It is well established that rare, damaging genetic variants with strong effects contribute to autism. Although individually rare, these variants are collectively common: Clinical genetic testing identifies them in at least 25 percent of autistic people. Studies of these variants have implicated more than 100 genes — and counting — in autism.
Identifying these genes is important — not only for clinical care, but also for advancing our understanding of the neural circuits and processes involved in autism or in its core traits. It creates the opportunity to develop therapies targeted to specific molecular diagnoses. And as we learn more about these genes and the consequences of variants that disrupt their function, we have the potential to better understand the mechanisms underlying cases of autism in which a definitive genetic diagnosis cannot yet be made.
Join the Transdisciplinary Agora for Future Discussions, Inc. — TAFFD’s.
A bi-weekly virtual town hall-like show presenting in-depth discussions on issues connected to African advancement in the 21st century ranging from science, technology, … See More.
– Mission. Creating a space for discussions on ideas and issues related to the African condition, and develop a suitable narrative through multidimensional approaches to drive progress in Africa towards a sustainable and more prosperous future.
Vision. Building from the present and critically reconstructed African past for a greater, highly advanced, cosmopolitan, peaceful, and prosperous future African civilization through meaningful and fruitful discourse and action.
Holding: TAFFD’s Africa. Host: Chogwu Abdul.
Objectives. To steer discourse and action for a needed cultural, scientific, and technological revolution in 21st century Africa. To provide global exposure for African skills and innovations to opportunities for investments and industrial growth. To provide a platform for dialogues towards creative solutions to contemporary African problems; social, political, and economic. To drive consciousness and initiatives for conceptual, material, and infrastructural transformations necessary in actualizing the Fourth Industrial Revolution in Africa. To promote Afrofuturism as a movement and philosophy of history, science, and development relevant for significant transformations and advancement in the technology, culture, and economy of Africa. To pursue the vision of an African Enlightenment through the provision of an intellectual environment for stimulation and exchange of knowledge and ideas.
Mode of Execution. The Africa Town Hall meetings will be conducted virtually, presumably as Zoom conferences, and streamed live on various TAFFD’s social media platforms. Each session will consist of a focus either on a topical issue, idea, event, or institution(s) related to Africa and feature a panel of discussants (experts/resource persons drawn from diverse relevant fields) alongside an audience. The themes of discussion can range from science, technology, medicine, innovations, business, industry, education, art, creativity, entertainment, culture, politics, current affairs, futurism, etc., as connected to the African experience. Each session further can either be a focus on a situation in a particular African country, the African continent/condition in general, the experience of Africans in Diaspora, or on a global issue/event as viewed from an African perspective or in the context of its implications for Africa. Upon some necessary editing of the virtual meetings, these sessions may be developed/produced and uploaded as podcasts/videos on YouTube and/or other sites for wider public consumption. Schedule. Bi-weekly (i.e., once every two weeks and twice a month). 1st and 3rd Friday of every month at 18:00 WAT. A one-hour (1 hour) program. We help prepare people’s minds by talking about the current advantages of this new paradigm and what the future entails using a trans-disciplinary approach that is transposed through the TAFFD’s Quarterly Journal, TAFFD’s annual Magazine, TAFFD’s International/Local Conferencing, TAFFD’s Awards, and TAFFD’s Teens divisions of our organization.
TAFFD’s is grateful & honored to be supported/endorsed by the Lifeboat Foundation, USTP, International Longevity Alliance, Open Source Mode, Emerge, Aubrey de Grey, Catherine Demetriades, and by many people who wish to change the world through the proper use of technology.
Summary: Focused ultrasound allowed researchers to record and monitor brain activity in a non-invasive way. The technology allowed the researchers to predict movement.
Source: CalTech.
What is happening in your brain as you are scrolling through this page? In other words, which areas of your brain are active, which neurons are talking to which others, and what signals are they sending to your muscles?
Humans have the innate ability to store important information in their mind for short periods of time, a capability known as short-term memory. Over the past few decades, numerous neuroscientists have tried to understand how neural circuits store short-term memories, as this could lead to approaches to assist individuals whose memory is failing and help to devise memory enhancing interventions.
Researchers at Stanford and the Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute have recently identified neural circuit motifs involved in how humans store short-term memories. Their findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, suggest that memory-related neural circuits contain recurrently connected modules that independently maintain selective and continuous activity.
“Short-term memories are of approximately 10 seconds or so, for example, if you needed to remember a phone number while you looked for a pen to write the number,” Kayvon Daie, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Medical Xpress. “Individual neurons, however, are very forgetful, as they can only remember their inputs for about 10 milliseconds. It has been hypothesized that if two forgetful neurons were connected to each other, they could continuously remind each other of what they were supposed to remember so that the circuit can now hold information for many seconds.”
How recent research points the way towards defeating adversarial examples and achieving a more resilient, consistent and flexible A.I.
How recent neuroscience research points the way towards defeating adversarial examples and achieving a more resilient, consistent and flexible form of artificial intelligence.
“Previously reported detection of plant biomagnetism, which established the existence of measurable magnetic activity in the plant kingdom, was carried out using superconducting-quantum-interference-device (SQUID) magnetometers1, 5, 16. Atomic magnetometers are arguably more attractive for biological applications, since, unlike SQUIDs34, 35, they are non-cryogenic and can be miniaturized to optimize spatial resolution of measured biological features14, 15, 36. In the future, the SNR of magnetic measurements in plants will benefit from optimizing the low-frequency stability and sensitivity of atomic magnetometers. Just as noninvasive magnetic techniques have become essential tools for medical diagnostics of the human brain and body, this noninvasive technique could also be useful in the future for crop-plant diagnostics—by measuring the electromagnetic response of plants facing such challenges as sudden temperature change, herbivore attack, and chemical exposure.”
Upon stimulation, plants elicit electrical signals that can travel within a cellular network analogous to the animal nervous system. It is well-known that in the human brain, voltage changes in certain regions result from concerted electrical activity which, in the form of action potentials (APs), travels within nerve-cell arrays. Electro-and magnetophysiological techniques like electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography, and magnetic resonance imaging are used to record this activity and to diagnose disorders. Here we demonstrate that APs in a multicellular plant system produce measurable magnetic fields. Using atomic optically pumped magnetometers, biomagnetism associated with electrical activity in the carnivorous Venus flytrap, Dionaea muscipula, was recorded. Action potentials were induced by heat stimulation and detected both electrically and magnetically.
Long but annotated! Most important here is human data for specific treatments due out starting in May or June. And apparently they had a mouse study where they expected a paper due out already but other groups chimed in to help with more testing so there is a delay.
Liz Parrish, CEO of BioViva Science and patient zero of biological rejuvenation with gene therapies, is interviewed by Zora Benhamou on her fresh podcast “HackMyAge”.
During the conversation, Liz enters deep into the world of gene therapies, either to cure monogenic diseases, multifactorial genetic diseases, or the mother of all diseases: aging itself.
The conversation lasts for one hour and twenty minutes and has no waste. However, to go direct to certain themes use the following time marks:
0:00:00 Zora introduces the podcast: who is Liz Parrish and what the conversation will be about. 0:02:17 Liz Parrish begins her intervention in the podcast. 0:03:00 What is gene therapy and how Liz got involved in gene therapy applied to aging. 0:05:52 How Liz and her son are dealing with the treatment of type 1 diabetes. 0:08:05 How Liz got involved in becoming the first human treated with gene therapy to treat biological aging and what it means to go through gene therapy. 0:14:34 Current legal status of gene therapies and ways to get the treatment. 0:16:20 Current costs of undergoing gene therapies. 0:18:49 Why aren’t medical doctors applying gene therapies more than they actually are and what’s the role of medical tourism. 0:21:34 What prompted Liz to become the first patient to undergo gene therapy for biological aging. 0:25:25 How gene therapies compare with nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals. 0:30:05 Why big pharmaceutical companies haven’t jumped into the field with more impetus. 0:33:20 How long will it take for gene therapies to become mainstream. 0:39:29 How gene therapies work and what is the experience for the patient that goes through it. 0:48:11 What can be expected from treating sarcopenia with gene therapy. 0:50:02 Where do the genes used in gene therapies come from. 0:53:12 What can expect someone who is treated with gene therapy to tackle dementia. 0:54:34 What are the major changes experienced by Liz in her blood markers since being treated. 0:56:38 When and how did Liz go through her gene therapies, not only for hTERT and Follistatin but also for Klotho and PGC-1alpha. What are the latter two all about? 1:02:15 How Liz envision the future of humans. 1:04:08 Liz comments on a coming paper BioViva is working together with Rutgers University. 1:05:38 Other studies in the pipeline. 1:06:45 Explanation of testing services and data storage offered by BioViva. 1:17:20 Liz on topical creams and/or small molecules for removal of senescent cells, and pills for telomeres lengthening. 1:19:16 Liz responds to “if you could meet your 20-year-old self what would you tell her” 1:20:03 What can people do to help Liz on her mission. 1:22:12 Resources to learn more about the future that is coming, genomics and gene therapy technology. 1:24:18 BioViva and Integrated Health Systems websites as well as social media sites where Liz and BioViva are actively present. 1:25:38 Words of farewell.
Websites: HackMyAge: https://hackmyage.com/ BioViva Science: https://bioviva-science.com/ Integrated Health Systems: https://www.integrated-health-systems.com/
Devices shift away from Robocop-like wearables to simpler, more accessible assistive solutions.
There are many, many wearable and portable devices aimed at improving life for the blind and visually impaired (in some cases, even restoring vision). Such devices have been developed for pretty much every part of the body: fingers, wrists, abdomen, chest, face, ears, feet, even the tongue.
The thing is—people don’t want to wear them.
“All of these wearables currently on the market have very low acceptance from the community because you look like some sort of RoboCop when you wear them, and people don’t want to attract attention to their impairment,” said Ruxandra Tivadar of the University of Bern in Switzerland, during the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS), held virtually this week.
Summary: A new genetic engineering strategy significantly reduces levels of tau in animal models of Alzheimer’s disease. The treatment, which involves a single injection, appears to have long-last effects.
Source: Mass General.
Researchers have used a genetic engineering strategy to dramatically reduce levels of tau–a key protein that accumulates and becomes tangled in the brain during the development of Alzheimer’s disease–in an animal model of the condition.
The regeneration of damaged central nervous system (CNS) tissues is one of the biggest goals of regenerative medicine.
Most stroke victims don’t receive treatment fast enough to prevent brain damage. Scientists at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, College of Engineering and College of Medicine have developed technology to “retrain” cells to help repair damaged brain tissue. It’s an advancement that may someday help patients regain speech, cognition and motor function, even when administered days after an ischemic stroke.
Engineering and medical researchers use a process created by Ohio State called tissue nanotransfection (TNT) to introduce genetic material into cells. This allows them to reprogram skin cells to become something different—in this case vascular cells—to help fix damaged brain tissue.
Study findings published online today in the journal Science Advances.
