Lifeboat Foundation

Summary: As the brain ages, microglia adopt dysfunctional states that increase the risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Source: TCD

Scientists from the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute (TBSI) have shed new light on aging processes in the brain. By linking the increased presence of specialised immune cells to conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and traumatic brain injury for the first time, they have unearthed a possible new target for therapies aimed at treating age-related neurological diseases.

Human enhancement has long been depicted as having the potential to help but also harm humanity. Brian Greene talks with Neuroscientists Takao Hensch, John Krakauer and Entrepreneur Brett Wingeier about their experiments using brain plasticity to heal illness, improve cognitive and athletic performance. They also raise warning flags about the race to build a more perfect human.

This program is part of the Big Ideas series, supported by the John Templeton Foundation.

Continue reading “Rewiring the Brain: The Promise and Peril of Neuroplasticity” »

Elon Musk’s company Neuralink has developed a technology that can link human brains to computers, and according to Musk, it is now ready for human testing. This groundbreaking technology has the potential to revolutionize the way we communicate and interact with machines, and could pave the way for new treatments for neurological disorders. With the announcement that Neuralink is ready for human testing, the future of human-computer integration is closer than ever before.

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Reverse the aging process and live decades longer? Transfer your brain onto a database and achieve digital immortality? Humans one day may have such options.

The concept of Boltzmann Brain — a self-aware entity that emerges from random fluctuations in the fabric of reality— is intriguing. Perhaps God emerges from the evolution of a cosmic society of Boltzmann Brains?

I am referring to a generic “fabric of reality” but the concept can be formulated more precisely. For example, imagine a conscious, thinking being arising from random quantum fluctuations in the vacuum.

In the delightful “The Gravity Mine” short story, Stephen Baxter imagines the birth of a Boltzmann Brain:

Rudy Rucker says:

I’m quite happy with this resolution of the conflict between determinism and free will…

Continue reading “Computational irreducibility in Wolfram’s digital physics, and free will” »

Here’s another thing I have changed my mind on. Well, sort of. I used to make fun of “vitalism” and trade insults with my favorite archenemy Dale Carrico. Now I must repent or at least add important qualifications.

Vitalism is currently defined by Wikipedia as “the belief that living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things.”

If we eliminate a few words from this definition we are left with a statement that I don’t disagree with:

Recent advances in human stem cell-derived brain organoids promise to replicate critical molecular and cellular aspects of learning and memory and possibly aspects of cognition in vitro. Coining the term “organoid intelligence” (OI) to encompass these developments, we present a collaborative program to implement the vision of a multidisciplinary field of OI. This aims to establish OI as a form of genuine biological computing that harnesses brain organoids using scientific and bioengineering advances in an ethically responsible manner. Standardized, 3D, myelinated brain organoids can now be produced with high cell density and enriched levels of glial cells and gene expression critical for learning. Integrated microfluidic perfusion systems can support scalable and durable culturing, and spatiotemporal chemical signaling.

Reducing the methylation of a key messenger RNA can promote migration of macrophages into the brain and ameliorate symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in a mouse model, according to a new study publishing March 7 in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Rui Zhang of Air Force Medical University in Xian, Shaanxi, China. The results illuminate one pathway for entrance of peripheral immune cells into the brain, and may provide a new target for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.

A presumed trigger for the development of Alzheimer’s disease is the accumulation of proteinaceous, extracellular amyloid-beta plaques in the brain. High levels of amyloid-beta in mice leads to neurodegeneration and cognitive symptoms reminiscent of human Alzheimer’s disease, and reduction of amyloid-beta is a major goal in development of new treatments.

One potential pathway for getting rid of amyloid-beta is the migration of blood-derived myeloid cells into the brain, and their maturation into macrophages, which, along with resident microglia, can consume amyloid-beta. That migration is a complex phenomenon controlled by multiple interacting players, but a potentially important one is the methylation of messenger RNA within the myeloid cells.