Lifeboat Foundation

Music for pain relief and anxiety. I think somewhere else I read it helps heal brain injuries.

Further, subject-preferred music appears to induce a superior effect in relieving pain. This can be approached by allowing participants to select the most pleasant music from a prespecified list of songs or listen to their favorite music during the study. Nevertheless, the richness of emotions, meanings, and associations involved when listening to favorite music is poorly understood, especially regarding pain relief.

About the study

Continue reading “Study finds pleasurable music and ‘chills’ predict music-induced hypoalgesia” »

“To our knowledge, ours is the first study to achieve communication by someone who has no remaining voluntary movement.” — Jonas Zimmermann, a Wyss Center neuroscientist. Watch it here: https://www.freethink.com/health/locked-in-syndrome Freethink.

A man with total locked-in syndrome has used a brain-computer interface to spell out sentences with his mind.

Human decision-making has been the focus of countless neuroscience studies, which try to identify the neural circuits and brain regions that support different types of decisions. Some of these research efforts focus on the choices humans make while gambling and taking risks, yet the neural underpinnings of these choices have not yet been fully elucidated.

Researchers at University of Louisville carried out a study aimed at better understanding the patterns in neural network communication associated with ‘bad’ decisions made while gambling. Their paper, published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, shows that different types of ‘bad’ decisions made while gambling, namely avoidant and approach decisions, are associated with distinct neural communication patterns.

“Our recent work follows a line of research that examines how humans approach rewarding and punishing situations in the environment,” Brendan Depue and Siraj Lyons, the researchers who carried out the study, told Medical Xpress.

“The disease starts to develop 20 years before the onset of symptoms, so it’s important to detect it early,” Per Nilsson said.

A UK-led team of researchers restrained mice for 6 hours to induce a stress response and then analyzed the rodents’ brains on a molecular level.⁠

This led to the discovery of increased levels of five microRNAs (miRNAs) — small molecules that help determine which genes in a cell are expressed and which aren’t — in the amygdala, the brain region implicated in anxiety. When the researchers took a closer look at the miRNA that reached the highest levels, miR-483-5p, they saw that it suppressed the expression of the Pgap2 gene — and that this suppression appeared to provide stress relief and reduce anxiety-related behavior.⁠

➡️

Continue reading “Scientists discover ‘anxiety gene’ in the brain — and a natural way to turn it off” »

A recent experiment suggests the brain is not too warm or wet for consciousness to exist as a quantum wave that connects with the rest of the universe.

Summary: Researchers unveil how neurons in the brain depict time and space, fundamental to human consciousness.

Utilizing special depth electrodes, they studied patients undergoing treatment for epilepsy, revealing “place cells” for spatial awareness and “time cells” for temporal comprehension.

One study showed these cells operate independently yet concurrently during navigation tasks. Another found certain neurons maintained regular temporal patterns regardless of external stimuli speed.

The convergence of Biotechnology, Neurotechnology, and Artificial Intelligence has major implications for the future of humanity. This talk explores the long-term opportunities inherent to these fields by surveying emerging breakthroughs and their potential applications. Whether we can enjoy the benefits of these technologies depends on us: Can we overcome the institutional challenges that are slowing down progress without exacerbating civilizational risks that come along with powerful technological progress?

About the speaker: Allison Duettmann is the president and CEO of Foresight Institute. She directs the Intelligent Cooperation, Molecular Machines, Biotech & Health Extension, Neurotech, and Space Programs, Fellowships, Prizes, and Tech Trees, and shares this work with the public. She founded Existentialhope.com, co-edited Superintelligence: Coordination & Strategy, co-authored Gaming the Future, and co-initiated The Longevity Prize. She advises companies and projects, such as Cosmica, and The Roots of Progress Fellowship, and is on the Executive Committee of the Biomarker Consortium. She holds an MS in Philosophy & Public Policy from the London School of Economics, focusing on AI Safety.

Within seconds of the withdrawal of life support, two of the patients exhibited a surge of neurophysiological activity characterized by changes in several different brain wave “bands,” at both the local and global levels. Freethink.

Researchers found a surge of neurophysiological activity in the dying human brain, including in regions associated with conscious processing.