The recreation of the human brain is giving clues to essentially how we engineer a super brain someday đ.
Nobodyâs quite sure what it means yet. But weâre sure that itâs important.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 822
Science Fiction Meets Neuro-Reality: Organoids to Rebuild the Brain
This is leading to even better brain engineering đ đ đ đ đ.
Computer-augmented brains, cures to blindness, and rebuilding the brain after injury all sound like science fiction. Today, these disruptive technologies arenât just for Netflix, âTerminator,â and comic book fodder â in recent years, these advances are closer to reality than some might realize, and they have the ability to revolutionize neurological care.
Neurologic disease is now the worldâs leading cause of disability, and upwards of 11 million people have some form of permanent neurological problem from traumatic brain injuries and stroke. For example, if a traumatic brain injury has damaged the motor cortex â the region of the brain involved in voluntary movements â patients could become paralyzed, without hope of regaining full function. Or some stroke patients can suffer from aphasia, the inability to speak or understand language, due to damage to the brain regions that control speech and language comprehension.
Thanks to recent advances, sometimes lasting neurologic disease can be prevented. For example, if a stroke patient is seen quickly enough, life-threatening or-altering damage can be avoided, but itâs not always possible. Current treatments to most neurologic disease are fairly limited, as most therapies, including medications, aim to improve symptoms but canât completely recover lost brain function.
Brain-Belly Connection: Gut Health May Influence Likelihood of Developing Alzheimerâs
Could changing your diet play a role in slowing or even preventing the development of dementia? Weâre one step closer to finding out, thanks to a new UNLV study that bolsters the long-suspected link between gut health and Alzheimerâs disease.
The analysis â led by a team of researchers with the Nevada Institute of Personalized Medicine (NIPM) at UNLV and published this spring in the Nature journal Scientific Reports â examined data from dozens of past studies into the belly-brain connection. The results? Thereâs a strong link between particular kinds of gut bacteria and Alzheimerâs disease.
UNLV study pinpoints 10 bacterial groups associated with Alzheimerâs disease, provides new insights into the relationship between gut makeup and dementia.
Machine learning model able to detect signs of Alzheimerâs across languages
The University of Alberta is 3rd in the world for AI research.
Researchers meet the challenge of developing a model that uses speech traits to detect cognitive decline, paving the way for a potential screening tool.
Researchers are striving to make earlier diagnosis of Alzheimerâs dementia possible with a machine learning (ML) model that could one day be turned into a simple screening tool anyone with a smartphone could use.
The model was able to distinguish Alzheimerâs patients from healthy controls with 70 to 75 per cent accuracy, a promising figure for the more than 747,000 Canadians who have Alzheimerâs or another form of dementia.
A machine learning model able to screen individuals with Alzheimerâs dementia from individuals without it by examining speech traits typically observed among people with the disease could one day become a tool that makes earlier diagnosis possible.
Omega-3 fatty acids may slow age related hearing loss
Hearing diminishes as we age â about 50% of adults 75 and over in the United States have disabling hearing loss.
Age-related hearing loss cannot currently be stopped.
Researchers from the University of Guelph and Tufts.
University/Fatty Acid Research Institute have found a link between increased omega-3 fatty acids in the blood and less age-related hearing issues.
As we age, it is not uncommon for the effectiveness of some of our sensesTrusted Source â including vision, hearing, and tasteTrusted Source â to decrease.
In fact, research shows the rate of hearing loss increases with ageTrusted Source. In the United States, about 25% of people ages 65 to 74 and almost half of adults aged 75 and⊠More.
Cells in confinement and people in crowds have similar behaviors
On a rush-hour train or a crowded flight, you might draw your limbs in close, shrinking as people fill the space. As it turns out, living cells behave similarly in confinement, adjusting their size while growing alongside other cells in sheets of tissue.
John Devany, then a graduate student in the lab of biophysicist Margaret Gardel, had been studying epithelial monolayersâsheets of cells that form barriers in skin and coat internal organsâwhen he noticed something interesting about how the cells were dividing.
âThe way people think about division is that a cell will grow to twice its size, divide, and repeat the cycle,â says Devany, the first author of the study, published in Developmental Cell. But in the epithelial tissue he was observing, division was proceeding as usual, but the daughter cells were ending up smaller than the mother. The team, collaborating with researchers from New York University, decided to investigate the mechanisms that control cell growth and cycle duration in tissue and discovered that the two processes are not directly coupled.
Way cells grow and multiplyânormally considered part of the same processâregulated separately, UChicago biophysicists find.
A motherâs diet can protect her grandchildrenâs brains: genetic model study
Mothers who eat apples and herbs in early pregnancy could be protecting the brain health of their children and grandchildren, a Monash University study using genetic models has found.
The discovery is part of a project that found a motherâs diet can affect not just her childâs brain but also those of her grandchildren.
Published in Nature CellBiology, the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute study found that certain foods could help protect against the deterioration of brain function.
More specifically, the study used roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans) as the genetic model because many of their genes are also found conserved in humans, allowing insights into human cells.
The researchers⊠More.
Apples and herbs in early pregnancy could protect your child and grandchildâs brain health, a study has found.
AI-powered brain implants restore touch and movement to paralysed man
In a world first, a quadriplegic man in the United States has regained touch and movement after surgeons successfully implanted microchips into his brain.
AI is then used to read, interpret and translate his thoughts into action.
Keith Thomas, 45, broke his neck in an accident and became paralysed from his chest down.
âFooling the nervous system to make it workâ
Dr Ashesh Mehta, the surgeon who performed Thomasâ brain surgery said the wiring in Thomasâ brain was âbrokenâ.
The surgical team had to rewire the pathways where electrical signals are sent between the brain, the body and the spinal cord.
Signaling Pathway Implicated in Inflammation and Functional Decline during Aging
Low-grade inflammation contributes to age-related decline and impairment, but the precise pathways responsible for this inflammation and their impact on natural aging have until now remained elusive.
A study headed by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) has now shown that a molecular signaling pathway known as cGAS/STING plays a critical role in driving chronic inflammation and functional decline during aging. Andrea Ablasser, PhD, and colleagues found that blocking the STING protein suppressed inflammatory responses in human senescent cells and tissues, and reduced aging-related inflammation in multiple peripheral organs and in the brain in mice.
The researchers in addition studied the effects of blocking the STING protein in aged mice. As expected by its central role in driving inflammation, inhibiting STING alleviated markers of inflammation both in the periphery and in the brain. âNotably, various aging-related immune signature genes were significantly attenuated as a result of STING inhibition,â they stated. And importantly, animals receiving STING inhibitors displayed significant enhancements in spatial and associative memory, as well as improved muscle strength and physical endurance.
âConsistently, STING inhibition by H-151, a brain permeable compound, reduced the levels of immune-related signature genes in the brains of aged mice,â the scientists pointed out. âTogether, these results establish STING as an important driver of aging-associated inflammation, both in the periphery and the CNS, promoting frailty and cognitive decline.â
The study advances our understanding of aging-related inflammation and also offers potential strategies for slowing cognitive deterioration in age-associated neurodegenerative conditions. The precise elucidation of the neuroimmune crosstalk governing microglial-dependent neurotoxicity also holds promise for the future study of neurodegenerative diseases. The team concluded, âTogether with previous studies in models of Alzheimerâs disease, Parkinsonâs disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia, and NiemanâPickâs disease, our study reveals notable convergence on cGASâSTING signaling in chronic neurodegenerative conditions ⊠Our findings establish the cGASâSTING pathway as a driver of aging-related inflammation in peripheral organs and the brain, and reveal blockade of cGASâSTING signaling as a potential strategy to halt neurodegenerative processes during old age.â
Research discovers key cause of restricted blood flow to the brain in vascular dementia
New research on mice has shed light on how high blood pressure causes changes to arteries in the brain, a process that leads to vascular dementia. The research, led by University of Manchester scientists, funded by the British Heart Foundation and published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, [1] has uncovered a route to developing the first ever drug treatments for vascular dementia that directly target a cause of the condition.
High blood pressure is the main cause of vascular dementia, a condition characterised by poor blood flow to the brain. The reduced blood supply starves brain cells of nutrients and over time they become damaged and die. Symptoms of vascular dementia include loss of energy, lack of concentration and poor memory.
Itâs normal for the brainâs arteries to narrow and widen in response to changes in blood pressure. However, consistently high blood pressure causes arteries to stay narrow and restrict the brainâs blood supply. Until now, it was not known why.