Lifeboat Foundation

You just go to the Planet of the Apes immediately.

Cell-by-cell genetic analyses of developing brain tissues in neonatal mice and laboratory models of brain cancer allowed scientists to discover a molecular driver of the highly aggressive, deadly, and treatment-resistant brain cancer, glioblastoma.

Published findings in Cell Stem Cell describe how the single-cell analyses identified a subpopulation of cells critical to glioblastoma formation—the early primitive progenitor cells of oligodendrocyte brain cells, pri-OPC progenitors, according to Q. Richard Lu, Ph.D., lead investigator and Scientific Director of the Brain Tumor Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

The data suggest that reprogramming of primitive oligodendrocyte progenitors into a stem-like state plays an important role in glioma initiation and progression. The researchers’ primary molecular target in the study, a protein called Zfp36l1, launches biological programs that mirror those of healthy early brain development in the mice, but instead help fuel brain cancer growth. The discovery presents an opportunity to find out if new therapeutic approaches can stop glioblastoma at its earliest stages of initial formation or recurrence, Lu said.

Continue reading “Shutting down deadly pediatric brain cancer at its earliest moments” »

Researchers have identified ketamine-induced brain-related changes that are responsible for maintaining the remission of behaviors related to depression in mice—findings that may help researchers develop interventions that promote lasting remission of depression in humans. The study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health, appears in the journal Science.

Major depression is one of the most common mental disorders in the United States, with approximately 17.3 million adults experienced a major depressive episode in 2017. However, many of the neural changes underlying the transitions between active depression, remission, and depression re-occurrence remain unknown. Ketamine, a fast-acting antidepressant which relieves depressive symptoms in hours instead of weeks or longer, provides an opportunity for researchers to investigate the short- and long-term biological changes underlying these transitions.

“Ketamine is a potentially transformative treatment for depression, but one of the major challenges associated with this drug is sustaining recovery after the initial treatment,” said study author Conor Liston, M.D., Ph.D., of Weill Cornell Medicine, New York City.

Continue reading “Ketamine reverses neural changes underlying depression-related behaviors in mice” »

A team of scientists recently revealed they’d successfully conducted experiments on hundreds of pigs that involved keeping their brains alive for up to 36 hours after the animals had been decapitated.

Maybe Sergio Canavero, the mad scientist who wants to perform a brain transplant on a human, isn’t so crazy after all.

Scientists have identified special types of brain cells that may allow us to simulate the decision-making processes of others, thereby reconstructing their state of mind and predicting their intentions. Dysfunction in these ‘simulation neurons’ may help explain difficulties with social interactions in conditions such as autism and social anxiety.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge identified the previously-unknown neuron type, which they say actively and spontaneously simulates mental decision processes when social partners learn from one another.

The study, published today in Cell, suggests that these newly-termed ‘simulation neurons’ — found in the amygdala, a collection of nerve cells in the temporal lobe of the brain — allow animals (and potentially also humans) to reconstruct their social partner’s state of mind and thereby predict their intentions.

Continue reading “‘Mindreading’ neurons simulate decisions of social partners” »

Stimulating the brains of elderly people with electrical currents allowed them to perform just as well on a memory test as people in their 20s — a sign that researchers may have found a noninvasive way to turn back the hands of time when it comes to human memory.

“It’s opening up a whole new avenue of potential research and treatment options,” researcher Rob Reinhart said in a press release regarding the study, “and we’re super excited about it.”

Scientists say they’ve developed a new “quantum material” that could one day transfer information directly from human brains to a computer.

The research is in early stages, but it invokes ideas like uploading brains to the cloud or hooking people up to a computer to track deep health metrics — concepts that until now existed solely in science fiction.

‘’Examining how deep disagreements arise will demonstrate the gravity of the issue. Why do we disagree with valid, knowable facts when we all live in the same world, we have roughly the same cognitive abilities and, in the Western world at least, most people have fairly easy access to roughly the same information?

What happens when you can’t agree on the facts?

Researchers may be closing in on a way to check athletes while they’re alive for signs of a degenerative brain disease that’s been linked to frequent head blows. Experimental scans found higher levels of an abnormal protein tied to the disease in a study of former National Football League players who were having mood and thinking problems.

It’s the first time a major study has tested these scans for detecting chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, which is only diagnosed now after death, with brain autopsies.

Doctors are searching for a way to tell when players, veterans or others with concussions or other head injuries are at risk for permanent damage. It’s too soon to know if the scans will enable that — so far they only show that these athletes are different as a group; they can’t be used to say a particular player does or does not have CTE.

Continue reading “Brain scans may reveal concussion damage in living athletes” »