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Discovery suggests glial cells may be important in other organs as well.

Glial cells in the heart help regulate heart rate and rhythm, and drive its development in the embryo, according to a new study publishing today (November 18^th, 2021) in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Nina Kikel-Coury, Cody Smith and colleagues at the University of Notre Dame. The discovery provides the most detailed portrait yet of a critical population of cells that had been previously poorly understood.

Glia are a diverse set of cell types, originally named after the Greek word for glue, and include cells that surround and nourish neurons, and others that mount immune responses within the central nervous system. In the peripheral nervous system, glia are present and presumably active in multiple organs, including the gut, pancreas, spleen, and lungs, although their function is not clear in most cases.

Over the past few years, scientists have been trying to understand how listening to music affects your brain. One of the features of music that seems to be important is whether you have an emotional connection to it. In other words, listening to a favorite tune will have a different effect on your brain than an unknown or disliked piece of music.

Now, a new study has shown that people with Alzheimer’s Disease can improve their cognition by listening to music that has personal meaning to them, such as songs they’ve been listening to for years.

Researchers Corinne Fischer, Nathan Churchill and colleagues from the University of Toronto ran a small study to find out what exactly happens when people with Alzheimer’s listened to their favorite songs. They asked fourteen people with early stage Alzheimer’s Disease to spend one hour per day listening to music they enjoyed and were very familiar with. Before and after the test period all participants also took a cognitive test, and had their brain activity measured by functional MRI (fMRI).

The Neuro-Network.

“𝘿𝙚𝙚𝙥𝙛𝙖𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙈𝙞𝙣𝙙” 𝘾𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙄𝙢𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙫𝙚 𝘽𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣-𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙪𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙛𝙖𝙘𝙚𝙨 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙋𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬

𝙎𝙮𝙣𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙩𝙞𝙘 𝙣𝙚𝙪𝙧𝙤𝙡𝙤𝙜𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙙𝙖𝙩𝙖 𝙘𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙜𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙖𝙙𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝙣𝙚𝙩𝙬… See more.

Continue reading “‘Deepfaking the Mind’ Could Improve Brain-Computer Interfaces for People with Disabilities” »

Name: Travis Chen and Brian Femminella

Age: 22 and 21

Location: Seattle, Washington; Los Angeles, California.

Continue reading “Meet the Gen Z founders who created a music app to help combat pandemic-induced anxiety and depression” »

Distinct phases of synaptic plasticity contribute to memory formation at different times and in different brain regions.

Telegraphs and computers helped scientists reimagine the mind, writes Matthew Cobb in The Idea of the Brain.

Google is secretly working with the world’s leading neuroscientists on mapping the entire Human Brain. Neuroscientists at have released the most detailed 3D map of the mammalian brain ever made. Google has helped them by funding their goal to create the most detailed map yet of the connections within the human brain. It reveals a staggering amount of detail, including patterns of connections between neurons, as well as what may be a new kind of neuron.

The applications in the field of Brain Computer Interfaces or understanding medical conditions are staggering. But it’s doubtful that this will just help companies such as Neuralink develop advanced future brain computer interfaces and will likely lead to Google doing evil things by understanding people’s way of thinking and delivering ads to them.
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Continue reading “How Google is Reading Your Thoughts — Scientists Mapping the Human Brain” »

For example, scientists recently treated a patient’s severe depression with a neural implant that zaps her brain 300 times per day and, she says, has allowed her to spontaneously laugh and feel joy for the first time in years. Of course, the treatment requires an electrode implanted deep into the brain, which currently reserves it for the most extreme medical cases — but as brain interface tech inexorably becomes more advanced and widely available, there’s no reason such a device couldn’t become a consumer gadget as well.

At the research’s current rate of trajectory, experts told Futurism, the tech could conceivably hit the market in just a few years. But what we don’t know is what it will mean for us, psychologically as individuals and sociologically as a society, when we can experience genuine pleasure from the push of a button. And all those questions become even more complex, of course, when applied to the messy world of sex.

“A big question that remains unanswered is whether sextech will ultimately become a complement to our sex lives or a substitute,” Kinsey Institute research fellow Justin Lehmiller, an expert on sex and psychology, told Futurism.

Cybernetics can be defined as a multidisciplinary approach to study feedback-driven systems of control between animal and machine.