A team of researchers using the Microsoft HoloLens mixed reality platform has created what is believed to be the first interactive holographic mapping system, e.
Circa 2018 o,.o!
Dental fillings may soon be left in the ash heap of history, thanks to a recent discovery about a drug called Tideglusib.
Developed for and trialled to treat Alzheimer’s disease, last year scientists found the drug also happens to promote the natural tooth regrowth mechanism in mice, allowing the tooth to repair cavities.
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People who were children when their parents were divorced showed lower levels of oxytocin — the so-called “love hormone” — when they were adults than those whose parents remained married, according to a study led by Baylor University. That lower level may play a role in having trouble forming attachments when they are grown.
Oxytocin — secreted in the brain and released during bonding experiences such as delivery of a baby or sexual interaction or nursing, even being hugged by a romantic partner — has been shown in previous research to be important for social behavior and emotional attachments in early life. The oxytocin system also has been linked to parenting, attachment and anxiety.
The new study, published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology, delves into an area that has not been well researched — a link between oxytocin, early experience and adult outcomes.
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Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and Stanford University have pinpointed the circuit in the brain that is responsible for sleepless nights in times of stress—and it turns out that circuit does more than make you toss and turn. Their study, done in mice, ties the same neuronal connections that trigger insomnia to stress-induced changes in the immune system, which weaken the body’s defenses against a host of threats.
The study, reported September 9, 2020, in the journal Science Advances, connects and explains two familiar problems, says CSHL Assistant Professor Jeremy Borniger. “This sort of stress-induced insomnia is well known among anybody that’s tried to get to sleep with a looming deadline or something the next day,” he says. “And in the clinical world, it’s been known for a long time that chronically stressed patients typically do worse on a variety of different treatments and across a variety of different diseases.”
Like many aspects of the body’s stress response, these effects are thought to be driven by the stress hormone cortisol. Working in the Stanford lab of Luis de Lecea, where Borniger completed a postdoctoral fellowship prior to joining CSHL, the research team found a direct connection between stress-sensitive neurons in the brain that trigger cortisol’s release and nearby neurons that promote insomnia.
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Summary: Researchers demonstrate how a single injection of fibroblast growth factor 1 (FGF1) can restore blood sugar levels to normal for extended periods in rodent models of type 2 diabetes. Studies show how FGF1 affects specific neurons and perineuronal nets to help restore blood sugar levels to normal, thus sending diabetes into remission.
Source: UW Health
In rodents with type 2 diabetes, a single surgical injection of a protein called fibroblast growth factor 1 can restore blood sugar levels to normal for weeks or months. Yet how this growth factor acts in the brain to generate this lasting benefit has been poorly understood.
Research carried out by a University academic has shed new light on the fundamentals of how, and why, we make the decisions we do.
In two separate studies, UKRI Future Leader Fellow and Lecturer in Psychology, Dr. Elsa Fouragnan has used her expertise in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and computational analysis to discover exactly what happens in the brains of human and non-human primates when certain kinds of decisions are made in different contexts. Both pieces of work were carried out in collaboration with researchers at the University of Oxford’s Department of Experimental Psychology.
The first, published in Nature Communications, explores how and where the brain encodes a memory of the general reward rate in an environment, what the team describes as the ‘richness’ of the context in which decisions are made.
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Circa 2014 o,.o.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has announced the start of a five-year, $26 million effort to develop brain implants that can treat mental disease with deep-brain stimulation.
The hope is to implant electrodes in different regions of the brain along with a tiny chip placed between the brain and the skull. The chip would monitor electrical signals in the brain and send data wirelessly back to scientists in order to gain a better understanding of psychological diseases like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The implant would also be used to trigger electrical impulses in order to relieve symptoms.
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Military brain computer interface BCI — rand.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has invested in the development of technologies that allow the human brain to communicate directly with machines, including the development of implantable neural interfaces able to transfer data between the human brain and the digital world. This technology, known as brain-computer interface (BCI), may eventually be used to monitor a soldier’s cognitive workload, control a drone swarm, or link with a prosthetic, among other examples. Further technological advances could support human-machine decisionmaking, human-to-human communication, system control, performance enhancement and monitoring, and training. However, numerous policy, safety, legal, and ethical issues should be evaluated before the technology is widely deployed. With this report, the authors developed a methodology for studying potential applications for emerging technology. This included developing a national security game to explore the use of BCI in combat scenarios; convening experts in military operations, human performance, and neurology to explore how the technology might affect military tactics, which aspects may be most beneficial, and which aspects might present risks; and offering recommendations to policymakers. The research assessed current and potential BCI applications for the military to ensure that the technology responds to actual needs, practical realities, and legal and ethical considerations.
He was also scared because the experiment showed, in a concrete way, that humanity was at the dawn of a new era, one in which our thoughts could theoretically be snatched from our heads. What was going to happen, Dr. Gallant wondered, when you could read thoughts the thinker might not even be consciously aware of, when you could see people’s memories?
Continue reading “The Brain Implants That Could Change Humanity” »
Women with Alzheimer’s disease tend to live longer than men with the disease — and a new study suggests that a gene on the X chromosome may help explain why.
Each person typically has one pair of sex chromosomes in each cell of their body. People assigned female at birth typically have two X chromosomes, while people assigned male at birth typically have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome.
Researchers say a gene called KDM6A may explain why women with Alzheimer’s disease tend to live longer than men with the same condition.
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