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Category: neuroscience – Page 979

When Jan Scheuermann volunteered for an experimental brain implant, she had no idea she was making neuroscience history.

Scheuermann, 54 at the time of surgery, had been paralyzed for 14 years due to a neurological disease that severed the neural connections between her brain and muscles. She could still feel her body, but couldn’t move her limbs.

Unwilling to give up, Scheuermann had two button-sized electrical implants inserted into her motor cortex. The implants tethered her brain to a robotic arm through two bunches of cables that protruded out from her skull.

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A three-photon microscopic video of neurons in a mouse brain. The imaging depth is approximately 1 millimeter below the surface of the brain. The firing of the neurons is captured by an indicator that is based on green fluorescent protein GFP, which glows brighter as the neuron sends a signal.

Nearly four years ago, then-President Obama launched the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, to “accelerate the development and application of new technologies that will enable researchers to produce dynamic pictures of the brain.”

Several of the program’s initial funding awards went to Cornell’s Chris Xu, the Mong Family Foundation Director of Cornell Neurotech – Engineering, and professor and director of undergraduate studies in applied and engineering physics. Xu’s projects aimed to develop new imaging techniques to achieve large scale, noninvasive imaging of neuronal activity.

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Green: NAc-projecting prefrontal cortex neurons become active during the presentation of a reward-predictive cue, and this activity drives reward-seeking behavior. Purple: PVT-projecting prefrontal cortex neurons inhibited during reward-predictive cue. Credit: The Stuber Lab (UNC School of Medicine)

The prefrontal cortex, a large and recently evolved structure that wraps the front of the brain, has powerful “executive” control over behavior, particularly in humans. The details of how it exerts that control have been elusive, but UNC School of Medicine scientists, publishing today in Nature, have now uncovered some of those details, using sophisticated techniques for recording and controlling the activity of neurons in live mice.

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Got OCD; check your genes for a mutation.

A new Northwestern Medicine study found evidence suggesting how neural dysfunction in a certain region of the brain can lead to obsessive and repetitive behaviors much like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Both in humans and in mice, there is a circuit in the brain called the corticostriatal connection that regulates habitual and repetitive actions. The study found certain synaptic receptors are important for the development of this brain circuit. If these receptors are eliminated in mice, they exhibit obsessive behavior, such as over-grooming.

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A new and extensive interview I did at New Atlas, including ideas about my #libertarian California Governor run. Libertarianism has many good ideas, but two core concepts are the non-aggression principle (NAP) and protection of private property rights—both of which I believe can be philosophically applied to the human body (and the body’s inevitable transhuman destiny of overcoming disease and decay with science and technology):

Zoltan Istvan is a transhumanist, journalist, politician, writer and libertarian. He is also running for Governor of California for the Libertarian Party on a platform pushing science and technology to the forefront of political discourse. In recent years, the movement of transhumanism has moved from a niche collection of philosophical ideals and anarcho-punk gestures into a mainstream political movement. Istvan has become the popular face of this movement after running for president in 2016 on a dedicated transhumanist platform.

We caught up with Istvan to chat about how transhumanist ideals can translate into politics, how technology is going to change us as humans and the dangers in not keeping up with new innovations, such as genetic editing.

New Atlas: How does transhumanism intersect with politics?

Istvan: For me you can never make any headway in the universe, or on planet Earth, if you don’t involve politics because so much money for innovation or research and development comes from the government and so many laws about what you can do. Genetic editing, chip implants, can you get a brain implant that makes you smarter than other people? These things are often directed by the government determining whether it’s illegal or not. You can either be thrown in jail or not thrown in jail – so you must have a political footprint, you must have attorneys on the ground, you must have that kind of legal position that can explain things in terms that a government will understand.

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Why not as we will see we will indeed require cell circuited technology for QBS to be full effective/ enhanced.

The TV commercial is nearly 20 years old but I remember it vividly: a couple is driving down a street when they suddenly realize the music on their tape deck is in sync with the repetitive activity on the street. From the guy casually dribbling a basketball to people walking along the sidewalk to the delivery people passing packages out of their truck, everything and everyone is moving rhythmically to the beat.

The ending tag line was, “Sometimes things just come together,” which is quite true. Many of our basic daily activities like breathing and walking just come together as a result of repetitive movement. It’s easy to take them for granted but those rhythmic patterns ultimately rely on very intricate, interconnected signals between nerve cells, also called neurons, in the brain and spinal cord.

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Restorative neuroscience, the study to identify means to replace damaged neurons and recover permanently lost mental or physical abilities, is a rapidly advancing scientific field considering our progressively aging society. Redirecting immature neurons that reside in specific brain areas towards the sites of brain damage is an appealing strategy for the therapy of acute brain injury or stroke. A collaborative effort between the Center for Brain Research of Medical University of Vienna and the National Brain Research Program of Hungary/Semmelweis University in Budapest revealed that some mature neurons are able to reconfigure their local microenvironment such that it becomes conducive for adult-born immature neurons to extensively migrate. Thus, a molecular principle emerges that can allow researchers to best mobilize resident cellular reserves in the adult brain and guide immature neurons to the sites of brain damage.

The adult brain has limited capacity of self-repair.

In the aging Western society, acute brain damage and chronic neurodegenerative conditions (e.g. Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases) are amongst the most debilitating diseases affecting hundreds of millions of people world-wide. Nerve cells are particularly sensitive to microenvironmental insults and their loss clearly manifests as neurological deficit. Since the innate ability of the adult human brain to regenerate is very poor and confined to its few specialized regions, a key question in present-day neurobiology is how to establish efficient strategies that can replace lost neurons, guide competent cells to the sites of injury and facilitate their functional integration to regain lost functionality. “Cell replacement therapy” thus offers frontline opportunities to design potent therapeutic interventions.

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