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Category: biological

Brain enzyme caught doing something unexpected—it builds polysialic acid on itself

A chance discovery at Nagoya University in Japan has shown that a well-known brain enzyme has a hidden ability: It builds a sugar chain on itself, becomes secreted from the cell and deactivates, then switches on outside the cell once the chain is removed. The finding, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, overturns a decades-old assumption about how polysialic acid, a sugar chain critical for brain development and function, is produced and shows a new way an enzyme can regulate its own activity.

The human brain is covered in sugar chains, or glycans, molecular structures that coat cells and regulate how they communicate. One of the most important is polysialic acid, a long chain found mainly in the brain.

Polysialic acid keeps brain cells from adhering too tightly to each other and binds to growth factors and neurotrophins to regulate the presentation of their receptors. Through this, it plays a key role in learning, memory and neural development. Importantly, these sugar chains change rapidly in response to brain activity. The ability to restore them quickly is thought to be essential for normal brain function.

Restless legs syndrome—zebrafish reveal a cerebellar connection

An irresistible urge to move the legs or other areas, often accompanied by unpleasant sensations at night or during rest: Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) affects millions of people worldwide. Despite being one of the most common sleep-related disorders, its biological causes remain poorly understood.

Researchers led by Professor Alex Schier at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel have discovered new clues about the underlying brain regions and mechanisms. Surprisingly, their findings come from an unlikely model organism: larval zebrafish.

“Studies in humans have implicated many different brain regions, but it remains unclear how they relate to RLS,” says Schier. “Our work highlights possible contributions from the cerebellum, a brain region crucial for coordinating movement.”

Diamond-based particle detector captures one-picosecond electron bursts for high-rate beam diagnostics

Physicists at UC Santa Cruz and other institutes across California and New Mexico have developed a detection system that will allow next-generation particle accelerators to better reveal fundamental biological and chemical processes, as well as advance critical areas such as materials science and energy research.

The Advanced Accelerator Diagnostics Collaboration, a group of two University of California campuses and three U.S. national laboratories, came together to solve a growing need for high-rate beam diagnostics. These accelerators will now jump from 120 pulses a second to 1 million pulses a second, straining current beam diagnostic systems. The results are now published in the journal Physical Review Accelerators and Beams.

“It really highlights the power of collaboration between universities and national laboratories,” said Bruce Schumm, the Long Family Professor of Experimental Physics. “If you took away Lawrence Berkeley Lab, if you took away Los Alamos, if you took away UC Davis, any of those, the whole thing would have fallen apart.”

How to train your magnet: Excitons as a new knob for magnetic control

Scientists can learn a lot about a quantum material by watching how it responds to light. In magnetic semiconductors, one especially useful messenger is the exciton: a pairing of a negatively charged electron and the positively charged “hole” it leaves behind. Until now, excitons in magnetic materials have mostly been used as reporters. They could reveal how spins were arranged or how magnetic waves moved through a material. But Cornell researchers have shown that excitons can do more than observe magnetism. They can actively steer it.

In the paper “Excitonic Spin Torque in a Magnetic Semiconductor,” published June 15 in Nature Materials, Youn Jue (Eunice) Bae, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, and colleagues report that excitons created by light can exert a spin torque in the two-dimensional magnetic semiconductor chromium sulfide bromide, or CrSBr. The finding establishes excitons as a new way to control magnetic motion with light.

“Excitons have been very useful for watching what spins are doing in magnetic materials,” Bae said. “What we show here is that excitons can also act back on the spins. They are not just spectators; they can help drive the magnetic motion.”

What AI Reveals About the Brain

Can AI become smarter than humans?

In this episode, I talk to Chris Summerfield about the frontier of artificial intelligence, neuroscience, LLMs, AI agents, memory, and superintelligence.

We discuss why models like ChatGPT and Claude can feel so human, why today’s AI still does not learn like the brain, and why continual learning may be one of the most important unsolved problems in AI. Chris explains how human memory works, why sleep matters for learning, and what AI research is teaching us about intelligence itself.

We also discuss the future of work, education, creativity, and whether AI could lead to a more human world — or a much stranger one.

Topics covered:
• ⁠ ⁠Artificial intelligence and the human brain.
• ⁠ ⁠⁠LLMs, ChatGPT, Claude and AI agents.
• ⁠ ⁠⁠AI memory and continual learning.
• ⁠ AI alignment, safety and misalignment.
• ⁠. Superintelligence and self-improving systems.
• ⁠ Hallucinations, reasoning and intelligence.
• ⁠. Education, jobs and the future of work.
• ⁠. Why AI may change how humans understand themselves.

TIMESTAMPS:

Continue reading “What AI Reveals About the Brain” | >

The First Brain Upload Just Made Simulation Theory Real

The first real brain upload just happened — and it might be the strongest evidence yet that simulation theory isn’t just philosophy anymore. A startup called Eon Systems copied a complete biological brain (139,255 neurons, 54 million synapses) into a physics simulation, and the digital fly started walking, grooming, and feeding on its own. No training. No AI. Just the copied wiring on a laptop.
We break down how they did it, why a billion euros in previous brain simulation projects failed, what Nick Bostrom’s simulation argument actually says, and why a fruit fly on a laptop just moved the needle on whether our own reality could be simulated. We also look hard at the limitations — this work is not yet peer reviewed — and what it would actually take to scale this to a human brain.

Eon Systems announcement: https://theinnermostloop.substack.com… model paper: Shiu et al. (2024) Nature 634 — https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158… FlyWire connectome paper: Dorkenwald et al. (2024) Nature 634 — https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158… #simulationtheory #brainupload #consciousness.
Brain model paper: Shiu et al. (2024) Nature 634 — https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158…
FlyWire connectome paper: Dorkenwald et al. (2024) Nature 634 — https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158…

#simulationtheory #brainupload #consciousness

Merging Humans and AI: The Rise of Biological Computers

It’s no secret that tech companies are racing to build “artificial general intelligence,” or AI that can match a human brain without needing a lifeline. But our brains already do the same heavy lifting with just a fraction of the resources. Whether it’s energy, water, land, components, or, you know… money… human brains are just way cheaper. Right now, you can either buy a human brain cell-based computer… or rent time on a remote one. Yep, even brainpower’s got a subscription plan these days. So what can these living computers actually do? How do they work? And, most importantly, should we be freaking out a little bit?

Watch how deep sea water is now drinkable • how deep sea water is now drinkable.

Video script and citations:
https://undecided.tech/how-living-com… my achieve energy security with solar guide: https://undecided.link/solar-guide Follow-up podcast: Video version — / @stilltbd Audio version — https://undecided.link/stilltbd-podcast Join the Undecided Discord server: https://undecided.link/discord 👋 Support Undecided on Patreon! / mattferrell ⚙️ Gear & Products I Like https://undecided.tech/shop/ Visit my Energysage Portal (US): Research solar panels, heat pumps, and more to get quotes for free! https://undecided.link/energysage For a curated solar buying experience (Canada) EnergyPal’s free personalized quotes: https://undecided.link/energypal 👉 Follow Me Mastodon https://mastodon.social/@mattferrell Instagram / undecidedtech Website https://undecided.tech Some music provided by Epidemic Sound https://undecided.link/epidemic I may earn a small commission for my endorsement or recommendation to products or services linked above, but I wouldn’t put them here if I didn’t like them. Your purchase helps support the channel and the videos I produce. Thank you. Chapters 00:00 — Intro 01:54 — Why? 05:29 — How? 09:17 — What? 15:59 — The Bigger Questions 17:28 — When?

Get my achieve energy security with solar guide:
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Follow-up podcast:
Video version — / @stilltbd.
Audio version — https://undecided.link/stilltbd-podcast.

Join the Undecided Discord server:
https://undecided.link/discord.

Beyond frozen snapshots, protein ‘breathing’ comes into view with combined imaging methods

Advances in structural biology have allowed scientists to determine molecular structures with atomic-level detail, sometimes yielding static snapshots that do not reflect the dynamism of proteins. However, these motions are often crucial for biological function. Researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), together with international collaborators, have now combined several methods to shed light on how proteins “breathe” and how some experimental techniques freeze their motion. The findings—which could boost protein design approaches and improve AI-based structural prediction tools—are published in Nature Chemistry.

Despite serving as structural biology’s central pillar for more than half a century, protein crystallography has yielded static molecular structures—like still frames from a video—far from the buzzing life inside cells.

“How much can these ‘frozen snapshots’ of protein structures really tell us about their true biological functions and bustling molecular environments?” asks Lea Becker, the study’s first author and a Ph.D. student in Professor Paul Schanda’s group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA).

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