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Category: neuroscience

Portable light-based brain monitor shows promise for dementia diagnosis

Early and accurate diagnosis of dementia remains a major challenge. Standard approaches such as MRI and PET scans can provide valuable information about brain structure and function, but they are expensive, not always accessible, and often too expensive for repeated use.

A team of researchers in the UK has now demonstrated that a compact, noninvasive technology—broadband (bNIRS)—may offer a new way to detect brain changes linked to Alzheimer’s disease, even in the early stages.

In this pilot study reported in the Journal of Biomedical Optics, scientists used bNIRS to monitor both blood oxygenation and brain metabolism in response to .

In quantum sensing, what beats beating noise? Meeting noise halfway

Noise is annoying, whether you’re trying to sleep or exploit the laws of quantum physics. Although noise from environmental disturbances will always be with us, a team including scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) may have found a new way of dealing with it at the microscopic scales where quantum physics reigns. Addressing this noise could make possible the best sensors ever made, with applications ranging from health care to mineral exploration.

By taking advantage of quantum phenomena known as superposition and entanglement, researchers can measure subtle changes in the environment useful for everything from geology to GPS. But to do this, they must be able to see through the caused by environmental sources such as stray magnetic fields to detect, for example, an important signal from the brain.

New findings, detailed today in Physical Review Letters, would enable interlinked groups of quantum objects such as atoms to better sense the environment in the presence of noise. A horde of unlinked quantum objects can already outperform a conventional sensor. Linking them through the process of quantum entanglement can make them perform better still. However, entangling the group can make it vulnerable to environmental noise that causes errors, making the group lose its additional sensing advantage.

Ultra-Bright and —Stable Red and Near-Infrared Squaraine Fluorophores for In Vivo Two-Photon Imaging

Fluorescent dyes that are bright, stable, small, and biocompatible are needed for high-sensitivity two-photon imaging, but the combination of these traits has been elusive. We identified a class of squaraine derivatives with large two-photon action cross-sections (up to 10,000 GM) at near-infrared wavelengths critical for in vivo imaging. We demonstrate the biocompatibility and stability of a red-emitting squaraine-rotaxane (SeTau-647) by imaging dye-filled neurons in vivo over 5 days, and utility for sensitive subcellular imaging by synthesizing a specific peptide-conjugate label for the synaptic protein PSD-95.

How early brain structure primes itself to learn efficiently

Vision happens when patterns of light entering the eye are converted into reliable patterns of brain activity. This reliability allows the brain to recognize the same object each time it is seen. Our brains, however, are not born with this ability; instead, we develop it through visual experience. Collaborating scientists at MPFI and the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies have recently discovered key circuit changes that lead to the maturation of reliable brain activity patterns.

Their findings, published in Neuron this week, are likely generalizable beyond vision, providing a framework to understand the brain’s unique ability to adapt and learn quickly during the earliest stages of development.

The brain is a highly organized structure. Like other , visual areas have structure to them, which scientists call modules. This modular organization consists of patches of neurons that activate together in response to specific information. For example, some patches of neurons activate together in response to seeing vertical stripes, while other patches activate when horizontal stripes are seen.

Alleviating head-mounted weight burden for neural imaging in freely-behaving rodents

Liu et al. present a remarkably simple yet clever method of mitigating the effects of head-mounted microscopes on mouse behavior: they tethered a helium balloon to the microscope device to counter its weight! A fun and useful engineering solution!

Link to article.

Scientific Reports — Alleviating head-mounted weight burden for neural imaging in freely-behaving rodents. Sci Rep 15, 19175 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-04300-0

Study finds cell memory can be more like a dimmer dial than an on/off switch

When cells are healthy, we don’t expect them to suddenly change cell types. A skin cell on your hand won’t naturally morph into a brain cell, and vice versa. That’s thanks to epigenetic memory, which enables the expression of various genes to “lock in” throughout a cell’s lifetime. Failure of this memory can lead to diseases, such as cancer.

Traditionally, scientists have thought that epigenetic memory locks genes either “on” or “off” — either fully activated or fully repressed, like a permanent Lite-Brite pattern. But MIT engineers have found that the picture has many more shades.

In a new study appearing today in Cell Genomics, the team reports that a cell’s memory is set not by on/off switching but through a more graded, dimmer-like dial of gene expression.

The universe’s first magnetic fields were ‘comparable’ to the human brain — and still linger within the ‘cosmic web’

New computer simulations suggest the first magnetic fields that emerged after the Big Bang were much weaker than expected — containing the equivalent magnetic energy of a human brain.

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