Lifeboat Foundation

Enzymes play an important role in cognitive function. Enzymes are biological catalysts. They’re responsible for accelerating chemical reactions.

What role do enzymes play in #aging and cognitive function?

According to new research in laboratory mice by UC San Francisco scientists have discovered that loss of an #enzyme that modifies gene activity to promote brain regeneration may be partly responsible for age-related cognitive decline. When age related cognitive decline starts is still debatable, however the effects of age related cognitive decline are well known.

Continue reading “Enzymes and Cognitive Decline” »

A recent study gives insight into the #neurobiology of dying. Before the process of dying neurologists closely monitored patients with devastating #brain injuries following Do Not Resuscitate-Comfort Care orders. This gave key insights into the mechanisms and timing of events in the brain and the circulatory system during the dying process.

The objective of emergency treatment is to restore circulation to prevent #cerebral ischemia. #Cerebral ischemia is a condition that occurs when blood flow is restricted to the brain, which then causes the #death of brain tissue. Understanding the brain’s response to energy depletion can help us estimate how much time is available for resuscitation until irreversible damage has occurred. The goal is to develop methods that can prolong this window before irreversible damage takes place. Injury to central neurons begins only during the progressive and uncontrollable #depolarization of neurons called anoxic depolarization. This Anoxic depolarization “wave” is potentially reversible and typically starts 2 to 5 minutes after the emergence of severe ischemia. This marks the beginning of a toxic change within the neuron which eventually leads to irreversible brain injury.

Continue reading “1 thought on ‘Insights into the Neurobiology of Death’” »

It’s hard for us to accept the idea that the brain stops growing, despite the large body of scientific evidence supporting this idea. The often-repeated statistic, based on years of research, is that the brain stops developing around the age of 25. More recently, an international team of neuroscientists argued in Nature that the human brain stops producing new neurons at age 13. The response from the scientific community to this most recent study has been significant, to say the least.

In their paper, published Wednesday, the researchers write that their findings “do not support the notion that robust adult neurogenesis continues in the human hippocampus.” In other words, none of the hippocampus tissue samples from adult brains they examined showed evidence of new neurons. Infants’ brains grow lots of new neurons, they report, and older children’s brains slow down a little. Meanwhile, none of their adult samples showed evidence of new neurons. And this is what other scientists don’t agree with.

“They may just not have looked carefully enough,” Jonas Frisén, Ph.D., of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, told STAT News on Wednesday. Frisén co-authored a paper in 2015 that contradicts the findings of the Nature paper. And Frisén isn’t the only one who thinks these researchers’ conclusion may be premature.

Continue reading “Scientists Claiming There’s No Brain Growth After Age 13 Spark Fiery Debate” »

An international group of researchers has made a decisive step towards creating the technology to achieve simulations of brain-scale networks on future supercomputers of the exascale class. The breakthrough, published in Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, allows larger parts of the human brain to be represented, using the same amount of computer memory. Simultaneously, the new algorithm significantly speeds up brain simulations on existing supercomputers.

The human brain is an organ of incredible complexity, composed of 100 billion interconnected nerve cells. However, even with the help of the most powerful supercomputers available, it is currently impossible to simulate the exchange of neuronal signals in networks of this size.

“Since 2014, our software can simulate about one percent of the neurons in the human brain with all their connections,” says Markus Diesmann, Director at the Jülich Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6). In order to achieve this impressive feat, the software requires the entire main memory of petascale supercomputers, such as the K computer in Kobe and JUQUEEN in Jülich.

Continue reading “Researchers find algorithm for large-scale brain simulations” »

Before the 7.6 billion people alive today, demographers estimate that about 100 billion people lived and died. This is the reality of the human condition. Memento mori, as medieval Christians reflected—Remember that you have to die.

What if it didn’t have to be this way? There are, in fact, organisms whose bodies steadily and reliably replace cells with healthier cells, and whose tissues and organs self-repair and maintain their vigor. They’re called children. And there are cells in adults that divide indefinitely. They’re called cancer. What if there were a way to genetically re-engineer and chemically reprogram our cells to divide indefinitely like they do in children, and to continue this process throughout adulthood without becoming cancerous? Could we become immortal?

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work,” Woody Allen once said, “I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.” There are today well-funded groups of scientists who believe we can do just that. If these techno-dreamers succeed, would you want to live for 150 years? 300 years? Or even 500 years? I’m not talking about being brain-dead and bedridden on a morphine drip. I mean living a full, rich physical and mental life for centuries, possibly forever. Would you opt for immortality?

Continue reading “Would You Opt for Immortality?” »

Israel-based BrainQ is a new neurotech startup hoping to take on brain-computer interface (BCI) companies like Braintree founder Bryan Johnson’s Kernel and Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk’s Neuralink.

It’s not clear yet what Musk’s startup intends to do with the computer chips it plans to put in our heads, but Johnson’s startup says it is focused on developing “technologies to understand and treat neurological diseases in new and exciting ways.”

Whatever sector each company goes for, both plan to insert chips in our brains to connect us to computers — the consequences of which could have dramatic effects on human memory, intelligence, communication and many other areas that could rocket humanity forward, should they work out.

Continue reading “BrainQ aims to cure stroke and spinal cord injuries through mind-reader tech” »