Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers implanted 14 electrodes into the brains of volunteers with depression. One says it saved his life.

John’s life changed forever when he broke up with his girlfriend. The breakup sent him into a downward spiral, and led to his first depressive episode when he was 27 years old. “At first it’s just extreme sadness… then you start losing sleep,” says John (not his real name), who spoke on condition of anonymity. He developed crippling anxiety and experienced panic attacks and dark thoughts that eventually led him to attempt to end his own life.

Drugs didn’t work for John—he says he has tried pretty much every antidepressant, antipsychotic, and sedative out there.

One writer embarks upon the trip of a lifetime at Field Trip Health, a very particular kind of wellness clinic in Amsterdam, and recounts her experience of “macrodosing” psilocybin.

Individuals with long COVID, sometimes referred to as “long-haulers,” experience symptoms that may persist for weeks, months, or even years after their acute viral infection. While symptoms vary widely, a common complaint among patients is “brain fog”—a colloquial term for significant, persistent cognitive deficits, with consistent impairment of executive functioning and working memory.

Long-haulers may experience a lack of mental clarity, poor focus and concentration, memory problems, difficulty with multi-tasking, and more. Brain fog can be debilitating, but there currently are no treatment options that are approved for the condition.

While the number of patients they studied is too small for their results to be definitive, Yale researchers, using their extensive experience with two existing medications, have published initial evidence that those drugs, given together, can mitigate or even eliminate brain fog.

Summary: The integrity of cholinergic pathways may indicate very early changes in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Source: Karolinska Institute.

A new collaborative study from Karolinska Institutet, Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen (DZNE), and Czech Technical University suggests a novel imaging marker of brain connectivity might be a very early indicator of pathological changes in Alzheimer’s disease.

The brain of an octopus has some similarities to humans, and shows many signs of high intelligence.

Newton Howard, Director of the MIT Synthetic Intelligence Lab: http://www.techsylvania.co/speakers/newton-howard/

Check out the presentation on Slideshare: https://www.slideshare.net/techsylvania/newton-howard-mit

Neurotechnology and Brain-Computer Interfaces are advancing at a rapid pace and may soon be a life-changing technology for those with limited mobility and/or paralysis. There are already two brain implants, Blackrock Neurotech’s NeuroPort and Synchron’s Stentrode, that have been approved to start clinical trials under an Investigational Device Exemption. In this video, we compare these devices on the merits of safety, device specifications, and capability.

Thanks to Blackrock Neurotech for sponsoring this video. The opinions expressed in this video are that of The BCI Guys and should be taken as such.

Continue reading “Brain Implants are Here: Blackrock’s Neuroport & Synchron’s Stentrode” »

Summary: Researchers have identified a correlation between control energy consumption and glucose metabolism in temporal lobe epilepsy. The mechanism provides a biological basis for the application of network control theory in the study of brain dynamics.

Source: USTC

A team led by researcher He Xiaosong from the University of Science and Technology (USTC) revealed the correlation between control energy consumption and glucose metabolism in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), providing the biological basis for the application of network control theory (NCT) in the study of brain dynamics.

Year 2015 😗

The power of rats’ and monkeys’ brains has been pooled by wiring them up. If we could do the same with humans, it could allow non-verbal collaboration.