Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati examined the post-treatment journals kept by participants in a 2014 smoking cessation study that found psychedelics were effective in helping some people quit smoking for years.

In a new paper published in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, researchers analyzed the participants’ own words and found that psychedelics combined with talk therapy often helped longtime smokers see themselves as nonsmokers. This new core identity might help explain why 80% of participants were able to stop smoking for six months and 60% remained smoking-free after five years.

Continue reading “Psychedelics may help people reinvent themselves” »

A review explains that species extinct in the wild may recover after reintroduction if ex situ populations maintain genetic diversity.

A study published in Cell Stem Cell this month concluded that they can. Using brain organoids made from human cells, a team led by Dr. Han-Chiao Isaac Chen at the University of Pennsylvania transplanted the mini-brains into adult rats with substantial damage to their visual cortex—the area that supports vision.

In just three months, the mini-brains merged with the rats’ brains. When the team shone flashing lights for the animals, the organoids spiked with electrical activity. In other words, the human mini-brain received signals from the rats’ eyes.

Continue reading “Human Mini-Brains Grafted Into Injured Rats Restored Their Sight” »

An unusual form of cesium atom is helping a University of Queensland-led research team unmask unknown particles that make up the universe.

Dr. Jacinda Ginges, from UQ’s School of Mathematics and Physics, said the unusual atom—made up of an ordinary cesium atom and an elementary particle called a muon—may prove essential in better understanding the universe’s fundamental building blocks.

“Our universe is still such a mystery to us,” Dr. Ginges said.

This adorable little nebula makes its home in the cloudscape of the much larger Carina Nebula, about 7,500 light years away from Earth.

The tiny nebula is about 7,500 light years away, with no nice green leaves in sight.

When a person experiences a happy or sad mood, which brain cells are active?

To answer that question, scientists need to understand how individual brain cells contribute to a larger network of brain activity and what role each cell plays in shaping behavior and overall health. Until now, it’s been difficult to get a clear view of how brain cells in living animals behave over extended periods of time.

But Jia Liu’s group at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has developed an electronic implant that collected detailed information about brain activity from a single cell of interest for more than a year. Their findings, based on research in mice, are reported in Nature Neuroscience.

Summary: Study reveals how neural populations in different people synchronize during social interaction and tasks of cooperation.

Source: SPIE

Humans are social creatures. But what leads to them being this way?

The newly-discovered species belongs to Horaglanis, a genus of rarely-collected, tiny, blind, pigment less, and strictly aquifer-residing catfish.

It currently includes four species endemic to the southern Indian state of Kerala.

That’s not supposed to happen.