#Wireless brain-computer interface streams thought commands with the speed of an Internet connection Following more than a decade of engineering work,
a wireless brain-computer interface could finally give paralyzed people the ability to control everyday devices like TVS, computers,
and transmit thought commands collected from a brain implant. The researchers say that the wireless BCI is able to stream thought commands via its radio at a rate of 48 megabits per second, about the speed of a home Internet connection.
and wired to electrodes inside the brain. The processor inside the device amplifies the electrical signals emitted by neurons,
Braingate was among the first to place implants in the brains of paralyzed people and show that electrical signals emitted by neurons inside the cortex could be recorded,
#MIT's multifunctional fiber implant could revolutionize neural prosthetics Today cutting edge neural implants can passively read brain activity,
The brain itself is composed of some of the softest tissue in the body, so harder implants that don bend with their surrounding biological environment can easily shift
but anything implanted with the body has to be entirely non-reactive, especially in the brain.
#Network Dynamics with Brainx3 A large scale simulation of the human brain network with real time interaction. In order to address the big data challenge of the human brain,
researchers at the SPECS lab of Paul Verschure have developed recently Brainx3, which is a platform for visualization, simulation, analysis and interaction of large data,
On this platform, the researchers reconstructed a large-scale simulation of human brain activity in a 3d virtual reality environment.
Using the brain known connectivity along with detailed biophysics, the researchers reconstruct neuronal activity of the entire cortex in the resting-state.
Users can interact with Brainx3 in real-time by perturbing brain regions with transient stimulations to observe reverberating network activity,
Within the immersive mixed/virtual reality space of Brainx3 users can explore and analysis dynamical activity patterns of brain networks
or for discovering of signaling pathways associated to brain function and/or dysfunction or as a tool for virtual neurosurgery.
the researchers have simulated also neural activity from lesioned brains and that resulting from TMS perturbation. These simulations shed insight on the spatial distribution of activity in the attractor state, how the brain maintains a level of resilience to damage, effects of noise and physiological perturbations.
Knowledge of brain activity in these various states is clinically relevant for assessing levels of consciousness in patients with severe brain injury y
#First Contracting Human Muscle Grown in Laboratory Researchers at Duke university report the first lab-grown, contracting human muscle,
even if the neural pathways from the brain are interrupted physically as the result of a spinal cord injury.
The results have now been published in the leading journal rain Although the brain or brain stem acts as the command center,
when the brain is involved no longer, as in the headless chicken running around the farmyard. Even after control by the brain has been lost,
the spinal cord continues to send out motor signals, which are translated into movements of the legs and/or wings.
Historically, these genetic brain diseases were viewed as untreatable. However, in recent years neuroscientists have shown in animal models that it is possible to reverse the debilitating effects of these gene mutations.
called FMR1, is turned off during brain development. Fragile X is rare, affecting one in about 4, 000 individuals.
Synaptic protein synthesis was disrupted indeed in the hippocampus, a part of the brain important for memory formation.
similar to fragile X. Restoring brain function after disease onset These findings encouraged the MIT researchers to attempt to improve memory function in the 16p11.2 mice with the same approach that has worked in fragile X mice.
previously believed to be an intractable consequence of altered early brain development, might instead arise from ongoing alterations in synaptic signaling that can be corrected by drugs.
by removing a biochemical lampthat prevents connections between nerve cells in the brain from growing stronger.
when connections called synapses among brain cells form and grow stronger. Researchers have known long that a crucial step in the process is the flow of calcium ions into the synapse area,
but activating Camkii did not noticeably change anything. his gives us a much clearer idea of how some Syngap mutations cause problems in the brain,
#Researchers Redefine Role of Brain's'Hunger Circuit'Using techniques developed only over the past few years,
UC San francisco researchers have completed experiments that overturn the scientific consensus on how the brain unger circuitgoverns eating.
what this region of the brain is doing. It has been known for 75 years that a region at the base of the brain called the hypothalamus exerts profound control over eating behavior.
As neuroscientists refined this observation over the ensuing decades, they zeroed in first on a small area of the hypothalamus known as the arcuate nucleus,
and more recently on Agrp and POMC neurons, two small populations of cells within that nucleus. These two groups of cells,
which collectively occupy an area smaller than a millimeter in the mouse brain, are organized functionally in a seesaw-like fashion:
Hundreds of experiments in which scientists added hormones or nutrients to brain slices while recording the activity of Agrp
because the cells in this region are incredibly heterogeneous and located deep within the brain, said Chen. he technology to do this experiment has existed only for a few years.
the most adaptive brain mechanism would suppress the motivation to continue searching; likewise, since energy-dense foods alleviate hunger for longer periods,
the Mcknight Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a NARSAD Young Investigator Grant from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, the Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Foundation, the Program for Breakthrough
Dr. Maniatis is also a member of the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and director of Columbia university-wide precision medicine initiative. t now seems clear that future ALS treatments will not be equally effective for all patients because of the disease genetic diversity.
#New Brain Mapping Reveals Unknown Cell Types Using a process known as single cell sequencing, scientists at Karolinska Institutet have produced a detailed map of cortical cell types and the genes active within them.
and even managed to identify a number of hitherto unknown types. f you compare the brain to a fruit salad,
what colour juice you got from different parts of the brain, says Sten Linnarsson, senior researcher at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics. ut in recent years wee developed much more sensitive methods of analysis that allow us to see which genes are active in individual cells.
especially as regards the brain, the body most complex organ. In the present study, the scientists used large-scale single-cell analysis to answer some of these questions.
By studying over three thousand cells from the cerebral cortex in mice, one at a time and in detail, and comparing which of the 20,000 genes were active in each one,
such as that the pyramidal cells of the cerebral cortex are organised functionally in layers, says Jens Hjerling-Leffler,
we have created a much more detailed map of the cells of the brain that describes each cell type in detail
and helps us to understand better how brain cell respond to disease and injury. There are estimated to be 100 million cells in a mouse brain
and 65 billion in a human brain. Nerve cells are approximately 20 micrometres in diameter, glial cells about 10 micrometres.
A micrometre is equivalent to a thousandth of a millimetre. The study was carried out by Sten Linnarsson and Jens Hjerling-Leffler research groups at the department of medical biochemistry and biophysics, in particular by Amit Zeisel and Ana Muños Manchado.
the EU Seventh Framework Programme, the Swedish Society of Medicine, the Swedish Brain Fund, Karolinska Institutet strategic programme for neuroscience (Stratneuro), the Human Frontier Science Program
#Molecular Inhibitor Breaks Cycle That Leads to Alzheimer's A molecular chaperone has been found to inhibit a key stage in the development of Alzheimer disease and break the toxic chain reaction that leads to the death of brain cells, a new study shows.
thereby helping to avoid the formation of highly toxic clusters that enable the condition to proliferate in the brain.
The research team then carried out further tests in which living mouse brain tissue was exposed to amyloid-beta, the specific protein that forms the amyloid fibrils in Alzheimer disease.
but the toxicity did not develop in the brain tissue, confirming that the molecule had suppressed the chain reaction from secondary nucleation that feeds the catastrophic production of oligomers leading to Alzheimer disease.
and more likely to experience increased brain atrophy than non-carriers. his study demonstrates that tau deposits in the brains of Alzheimer disease subjects are not just a consequence of the disease,
#What Autism Can Teach Us About Brain Cancer Both disorders involve faults in the same protein.
Applying lessons learned from autism to brain cancer, researchers at The Johns hopkins university have discovered why elevated levels of the protein NHE9 add to the lethality of the most common and aggressive form of brain cancer, glioblastoma.
Their discovery suggests that drugs designed to target NHE9 could help to successfully fight the deadly disease.
for treating a deadly brain cancer says Rajini Rao, Ph d, . a professor of physiology at the Johns hopkins university School of medicine. his is a great example of the unexpected good that can come from going wherever the science takes us.
when placed on a surface mimicking that of the brain, suggesting a high potential for metastasis
or low NHE9, were transplanted into the brains of mice. This image is a drawing of a brain.
The overactive NHE9 protein is shown in blue over the brain. The argo carriers, or endosomes, of certain brain cancer cells contain overactive NHE9 proteins (blue),
which pump out too many protons (orange), changing the endosomesacidity and slowing their hipping speed.
Image credit: Hari Prasad and Rajini Rao. Based on their autism research, the team suspected that the boost NHE9 gave to glioblastomas was explained by abnormal endosome acidity.
NHE9 is overactive in brain cancer, causing endosomes to leak too many protons and become too alkaline.
and Extra Copies of Disease Gene in Alzheimer s Brain cells The surprise discovery offers a new understanding of Alzheimer s disease.
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found diverse genomic changes in single neurons from the brains of Alzheimer s patients pointing to an unexpected factor that may underpin the most common form of the disease.
A new study published February 4 2015 in the online journal elife shows that Alzheimer s brains commonly have many neurons with significantly more DNA and genomic copies of the Alzheimer s-linked gene APP than normal brains.#
#Our findings open a new window into the normal and diseased brain by providing the first evidence that DNA variation in individual neurons could be related to brain function
Alzheimer s disease is an irreversible brain disease that tends to strike older people. It is progressive#impairing memory destroying motor skills and eventually causing death.
Researchers have known long about disease-related protein accumulations (called amyloid plaques) in the brains of Alzheimer s patients.
Chun and his laboratory group have had a longstanding interest in genomic variation among brain cells which produces#genomic mosaicism.#
#In 2001 Chun was the first to report that the brain contains many distinct genomes within its cells#much like the colorful tiles in an artist#s mosaic.#
#When we started genomic mosaicism in the brain was recognized not#said Chun.##But it turns out there is a remarkable range of genomic changes encompassed by DNA content variation in single brain cells.#
#In the new study Chun and his colleagues first set out to analyze the overall DNA content in cells comparing 32 postmortem Alzheimer s brains and 21 postmortem non-diseased brains.
Remarkably the researchers found that more than 90 percent of sporadic Alzheimer s disease brains displayed highly significant DNA increases of hundreds of millions more DNA base-pairs compared with control samples showing that genomic mosaicism was altered in the Alzheimer s brain.
Interestingly these changes were not found everywhere but were greatest in a part of the brain involved with complex thought.
Next the researchers used a technique called single-cell qpcr to determine the numbers of APP copies in 154 individual neurons from Alzheimer s and normal brains.
They also tested the neurons using a technique called FISH as an independent method to assess APP copies using fluorescent probes.
#A lot of people are still not aware of genomic mosaicism in the brain so to be able to connect it with a disease is really interesting#said Gwen Kaeser a graduate student studying in Chun#s lab and co-first author of the study with former graduate student Diane Bushman.
because the genomic signatures of sporadic Alzheimer s disease occur within individual brain cells. Indeed a majority of major brain diseases are also sporadic.
For example amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) can be linked to a gene in one to two percent of cases
Chun believes genomic mosaicism could possibly have a role in other brain diseases. Future studies in the Chun lab will investigate the relationship between mosaicism
In addition to Chun Kaeser and Bushman other authors of the study#Genomic mosaicism with increased amyloid precursor protein (APP) gene copy number in single neurons from sporadic Alzheimer s disease brains#were Jurgen
Full open access research for#Genomic mosaicism with increased amyloid precursor protein (APP) gene copy number in single neurons from sporadic Alzheimer s disease brains#by Diane M Bushman
#Previous reports have shown that individual neurons of the brain can display somatic genomic mosaicism of unknown function.
#Researchers Enlarge Brain Samples Making Them Easier to Image New technique enables nanoscale-resolution microscopy of large biological specimens.
says Ed Boyden, an associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT. Boyden is the senior author of a paper describing the new method in the Jan 15 online edition of Science.
who is a member of MIT Media Lab and Mcgovern Institute for Brain Research. Protein complexes, molecules that transport payloads in and out of cells,
and take a long time to image large samples. f you want to map the brain, or understand how cancer cells are organized in a metastasizing tumor,
the MIT team was able to image a section of brain tissue 500 by 200 by 100 microns with a standard confocal microscope.
MIT researchers led by Ed Boyden have invented a new way to visualize the nanoscale structure of the brain and other tissues.
The researchers envision that this technology could be very useful to scientists trying to image brain cells
Boyden says. specially for the brain, you have to be able to image a large volume of tissue,
While Boyden team is focused on the brain, other possible applications for this technique include studying tumor metastasis
It Thync, a wearable device that zaps your brain with low levels of pulsed electrical energy to calm you down
Zap Your Brain To Change Your Mood Shanklin describes the calm mode giving him a feeling
The energy mode provide his brain with more clarity. Thync is considered a lifestyle product, as opposed to a medical device,
#Needle Injects Healing Electronics into the Brain Researchers have built a tiny mesh-like electronic sensor,
and injected it into the brain. The device taking this fantastic electronic voyage may soon be able to zap tumors,
repair damaged spinal cords or even connect parts of the brain like an artificial synapse. The key finding is that the sensor
and mesh combination is so small and bendy that it doesn cause any damage to the surrounding brain tissue, something that often plagues surgical procedures done with a needle, knife or other type of probe.
Could A Brain Implant Cure Depression? f one is thinking of trying to change the way one does long term brain implants,
it could be a really big deal, said Charles Lieber, chemistry professor at Harvard university and lead author on the new paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. ou can promote a positive interaction
After an injection several centimeters into the brain of a laboratory mouse the scientists were able to monitor electronic brain signals.
Zhenan Bao, professor of chemical engineering at Stanford university who is also building injectable electronics, said the experiment was n amazing piece of work. he concept is said ingenious,
Brain-Zapping Implant Could Aid Injured Soldiers The authors of the paper say next step is to use the mesh system to deliver living stem cells that may help repair damaged sections of the brain or perhaps a multifunction electronic device
#'Wi-fi'Nanoparticles Send Signals from the Brain The problem with talking to our own brains,
The brain uses complex electrical fields and impulses to move information around on the atomic level.
A medical research team at Florida International University in Miami injected 20 billion nanoparticles into the brains of mice
Brain-To-Brain Networking Takes First Baby Stepsthe agnetoelectricnanoparticles (MENS) injected in the mice have several special properties.
should be able to communicate directly with the brain electric field. hen MENS are exposed to even an extremely low frequency magnetic field,
the electric field can directly couple to the electric circuitry of the neural network. he nanoparticles could be used to deliver drugs to specific parts of the brain.
Wearable device Changes Your Moodthe technique could also be used to create a new kind of brain-computer interface.
the nanoparticles could generate measurable magnetic fields in response to the brain electrical fields. Toggle the system back
but due to an ill-advised rey Anatomybinge-watching incident last night, my brain and I are not currently on speaking terms. via New Scientis k
#Brain-Sensing Headband Helps Users Manage Stress Technology and relaxation don always go hand in hand. However, a brain-sensing headband that reads brain waves
and provides real-time feedback has been developed to help users better focus and manage stress. The Muse headband is lined with seven EEG sensors that detect the brain electrical activity
and sends information about the user state of mind to a smartphone app, Calm, which is available on both ios and Android.
Interaxon, the company behind the Muse headband and a Mars venture client, claims that sustained use of the device will train one brain to stay more naturally calm and focused.
Tiny Brain Parts Teased From Stem Cells This isn the first time stem cells have been used to help develop hearts.
The protein impairs the formation of new brain cells and contributes to age-related memory losst least in mice, according to a new study.
Moreover, their brains had fewer new neurons than other mice. Thirty days later, however, when the protein had been cleared from their bodies,
and the number of newly formed brain cells was back to normal. To see whether reducing B2m levels could treat
suggesting that B2m is part of a pathway that affects the brain. hat this shows is that you can manipulate the blood, rather than the brain, to potentially treat memory problems,
and restore brain cell formation. The real test, Conboy says, will come in clinical trials that aim to block B2mr other related moleculeso treat
but a small amount of fluorescence in the brain which is a destination for much of the Vitamin c produced in the liver.
Another possible application is engineering brain cells of living animals or human cells grown in a petri dish to allow researchers to track
receiving pacemaker implants in his chest that could intercept aberrant signals from his brain before they reached his muscles.
A new study from MIT Brigham and Women s Hospital and Johns hopkins university suggests that delivering chemotherapy directly into the brain cavity may offer a better way to treat tumors that have metastasized to the brain.
because it s not getting to the brain at a high enough dose for a long enough period of time says Cima who is also a member of MIT s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.
To overcome these delivery issues Cima s lab is working on small implantable devices to deliver drugs for ovarian cancer and bladder disease as well as brain cancer.
For the new brain study the researchers delivered chemotherapy drugs via implantable microcapsules made of a biocompatible material called liquid crystal polymer.
TMZ which is a first-line treatment for brain metastasis and gliomas and doxorubicin a common treatment for breast cancer
which often metastasizes to the brain. Zone of influenceworking with mice implanted with tumors similar to human brain metastases the researchers found that TMZ delivered directly to the brain prolonged survival by several days compared with TMZ administered by injection.
They also found higher rates of apoptosis or programmed cell death in tumor cells near the capsules.
However doxorubicin delivered to the brain did not perform as well as systemic injection of doxorubicin. As an explanation for that discrepancy the researchers found that TMZ travels farther from the capsule after release allowing it to reach more tissue.
After they have their brain metastases surgically taken out you could put in these microcapsules which would kill any remaining cancer cells right then and there.
because so many cancers particularly those of the breast and lung spread to the brain. The researchers are also working on using this approach to precisely deliver drugs to very small regions of the brain in hopes of developing better treatments for psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.
The research was funded by the National institutes of health and the Brain science Foundation n
#Microscopic walkers find their way across cell surfaces Nature has developed a wide variety of methods for guiding particular cells enzymes and molecules to specific structures inside the body:
White blood cells can find their way to the site of an infection while scar-forming cells migrate to the site of a wound.
and brain to model tumors in those regions the researchers say. This method also offers new ways to seek personalized treatments for cancer patients depending on the types of mutations found in their tumors the researchers say.
if they displayed any fluorescent protein in the brain indicating whether the RNA successfully entered the brain tissue was taken up by the cells
and expressed the desired protein. The researchers found that several lipidoids that had performed not well in cultured cells did deliver RNA efficiently in the zebrafish model.
or other large molecules to enter the brain through the bloodstream.##The research was funded by the National institutes of health the Packard Award in Science and Engineering Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Foxconn Technology Group and the Hertz Foundation e
But the brain behind those Hollywood interfaces, MIT alumnus John Underkoffler 8, SM 1, Phd 9 who served as scientific advisor for both films has been bringing a more practical version of that technology to conference rooms
A new study from MIT neuroscientists reveals the brain circuit that controls how memories become linked with positive or negative emotions.
Furthermore the researchers found that they could reverse the emotional association of specific memories by manipulating brain cells with optogenetics a technique that uses light to control neuron activity.
which are stored in different parts of the brain. A memory s context including information about the location where the event took place is stored in cells of the hippocampus
David Anderson a professor of biology at the California Institute of technology says the study makes an important contribution to neuroscientists fundamental understanding of the brain
The research was funded by the RIKEN Brain science Institute Howard hughes medical institute and the JPB Foundation i
#Sorting cells with sound waves Researchers from MIT, Pennsylvania State university, and Carnegie mellon University have devised a new way to separate cells by exposing them to sound waves as they flow through a tiny channel.
Because researchers cannot study the biochemistry of the living human brain the genes that predispose people to schizophrenia
when and how these genes act in human brain cells and how in psychiatric patients those processes may go awry.
#Noninvasive brain control Optogenetics, a technology that allows scientists to control brain activity by shining light on neurons,
This technique requires a light source to be implanted in the brain, where it can reach the cells to be controlled.
Led by Ed Boyden, an associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, the researchers described the protein in the June 29 issue of Nature Neuroscience.
has become a common laboratory tool for shutting off or stimulating specific types of neurons in the brain,
such as an optical fiber, into the brain to control the selected neurons. Such implants can be difficult to insert,
which the brain changes size, or of neurodegenerative disorders, during which the implant can interact with brain physiology.
In addition, it is difficult to perform long-term studies of chronic diseases with these implants. To find a better alternative, Boyden, graduate student Amy Chuong,
who is a member of MIT Media Lab and the Mcgovern Institute for Brain Research.
the researchers were able to shut down neuronal activity in the mouse brain with a light source outside the animal head.
The suppression occurred as deep as 3 millimeters in the brain, and was just as effective as that of existing silencers that rely on other colors of light delivered via conventional invasive illumination.
A key advantage to this opsin is that it could enable optogenetic studies of animals with larger brains,
says Garret Stuber, an assistant professor of psychiatry and cell biology and physiology at the University of North carolina at Chapel hill. n animals with larger brains,
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011