimulus it produces inside your brain vastly exceeds the natural stimuli humans received throughout evolution, from natural foods.
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One of the fundamental pathological markers seen in patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease is a build-up of two proteins — amyloid beta and tau — in the brain. It’s this action that many researchers hypothesize is the key symptomatic cause of cognitive decline associated with the disease. However, not all people with a build-up of these proteins display neurological damage and cognitive decline. New research from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston may have finally homed in on the reason behind this strange observation, and the results could lead to a whole new way to battle this devastating disease.
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🐸 The wood frog, Rana sylvatica, is one of many animals to master the art of a reversible, coma-like state known as metabolic depression. Metabolically depressed animals use tiny amounts of energy, sometimes so little that scientists can’t tell if they have any metabolism at all. Somehow, these animals press the pause button on life, outlasting hard times in demanding environments. Could humans ever learn to imitate death like these animals? Workers from fields as diverse as medicine to space exploration are itching to know the answer… 🤔♾😴.
If other members of the animal kingdom can shut down their bodies over winter, then why can’t we?
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Aggressive brain tumour cells taken from patients self-destructed after being exposed to a chemical in laboratory tests, researchers have shown.
The study could be the first step in tackling cancers like glioblastoma, which led to Dame Tessa Jowell’s death earlier this year.
The research, led by the University of Leeds, found that the synthetic chemical, named KHS101, was able to cut the energy source of tumour cells from glioblastoma, leading to the death of the cells.
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Imagine something similar to the Great Depression of 1929 hitting the world, but this time it never ends.
Economic modelling suggests this is the reality facing us if we continue emitting greenhouse gases and allowing temperatures to rise unabated.
Economists have largely underestimated the global economic damages from climate change, partly as a result of averaging these effects across countries and regions, but also because the likely behaviour of producers and consumers in a climate change future isn’t usually taken into consideration in climate modelling.
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“There are more synapses in a human brain than there are stars in the galaxy. The brain is the most complex object we know of and understanding its connections at this level is a major step forward in unravelling its mysteries,” said lead author Dr. Seth Grant at the Center for Clinical Brain Sciences.
Imagine a map of every single star in an entire galaxy. A map so detailed that it lays out what each star looks like, what they’re made of, and how each star is connected to another through the grand physical laws of the cosmos.
While we don’t yet have such an astronomical map of the heavens, thanks to a momentous study published last week in Neuron, there is now one for the brain.
If every neuron were a galaxy, then synapses—small structures dotted along the serpentine extensions of neurons—are its stars. In a technical tour-de-force, a team from the University of Edinburgh in the UK constructed the first detailed map of every single synapse in the mouse brain.
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