Lifeboat Foundation

Like periods in women, after a while our brains waves synchronise with the people we share our communications (family, friends, co-workers, church members, social media, etc.) so, it is good to know what are those and how they affect others and you.

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Continue reading “Our Brains Broadcast a Message We Don’t Understand” »

It is true. From its effect on biomarkers such as heat shock proteins and Fox 03, through to real world impacts on cardiovascular health, to improving mood, helping you live longer healthier and reducing your chance of dying before your time. I think we all know saunas are really great for you, but this will give you all the scientific reasons why… Taking it easy and relaxing for half an hour… Is not just wasting your time… Changes today will make tomorrow better. #saunas

I am going to give you the best reasons in the world to sit back and take it easy in a nice warm environment, and to just forget the troubles of the world.
Maybe play some music, or a podcast, or listen to a book, or just meditate, just relax and take it easy.
It is for your own health after all!!

Continue reading “Sauna Exercise Mimetic — The Science Of The Amazing Health & Longevity Benefits” »

Scientists pinpoint brain wave patterns that signal when our minds are wandering. (iStockphoto)

Anyone who has tried and failed to meditate knows that our minds are rarely still. But where do they roam? New research led by UC Berkeley has come up with a way to track the flow of our internal thought processes and signal whether our minds are focused, fixated or wandering.

Using an electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure brain activity while people performed mundane attention tasks, researchers identified brain signals that reveal when the mind is not focused on the task at hand or aimlessly wandering, especially after concentrating on an assignment.

A brain aging link ~~~.

Suppose Smokey the Bear were to go on a tear and start setting forest fires instead of putting them out. That roughly describes the behavior of certain cells of our immune system that become increasingly irascible as we grow older. Instead of stamping out embers, they stoke the flames of chronic inflammation.

Biologists have long theorized that reducing this inflammation could slow the aging process and delay the onset of age-associated conditions, such as heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and frailty, and perhaps even forestall the gradual loss of mental acuity that happens to nearly everyone.

Continue reading “Study reveals immune driver of brain aging” »

This prompted a pair of neuroscientists to see if they could design an AI that could learn from few data points by borrowing principles from how we think the brain solves this problem. In a paper in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, they explained that the approach significantly boosts AI’s ability to learn new visual concepts from few examples.

“Our model provides a biologically plausible way for artificial neural networks to learn new visual concepts from a small number of examples,” Maximilian Riesenhuber, from Georgetown University Medical Center, said in a press release. “We can get computers to learn much better from few examples by leveraging prior learning in a way that we think mirrors what the brain is doing.”

Several decades of neuroscience research suggest that the brain’s ability to learn so quickly depends on its ability to use prior knowledge to understand new concepts based on little data. When it comes to visual understanding, this can rely on similarities of shape, structure, or color, but the brain can also leverage abstract visual concepts thought to be encoded in a brain region called the anterior temporal lobe (ATL).

Scientists at EPFL have used a snap-freezing method to reveal the true structure of the connections that join neurons together in the adult brain.

The older we grow, the weaker our muscles get, riddling old age with frailty and physical disability. But this doesn’t only affect the individual, it also creates a significant burden on public healthcare. And yet, research efforts into the biological processes and biomarkers that define muscle aging have not yet defined the underlying causes.

Now, a team of scientists from lab of Johan Auwerx at EPFL’s School of Life Sciences looked at the issue through a different angle: the similarities between muscle aging and degenerative muscle diseases. They have discovered protein aggregates that deposit in skeletal muscles during natural aging, and that blocking this can prevent the detrimental features of muscle aging. The study is published in Cell Reports.

“During age-associated muscle diseases, such as inclusion body myositis (IBM), our cells struggle to maintain correct protein folding, leading these misfolded proteins to precipitate and forming toxic protein aggregates within the muscles,” explains Auwerx. “The most prominent component of these protein aggregates is beta-amyloid, just like in the amyloid plaques in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.”

Summary: Better glucose uptake compensates for age-related motor deterioration and extends lifespan in fruitflies.

Source: Tokyo Metropolitan University.

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered that fruit flies with genetic modifications to enhance glucose uptake have significantly longer lifespans.

In a new study, German scientists have restored the ability to walk in mice that had been paralyzed after a complete spinal cord injury. The team created a “designer” signaling protein and injected it into the animals’ brains, stimulating their nerve cells to regenerate and share the recipe to make the protein.

Spinal cord injuries are among the most debilitating. Damaged nerve fibers (axons) may no longer be able to transmit signals between the brain and muscles, often resulting in paralysis to the lower limbs. Worse still, these axons cannot regenerate.

Previous studies have shown promise in restoring some limb function through spinal stimulation therapy, or by bypassing the injury site altogether. Other promising research in similar areas has involved using compounds that restore balance to the inhibitory/excitatory signals in the neurons of partially paralyzed mice, and transplanting regenerating nose nerve cells into the spines of injured dogs.