Memories of significant learning experiences—like the first time a driver gets a speeding ticket—are sharp, compared to the recollection of everyday events—like what someone ate for dinner two weeks ago. That’s because the human brain is primed to learn from helpful associations.
Carnegie Mellon University researchers have identified specific neural connections that are especially sensitive to this process of learning about causality. The discovery, while seemingly intuitive, could have widespread implications for understanding how humans learn and inform new ways to address learning challenges.
“If you look out the window and see dark clouds, you know that it’s going to rain and that you’ll need an umbrella,” said Eunsol Park, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, a joint program between Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh.
The widespread prevalence of plastics and in particular, microplastics (MPs) raises concerns about their potential toxic effects. MPs, defined as particles smaller than 5 mm, are distributed throughout ecosystem and can enter the human body through the food chain. There is a lack of knowledge regarding MP potential harmful effects on the mammal’s body, especially the brain. This study aimed to examine the impact of low-density polyethylene (LDPE) MPs (< 30 μm) on blood–brain barrier (BBB) integrity, oxidative stress, and neuronal health. Male rats were exposed to LDPE MPs via oral administration for 3 and 6 weeks. The results revealed no significant changes in brain water content across groups. However, BBB integrity was significantly compromised after both 3 and 6 weeks of exposure. Oxidative stress increased in MP-treated groups, evidenced by decreased superoxide dismutase (SOD) levels and elevated malondialdehyde (MDA). Additionally, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels significantly declined in the 6-week group. Histological analysis indicated neuronal damage and death in both treatment durations. These findings demonstrate that chronic exposure to LDPE MPs impairs BBB integrity, increases oxidative stress, and induces neuronal damage in rats. The results highlight the neurotoxic potential of MPs and emphasize the need for further research to address their possible health risks.
Chinese researchers have made significant progress in developing flexible invasive brain-computer interface implants, creating a stiffness-tunable “Neurotentacle” probe that can reduce implantation damage by 74 percent, Science and Technology Daily reported Tuesday.
The “Neurotentacle” probe developed by researchers at the Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), contains a tiny hydraulic system. During the implantation, the hydraulically actuated “Neurotentacle” probe stiffens like an inflated balloon to precisely penetrate brain tissue. Once it is in place, it softens afterward to minimize damage and returns to a flexible state to adapt to the brain’s microenvironment, said the report.
The findings were published online in the international journal Advanced Science on July 21.
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Quantum theory is very strange. No act is wholly sure. Everything works by probabilities, described by a wave function. But what is a wavefunction? One theory is that every possibility is in fact a real world of sorts. This is the Many Worlds interpretation of Hugh Everett and what it claims boggles the brain. You can’t imagine how many worlds there would be.
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David Elieser Deutsch, FRS is a British physicist at the University of Oxford. He is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation (CQC) in the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford.
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Aging is particularly harsh on the hippocampus, the brain region responsible for learning and memory.
Now, researchers at UC San Francisco have identified a protein that’s at the center of this decline.
They looked at how the genes and proteins in the hippocampus changed over time in mice and found just one protein that differed between old and young animals. It’s called FTL1. Old mice had more FTL1, as well as fewer connections between brain cells in the hippocampus and diminished cognitive abilities.
Scientists discover a protein that gets concentrated in the brain during aging, leading brain connections to wither and cognitive decline to accelerate — and a way to counter its effects.
For much of the 20th century it was thought that the adult brain was incapable of regeneration. This view has since shifted dramatically and neurogenesis—the birth of new neurons—is now a widely accepted phenomenon in the adult brain, offering promising avenues for treating many neurological conditions.
One of the main challenges in the field has been identifying neural stem and progenitor cells (NPCs) responsible for generating these new neurons. NPCs are rare, diverse and difficult to isolate from other brain cells due to overlapping molecular signatures. As a result, understanding their biology—and particularly their role in human brain disorders—has remained elusive.
In a study published in Stem Cell Reports, a team led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute (Duncan NRI) at Texas Children’s Hospital reveals specific genes that define NPCs.
Flies too need their sleep. In order to be able to react to dangers, however, they must not completely phase out the environment. Researchers at Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin have now deciphered how the animal’s brain produces this state. As they describe in the journal Nature, the fly brain filters out visual information rhythmically during sleep—so that strong visual stimuli can still wake the animal.
Periods of rest and sleep are vital—presumably for all animals.
“Sleep is essential for physical regeneration, and in humans and many animals it is also fundamental for memory formation,” explains Prof. David Owald, a scientist at Charité’s Institute of Neurophysiology and leader of the recently published study. It was previously unclear how an organism reduces its response to stimuli sufficiently to be able to regenerate, while still remaining alert enough to respond to external dangers.