Lifeboat Foundation

Summary: A newly designed synthetic compound could act as a prototype for a novel class of drugs to treat neurological damage.

Source: DZNE

Researchers from the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), UK and Japan have developed a neurologically acting protein and tested it in laboratory studies. In mice, the experimental compound ameliorated symptoms of certain neurological injuries and diseases, while on the microscopic level it was able to establish and repair connections between neurons. This proof-of-principle study suggests that biologics, which act on neuronal connectivity, could be of clinical use in the long term. The results are published in the journal Science.

O,.o circa 2019.

PARIS (Reuters) — A Paris zoo showcased a mysterious new organism on Wednesday, dubbed the “blob”, a yellowish unicellular small living being which looks like a fungus but acts like an animal.

This newest exhibit of the Paris Zoological Park, which goes on display to the public on Saturday, has no mouth, no stomach, no eyes, yet it can detect food and digest it.

Continue reading “Paris zoo unveils the ‘blob’, an organism with no brain but 720 sexes” »

Big initiatives to understand the workings of the brain

Neuroscience has a data problem. In our efforts to understand the brain researchers are generating ever greater amounts of data. The problem is, how can they gain meaning from it?

Continue reading “People Power Increase Processing Speed” »

Elon Musk’s controversial ‘brain chip’ might be coming to us sooner than we first thought, with the technology entrepreneur promising a working demo by the end of this week.

The news comes a little over a month after Musk announced his latest start-up, Neuralink, was in the process of developing a brain-computer interface that allegedly has a life-changing range of benefits – including the ability to stream music straight into your brain.

Now, Neuralink, which has already received more than $158 million in funding, will be demonstrating a working device this coming Friday, August 28, at approximately 6.00pm ET (11.00pm BST).

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Back in 2017, neuroscientists used a classic branch of maths in a totally new way to peer into the structure of our brains.

What they discovered is that the brain is full of multi-dimensional geometrical structures operating in as many as 11 dimensions.

We’re used to thinking of the world from a 3D perspective, so this may sound a bit tricky, but the results of this study could be the next major step in understanding the fabric of the human brain — the most complex structure we know of.

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You’ll be surprised by how much your language shapes your perspective.

There are about 7,000 languages spoken around the world — and they all have different sounds, vocabularies and structures. But do they shape the way we think? Cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky shares examples of language — from an Aboriginal community in Australia that uses cardinal directions instead of left and right to the multiple words for blue in Russian — that suggest the answer is a resounding yes. “The beauty of linguistic diversity is that it reveals to us just how ingenious and how flexible the human mind is,” Boroditsky says. “Human minds have invented not one cognitive universe, but 7,000.”

This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.

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Here’s my latest video!

The incidence of fungi bloodstream infections increases during aging-is that a potential explanation for the presence of fungi in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients? Rapamycin is a known antifungal-is it effective against fungi that are found in the blood and brain?

Continue reading “Fungi In The Blood, Fungi In The Brain: Rapamycin To The Rescue?” »

Research looking at a possible new therapeutic approach for Alzheimer’s disease was recently published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation. The paper out of the University of Kentucky’s Sanders-Brown Center on Aging (SBCoA) is titled “Therapeutic Trem2 activation ameliorates amyloid-beta deposition and improves cognition in the 5XFAD model of amyloid deposition”. The work looked at targeting inflammation by using an antibody. Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias have no disease-modifying treatments at this time and represent a looming public health crisis given the continually growing aging population.

The paper explains that current therapeutic approaches to the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease focus on the major pathological hallmarks of the disease which are amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. They are the requirements for a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. However, the authors say there has been an explosion of genetic data suggesting the risk for sporadic Alzheimer’s disease is driven by several other factors including neuroinflammation, membrane turnover and storage, and lipid metabolism.

In this study the researchers focused on triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cell-2 (TREM2). “TREM2 was identified several years ago as a gene that, when there’s a mutation, significantly increases risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The field thinks that this mutation reduces the function of the receptor, so we hypothesized that targeting TREM2 to increase its function might be a valid treatment for Alzheimer’s,” explained Donna Wilcock, SBCoA associate director.

Elon Musk’s Neuralink will likely show off its design for a brain-computer interface Friday evening. The concept it unveiled last summer involves surgically implanting it into the brain to detect the activity of neurons. The US military also wants to develop a brain-computer interface, as we explain in this story from October. But here’s the kicker: no surgery required—and the device could be put on and taken off like a helmet or headband.

In August, three graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University were crammed together in a small, windowless basement lab, using a jury-rigged 3D printer frame to zap a slice of mouse brain with electricity.

The brain fragment, cut from the hippocampus, looked like a piece of thinly sliced garlic. It rested on a platform near the center of the contraption. A narrow tube bathed the slice in a solution of salt, glucose, and amino acids. This kept it alive, after a fashion: neurons in the slice continued to fire, allowing the experimenters to gather data. An array of electrodes beneath the slice delivered the electric zaps, while a syringe-like metal probe measured how the neurons reacted. Bright LED lamps illuminated the dish. The setup, to use the lab members’ lingo, was kind of hacky.

Continue reading “The US military is trying to read minds” »