Lifeboat Foundation

A maverick neuroscientist believes he has deciphered the code by which the brain forms long-term memories.

Researchers at MIT have developed an imaging technique that will help study exactly how electrical signals propagate through the brain, in an advance that could help us better understand Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, and other brain disorders, as well as how thoughts and feelings are formed.

Brain MRIs offer important insight into how our brains work, but they can only produce crude approximations of the areas that are activated by a given stimulus. In order to unravel the minutiae of how neurons communicate and collaborate to form thoughts and feelings, we would need imaging tools with vastly improved resolutions.

Today, far from being able to tackle the 86 billion neurons in the human brain, neuroscientists must settle for studying simple organisms like worms and fish larvae (with neuron counts in the hundreds), relying on slow and cumbersome methods like implanting electrodes into brain tissue to detect electrical signals.

Continue reading “MIT imaging technique sheds light on the brain’s electrical activity” »

Speaking a second language slows brain aging and makes you smarter.

Scientists have been rejuvenating old mice with infusions of not just the blood of younger mice, but even blood from teenage human beings — and we finally have our first clues on why this strange technique works.

Researchers have discovered an enzyme that helps rescue ageing brains from cognitive decline. So far it’s only been shown in mice, but if the same mechanisms are found in humans, it could lead to a new class of anti-ageing therapies.

Four years ago, a team of researchers led by neurobiologist Saul Villeda from the University of California, San Francisco, discovered that giving older mice infusions of blood from younger mice improved their memory and learning by improving connections in the hippocampus.

Continue reading “We Might Finally Know Why The Blood of Young People Can Rejuvenate Old Brains” »

A startup working to better understand the relationship our gut has with our brain has raised another $66 million.

New York-based Kallyope raised its series B round from new investors Two Sigma Ventures and Euclidean Capital. They were joined by Polaris Partners, Illumina Ventures, Lux Capital and others that had invested in Kallyope’s $44 million series A round in 2015.

Kallyope is trying to figure out how exactly the brain interacts with the gut by mapping it out. By collecting sequencing information about cells in the gut, for example, Kallyope can better figure out how they’re connected to neurons in the brain in a series of circuits. Understanding that relationship could lead to pills that could interact with the gut’s signals and in turn pass that message along to the brain.

Continue reading “A startup that wants to better understand the relationship our gut has to our brain just raised $66 million” »

Neuroscientists have devised a new method of “mind-reading” technology that recreates images perceived by the human brain based on EEG readings.

Summary: UCSF scientists discover a protein in young blood that rejuvenates an aging brain. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

Scientists have long been searching for the factors in young blood that give it its rejuvenating powers to drug form for widespread public use.

A team of researchers led by Saul Villeda, Ph.D., an assistant professor of anatomy at UC San Francisco discovered a brain-rejuvenating enzyme that improved memory in adult mice when restored to youthful levels. The researchers say the new protein could lead to new therapies for maintaining the healthy brain function of humans.

Continue reading “Brain rejuvenating protein found in young blood” »

Researchers at the University of Chicago have developed light-activated nanowires that can stimulate neurons to fire when they are exposed to light. The researchers hope that the nanowires could help in understanding complex brain circuitry, and they may also be useful in treating brain disorders.

Optogenetics, which involves genetically modifying neurons so that they are sensitive to a light stimulus, has attracted a lot of attention as a research tool and potential therapeutic approach. However, some researchers have misgivings about optogenetics, as it involves inserting a gene into cells, potentially opening the door to unforeseen effects and possibly permanently altering treated cells.

In an effort to develop an alternative, a research team at the University of Chicago has devised a new modality that can enable light activation of neurons without the need for genetic modification. Their technique involves nanowires that are so small that if they were laid side-by-side, hundreds of them would fit on the edge of a sheet of paper. Although initially designed for use in solar cells, their small size also makes them well suited to interacting with cells.

Continue reading “Tiny Light-Activated Gold-Covered Nanowires Can Make Neurons Fire” »

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