Lifeboat Foundation

Interesting and I remember coming across similar research a few years ago.

Brain stimulation might sound like some Frankensteinian demonstration from a Victorian science fair. But in reality, it is a contemporary technique making a huge impact in neuroscience by addressing a longstanding limitation of traditional methods for investigating human brain function. Such techniques, like EEG and fMRI, can only be used to infer the effects of a stimulus or task on brain activity, and not vice versa. For example, a scientist might use EEG to study the effect of a task like arm movement on brain activity, but how can one study the effect of brain activity on arm movement?

Today, noninvasive brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) are offering alternatives to old paradigms. TMS can excite or suppress underlying brain tissue safely and ethically, allowing researchers to study causal relationships between brain circuits and behavior. What’s more, TMS may have therapeutic value in treating brain disorders such as depression.

Continue reading “Stimulating Neural Circuits with Magnetism” »

Luv this.

Proteins are the workhorse molecules of life. Among their many jobs, they carry oxygen, build tissue, copy DNA for the next generation, and coordinate events within and between cells. Now scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have developed a method to control proteins inside live cells with the flick of a switch, giving researchers an unprecedented tool for pinpointing the causes of disease using the simplest of tools: light.

Continue reading “Scientists use light to control the logic networks of a cell (w/video)” »

Brain cancer treated with patient’s own immune cells.

A man with an aggressive cancer in his brain and spine went into remission after doctors dripped his own white blood cells into his brain.

There’s an old saying in neuroscience: “neurons that fire together wire together.” This means the more you run a neuro-circuit in your brain, the stronger that circuit becomes. This is why, to quote another old saw, “practice makes perfect”. The more you practice piano, or speaking a language, or juggling, the stronger those circuits get.

Scientists have known this for years. However, nowadays researchers learn another part of the truth: In order to learn something, even more important than practicing is the ability to unlearn, or to break down the old neural connections. This is called “synaptic pruning”.

Wonder how much this would be really true.

What would happen if everyone in the world had an IQ score over 200 points? This is a type of intelligence that only comes along every so often. An IQ level of 200 is as high, or higher, than the theoretical IQs of history’s greatest minds like Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, and Isaac Newton.

In recent research published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, Northwestern Medicine scientists identified a new pathway in the brain that can be manipulated to alleviate depression.

The pathway offers a promising new target for developing a drug that could be effective in individuals for whom other antidepressants have failed.

New antidepressant options are important because a significant number of patients don’t adequately improve with currently available antidepressant drugs.

Continue reading “Scientists find new path in brain to ease depression” »

Slime mold, a unicellular organism living in forest litter, offers a curious case of learning without a brain. This blob-like creeping organism learns from experience and imparts the knowledge to peers.

New version of this out: https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2017/01/02/americas-r…-cold-war/ #transhumanism #biohacking

Unlike other epic scientific advances…the immediate effect of genetic editing technology is not dangerous. Yet, it stands to be just as divisive to humans as the 70-year proliferation of nuclear weaponry.

The playing field of geopolitics is pretty simple: If China or another country vows to increase its children’s intelligence via genetic editing, and America chooses to remain “au naturel” because they insist that’s how God made them, a conflict species-deep will quickly arise.

Continue reading “America’s refusal to embrace gene editing could start the next Cold War” »

In a breakthrough for regenerative medicine, scientists have grown intestinal tissues with functional nerves in a laboratory setup using human pluripotent stem cells. The synthesized tissue was used to study Hirschsprung’s disease, a congenital condition where nerve cells are missing from the colon, causing complications in passing stool. The research is detailed in Nature Medicine.

A pluripotent stem cell is a precursor cell to all the other types of cells in the body. In a petri dish, the stem cells were treated in a biochemical bath that triggered the formation into intestinal tissue. The novel part of the study was the construction of a nervous system on the intestinal organoid. The researchers manipulated neural crest cells to grow a system of nerves. By putting together the neural crest cells and the intestinal tissue at the exact time, they successfully grew together into a complex functional system.

The tissues were transplanted into mice. They worked successfully and showed a structure “remarkably similar” to that of a natural human intestine.

Continue reading “Regenerative Medicine: Scientists Have Successfully Engineered Functioning Human Nerves” »