Lifeboat Foundation

While not a complete figment of our imagination, the universe may only become real because we’re looking at it.

By Douglas Heaven

Samuel Johnson thought the idea was so preposterous that kicking a rock was enough to silence discussion. “I refute it thus,” he cried as his foot rebounded from reality. Had he known about quantum mechanics, he might have spared himself the stubbed toe.

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Scientists have successfully re-awoken coma patients so they can communicate with their family by ‘zapping’ their brain with a low-intensity current.

Two people in a vegetative state, and another 13 in a minimally-conscious coma, were able to show new signs of awareness after receiving brain stimulation, New Scientist reported.

The effect lasted for up to a week, according to researchers at the University of Liege in Belgium.

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By Helen Thomson

People in a minimally conscious state have been “woken” for a whole week after a brief period of brain stimulation. The breakthrough suggests we may be on the verge of creating a device that can be used at home to help people with disorders of consciousness communicate with friends and family.

People with severe brain trauma can fall into a coma. If they begin to show signs of arousal but not awareness, they are said to be in a vegetative state. If they then show fluctuating signs of awareness but cannot communicate, they are described as being minimally consciousness.

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The Buck institute is in the spotlight today.

Located in Novato, California, not too far from Mount Burdell Preserve and Olompali State Historic Park, is one of the world’s leading research centres for ageing and age-related diseases—the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.

Opened in 1999 thanks to the substantial bequest of American philanthropist Beryl Hamilton Buck, the Buck Institute set to fulfill her wishes that her patrimony be spent to “extend help towards the problems of the aged, not only the indigent but those whose resources cannot begin to provide adequate care.” Over the years, the Institute has certainly honoured its commitment: The Buck can boast some of the most eminent experts on ageing among its research staff, and a number of laboratories that push forward our understanding of age-related pathologies every day—such as the Campisi Lab and the Kennedy Lab, just to name a few.

The Buck’s approach to investigating ageing is a multifaceted one. The institute rightfully acknowledges the necessity to bring together experts from disparate fields of science—from physics to engineering, from mathematics to anthropology—in order to properly understand the complex networks of biochemical processes underlying ageing and ultimately leading to pathology. Biochemistry, molecular endocrinology, proteomics, genomic stability, and cell biology are only some of the areas of investigation of the Buck, and the medical conditions researched by their teams range from Huntington’s disease to ischemia, to Parkinson’s, to cancer and Alzheimer’s. The three main questions the Buck set to answer are why do ageing tissues lose their regeneration capacity, why do stem cells fail to function with ageing, and how do tissues change during ageing so that they no longer support normal regenerative processes.

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On 5th of May, the cornerstone for the construction of a neuromorphic computing facility in Europe was laid at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. With the financial support of the European Union and German public and private institutions, the new building will house leading European researchers working on neuromorphic computing within the Human Brain Project, a FET Flagship of the European Commission.

With this new facility the research team from Heidelberg University, led by Prof. Dr. Karlheinz Meier, will benefit from an optimal environment to continue working on the neuromorphic computing platform, which they are developing together with other research groups within the Human Brain Project.

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In yet another study that has connected conditions in the gut to diseases of the brain, scientists have linked the cause of common blood vessel abnormalities in the brain to bacteria colonies in the stomach.

These malformations can lead to strokes called cerebral cavernous malformations (CCMs), which don’t leave patients with many options — if surgery can’t be performed, there’s little left but palliative care. But figuring out what causes these abnormalities could led to treatments that block them before they even occur.

An international team led by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania studied genetically engineered mice that were prone to developing vascular lesions in their brains.

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Scientists hope to understand how conditions such as autism, cerebral palsy and attention deficit disorders arise using thousands images of brain’s wiring.

A new tool to address loss of proteostasis and destroy target proteins. It could potentially be used to destroy amyloids in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS, heart disease and amyloidosis which are driven by misfolded protein aggregation.

A new therapy could be the basis for addressing one of the primary reasons we age, loss of proteostasis and the resulting accumulation of Amyloidosis. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Amloidosis, Lipofuscin and so on could all potentially be targets for this technique.

“University of Dundee researchers have shown that it is possible to rapidly target and destroy specific proteins in cells, raising the possibility of developing new ways of targeting ‘undruggable’ proteins in diseases.”

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For an empirical science, physics can be remarkably dismissive of some of our most basic observations. We see objects existing in definite locations, but the wave nature of matter washes that away. We perceive time to flow, but how could it, really? We feel ourselves to be free agents, and that’s just quaint. Physicists like nothing better than to expose our view of the universe as parochial. Which is great. But when asked why our impressions are so off, they mumble some excuse and slip out the side door of the party.

Physicists, in other words, face the same hard problem of consciousness as neuroscientists do: the problem of bridging objective description and subjective experience. To relate fundamental theory to what we actually observe in the world, they must explain what it means “to observe”—to become conscious of. And they tend to be slapdash about it. They divide the world into “system” and “observer,” study the former intensely, and take the latter for granted—or, worse, for a fool.

A purely atomic explanation of behavior may be just that: an explanation of what atoms do. It would say nothing about brains, much less minds.

Continue reading “A Theory of Consciousness Can Help Build a Theory of Everything” »