Researchers at SWC have mapped how the brain transforms sensations into action.
Read the story: https://sainsburywellcome.org/web/research-news/brain-wide-d…discovered.
Full paper in https://nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07908-w.
Continue reading “Brain-wide dynamics linking sensation to action during decision-making” »
Past neuroscience studies have consistently highlighted the profound changes that the human brain undergoes throughout childhood and adolescence. These efforts have uncovered various stages of development, during which the brain’s organization evolves to support increasingly complex cognitive functions, gradually shifting from a focus on somatosensory/motor and visual processing to more advanced mental capabilities.
These stages of brain development and their underlying neurobiological processes have been closely studied and are now relatively well-understood. In contrast, the contributions of specific functional networks (i.e., interconnected brain regions that collectively serve specific functions) to the brain’s maturation process remain poorly delineated.
Researchers at Yale University, National University of Singapore and Beijing Normal University carried out a study investigating the extent to which individual functional networks contribute to the maturation of the brain and the gradual acquisition of new cognitive abilities before adulthood.
Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurological disorders can be seen as “dirty brain” diseases, where the brain struggles to clear out harmful waste. Aging is a key risk factor because, as we grow older, our brain’s ability to remove toxic buildup slows down. However, new research in mice demonstrates that it’s possible to reverse age-related effects and restore the brain’s waste-clearing process.
“This research shows that restoring cervical lymph vessel function can substantially rescue the slower removal of waste from the brain associated with age,” says Douglas Kelley, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Rochester. “Moreover, this was accomplished with a drug already being used clinically, offering a potential treatment strategy.”
Kelley is one of the lead authors of the study, which appears in the journal Nature Aging, along with Maiken Nedergaard, codirector the University’s Center for Translational Neuromedicine. The study is one of many collaborations carried out by researchers at Rochester’s Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences and the Medical Center.
Researchers mapped changes in the brain’s architecture before, during and after propofol sedation, guided by functional magnetic resonance imaging, enabling them to monitor blood flow to areas of the brain during the (un)conscious state.
Also discussed is a comparison between analog computing and digital in the context of computational biology. In this video I am reading a recent discussion of my notes with Self Aware Networks.
In hospital operating rooms and intensive care units, propofol is a drug of choice, widely used to sedate patients for their comfort or render them fully unconscious for invasive…
Propofol works quickly and is tolerated well by most patients when administered by an anesthesiologist.
But what’s happening inside the brain when patients are put under and what does this reveal about consciousness itself?
Continue reading “How the brain’s inner chamber governs our state of consciousness” »
Every cell in our body contains the same DNA, yet liver cells are different from brain cells, and skin cells differ from muscle cells. What determines these differences? It all comes down to gene regulation; essentially how and when genes are turned on and off to meet the cell’s demands. But gene regulation is quite complex, especially because it is itself regulated by other parts of DNA.
Could buy patients more time to survive critical injuries and diseases, even when disaster strikes far from a hospital.
Donepezil, an FDA-approved drug to treat Alzheimer’s, has the potential to be repurposed for use in emergency situations to prevent irreversible organ injury, according to researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.
Using donepezil (DPN), researchers report that they were able to put tadpoles of Xenopus laevis frogs into a hibernation-like torpor.
(video 19min) What if everything you know about consciousness is wrong?
What if everything you know about consciousness is wrong? This video challenges the long-standing belief that the brain creates consciousness, revealing a bold new theory: the brain is not the creator but the *consumer*—a filter limiting your access to an infinite, boundless consciousness that exists beyond it. We’ll explore David Chalmers’ \.
The wave dimension is crucial. Without the time-binding wave of consciousness established by actual entities remembering their past instant(s), experiencing, choosing, and acting in their present instants, and anticipating and then passing their inheritance on to their future instant(s), it would not be possible to begin a sentence and then go on to complete it in a way that has meaning. It would not be possible to interact with ourselves or other people in a way that has meaning. We couldn’t begin, continue, and complete a meal. We would forget where we were and what we were doing. We couldn’t begin, continue, and complete a walk. We would forget where we were and what we were doing. We couldn’t undertake any complex task and remember what we were doing. We certainly couldn’t drive a car or even cross a street.
If we pay attention to our own consciousnesses closely, we find that, as each moment of our experience transpires, we take in sensations from outside in the world and inside in our bodies and then we layer feelings and thoughts and images on top of these sensations to form a moment of experience with some coherence and meaning. And this moment of experience passes its sensations and feelings and thoughts and images on to the next moment of experience with some relative coherence.
Now, with an untrained mind, our sensations and feelings and thoughts and images kind of jump around outside of our control. But with a relatively trained mind, we can focus in a way that allows us to maintain a constant stream of sensations and feelings and thoughts and images and choose what we want to focus that stream on in an expansion of our consciousnesses. That is the gift of mindfulness and meditation. Using Whitehead’s language, we can say that we can work to shift our mental prehensions to embrace a different and more powerful form or idea of what it is to be human.
