Category: neuroscience – Page 706
Dr Jennifer Garrison, PhD — Global Consortium for Reproductive Longevity & Equality — Buck Institute
Dr. Jennifer Garrison, PhD (http://garrisonlab.com/) is Assistant Professor, Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Founder & Faculty Director, Global Consortium for Reproductive Longevity & Equality (https://www.buckinstitute.org/gcrle/), Assistant Professor in Residence, Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, UCSF and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Gerontology, USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology.
Dr. Garrison’s lab is interested in understanding how neuropeptides (a large class of signaling molecules which are secreted from neurons and transmit messages within the brain and across the nervous system) regulate changes in normal and aging animals as well in understanding how they control behavior at both the cell biological and neural circuit level.
Dr. Garrison received her PhD from the University of California San Francisco in Chemistry and Chemical Biology in the laboratory of Dr. Jack Taunton, where she discovered the molecular target of a natural product and elucidated a novel mechanism by which small molecules can regulate protein biogenesis. As a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Cori Bargmann’s lab at the Rockefeller University, she showed that the nematode C. elegans produces a neuropeptide that is an evolutionary precursor of the mammalian peptides vasopressin and oxytocin, and mapped a neural circuit by which this molecule, nematocin, modulates mating behavior.
Dr. Garrison was named an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow and received a Glenn Foundation Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging in 2,014 and a Next Generation Leader at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in 2015. Her work is funded by the NIH National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Larry L. Hillblom Foundation.
Math Equation of Mood Can Predict Your Preferences Better Than You Can
“Our mathematical equation lets us predict which individuals will have both more happiness and more brain activity for intrinsic compared to extrinsic rewards. The same approach can be used in principle to measure what people actually prefer without asking them explicitly, but simply by measuring their mood.”
Summary: A new mathematical equation predicts which individuals will have more happiness and increased brain activity for intrinsic rather than extrinsic rewards. The approach can be used to predict personal preferences based on mood and without asking the individual.
Source: UCL
A new study led by researchers at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging shows that using mathematical equations with continuous mood sampling may be better at assessing what people prefer over asking them directly.
People can struggle to accurately assess how they feel about something, especially something they feel social pressure to enjoy, like waking up early for a yoga class.
Neural correlates of the DMT experience assessed with multivariate EEG
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Studying transitions in and out of the altered state of consciousness caused by intravenous (IV) N, N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT — a fast-acting tryptamine psychedelic) offers a safe and powerful means of advancing knowledge on the neurobiology of conscious states. Here we sought to investigate the effects of IV DMT on the power spectrum and signal diversity of human brain activity (6 female, 7 male) recorded via multivariate EEG, and plot relationships between subjective experience, brain activity and drug plasma concentrations across time. Compared with placebo, DMT markedly reduced oscillatory power in the alpha and beta bands and robustly increased spontaneous signal diversity. Time-referenced and neurophenomenological analyses revealed close relationships between changes in various aspects of subjective experience and changes in brain activity.
This Photo Is Black And White. It Uses Color Grid Lines to Trick Your Brain
A weird and brilliantly effective optical illusion that has gone viral on the internet tricks your brain into seeing a color image … but if you look closely you will notice that the photo you are looking at is only black and white.
The viral image was created by artist and developer Øyvind Kolås who carefully overlaid red, orange, yellow, blue, and green grid lines over black and white images.
“An over-saturated coloured grid overlaid on a grayscale image causes the grayscale cells to be perceived as having colour,” Kolås explains on his Patreon page.
In a First, Scientists Track 1 Million Neurons Near-Simultaneously in a Mouse Brain
The key is an innovation that’s being called ‘light beads microscopy’. It improves on current two-photon microscopy, using lasers to trigger introduced fluorescence in living cells. As the cells are lit up, scientists can see how they’re moving and interacting.
With light beads microscopy, scientists can get the speed, scale, and resolution required to map a mouse brain in detail as its neural activity changes. The near-simultaneous tracking can last for as long as the light beads are able to stay illuminated.
New bionics center established at MIT with $24 million gift
A deepening understanding of the brain has created unprecedented opportunities to alleviate the challenges posed by disability. Scientists and engineers are taking design cues from biology itself to create revolutionary technologies that restore the function of bodies affected by injury, aging, or disease — from prosthetic limbs that effortlessly navigate tricky terrain to digital nervous systems that move the body after a spinal cord injury.
With the establishment of the new K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics, MIT is pushing forward the development and deployment of enabling technologies that communicate directly with the nervous system to mitigate a broad range of disabilities. The center’s scientists, clinicians, and engineers will work together to create, test, and disseminate bionic technologies that integrate with both the body and mind.
The Quality, Not Quantity, of Cardiovascular Fat Can Interfere With Memory Later in Life
Cardiovascular fat deposition, found to be higher in postmenopausal women compared with premenopausal women, is a novel risk factor for cardiovascular disease. It is also believed to affect cognitive function through neuropathological pathways by changing the secretion of inflammatory cytokines and adipokines. The quality of cardiovascular fat is characterized by its radiodensity.
Summary: Greater radiodensity of perivascular adipose tissue in women during midlife was associated with decreased working memory performance later in life.
Source: NAMS
A worsening cardiovascular profile after menopause may contribute to the fact that women are disproportionately affected by dementia. A new study identified a link between cardiovascular fat volume and radiodensity and cognitive function, as well as racial differences in this association.
Study results will be presented during The North American Menopause Society (NAMS) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, September 22–25, 2021.
