Lifeboat Foundation

You can easily picture yourself riding a bicycle across the sky even though that’s not something that can actually happen. You can envision yourself doing something you’ve never done before—like water skiing—and maybe even imagine a better way to do it than anyone else.

Imagination involves creating a mental image of something that is not present for your senses to detect, or even something that isn’t out there in reality somewhere. Imagination is one of the key abilities that make us human. But where did it come from?

I’m a neuroscientist who studies how children acquire imagination. I’m especially interested in the neurological mechanisms of imagination. Once we identify what brain structures and connections are necessary to mentally construct new objects and scenes, scientists like me can look back over the course of evolution to see when these brain areas emerged—and potentially gave birth to the first kinds of imagination.

Researchers from The University of Queensland have discovered the active compound from an edible mushroom that boosts nerve growth and enhances memory.

Professor Frederic Meunier from the Queensland Brain Institute said the team had identified new active compounds from the mushroom, Hericium erinaceus.

“Extracts from these so-called ‘lion’s mane’ mushrooms have been used in traditional medicine in Asian countries for centuries, but we wanted to scientifically determine their potential effect on brain cells,” Professor Meunier said.

Summary: Researchers have developed a more powerful and energy-efficient memristor, based on the structure of the human brain, that combines data storage and processing. The new technology, made from nanocrystals of halogenated perovskite, is not yet ready for use as it is difficult to integrate with existing computer chips, but it has the potential for parallel processing of large amounts of data.

Source: Politecnico di Milano.

Inspired by the brain’s energy efficiency, copying its structure to create more powerful computers, a team of researchers from Politecnico di Milano, Empa and ETH Zurich has developed a memristor that is more powerful and easier to produce than its predecessors: the results have been published in Science Advances.

“That’s got molecules in it that will prevent cancer, among other things” like anti-inflammatory properties, he said. Some older research has shown, for example, that green tea consumption might be linked to a lower risk of stomach cancer.

Sinclair also said he takes supplements (like those sold on the Tally Health website) that contain resveratrol, which his team’s research has shown can extend the lifespan of organisms like yeast and worms.

While the compound, famously found in red wine, is known to have anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, heart health, and brain health benefits, the research is mixed on if or how well such benefits can be achieved in humans through a pill.

The animal brain consists of tens of billions of neurons or nerve cells that perform complex tasks like processing emotions, learning, and making judgments by communicating with each other via neurotransmitters. These small signaling molecules diffuse—move from high to low concentration regions—between neurons, acting as chemical messengers.

Scientists believe that this diffusive motion might be at the heart of the brain’s superior function. Therefore, they have aimed to understand the role of specific neurotransmitters by detecting their release in the brain using amperometric and microdialysis methods. However, these methods provide insufficient information, necessitating better sensing techniques.

To this end, scientists developed an optical imaging method wherein protein probes change their fluorescence intensity upon detecting a specific neurotransmitter. Recently, a group of researchers from Shibaura Institute of Technology in Japan led by Professor Yasuo Yoshimi has taken this idea forward. They have successfully synthesized fluorescent molecularly imprinted polymeric nanoparticles (fMIP-NPs) that serve as probes to detect specific neurotransmitters–serotonin, dopamine, and acetylcholine.

Shortform link:
https://shortform.com/artem.

In this video we will explore a very interesting paper published in Nature in 2022, which describes the hidden torus in the neuronal activity of cells in the entorhinal cortex, known as grid cells.

Continue reading “Your brain is moving along the surface of the torus 🤯” »

Shortform link:
https://shortform.com/artem.

My name is Artem, I’m a computational neuroscience student and researcher.

Continue reading “Logarithmic nature of the brain 💡” »

Reverse engineering the cognitive brain.

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Through a vast network of nerve fibers, electrical signals are constantly traveling across the brain. This complicated activity is what ultimately gives rise to our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors – but also possibly to mental health and neurological problems when things go wrong.

Brain stimulation is an emerging treatment for such disorders. Stimulating a region of your brain with electrical or magnetic pulses will trigger a cascade of signals through your network of nerve connections.

However, at the moment, scientists are not quite sure how these cascades travel to impact the activity of your brain as a whole – an important missing piece that limits the benefits of brain stimulation therapies.