Lifeboat Foundation

Transforming the microbial environment in the guts of children diagnosed with autism could significantly ease the severity of their condition’s signature traits, according to newly published research.

A study on the effects of a form of faecal transplant therapy in children on the autism spectrum found participants not only experienced fewer gut problems, but continued to show ongoing improvements in autism symptoms two years after the procedure.

Arizona State University researchers had already discovered a dose of healthy gut microflora caused characteristics associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to ease or vanish for at least a couple of months after treatment ended.

Continue reading “Radical Fecal Transplant Therapy in Kids Has Reduced Their Autism Severity” »

But not everyone is on board.

“The use of transgenic monkeys to study human genes linked to brain evolution is a very risky road to take,” University of Colorado geneticist James Sikela told the MIT Technology Review. “It is a classic slippery slope issue and one that we can expect to recur as this type of research is pursued.”

Pinpointing the gene’s role in intelligence could help scientists understand how humans evolved to be so smart, MIT Tech reports.

Continue reading “Chinese Scientists Gene-Hacked Super Smart Human-Monkey Hybrids” »

In a stunning piece of research, Stanford neuroscientists have hunted down a single gene that encodes a protein responsible for age-related cognitive losses, targeted it with special blocking antibodies, and shown in mice that these antibodies can rejuvenate old brains to work as well as young ones.

A team of Stanford researchers led by Professor Wyss-Coray set out to find out which genes were linked to age-related cognitive decline. Not only did the researchers find the culprit, they were able to reverse cognitive decline and rejuvenate aged mouse brains.

Searching for the cause of cognitive decline

Microglia are immune cells that reside in the brain and spinal cord. These cells mediate immune responses in the central nervous system and act like other macrophages, clearing cellular debris and dead neurons from nervous tissue through the process of phagocytosis (cell eating).

Continue reading “Reversing Cognitive Decline” »

A permanent neural implant that reads brain activity and churns out text could prove to be a valuable medical tool, but it also could provide doctors with an unprecedented 24/7 stream of neural data.

Oxley recognizes that an endless feed of brain activity could be invaluable to medical researchers, but he doesn’t have plans to tap into that yet.

“[The Stentrode is] going to show us information that we hadn’t had before. Whether that helps us understand other things is not what we’re trying to do here,” he said, clarifying that Synchron’s primary goal is to get the new brain-computer interface working so that it can help paralyzed patients. “This is a novel data set, but this raises questions around privacy and security. That’s the patient’s data, and we can’t be mining that.”

Continue reading “This Neural Implant Accesses Your Brain Through the Jugular Vein” »

The memory of older people has been returned to the state of someone in their 20s for the first time by applying electrical stimulation to the brain to reconnect faulty circuits.

Scientists at Boston University in the US have proven it is possible to restore working memory by ‘recoupling’ areas of the brain which have become out-of-sync as people grow older.

Short-term working memory is crucial for everyday life, storing information for around 10 — 15 seconds to allow problem solving, reasoning, planning and decision making, allowing someone, for example, to keep a telephone number in mind while writing it down.

Continue reading “Memory of older people returned to state of someone in their 20s” »

Consciousness.

“Why are we impatient? It’s a heritage from our evolution,” says Marc Wittmann, a psychologist at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg, Germany. Impatience made sure we didn’t die from spending too long on a single unrewarding activity. It gave us the impulse to act.

Not long ago I diagnosed myself with the recently identified condition of sidewalk rage. It’s most pronounced when it comes to a certain friend who is a slow walker. Last month, as we sashayed our way to dinner, I found myself biting my tongue, thinking, I have to stop going places with her if I ever want to … get there!

You too can measure yourself on the “Pedestrian Aggressiveness Syndrome Scale,” a tool developed by University of Hawaii psychologist Leon James. While walking in a crowd, do you find yourself “acting in a hostile manner (staring, presenting a mean face, moving closer or faster than expected)” and “enjoying thoughts of violence?”

Continue reading “Why Your Brain Hates Slowpokes” »

A revolutionary 60-minute therapy for high blood pressure could allow patients to throw their tablets away for good.

The unlikely remedy involves blasting nerves in the kidneys with sound waves to stop them sending signals to the brain that drive up blood pressure.

Continue reading “How a blast to the kidney could end high blood pressure for good” »