Goodbye depression.
Neuralink‘s mission has never quite been clear. We know it’s working on a chip designed to be surgically inserted into the human skull called a brain-computer interface (BCI), but exactly what and who it’s for remains a bit of a mystery.
As best we can tell based on what’s been revealed so far, it’s shaping up to be a terrifying hormone hijacker capable of potentially giving you forced mental orgasms or making you fall in love.
Yes.
TOKYO – Although scientists know many of the underlying symptoms which trigger Alzheimer’s disease, a cure remains elusive. Now, a new study suggests that oxytocin, a hormone best known for promoting feelings of love and wellbeing, may reverse some of the damage the degenerative illness causes.
Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive brain disease causing the continuous deterioration of mental functions. Its primary symptoms include severely impaired thinking, memory loss, and confusion.
One of the primary culprits in Alzheimer’s is a protein known as amyloid β (Aβ). Researchers say Aβ clumps together to form plaques around neurons in the brain. These plaque build-ups disrupt normal neuron function and triggers the degeneration.
Explicit self-reflection is unreliable for measuring thoughts. Here, the authors use brain data to implicitly pinpoint transitions between thoughts and find thought turnover to be reliably predicted by narrative events during movie-viewing, as well as by greater trait neuroticism at rest.
Here, we discover prototypical pacemaker neurons in the ancient cnidarian Hydra and provide evidence for a direct interaction of these neurons with the commensal microbiota. We uncover a remarkable gene-expression program conservation between the Hydra pacemaker neurons and pacemaker cells in Caenorhabditis elegans and the mammalian gut. We suggest that prototypical pacemaker cells emerged as neurons using components of innate immunity to interact with the microbial environment and ion channels to generate rhythmic contractions. The communication of pacemaker neurons with the microbiota represents a mechanistic link between the gut microbiota and gut motility. Our discoveries improve the understanding of the archetypical properties of the enteric nervous systems, which are perturbed in human dysmotility-related conditions.
Pacemaker neurons exert control over neuronal circuit function by their intrinsic ability to generate rhythmic bursts of action potential. Recent work has identified rhythmic gut contractions in human, mice, and hydra to be dependent on both neurons and the resident microbiota. However, little is known about the evolutionary origin of these neurons and their interaction with microbes. In this study, we identified and functionally characterized prototypical ANO/SCN/TRPM ion channel-expressing pacemaker cells in the basal metazoan Hydra by using a combination of single-cell transcriptomics, immunochemistry, and functional experiments. Unexpectedly, these prototypical pacemaker neurons express a rich set of immune-related genes mediating their interaction with the microbial environment.
Cutting-edge neuroscience can identify your unique brain signature much like your thumbprint. What secrets does your “neural thumbprint” reveal about your mind’s inner workings?
While the issue of aging and DNA methylation is an area that is well-studied, modifications of DNA to reduce or reverse aging remains an area in need of exploration. Studies in mice utilizing interventions such as caloric restriction and the drug rapamycin have reversed and/or slowed age-related DNA methylation by up to 40%. Understanding the cross-species aging based on similar DNA behaviors may open more doors to investigating therapeutics to minimize lifetime risks of age-related illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease and cancers.
A recent study published in Cell Systems sought to debunk one of the most common myths about dogs: much to our surprise, one “dog year” does not equal seven “human years.” As described in a recent Forbes piece by Sara Tabin, the relationship between dog years and human years is not linear, but is based on a logarithmic formula. The research group, based at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), created the formula as follows:
Age in human years = 16 ln(age in dog years) +31. (ln means “natural logarithm).
New research shows that neuroscientists can identify us from our distinct brain signatures, much like a thumbprint. Will this procedure be used someday to improve hiring procedures, reduce absenteeism or predict job performance, productivity and career success?
Summary: APOEe4, a gene associated with Alzheimer’s disease risk, doesn’t appear to directly affect memory performance or brain activity in older adults without cognitive impairment. However, the gene does seem to influence brain regions and systems that older at-risk adults activate to support successful memory recall.
Source: McGill University
Researchers at McGill University and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, in collaboration with the StoP-AD Center, have published a new paper in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, examining how a known genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD) influences memory and brain function in cognitively intact older adults with a family history of AD.
In the COVID-19 outbreak frenzy, several countries are considering massive fiscal stimulus packages and printing money, to blunt the concurrent crises underway: the pandemic and the unraveling economic depression.
These plans are essential, but they need to be strategic and sustainable. Because in addressing the current crises, we must avoid sowing seeds of new ones, as the stakes are incredibly high.
It is time to add a new element to the policy packages that governments are introducing, one we know but have abandoned: Universal Basic Income (UBI). It is needed as part of the package that will help us to get out of this yawning pit.
