John Searle and Sir John Eccles discuss the relationship between the mind and the brain. This is from a 1984 program called Voices. The host was Ted Honderich.
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Specific immune cells in the brain may play a crucial role in preventing the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study – a discovery that could lead to new therapies that try to coax cells into this protective state.
Earlier studies have shown that immune cells in the brain called microglia can effectively tackle the symptoms of Alzheimer’s, but also make them worse through inflammation.
Here, an international team of scientists took a detailed look at how microglia switch between those two helpful and harmful modes.
Today UNESCO’s Member States took the final step towards adopting the first global normative framework on the ethics of neurotechnology. The Recommendation, which will enter into force on November 12, establishes essential safeguards to ensure that neurotechnology contributes to improving the lives of those who need it the most, without jeopardizing human rights.
Maria Strømme, a materials science professor at Uppsala University, outlines a new theoretical model in AIP Advances that begins with a central claim: consciousness is fundamental field, and time, space, and matter develop from it.
Her paper treats conscious experience not as a late add-on, but as the basic “stuff” that reality is made of. In that picture, your brain, your body, and even space and time grow out of a deeper kind of “mind” that fills the whole universe.
Most neuroscientists still ask, “How does the brain produce consciousness?”
Nearly 4.5 million years ago, two large, hot stars brushed tantalizingly close to Earth’s sun. They left behind a trace in the clouds of gas and dust that swirl just beyond our solar system—almost like the scent of perfume after someone has left the room.
That’s one finding from new research led by Michael Shull, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado Boulder, and published Nov. 24 in The Astrophysical Journal.
The study sheds new light on the details of Earth’s neighborhood in space.
“Our upbringing and environment influence who we are,” said Dr. Luke Davies. “Someone who has lived their whole life in the city may have a very different personality compared to someone who lives remotely or in an isolated community. Galaxies are no different.”
How does galaxy location drive galaxy structure and star formation? This is what a recent study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated the interaction between galaxy location and evolution. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand galaxy formation and evolution, including stars and planets within them.
For the study, the researchers conducted the first study with the Deep Extragalactic Visible Legacy Survey (DEVILS) survey using the Anglo-Australian Telescope’s AAOmega spectrograph, the latter of which is located at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. The goal of the study was to use DEVILS to add to the existing catalog of galaxy populations based on their speed traveling away from us, also known as redshift. In contrast, blueshift happens when an object is moving towards us.
In the end, the researchers found that galaxies that are clustered together, or more densely packed, result in slower growth and evolution compared to galaxies that are spread apart. The researchers used the analogy of city centers compared to more rural areas. Essentially, a galaxy’s location potentially determines its evolutionary fate.
Leukemia starts when mutations in blood-forming cells disrupt the balance between growth and differentiation. Patients with entirely different genetic changes show strikingly similar patterns of gene activity and can respond to the same drugs. What invisible thread could make so many mutations behave the same way?
The authors looked into high-resolution microscope and saw something no one expected: leukemia cell nuclei shimmered with a dozen bright dots – tiny beacons missing from healthy cells.
Those dots weren’t random. They contained large amounts of mutant leukemia proteins and drew in many normal cell proteins to coordinate activation of the leukemia program. The dots were new nuclear compartments formed by phase separation, the same physical principle that describes why oil droplets form in water. The team named this new compartment, “coordinating bodies,” or C-bodies.
Inside the nucleus, these C-bodies act like miniature control rooms, pulling together the molecules that keep leukemia genes switched on. Like drops of oil collecting on the surface of soup, they appear when the cell’s molecular ingredients reach just the right balance.
Even more surprising, cells carrying entirely different leukemia mutations formed droplets with the same behavior. Although their chemistry differs, the resulting nuclear condensates perform the same function, using the same physical playbook.
A new quantitative assay confirmed it. These droplets are biophysically indistinguishable – like soups made from different ingredients that still simmer into the same consistency. No matter which mutation started the process, each leukemia formed the same kind of C-body.
The team confirmed the finding across human cell lines, mouse models and patient samples. When they tweaked the proteins so they could no longer form these droplets – or dissolved them with drugs, the leukemia cells stopped dividing and began to mature into healthy blood cells.