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Category: neuroscience – Page 915

Common Genetic Link Between Autism and Tourette’s Discovered – Brain Communication Impaired

Lancaster University researchers have discovered, for the first time, how a genetic alteration that increases the risk of developing Autism and Tourette’s impacts on the brain.

Their research also suggests that ketamine, or related drugs, may be a useful treatment for both of these disorders.

Autism affects an estimated 2.8 million people in the UK while Tourette’s Syndrome — a condition that causes a person to make involuntary sounds and movements called tics –affects an estimated 300,000 people in the UK. The treatments available for both disorders are limited and new treatments are urgently required. Recent research has also shown that these disorders are genetically linked.

The neuroscience of isolation: A trip to Antarctica can shrink your brain

A striking new study has tracked the effects of extreme isolation on the brains of nine crew members who spent 14 months living on a remote research station in Antartica. The study presents some of the first evidence ever gathered to show how intense physical and social isolation can cause tangible structural changes in a person’s brain, revealing significant reductions in several different brain regions. Despite the small size of the study the conclusions echo years of research correlating solitary confinement and sensory deprivation with mental health issues, and suggest social isolation may fundamentally change the structure of a person’s brain.

The lonely brain

In 1969 Robert King was arrested and convicted for a robbery he maintained he did not commit. Three years later an inmate on King’s block was murdered. King was blamed for the murder, and despite his claims of innocence he was convicted of murder and sent to solitary confinement.

Key mystery about how the brain produces cognition is finally understood

Human behavior is often explained in terms of unseen entities such as motivation, curiosity, anxiety and confidence. What has been unclear is whether these mental entities are coded by specific neurons in specific areas of the brain.

Professor Adam Kepecs at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has answered some of these questions in new research published in Nature. The findings could lead to the development of more effective treatments for , compulsive gambling and other psychiatric disorders.

The team studied the , an area critical for decision-making in humans and animals alike. Damage to this region impairs decision-making. In a famous example, Phineas Gage, a railway worker, survived extreme damage to this area when an iron rod pierced his skull in an explosion. Gage survived but his personality and decision-making skills didn’t.

Does a Breached Blood-Brain Barrier Cause Seizures in AD?

In back-to-back papers in the December 4 Science Translational Medicine, scientists led by Daniela Kaufer, University of California, Berkeley, and Alon Friedman, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel, report that age-related cracks in the blood-brain barrier allow an influx of serum protein albumin into the brain, where they activate TGFβ receptors, overexcite neuronal networks, and impair cognition. Breaches correlated with localized slowing of cortical activity in epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease patients, and in mouse models of AD. Called paroxysmal slow-wave events, these activity changes correlated with cognitive impairment and interspersed with seizures in epilepsy patients.

Internal brain timers linked with motivation and behavior

Time can be measured in many ways: a watch, a sundial, or the body’s natural circadian rhythms. But what about the sexual behavior of a fruit fly?

“If you ask a bunch of scientists whether animals can keep time, many would say they cannot, that things happen over time—but time itself is not measured,” says Michael Crickmore, Ph.D., a researcher in Boston Children’s Hospital’s F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center whose laboratory studies motivation. But in new research published in the journal Neuron in collaboration with the lab of Dragana Rogulja, Ph.D. at Harvard Medical School, he shows that the mating of fruit flies is not haphazard. Instead, motivation and behavior are under the control of that track time.

Crickmore uses the mating drive in to study how motivations are produced by the brain.

Antivirals for the Gut? Study Points To Potential New Gut (and Brain) Treatment

A Gulf War Illness study finds a connection between dysregulated gut flora, leaky gut and neuroinflammation – and a new way to potentially resolve it.

It’s nice when the government has your back. After years of neglect, the federal government finally appears, at least regarding medical research, to have Gulf War Illness (GWI) veterans’ backs.

From mind control, brainwashing and monsters — theories claim Stranger Things happened in REAL LIFE in a secret government project

In my humble opinion, this was very real but is still based on science. But quantum mechanics would democratize this technology rather than needing a human interface. I think in the right hands and doing good it comes essentially do so much even materializing water or food endlessly using psionic abilities. Really quantum mechanics could lead to even materializing a cup of coffee from a computer. This is probably the most groundbreaking knowledge because quantum mechanics can prove that this is real. There are still ethical problems with this technology but the possibilities make this essentially a cheaper form of a replicator than essentially a Higgs boson one may be using a lot less energy. If it was fully understood it could allow for real psionic abilities for everyone maybe using a device perhaps even with a limiter for safety or even air-gapped so it is just on a smartphone. One day you could essentially just press a button on a smartphone and a cup of coffee would materialize or your favorite beverage, not just a uber or teleportation but essentially real materializing which some say that has been used possibly since the founding of the planet earth based on mythology seen from all over the planet earth.

SPINE-chilling stories about the sinister goings-on at Camp Hero air force base in Montauk have long been the stuff of local legend.

Since the Seventies, tall tales have surrounded the derelict facility in Long Island, New York.

Most concern the US Government’s top secret Montauk Project — which, so the stories go, involved kidnapped kids, mind-control experiments, time travel, psychic brainwashing, aliens and a petrifying, other-worldly beast.

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