Lifeboat Foundation

The symptoms of severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD as it is more popularly known, may be reduced by half with deep brain stimulation, according to a pooled data analysis of the available data, which was recently published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, & Psychiatry.

According to the research, two-thirds of individuals who were affected saw a significant improvement after two years.

OCD is characterized by intrusive and persistent obsessive thoughts, as well as dysfunctional and ritualized behaviors. It is estimated that up to 3% of the population is affected by it.

‘I almost died on the way out,’ said the six-foot-two tall archeologist who lost 25 kgs to enter a 17.5-centimeter cave.

Researchers claim to have discovered new evidence of extinct human species who lived in the underground caves of modern-day South Africa.

“We have massive evidence. It’s everywhere,” said Berger, who reported the findings in a press release and a Carnegie Science lecture at the Martin Luther King Jr.

Continue reading “‘Massive evidence’ on evolution: Extinct human species with tiny brains ‘used fire’ to live underground” »

He suffered both physical and mental long-term side effects.

In April of 2006, doctors from London University revealed a case study of what they believed at the time was the largest amount of ecstasy ever consumed by a single person. They published a case report of a British man named only Mr. A estimated to have taken around 40,000 pills of MDMA over nine years, the most amount known to anyone.

They reported that the man then suffered from prominent physical and mental health side effects, such as extreme memory problems, paranoia, hallucinations and depression, as well as painful muscle rigidity around his neck and jaw, which often prevented him from opening his mouth.

Continue reading “The story of the man who took over 40,000 ecstasy pills over 9 years” »

Neural Computing Interfaces will revolutionize the world. From aiding motor function recovery, to augmenting and transforming the future human users. In this video, we take a look at what good can come from this technology but also what dark horrors await this future.

Panpsychism is a disruptive theory put forward by some philosophers and neuroscientists. It proposes that human consciousness is only one of many forms of consciousness in…

A good night’s sleep can work wonders for both mind and body. But what is it that determines how much we need to sleep, and what can cause us to sleep more deeply?

In a new study, researchers from the University of Tsukuba have now provided some answers, revealing a signaling pathway within brain cells that regulates the length and depth of sleep.

“We examined genetic mutations in mice and how these affect their patterns of sleep,” says senior author of the study, Professor Hiromasa Funato. “We identified a mutation that led to the mice sleeping much longer and more deeply than usual.” The researchers found that this was caused by low levels of an enzyme called histone deacetylase 4 (HDAC4), which is known to suppress the expression of target genes.

Frankly I’m pretty stoked about getting my brain inside a computer and living forever.

Biotech startup Lucy Therapeutics is developing mitochondrial-based small molecule therapies for neurological diseases and recently revealed the first two drugs to emerge from its lead programme targeting Parkinson’s. The company, which takes its name from the 3.2-million-year-old fossil of an ancestor of humankind, presented “promising preclinical data” at the Michael J Fox Foundation’s Parkinson’s Disease Therapeutics Conference in October.

The data shown by Lucy Therapeutics demonstrated that its compounds were able to reverse mitochondrial dysfunctions linked to Parkinson’s. In cellular models of the disease, the drugs boosted levels of cellular energy molecule ATP, prevented the death of neurons, and reduced levels of other hallmarks of Parkinson’s, including a-synuclein.

Longevity. Technology: Mitochondria are widely known as the ‘power generators’ within our cells, and their dysfunction has been linked to a range of age-related diseases. But the role of mitochondria extends beyond cellular energy as they also dictate many of a cell’s key functions. Lucy Therapeutics was founded on the hypothesis that diseases with rate-limiting steps involving mitochondrial dysfunction can potentially be treated by modulating key mitochondrial protein targets. To find out more, we caught up with the company’s founder and CEO, Dr Amy Ripka.

Biological supramolecular assemblies, such as phospholipid bilayer membranes, have been used to demonstrate signal processing via short-term synaptic plasticity (STP) in the form of paired pulse facilitation and depression, emulating the brain’s efficiency and flexible cognitive capabilities. However, STP memory in lipid bilayers is volatile and cannot be stored or accessed over relevant periods of time, a key requirement for learning. Using droplet interface bilayers (DIBs) composed of lipids, water and hexadecane, and an electrical stimulation training protocol featuring repetitive sinusoidal voltage cycling, we show that DIBs displaying memcapacitive properties can also exhibit persistent synaptic plasticity in the form of long-term potentiation (LTP) associated with capacitive energy storage in the phospholipid bilayer. The time scales for the physical changes associated with the LTP range between minutes and hours, and are substantially longer than previous STP studies, where stored energy dissipated after only a few seconds. STP behavior is the result of reversible changes in bilayer area and thickness. On the other hand, LTP is the result of additional molecular and structural changes to the zwitterionic lipid headgroups and the dielectric properties of the lipid bilayer that result from the buildup of an increasingly asymmetric charge distribution at the bilayer interfaces.