Lifeboat Foundation

Study shows kidney and nerve tissue cells learn and make memories in ways similar to neurons.

We all want to ‘age successfully’ with as few health issues as possible. A new study suggests getting more than seven hours of sleep a night could go a long way to achieving that goal.

The study involved 3,306 participants aged 45 and over, whose sleep habits were recorded in 2011, 2013, and 2015, followed by a health check five years later. The data, analyzed by a team from Wenzhou Medical University in China, showed that those who bank at least seven hours of sleep a night tend to have significantly better health later in life.

“Successful aging was evaluated in 2020 and was defined as being free of major chronic diseases, no physical impairment, high cognitive function, good mental health, and active engagement with life,” write the researchers in their published paper.

Novel magnetic nanodiscs could provide a much less invasive way of stimulating parts of the brain, paving the way for stimulation therapies without implants or genetic modification, MIT researchers report.

The scientists envision that the tiny discs, which are about 250 nanometers across (about 1/500 the width of a human hair), would be injected directly into the desired location in the brain. From there, they could be activated at any time simply by applying a magnetic field outside the body. The new particles could quickly find applications in biomedical research, and eventually, after sufficient testing, might be applied to clinical uses.

The development of these nanoparticles is described in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, in a paper by Polina Anikeeva, a professor in MIT’s departments of Materials Science and Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences, graduate student Ye Ji Kim, and 17 others at MIT and in Germany.

A mysterious electromagnetic mechanism may be more important than the firing of neurons in our brains to explain our awareness.

By Tamlyn Hunt

The neuron, the specialized cell type that makes up much of our brains, is at the center of today’s neuroscience. Neuroscientists explain perception, memory, cognition and even consciousness itself as products of billions of these tiny neurons busily firing their tiny “spikes” of voltage inside our brain.

In addition to lowering your cholesterol, keeping your brain healthy and improving mental health, new research from the University of Georgia suggests omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids may help ward off a variety of cancers.

The study relied on data from more than 250,000 people and found that higher…

But most Americans probably aren’t eating enough of these foods to reach the recommended amounts.

Continue reading “Fish oil supplements may protect against cancer” »

Nanomagnets keep a history of their states and can be trained in a few hours.

Jungfleisch uses nanomagnets to store and transmit information and achieves it in a more energy-efficient manner as compared to electrons.

The risk of getting dementia may go up as you get older if you don’t get enough slow-wave sleep. Over-60s are 27 percent more likely to develop dementia if they lose just 1 percent of this deep sleep each year, a 2023 study found.

Slow-wave sleep is the third stage of a human 90-minute sleep cycle, lasting about 20–40 minutes. It’s the most restful stage, where brain waves and heart rate slow and blood pressure drops.

Deep sleep strengthens our muscles, bones, and immune system, and prepares our brains to absorb more information. Recently, research discovered that individuals with Alzheimer’s-related changes in their brain did better on memory tests when they got more slow-wave sleep.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, the research team identified 24 networks with different functions,…

MIT researchers created the most comprehensive map yet of the functions of the brain’s cerebral cortex. Using fMRI, the team identified 24 networks with different functions, which include processing language, social interactions, visual features, and other sensory input.

A published today https://nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08145-x reveals brain cells can form a coordinate system for our behaviours.

Mice generalize complex task structures by using neurons in the medial frontal cortex that encode progress to task goals and embed behavioural sequences.