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Archive for the ‘neuroscience’ category: Page 66

Aug 21, 2024

The Invisible Damage: How COVID Rewires Our Brains

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

University of Colorado Boulder scientists have discovered that proteins left by COVID-19 can significantly lower cortisol levels in the brain, leading to heightened immune responses to new stressors.

This research, focusing on the neurological symptoms of Long COVID, utilized rats to demonstrate how SARS-CoV-2 antigens persist in the body and alter brain function. This persistent effect could explain the severe and varied symptoms of Long COVID, suggesting potential directions for further research and symptom management strategies.

Understanding covid-19’s long-term impact on the brain.

Aug 21, 2024

Your Memories Are Like Paintings

Posted by in categories: media & arts, neuroscience

Our brains constantly retouch the past with the colors of the present, putting a fresh version of ourselves on display.

Our brains are not designed to give us the entirety of reality.

Remembering is dominated by the perspective we have in the moment.

Continue reading “Your Memories Are Like Paintings” »

Aug 21, 2024

Neural circuit basis of placebo pain relief

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

A study in @ Nature identifies using mouse models a neural circuit that may underpin pain relief caused by the placebo effect.


Analgesia from the expectation of pain relief is mediated by rostral anterior cingulate cortex neurons that project to the pontine nucleus.

Aug 20, 2024

Sleep resets neurons for new memories the next day

Posted by in category: neuroscience

The study answers how people can keep learning new things for a lifetime without using up all of their neurons.

Aug 20, 2024

Causal effect of video gaming on mental well-being in Japan 2020–2022 Human Behaviour

Posted by in categories: entertainment, neuroscience

This study uses a natural experiment with game console lotteries to identify the causal effect of video gaming on mental well-being in Japan (2020–2022). Results show that video gaming reduced psychological distress and improved life satisfaction.

Aug 20, 2024

Human Consciousness Is an Illusion, Scientists Say

Posted by in category: neuroscience

The entire universe may have an internal mind—or the whole idea of consciousness could be a sham. Here’s why scientists still can’t agree.

Aug 20, 2024

The mystery of consciousness shows there may be a limit to what science alone can achieve

Posted by in categories: neuroscience, science

The progress of science in the last 400 years is mind-blowing. Who would have thought we’d be able to trace the history of our universe to its origins 14 billion years ago? Science has increased the length and the quality of our lives, and the technology that is commonplace in the modern world would have seemed like magic to our ancestors.

For all of these reasons and more, science is rightly celebrated and revered. However, a healthy pro-science attitude is not the same thing as “scientism”, which is the view that the scientific method is the only way to establish truth. As the problem of consciousness is revealing, there may be a limit to what we can learn through science alone.

Perhaps the most worked out form of scientism was the early 20th century movement knows as logical positivism. The logical positivists signed up to the “verification principle”, according to which a sentence whose truth can’t be tested through observation and experiments was either logically trivial or meaningless gibberish. With this weapon, they hoped to dismiss all metaphysical questions as not merely false but nonsense.

Aug 20, 2024

Is the Brain A Quantum Computer? New Insights Say It Might Be

Posted by in categories: computing, neuroscience, particle physics, quantum physics

There is a theory dubbed “quantum consciousness,” which stipulates that brain functions and consciousness are derived from quantum effects like the collapse of the quantum wavefunction.

This is a strange part of quantum physics, where particles go from a state of simultaneous properties to a more “normal” state where they have one defined characteristic. It has notably been popularized by the concept of Schrödinger’s cat.

Aug 20, 2024

Could machines have become self-aware without our knowing it?

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Consciousness creep.

Our machines could become self-aware without our knowing it.


Our machines could become self-aware without our knowing it. We need a better way to define and test for consciousness.

Aug 19, 2024

Alzheimer’s May Not Actually Be a Brain Disease, Expert Reveals

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

The pursuit of a cure for Alzheimer’s disease is becoming an increasingly competitive and contentious quest with recent years witnessing several important controversies.

In July 2022, Science magazine reported that a key 2006 research paper, published in the prestigious journal Nature, which identified a subtype of brain protein called beta-amyloid as the cause of Alzheimer’s, may have been based on fabricated data.

One year earlier, in June 2021, the US Food and Drug Administration had approved aducanumab, an antibody-targeting beta-amyloid, as a treatment for Alzheimer’s, even though the data supporting its use were incomplete and contradictory.

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