Summary: Researchers report an anti malaria drug has helped improve length and quality of life for a 26 year old brain cancer patient.
Source: University of Colorado.
Continue reading “Malaria Drug Successfully Treats 26 Year Old Brain Cancer Patient” »
Pretty wild.
Researchers of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) have found that “alpha-synuclein,” a protein involved in a series of neurological disorders including Parkinson’s disease, is capable of travelling from brain to stomach and that it does so following a specific pathway. Donato Di Monte and co-workers report on this in the journal Acta Neuropathologica. Their study, carried out in rats, sheds new light on pathological processes that could underlie disease progression in humans.
Alpha-synuclein occurs naturally in the nervous system, where it plays an important role in synaptic function. However, in Parkinson’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies and other neurodegenerative diseases termed “synucleinopathies,” this protein is accumulated within neurons, forming pathological aggregates. Distinct areas of the brain become progressively affected by this condition. The specific mechanisms and pathways involved in this widespread distribution of alpha-synuclein pathology remain to be fully elucidated. Clinical and experimental evidence suggests however that alpha-synuclein — or abnormal forms of it — could “jump” from one neuron to another and thus spread between anatomically interconnected regions.
Continue reading “Protein Associated With Parkinson’s Travels From Brain To Gut” »
Hmmm; you have a 2nd brain inside your stomach. At least this new research is pointing to that.
Gut feelings influence your mood and well-being.
Continue reading “The Pit In Your Stomach is Actually Your Second Brain” »
Nice.
In research that could one day lead to advances against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, University of Michigan engineering researchers have demonstrated a technique for precisely measuring the properties of individual protein molecules floating in a liquid.
Proteins are essential to the function of every cell. Measuring their properties in blood and other body fluids could unlock valuable information, as the molecules are a vital building block in the body. The body manufactures them in a variety of complex shapes that can transmit messages between cells, carry oxygen and perform other important functions.
Exercise is one of the best ways to slow down aging and its free too!
(Boston) — Older adults who experience good cardiac fitness may be also keeping their brains in good shape as well.
In what is believed to be the first study of its kind, older adults who scored high on cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) tests performed better on memory tasks than those who had low CRF. Further, the more fit older adults were, the more active their brain was during learning. These findings appear in the journal Cortex. Difficulty remembering new information represents one of the most common complaints in aging and decreased memory performance is one of the hallmark impairments in Alzheimer’s disease.
Continue reading “Older, fitter adults experience greater brain activity while learning” »
Many who worked closely with me at Microsoft use to say I had a Crystal ball and was psychic; maybe I have met my match for a career — LOL.
A number of job adverts suggest that Facebook is taking social networking to a different level of science fiction.
The social networking giant has advertised for a Haptics Engineer, a Neural Imaging Engineer, a Signal Processing Engineer and a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) Engineer – leading people to think Facebook is working on mind reading technology.
Continue reading “Could you recruit a ‘mind reader’ for Facebook?” »
But, the larger question remains as to how these individual dendrites and neuron outputs are used by the circuit and the brain as a whole. These findings are considerably different than sequences needing a group of neurons working in order and in a circuit. Even more unusual is the fact that (even young childrens’) brains are able to analyze and respond to information that is, in fact, so complex that the most advanced super computers cannot. Can individual cells do this as well?
Another new set of research shows that in a monkey brain, these responses of individual neurons are correlated somewhat with the final decision of the animal. This research used very limited visual information and showed that the final decisions of the animal using billions of neurons was perhaps relevant even to this small amount of information input given to individual cells.
It could be that the local neuron responded to the decision that was made by the larger circuits and brain. But, it doesn’t answer the question as to how the individual neuron relates to the brain.
Liviu Babitz is not content waiting around for evolution to improve upon his human form. Like other transhumanists, Babitz believes that science and technology can take a person’s intelligence, physical performance and psychological state to the next level, all in less than the span of a single lifetime.
To that end, he helped develop North Sense, a small silicone gadget that detects magnetic north. This is not a GPS device, nor a tracker. It’s not even connected to the Internet nor any other network. This is a new sensory organ designed to be pierced to a person’s body and vibrate each time the wearer faces magnetic north.
The idea is that over time, the brain will assimilate the vibration into the everyday human experience, enhancing it. That will open a person up to a world that exists beyond his or her own current capabilities.
Continue reading “Body-Pierced Gadget Turns You Into a Human Compass” »
A new way to treat brain cancer with our own immune cells.
Injecting genetically modified immune cells directly into the brain and spinal fluid has had remarkable effects on a deadly brain cancer
Glioblastoma is a particularly virulent form of brain cancer. Around 20,000 people in the United States are diagnosed each year and the disease typically has poor survival rates. In a new case reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, a man has undergone experimental CAR-T therapy to treat the condition. CAR-T therapy is a branch of immunotherapy, the field taking cancer treatment by storm, and involves infusing genetically modified T cells back into a patient to target cancer cells.
Continue reading “A Direct Infusion Of Immune Cells Could Fight Cancer” »
