Lifeboat Foundation

Depression and cardiovascular disease (CVD) are serious concerns for public health. Approximately 280 million people worldwide have depression, while 620 million people have CVD.

It has been known since the 1990s that the two diseases are somehow related. For example, people with depression run a greater risk of CVD, while effective early treatment for depression cuts the risk of subsequently developing CVD by half. Conversely, people with CVD tend to have depression as well. For these reasons, the American Heart Association (AHA) advises to monitor teenagers with depression for CVD.

What wasn’t yet known is what causes this apparent relatedness between the two diseases. Part of the answer probably lies in lifestyle factors common in patients with depression and which increase the risk of CVD, such as smoking, alcohol abuse, lack of exercise, and a poor diet. But it’s also possible that both diseases might be related at a deeper level, through shared developmental pathways.

What influences mental health, academic achievement, and cognitive growth? A recent review published in De Gruyter’s Reviews in the Neurosciences indicates that poverty and low socioeconomic status (SES) are significant contributing factors. While previous research has explored the individual impacts of poverty on the brain and behavior, this review introduces the first integrated framework. It synthesizes evidence from various studies to directly connect brain alterations caused by low SES with behavioral, pathological, and developmental outcomes.

SES refers to the social standing of an individual or family, and involves factors such as wealth, occupation, educational attainment, and living conditions. As well as affecting day-to-day life, perhaps surprisingly SES can also have far-reaching consequences for our brains that begin in childhood and persist into adulthood.

So, how can poverty and low SES change the brain? The review examines the negative effects of poor nutrition, chronic stress, and environmental hazards (such as pollution and inadequate housing conditions), which are more likely to affect low-SES families. These factors can impair the brain development of children, which in turn can influence their language skills, educational attainment, and risk of psychiatric illness.

A study focusing on childhood maltreatment in Australia has uncovered its alarming impact, estimating it causes up to 40 percent of common, life-long mental health conditions.

The mental health conditions examined were anxiety, depression, harmful alcohol and drug use, self-harm, and suicide attempts. Childhood maltreatment is classified as physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and emotional or physical neglect before the age of 18. Childhood maltreatment was found to account for 41 percent of suicide attempts in Australia, 35 percent for cases of self-harm, and 21 percent for depression.

The analysis, published in JAMA Psychiatry is the first study to provide estimates of the proportion of mental health conditions in Australia that arise from childhood maltreatment. The researchers said the results are a wake-up call for childhood abuse and neglect to be treated as a national public health priority.

Not ideal!

In January, multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk announced that his brain-computer interface startup Neuralink had successfully implanted a wireless brain chip into a human subject for the first time.

Over the next couple of months, 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh was shown moving a cursor with his mind, playing Civilization VI and even a fast-paced round of Mario Kart.

Continue reading “Neuralink Admits That Implant’s Threads Have Retracted From First Patient’s Brain, Possibly Due to Air in Skull” »

Tumors that move to the brain are difficult to treat because of the brain-blood barrier that separates the brain from the rest of the body.

Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers have developed a nanoparticle that could one day be used to treat brain metastases.

Reconstruction of 1 mm3 of human brain (at 1.4 petabytes of EM data) published by @stardazed0 (@GoogleAI) & Lichtman lab.

Paper: https://science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk4858

Blog:

Continue reading “Ten years of neuroscience at Google yields maps of human brain” »

Explore the tiny ‘pizza slice’ down to the neuron.

Summary: Preschool children actively influence their own development to align with their genetic dispositions. By examining how toddlers interact with their environment, including activities like reading and puzzles, researchers found that children’s preferences impact how they engage in cognitive stimulation at home.

This active involvement helps shape their brain development alongside environmental factors. The findings emphasize the dynamic interplay between genetics and environment in early childhood, challenging the traditional views of passive developmental processes.

Neuralink’s first human patient has become so adept at using the company’s brain implant that he can now beat other players at video games.

On Wednesday, Elon Musk’s company provided a progress update on Noland Arbaugh, who received a brain implant in January that lets him remotely control the cursor on a laptop.

In March, Neuralink revealed that Arbaugh was using the implant to play games including Chess, Civilization VI, and Mario Kart. In Wednesday’s update, the company reported that Arbaugh’s use of the implant has only improved over time.