Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: neuroscience

Deep-seated fears, like the memory of a death or war-time trauma, can be crippling. They’re also notoriously hard to study and treat, says neuroscientist Ossama Khalaf, Ph.D. But finally, we’re making progress: In a Science paper published Thursday, Khalaf and his team show new evidence suggesting that fearful memories that dwell deep in the brain’s neural circuitry don’t have to be a burden forever. It’s possible, the paper suggests, that they can be rewired.

The paper is rooted in the science of engrams — the idea that memories leave a physical trace in the brain. In this case, Khalaf, a researcher at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, and his team traced deep-seated fear memories in rats back to the activity of specific neurons. They found that the way those neurons fire — and thus the fearful memory they encode — can be reprogrammed.

“In our study, we are providing the first experimental evidence that fear memory attenuation is mediated by the re-engagement of the original fear re-writing it towards safety,” Khalaf tells Inverse via email.

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As the Equifax hack last year showed, there’s a lack of legislation governing what happens to data from a breach. And ultimately, a breach of genetic data is much more serious than most credit breaches. Genetic information is immutable: Vigna points out that it’s possible to change credit card numbers or even addresses, but genetic information cannot be changed. And genetic information is often shared involuntarily. “Even if I don’t use 23andMe, I have cousins who did, so effectively I may be genetically searchable,” says Ram. In one case, an identical twin having her genetic data sequenced created a tricky situation for her sister.

This week, DNA testing service MyHeritage revealed that hackers had breached 92 million of its accounts. Though the hackers only accessed encrypted emails and passwords — so they never reached the actual genetic data — there’s no question that this type of hack will happen more frequently as consumer genetic testing becomes more and more popular. So why would hackers want DNA information specifically? And what are the implications of a big DNA breach?

One simple reason is that hackers might want to sell DNA data back for ransom, says Giovanni Vigna, a professor of computer science at UC Santa Barbara and co-founder of cybersecurity company Lastline. Hackers could threaten to revoke access or post the sensitive information online if not given money; one Indiana hospital paid $55,000 to hackers for this very reason. But there are reasons genetic data specifically could be lucrative. “This data could be sold on the down-low or monetized to insurance companies,” Vigna adds. “You can imagine the consequences: One day, I might apply for a long-term loan and get rejected because deep in the corporate system, there is data that I am very likely to get Alzheimer’s and die before I would repay the loan.”

MyHeritage doesn’t offer health or medical tests, but many companies, like 23andMe and Helix, do. And there are plenty of players interested in DNA: researchers want genetic data for scientific studies, insurance companies want genetic data to help them calculate the cost of health and life insurance, and police want genetic data to help them track down criminals, like in the recent Golden State Killer case. Already, we lack robust protections when it comes to genetic privacy, and so a genetic data breach could be a nightmare. “If there is data that exists, there is a way for it to be exploited,” says Natalie Ram, a professor of law focusing on bioethics issues at the University of Baltimore.

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The connection between food and memory is one of those fundamentally human experiences we can all relate to. A compelling new study from the University of Southern California has revealed an intriguing explanation behind this phenomenon, and it illustrates how strongly the “second brain” in our gut communicates with our brain.

Inside our gastrointestinal tract lies a massive mesh of neurons often referred to as our “second brain.” While this neuronal control system primarily works to independently manage our digestive system, it also has been found to directly communicate with the brain via a long nerve, called the vagus nerve.

The vagus nerve has been found to mediate a great deal of metabolic communication between the gut and the brain. For example, one recent study revealed how feeding behavior, modulated by activity in the hippocampus, is directly activated by vagal nerve stimulation, mediated by signals from the gastrointestinal tract.

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Good news: The toolkit for neurorehabilitation is growing.

___ MindMaze Consolidates First-ever FDA Approval for Inpatient and Outpatient Neurorehabilitation Therapy (press release): MindMaze, a leader in braintech, has today announced that it has obtained FDA clearance to launch its portable neurorehabilitation product, MindMotion™ GO, in the United States. Together with.

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