Lifeboat Foundation

Recently, economists and behavioral scientists have studied the pattern of human well-being over the lifespan. In dozens of countries, and for a large range of well-being measures, including happiness and mental health, well-being is high in youth, falls to a nadir in midlife, and rises again in old age. The reasons for this U-shape are still unclear. Present theories emphasize sociological and economic forces. In this study we show that a similar U-shape exists in 508 great apes (two samples of chimpanzees and one sample of orangutans) whose well-being was assessed by raters familiar with the individual apes. This U-shaped pattern or “midlife crisis” emerges with or without use of parametric methods. Our results imply that human well-being’s curved shape is not uniquely human and that, although it may be partly explained by aspects of human life and society, its origins may lie partly in the biology we share with great apes. These findings have implications across scientific and social-scientific disciplines, and may help to identify ways of enhancing human and ape well-being.

Imagine brain scanning technology improves greatly in the coming decades, to the point that we can observe how each individual neuron talks to other neurons.

Then, imagine we can record all this information to create a simulation of someone’s brain on a computer.

This is the concept behind mind uploading – the idea that we may one day be able to transition a person from their biological body to a synthetic hardware.

A new technique using deep brain stimulation tailored to each patient exceeded researchers’ expectations in treating the cognitive impairments from moderate to severe traumatic brain injury.

In 2001, Gina Arata was in her final semester of college, planning to apply to law school, when she suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident. The injury so compromised her ability to focus she struggled in a job sorting mail.

“I couldn’t remember anything,” said Arata, who lives in Modesto with her parents. “My left foot dropped, so I’d trip over things all the time. I was always in car accidents. And I had no filter — I’d get pissed off really easily.”

So our experiences or how we handle those experiences may have an effect on the expression of genes in our body.

A surprising thing happened when researchers began exploring whether early-life stress compounds the effects of a childhood head injury on health and behavior later in life: In an animal study, stress changed the activation level of many more genes in the brain than were changed by a bump to the head.

It’s already known that head injuries are common in young kids, especially from falling, and can be linked to mood disorders and social difficulties that emerge later in life. Adverse childhood experiences are also very common, and can raise risk for disease, mental illness and substance misuse in adulthood.

Continue reading “Stress Changes More Genes in the Mouse Brain Than a Head Injury” »

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Could a fecal transplant pill be the antidepressants of the future?

Depression is real, and it is complex. Most conditions that affect our brain chemistry are going to be complex, and there are no easy, simple answers. We can’t cure depression by just exercising more, eating better, or taking a short vacation to recharge (although there is some evidence that getting more money, especially to lift you out of poverty, helps relieve depressive symptoms).

The complexity of the brain comes to life in the annual Art of Neuroscience competition.

By Lori Youmshajekian & Liz Tormes

Scattered evidence suggests that aberrant proteins act as “seeds” to transmit neurodegenerative disease, but the jury is still out.

By Esther Landhuis

This is the concept behind mind uploading – the idea that we may one day be able to transition a person from their biological body to a synthetic hardware. The idea originated in an intellectual movement called transhumanism and has several key advocates including computer scientist Ray Kurzweil, philosopher Nick Bostrom and neuroscientist Randal Koene.

The transhumanists’ central hope is to transcend the human condition through scientific and technological progress. They believe mind uploading may allow us to live as long as we want (but not necessarily forever). It might even let us improve ourselves, such as by having simulated brains that run faster and more efficiently than biological ones. It’s a techno-optimist’s dream for the future. But does it have any substance?

The feasibility of mind uploading rests on three core assumptions.