Lifeboat Foundation

Alzheimer’s gene is neutralised in human brain cells for the first time.

Just two copies of this gene can increase your risk 12-fold.

Have you ever questioned someone’s state of mind or reminded someone that it pays to be mindful? Maybe you’ve told someone that they needed to be more open-minded? Or perhaps you’ve felt like you need to find some peace of mind for yourself.

But have you ever wondered what exactly a mind is?

If you try, it’s quite difficult to define the concept. It is the center and stronghold of your being, the basis of your consciousness and without it can you even be considered to be truly alive? I have wondered many times about what and where it is.

S cientists have claimed an important breakthrough in the battle against Alzheimer’s after neutralising the most significant gene responsible for the disease for the first time.

A team in California successfully identified the protein associated with the high-risk apoE4 gene and then manage to prevent it damaging human neuron cells.

The study could open the door to a potential new drug capable of halting the disease, however the researchers have urged caution because so far their compound has only been tried on collections of cells in a laboratory.

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Scientists tested a brain implant that replicates short-term recall in patients with memory loss. It may have actually worked.

Dreams are so strange and carry so much significance to us that we often feel the need to tell people about our nocturnal adventures, sometimes at tedious length.

But if you understand what goes on inside the brain as dreams take their course, they start to make a lot more sense. And dreams are much more important than you might think.

Here are some common questions answered about the nighttime hallucinations we call dreams.

Continue reading “Science Is Getting Closer to Understanding What Goes on Inside The Mind When We Dream” »

Will open avenues for drug discovery

Scientists have developed a new blood test for Alzheimer’s disease that can detect early indicators of the disease long before the first symptoms appear in patients. The blood test would thus open the door to new avenues in drug discovery, said the researchers from Ruhr University Bochum in Germany.

The blood test uses a technology called immuno-infrared sensor to measure distribution of pathological and healthy structures of amyloid-beta, according to a study published in the Molecular Cell. The pathological amyloid-beta structure is rich in a sticky, sheet-like folding pattern that makes it prone to aggregation, while the healthy structure is not.

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A technique based on genetic bar codes can easily map the connections of individual brain cells in unprecedented numbers. Unexpected complexity in the visual system is only the first secret it has revealed.

Cryonics pioneer Linda Chamberlain could become a virtually immortal superwoman, but she must choose how: There’s more than one way.

A company called Nectome is developing a technology designed to preserve the brain so the human mind can be uploaded to supercomputers in the future.

A study suggests problems with mental ability and memory with old age are not down to neuron loss, but rather a failure of cells to communicate with each other.