Lifeboat Foundation

Central learning and memory hubs change in response to sex hormones. A new study in Nature Mental Health by Rachel Zsido and Julia Sacher of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the University Clinic in Leipzig, Germany, links rhythmic oscillations in ovarian hormone levels in women during the menstrual cycle to changes in brain structure.

Ovarian hormones have significant effects on the brain, and early menopause may be associated with an increased risk of accelerated brain aging and dementia later in life. However, the effects of ovarian hormone fluctuations on brain structure earlier in life are less defined. In their current study, Zsido and Sacher show that fluctuations in ovarian hormones affect structural plasticity in key brain regions during the reproductive years.

To do this, the scientists collected blood samples from 27 female study participants, used ultrasound to track follicle growth in the ovaries to pinpoint ovulation timing, and utilized ultra-high field 7 Tesla MRI to zoom into subregions of the medial temporal lobe and hippocampus. That’s because these regions are dense with sex hormone receptors and are critical for cognitive function, such as episodic memory.

Hospital nurseries routinely place soft bands around the tiny wrists of newborns that hold important identifying information such as name, sex, mother, and birth date. Researchers at Rockefeller University are taking the same approach with newborn brain cells—but these neonates will keep their ID tags for life, so that scientists can track how they grow and mature, as a means for better understanding the brain’s aging process.

As described in a new paper in Cell, the new method developed by Rockefeller geneticist Junyue Cao and his colleagues is called TrackerSci (pronounced “sky”). This low-cost, high-throughput approach has already revealed that while newborn cells continue to be produced through life, the kinds of cells being produced greatly vary in different ages. This groundbreaking work, led by co-first authors Ziyu Lu and Melissa Zhang from Cao’s lab, promises to influence not only the study of the brain but also broader aspects of aging and disease across the human body.

“The cell is the basic functional unit of our body, so changes to the cell essentially underlie virtually every disease and the aging process,” says Cao, head of the Laboratory of Single-Cell Genomics and Population Dynamics. “If we can systematically characterize the different cells and their dynamics using this novel technique, we may get a panoramic view of the mechanisms of many diseases and the enigma of aging.”

Dopamine seems to be having a moment in the zeitgeist. You may have read about it in the news, seen viral social media posts about “dopamine hacking,” or listened to podcasts about how to harness what this molecule is doing in your brain to improve your mood and productivity. However, recent neuroscience research suggests that popular strategies to control dopamine are based on an overly narrow view of how it functions.

Dopamine is one of the brain’s neurotransmitters — tiny molecules that act as messengers between neurons. It is known for its role in tracking your reaction to rewards such as food, sex, money, or answering a question correctly. There are many kinds of dopamine neurons located in the uppermost region of the brainstem that manufacture and release dopamine throughout the brain. Whether neuron type affects the function of the dopamine it produces has been an open question.

Recently published research reports a relationship between neuron type and dopamine function, and one type of dopamine neuron has an unexpected function that will likely reshape how scientists, clinicians, and the public understand this neurotransmitter.

A team of researchers in Japan claims to have figured out a way to translate the clucking of chickens with the use of artificial intelligence.

As detailed in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed preprint, the team led by University of Tokyo professor Adrian David Cheok — who has previously studied sex robots — came up with a “system capable of interpreting various emotional states in chickens, including hunger, fear, anger, contentment, excitement, and distress” by using “cutting-edge AI technique we call Deep Emotional Analysis Learning.”

They say the technique is “rooted in complex mathematical algorithms” and can even be used to adapt to the ever-changing vocal patterns of chickens, meaning that it only gets better at deciphering “chicken vocalizations” over time.

Microglial cells are the maintenance workers of the central nervous system (CNS), protecting against pathogens and pruning damaged neurons to help the brain maintain homeostasis. Considered immune cells, microglia work to protect the brain from before it is fully formed through its lifetime, but they aren’t infallible. The cells can be primed early on to respond in certain ways, making the microglia’s clean-up efforts less efficient. As other cells age, they can complicate microglial function, making them less effective.

But the underlying mechanism of how microglial cells age and how their aging directly affects the brain is poorly understood—meaning that attempts to prevent or treat brain dysfunction may not be as effective as they could be, according to a multi-institutional collaboration led by Bo Peng and Yanxia Rao, both professors at Fudan University.

The team investigated how microglial cells change as they age in both male and female mice across their lifespans, finding what the researchers called “unexpected sex differences.” They also established a model to study aged microglial cells in a non-aged brain, revealing that aged-like microglia contribute to cognitive decline even in young mice. The researchers published their findings in Nature Aging.

Here’s my new article for Aporia magazine, the final futurist story in my 4-part series for them!

Written by Zoltan Istvan.

I met my wife on Match.com 15 years ago. She didn’t have a picture on her profile, but she had written a strong description of herself. It was enough to warrant a first date, and we got married a year later.

Continue reading “Dating in the world of ‘Deep Fakes’” »

The Y chromosome is a never-ending source of fascination (particularly to men) because it bears genes that determine maleness and make sperm. It’s also small and seriously weird; it carries few genes and is full of junk DNA that makes it horrendous to sequence.

However, new “long-read” sequencing techniques have finally provided a reliable sequence from one end of the Y to the other. The paper describing this Herculean effort has been published in Nature.

The findings provide a solid base to explore how genes for sex and sperm work, how the Y chromosome evolved, and whether—as predicted—it will disappear in a few million years.

Female kidneys are known to be more resilient to disease and injury, but males need not despair. A new USC Stem Cell-led study published in Developmental Cell describes not only how sex hormones drive differences in male and female mouse kidneys, but also how lowering testosterone can “feminize” this organ and improve its resilience.

“By exploring how differences emerge in male and female kidneys during development, we can better understand how to address sex-related health disparities for patients with kidney diseases,” said Professor Andy McMahon, the study’s corresponding author, and the director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

First authors Lingyun “Ivy” Xiong and Jing Liu from the McMahon Lab and their collaborators identified more than 1,000 genes with different levels of activity in male and female mouse kidneys, in a study supported by the National Institutes of Health. The differences were most evident in the section of the kidney’s filtering unit known as the proximal tubule, responsible for reabsorbing most of the nutrients such as glucose and amino acids back into the blood stream.

A new study reveals the brain circuit that controls sex drive in male mice. Scientists believe this finding could apply to humans and may allow them to manipulate the male libido.

Scientists at Stanford Medicine have identified the exact part of the brain that controls sex drive in mice. It is possible that the same part of the human brain also regulates libido in men.

“We’ve singled out a circuit in male mammals’ brains that controls sexual recognition, libido, and mating behavior and pleasure,” said Nirao Shah, one of the senior researchers and a professor of behavioral sciences at Stanford.