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Category: neuroscience – Page 991

The nascent China Brain Project took another step toward reality last week with the launch of the Shanghai Research Center for Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Intelligence. The new center and its Beijing counterpart, launched 2 months ago, are expected to become part of an ambitious national effort to bring China to the forefront of neuroscience. But details of that 15-year project—expected to rival similar U.S. and EU efforts in scale and ambition—are still being worked out, 2 years after the government made it a priority.

New research centers move 15-year project closer to reality.

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Why it matters: Measles is a killer disease. It’s estimated that more than 2 million children a year died from measles in the 1980s, but due to global vaccine programs (including Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance launched in 2000), that number has been brought under 70,000 cases. The return of measles to Europe and the Americas could suggest that some of our vaccine successes could be reversing or unraveling. In the case of Venezuela, measles outbreaks are mostly due to the effect of broad economic problems on its health care system, but for Europe and the U.S. measles outbreaks show the effects of powerful and well-organized anti-vaccine movements.

What’s next: Vaccines do not cause autism, but more advocacy is needed to counteract the false claims of anti-vaccine groups. In April 2018, the European Commission proposed activities to strengthen the EU’s capacity to vaccinate its population and address what some call “vaccine hesitancy.” In the U.S., however, there are still 18 states that allow non-medical vaccine exemptions linked to personal or philosophical beliefs.

Peter Hotez is a professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, where he is also director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, and the author of “Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism.”

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Vascular risk and accumulation of beta-amyloids seem to accelerate the rate of cognitive decline in elderly adults.

Vascular risk appears to be a strong predictor of dementia, especially in older individuals with high levels of brain beta-amyloids, and the interaction between these two risk factors might lead to a higher rate of cognitive decline, according to a recent study at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an age-related neurological disorder whose most feared outcome is dementia, along with other symptoms, such as behavioral issues, loss of motivation, and even the inability to take care of oneself. Patients suffering from AD exhibit an accumulation of plaques in their brains; these plaques, resulting from the build-up of amyloid-beta protein, have long been thought to be the cause of the disease, though other hypotheses have been put forward as well.

However, the presence of excess beta amyloids is a constant in all AD patients, and a recent study by researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital has discovered that increased cardiovascular risk, combined with higher brain amyloid levels, is a predictor of faster cognitive decline in clinically normal elderly. [1].

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Physical exercise is a key piece of the brain health puzzle, but certainly not a magic pill.

___ Exercise ‘doesn’t slow’ progression of dementia (NHS Choices): A trial in which people with dementia took part in a moderately intense exercise programme for 4 months found their mental decline did not slow and may even have worsened faster than in people who did not take part in the programme…While the exercise.

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Efforts to connect human brains to computers have taken big leaps forward in recent years. Melding our minds with machines could provide the biggest single upgrade to human intelligence since our species evolved. But are we ready?

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Found in turmeric, curcumin has previously been shown to have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties in lab studies. It also has been suggested as a possible reason that senior citizens in India, where curcumin is a dietary staple, have a lower prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease and better cognitive performance.

“Exactly how curcumin exerts its effects is not certain, but it may be due to its ability to reduce brain inflammation, which has been linked to both Alzheimer’s disease and major depression,” said Dr. Gary Small, director of geriatric psychiatry at UCLA’s Longevity Center and of the geriatric psychiatry division at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, and the study’s first author.

The double-blind, placebo-controlled study involved 40 adults between the ages of 50 and 90 years who had mild memory complaints. Participants were randomly assigned to receive either a placebo or 90 milligrams of curcumin twice daily for 18 months.

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Stem cells in the brain can divide and mature into neurons participating in various brain functions, including memory. In a paper scientists have discovered that the flow of cerebrospinal fluid is a key signal for neural stem cell renewal.

The ancient Greek aphorism panta rhei means “everything flows”, a phrase used by philosophers to describe the constant flux and interplay between the past and renewal. A recent paper lends this relationship a whole new meaning: a team of researchers headed by Professor Magdalena Götz and their collaborators from the LMU (Professor Benedikt Grothe, Chair of Neurobiology) and the Henrich-Heine University Düsseldorf have discovered that the flow of is a key signal for neural stem cell renewal.

“Neural in the brain can divide and mature into neurons and this process plays important roles in various regions of the brain – including olfactory sense and memory,” explains Magdalena Götz, Head of LMU Department of Physiological Genomics and Director of the Institute for Stem Cell Research at Helmholtz Zentrum München. “These are located in what is known as the neurogenic stem cell niche one of which is located at the walls of the lateral ventricles, where they are in contact with circulating cerebrospinal fluid.”

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