Lifeboat Foundation

While everyone knows that a good night’s sleep restores energy, a new Cornell University study finds it resets another vital function: memory.

Learning or experiencing new things activates neurons in the hippocampus, a region of the brain vital for memory. Later, while we sleep, those same neurons repeat the same pattern of activity, which is how the brain consolidates those memories that are then stored in a large area called the cortex. But how is it that we can keep learning new things for a lifetime without using up all of our neurons?

A study, “A Hippocampal Circuit Mechanism to Balance Memory Reactivation During Sleep,” published in Science, finds at certain times during deep sleep, certain parts of the hippocampus go silent, allowing those neurons to reset.

A new study now published in Science reveals that the memory for a specific experience is stored in multiple parallel “copies.” These are preserved for varying durations, modified to certain degrees, and sometimes deleted over time, report researchers at the University of Basel.

The ability to turn experiences into memories allows us to learn from the past and use what we learned as a model to respond appropriately to new situations. For this reason, as the world around us changes, this memory model cannot simply be a fixed archive of the good old days.

Rather, it must be dynamic, changing over time and adapting to new circumstances to better help us predict the future and select the best course of action. How the brain could regulate a memory’s dynamics was a mystery—until multiple memory copies were discovered.

At the risk of sounding a bit woo-woo, as any speculation about the “hard problem” of the unknowns of consciousness does, can’t both be true? In other words, is it possible that Schrödinger’s “total mind” is a kind of quantum reserve downloaded and differentially phased into qualia through the materialist medium of natural selection, which Edelman calls “neural Darwinism”? Is it the embodied human sensory organs interacting with their environment in feedback loops that unveils the unformed wave of fundamental consciousness through the particle of particular experience?

The correct answer is: Who knows?

“Who Knows?” would be an apt title for the best inventory to date of the myriad views on consciousness, from the metaphysical to the materialist, compiled by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and titled “A landscape of consciousness: toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications,” recently published in the journal “Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology.”

First described by Nedergaard and her colleagues in 2012, the glymphatic system is the brain’s unique waste removal process that uses cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to wash away excess proteins generated by energy hungry neurons and other cells in the brain during normal activity.

A drug used to induce labor in pregnant women has been shown to reactivate tiny waste-clearing pumps in the brains of old mice. The finding could hold promise as a new way to fight Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases and overall cognitive decline.

When our brains are working properly, there is an excess of proteins that build up from the energy intensive processes that take place between our neurons. Those proteins need to be removed in order for the brain to continue to operate properly. When they aren’t, they can gunk up the works, leading to the beta amyloid and tau protein tangles that are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease or the build up of alpha-synuclein that accompanies Parkinson’s.

Continue reading “Common drug restores youthful function to clean up aging brains” »

More people than we thought who are in comas or similar states can hear what is happening around them, a study shows.

Philosopher and cognitive scientist David Chalmers explores virtual reality and its implication for our understanding of existence. Chalmers examines the simulation hypothesis, challenging conventional views of reality and suggesting that virtual worlds might be as real and meaningful as the physical world. This is a thought-provoking lecture at MindFest, held at Florida Atlantic University, CENTER FOR THE FUTURE MIND, spearheaded by Susan Schneider.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 — Intro.
01:34 — Overview.
11:55 — David’s Central Thesis.
15:55 — Biosim vs. Pure Sim.
18:11 — Imperfect vs. Perfect Simulation.
26:38 — Are Simulations Illusions?
31:29 — It-From-Bit Hypothesis.
36:06 — What Is The Metaverse?
43:58 — Meaning In A Virtual World.
51:49 — Q\&A
01:06:43 — Outro.

Continue reading “‘Virtual Reality Is GENUINE Reality‘ | David Chalmers Mindfest Lecture” »

In the quest to unravel the complexities of neural circuits, scientists are beginning to use genetically encoded voltage indicators (GEVIs) to visualize electrical activity in the brain. These indicators are crucial for understanding how neurons communicate and process information. However, the effectiveness of one-photon (1P) versus two-photon (2P) voltage imaging has remained a topic of debate. A recent study by researchers at Harvard University sheds light on the relative merits and limitations of these two imaging techniques, providing valuable insights for the scientific community.

Bracha et al.

Toxoplasma gondii culture and maintenance.

Type I RH and type II Pru and ME49 strain T. gondii were grown in HFF in high-glucose Dulbecco’s modified Eagle’s medium (DMEM) supplemented with 4 mM l-glutamine, 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS) and 1% penicillin/streptomycin or 20 μg ml⁻¹ gentamicin antibiotics (‘complete DMEM’) at 37 °C with 5% CO₂. Cultures were monitored daily and T. gondii were passaged by transferring 1–3 drops (20–100 μl) of the supernatant of a lysed dish (containing extracellular parasites) into a fresh dish with confluent HFF cells. Type I RH and type II Pru strains were validated by PCR–restriction-fragment length polymorphism (primers described in Supplementary Table 1)⁸¹ or by passage into Cre Reporter cell lines to confirm Cre recombination as previously described¹⁶.

Continue reading “Engineering Toxoplasma gondii secretion systems for intracellular delivery of multiple large therapeutic proteins to neurons” »

This explores how the human brain forms abstract concepts and adapts to changing environments, specifically looking at how neurons in certain brain regions contribute to complex thinking.

It takes brains to infer how any two things in the world relate to each other, whether it’s the way bad weather links to commuting delays or how environmental conditions lead to the evolution of species. A new study based on recordings in the brains of people has yielded a pathbreaking trove of data that researchers now have used to reveal, with more clarity than ever, the neural incarnations of inferential reasoning.