Lifeboat Foundation

A team of Rutgers undergraduates has shown that an experimental drug known as Yoda1 may help drain cranial waste plus neurotoxins that cause Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.

Rutgers study led by undergrads and gap-year students breaks ground in the field of neuroscience and suggests experimental medication could treat dementia.

René Descartes’ mind-body dualism—the view that the mind and body are different kinds of things—haunts cognitive science to this day.

[NEW POST] Most research on the role of gut microbiota in the gut-brain axis has focused on bacteria, while fungi living inside the gut have been overlooked. What do we know about the role of gut fungi in the communication between the gut and the brain?

Because brains are intricate and surgery is risky, scientists are seeking non-invasive methods like LILFUS – which use sound waves for brain issues.

Our brain is a sensitive organ.

Longstanding challenges in biomedical research such as monitoring brain chemistry and tracking the spread of drugs through the body require much smaller and more precise sensors. A new nanoscale sensor that can monitor areas 1,000 times smaller than current technology and can track subtle changes in the chemical content of biological tissue with sub-second resolution, greatly outperforming standard technologies.

The device, developed by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is silicon-based and takes advantage of techniques developed for microelectronics manufacturing. The small device size enables it to collect chemical content with close to 100% efficiency from highly localized regions of tissue in a fraction of a second. The capabilities of this new nanodialysis device are reported in the journal ACS Nano.

“With our nanodialysis device, we take an established technique and push it into a new extreme, making biomedical research problems that were impossible before quite feasible now,” said Yurii Vlasov, a U. of I. electrical & computer engineering professor and a co-lead of the study. “Moreover, since our devices are made on silicon using microelectronics fabrication techniques, they can be manufactured and deployed on large scales.”

Information closure theory of consciousness.

Shared with Dropbox.

Survival requires the selection of appropriate behaviour in response to threats, and dysregulated defensive reactions are associated with psychiatric illnesses such as post-traumatic stress and panic disorder.

Scientists have discovered a new neural pathway involved in how the brain encodes the transition to high-intensity fear response behaviors that are necessary for survival, according to a recent study published in Nature.

Jones Parker, Ph.D., assistant professor of Neuroscience, of Pharmacology and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, was a co-author of the study.

Continue reading “Scientists discover neural pathway that explains the escalation of fear responses” »

Autoimmune disease occurs from the body’s immune system attacking its healthy cells. Unfortunately, the mechanism that would normally prevent autoimmunity is not present in some individuals. T cells are the immune cell population responsible for killing or lysing invading pathogens. In the context of autoimmunity, T cells attack and lyse healthy cells. The thymus gland educates or prepares T cells to become activated and target foreign pathogens. T cells are exposed to different molecules and surface markers which further train these cells on how to respond when they come into contact with foreign markers. Autoimmune disorders are rare and can often be detected in children. However, there are limited treatment options, and a cure has not been found. Researchers are currently working to better treat autoimmune disorders and improve the quality of life in patients.

A recent article published in Nature, by a team led by Dr. Thomas Korn, reported a previously unknown mechanism underlying autoimmune disease. Korn is a Professor of Experimental Nueroimmunology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Principal Investigator at the Maximilian University of Munich (LMU). His lab focuses on T cell biology and the underlying mechanisms of autoimmune disorders. Korn and others demonstrated that another immune cell population, B cells, aid in T cell education in the thymus gland. Korn and others point out that B cells are part of T cell development and play a critical role in autoimmune disorder.

Researchers used both animal models and human tissue samples to conduct their research to investigate T cell development. The autoimmune disorder Korn and his team used as a model is known as neuromyelitis optica, which is similar to multiple sclerosis (MS). Researchers chose this specific model due to the well-known fact that T cells respond to the protein AQP4 in this autoimmune disorder. Interestingly, AQP4 is highly expressed in the nervous system, which becomes the target of autoimmunity. Researchers discovered that B cells also express AQP4, which present this protein to the T cells in the thymus. Interestingly, if the B cells did not express AQP4, then T cells would not become reactive to the surface protein and target healthy nervous system cells. Epithelial cells also expressed the AQP4 protein and resulted in the same autoimmune reaction. However, B cells were found to significantly impact T cell development compared to other cells in the thymus.

The maverick entrepreneur, known for embellishing the facts, provided no conclusive evidence as to the veracity of his claim.