Lifeboat Foundation

Neuroscience biweekly vol. 45 27th October — 10th November.

The brain uses a shared mechanism for combining words from a single language and for combining words from two different languages, a team of neuroscientists has discovered. Its findings indicate that language switching is natural for those who are bilingual because the brain has a mechanism that does not detect that the language has switched, allowing for a seamless transition in comprehending more than one language at once.

“Our brains are capable of engaging in multiple languages,” explains Sarah Phillips, a New York University doctoral candidate and the lead author of the paper, which appears in the journal eNeuro. “Languages may differ in what sounds they use and how they organize words to form sentences. However, all languages involve the process of combining words to express complex thoughts.”

Continue reading “NS/ AI and how the brain processes language” »

Human neurons have fewer ion channels, which might have allowed the human brain to divert energy to other neural processes.

Neurons communicate with each other via electrical impulses, which are produced by ion channels that control the flow of ions such as potassium and sodium. In a surprising new finding, MIT neuroscientists have shown that human neurons have a much smaller number of these channels than expected, compared to the neurons of other mammals.

The researchers hypothesize that this reduction in channel density may have helped the human brain evolve to operate more efficiently, allowing it to divert resources to other energy-intensive processes that are required to perform complex cognitive tasks.

Continue reading “Study finds a striking difference between neurons of humans and other mammals” »

A CNS 2021 provided an incredible opportunity to learn more how the anatomy and integrity of brain networks impact higher-level cognition.

In the 19th and 20th century, cases of individuals with brain injury, such as Phineas Gage or Henry Molaison, have advanced our understanding of the relationship between the anatomy of the brain and its function. Back then, methods were limited to investigate whole-brain structure and function. Now, cognitive neuroscientists have some ability to visualize and measure activity of the whole brain at once, as well as the computational tools to investigate complex network-level relationships between brain structure, brain function, and behavior.

As a doctoral student working on stroke recovery, attending the CNS 2021 symposium led by Danielle Bassett was an incredible opportunity to learn more about some of the most recent methods that have been developed to understand how the anatomy and integrity of brain networks impact higher-level cognition. Strokes highly disrupt anatomical and functional connectivity, leading to cognitive and motor impairments. In individuals with post-stroke language impairments, namely aphasia, evidence shows that the more functional brain networks recover an organization similar to healthy individuals the better the recovery (Kiran et al., 2019). Understanding the relationship between brain structure and function in health and disease is therefore essential to develop appropriate treatments.

Continue reading “Brain Structure is Key to Understanding Human Cognition” »

The human genome can be thought of as a massive library, containing over 20,000 different “instruction manuals”: your genes. For example, there are genes which contain information to build a brain cell, a skin cell, a white blood cell, and so on. There are even genes that contain information about regulating the genome itself—like books that explain how to organize a library. The ability to regulate gene expression —in other words, the cell’s ability to turn various constellations of genes on or off—is the basis of why different cells (such as a muscle cell or a brain cell) have different forms and functions.

For any library to be useful to a reader, it needs to be organized in an easily searchable way. For example, all the books pertaining to world history may be on one shelf, whereas the cookbooks may be in an entirely different section of the library. In a cellular nucleus, there is over six feet of genetic material packed into a space 50 times smaller than the width of a human hair. How is the “library” in the nucleus organized? When a cell needs to regulate certain genes, how does the cellular machinery find the right ones amongst 20,000 others?

A new paper from the laboratory of Mitchell Guttman, professor of biology, uses a powerful new tool that can peer into the world of the cell’s genetic material (DNA.

This video gives and overview of human neuroscience and applies it to the design of an artificial general intelligence named Eta.

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Continue reading “Neuroscience Behind an Artificial General Intelligence” »

The Neuro-Network.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘽𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝘾𝙖𝙣 𝙍𝙚𝙘𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙍𝙚𝙖𝙬𝙖𝙠𝙚𝙣 𝙋𝙖𝙨𝙩 𝙄𝙢𝙢𝙪𝙣𝙚 𝙍𝙚𝙨𝙥𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙚𝙨

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐢𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐞𝐬, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐨 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐬 “𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬” 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦.… See more.

Continue reading “The Brain Can Recall and Reawaken Past Immune Responses” »

The neurons, located in the brain are interconnected in a complex pattern and establish special communication points, the synapses. All neurons require a constant environment in order to function reliably. To ensure this, the brain is surrounded by the so-called blood-brain barrier. It ensures, for example, that the nutrient balance always remains the same and that harmful influences do not reach the neurons. This applies to all animals including humans. For insects, a team led by Nicole Pogodalla and Prof. Dr. Christian Klämbt from the Institute of Neuro-and Behavioral Biology at the University of Münster (Germany) has now shown that there is also a second barrier in the brain. Here glial cells, too, ensure a spatial separation of different functional compartments, which is essential for reliable functioning of the nervous system. The work was published in the prestigious online journal Nature Communications.

The research team studied the insect brain using larvae of the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) as an example and focused on the role of glial cells. Early in development these cells help to establish the correct neuronal network and later glial cells play important roles in controlling the transmission of signals between neurons. In all invertebrates, as well as in primitive vertebrates, glial cells also define the outer boundary of the nervous system – the blood-brain barrier.

Deep in the fly brain, all synapses are located in a special region called the neuropil. The neuropil is separated from the zone containing the cell bodies of the neurons by a small set of surrounding glial cells, that were in the focus of Nicole Pogodalla. She developed a new experimental approach — dye injections into living larval brains — and combined this with cell type specific ablation experiments to show that these glial cells actually form a diffusion barrier, i. e. regulate the distribution of molecules.

I think intelligent tool making life is rare but there is plenty of room for those far, far in advance of us. Robert Bradbury, who thought up M-Brains, said he did not think truly hyper advanced entities would bother communicating with us. Being able to process the entire history of human thought in a few millionths of a second puts them further away from us than we are from nematodes. But then that might not be giving them credit for their intelligence and resources, as they might wish to see how well their simulations have done compared to reality.

Foresight Intelligent Cooperation Group.

Continue reading “Anders Sandberg | Game Theory of Cooperating w. Extraterrestrial Intelligence & Future Civilizations” »

Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer by Robert Epstein + BIO.