Lifeboat Foundation

It’s been a truth for a long time: if you want to study the movement and behavior of single atoms, electron microscopy can give you what X-rays can’t. X-rays are good at penetrating into samples—they allow you to see what happens inside batteries as they charge and discharge, for example—but historically they have not been able to spatially image with the same precision electrons can.

But scientists are working to improve the image resolution of X-ray techniques. One such method is X-ray tomography, which enables non-invasive imaging of the inside of materials. If you want to map the intricacies of a microcircuit, for example, or trace the neurons in a brain without destroying the material you are looking at, you need X-ray tomography, and the better the resolution, the smaller the phenomena you can trace with the X-ray beam.

To that end, a group of scientists led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has created a new method for improving the resolution of hard X-ray nanotomography. (Nanotomography is X-ray imaging on the scale of nanometers. For comparison, an average human hair is 100,000 nanometers wide.) The team constructed a high-resolution X-ray microscope using the powerful X-ray beams of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) and created new computer algorithms to compensate for issues encountered at tiny scales. Using this method, the team achieved a resolution below 10 nanometers.

Our world and the self are constructions of the brain, a pioneering neuroscientist argues.

ABOVE: MAPT, one of the genes linked to both heavy drinking and neurodegenerative diseases, codes for the protein tau (blue in this illustration) inside a neuron. NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON AGING/ NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH

Some genetic risk factors for alcohol use disorder overlap with those for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, scientists reported in Nature Communications on August 20. The study, which relied on a combination of genetic, transcriptomic, and epigenetic data, also offers insight into the molecular commonalities among these disorders, and their connections to immune disfunction.

“By meshing findings from genome wide association studies… ith gene expression in brain and other tissues, this new study has prioritized genes likely to harbor regulatory variants influencing risk of Alcohol Use Disorder,” writes David Goldman, a neurogenetics researcher at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), in an email to The Scientist. “Several of these genes are also associated with neurodegenerative disorders—an intriguing connection because of alcohol’s ability to prematurely age the brain.”

Neuroscientists are the cartographers of the brain’s diverse domains and territories — the features and activities that define them, the roads and highways that connect them, and the boundaries that delineate them. Toward the front of the brain, just behind the forehead, is the prefrontal cortex, celebrated as the seat of judgment. Behind it lies the motor cortex, responsible for planning and coordinating movement. To the sides: the temporal lobes, crucial for memory and the processing of emotion. Above them, the somatosensory cortex; behind them, the visual cortex.

Not only do researchers often depict the brain and its functions much as mapmakers might draw nations on continents, but they do so “the way old-fashioned mapmakers” did, according to Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychologist at Northeastern University. “They parse the brain in terms of what they’re interested in psychologically or mentally or behaviorally,” and then they assign the functions to different networks of neurons “as if they’re Lego blocks, as if there are firm boundaries there.”

But a brain map with neat borders is not just oversimplified — it’s misleading. “Scientists for over 100 years have searched fruitlessly for brain boundaries between thinking, feeling, deciding, remembering, moving and other everyday experiences,” Barrett said. A host of recent neurological studies further confirm that these mental categories “are poor guides for understanding how brains are structured or how they work.”

Lipids are abundant in the brain, where they are found not just in the cell membranes of neurons, whose properties they modulate, but also in the so-called myelin sheaths insulating axons — the brain’s ‘wiring.’ The brain is therefore a surprisingly ‘fat’ organ — in fact, it is nearly 60% fat, the study’s first author, Anna Tkachev from Skoltech, said.

Summary: Prozac reduced polyunsaturated fatty acid lipid concentrations in the brains of juvenile macaque monkeys.

Source: Skoltech

Continue reading “Prozac Changes Fat Composition of the Brain” »

My story centers on the concept of a genetically modified virus (named) which infects the brain and gives people enhanced empathy. The narrative takes place in a fictional middle eastern city called Fakhoury and explores bioethical themes. Love acts as a central motif which ties the story together. Note that this piece will be available online for a limited time, after which you will need to pay for the magazine. I encourage you to check out my story!

Read Philosophy Ethics Short Stories with your friends, family, book club, and students. Each story comes with suggested discussion questions.

Dravet syndrome (DS) is a developmental and epileptic encephalopathy with an increased incidence of sudden death. Evidence of interictal breathing deficits in DS suggests that alterations in subcortical projections to brainstem nuclei may exist, which might be driving comorbidities in DS.

Summary: Researchers have identified a circuit within the brain that may be responsible for respiratory dysfunction and sudden death associated with Dravet syndrome.

Source: Vanderbilt University

Continue reading “Sudden Death From Deep in the Brain?” »

Summary: Retrofitting wireless earbuds to detect neural signals and relaying the data back to smartphones via Bluetooth, researchers say the new earEEG system could have multiple applications, including health monitoring.

Source: UC Berkeley.

From keypads to touch screens to voice commands – step by step, the interface between users and their smartphones has become more personalized, more seamless. Now the ultimate personalized interface is approaching: issuing smartphone commands with your brain waves.

Northwestern Medicine investigators have discovered that a subset of proteins in mitochondria of brain and heart cells are long-lived, supporting the long-term stability of mitochondrial complex architecture.

The study, published in the Journal of Cell Biology, was led by Jeffrey Savas, PhD, assistant professor in the Ken & Ruth Davee Department of Neurology’s Division of Behavioral Neurology, of Medicine the in Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, and of Pharmacology.

Previous work led by Savas discovered that nuclear pore complex proteins in post-mitotic neurons are exceptionally long-lived and persist for months in mouse and rat brains. These proteins, termed long-lived proteins, or LLPs, provide long-term stability and structure to the nuclear pore and subsequently to the nuclear envelope of neurons; however, this concept had never been considered for other intracellular organelles, until now.