without stopping to interpret the meaning of the signal in the brain. Double bionic arms, designed
Fidelity in collecting control information from the brain or elsewhere in the nervous system is important without that you can control the arm itself
And, crucially, the only way to interpret how much pressure is too much is to relay this information to the brain of a human who can judge the strength of things.
Currently available information is slightly vague about where the brain is being stimulated to produce these touch sensations.
it likely that the electrodes are stimulating the sections of motor cortex already associated with finger sensation.
which forces the patient to form new associations between totally new neural activity and familiar sensations.
Targeted muscle reinnervation allow natural control through the same neurons that controlled the lost limb.
and to judge it with their brain, the same as they would any reasonable level of heat.
Wee developing the hardware necessary to restore the relationship between the brain and the outside world and in the process developing the hardware necessary to completely change that relationship forever.
If your brain is wired up and youe thousands of miles away on business, why not let your partner run your spare hand over their face,
And you don have to be an amputee to get electrodes put on your brain, which opens up the area of extra mechanical limbs.
cancer has been nipping at our heelsnd brains, stomachs, kidneys, and so on. The fossil record indicates humanity embittered relationship with the disease extends even to prehistoric times.
drawing on principles from neuroscience and game mechanics to maximize uptake and retention. In many places, health workers are taking CME into their own hands simply by going online to improve their knowledge and skills.
Until now, animal research on central nervous system disorders, such as spinal cord injury and Parkinson disease, has been limited because researchers could not extract sufficient cerebrospinal fluid to perform conventional assays. ith our technology,
researchers will be able to perform large-scale controlled studies with comparable accuracy to conventional assays, Yarmush says.
and integrate within the brain network of sensory neurons. A new assistive device for blind people taps into this sensory network.
The work is described in a paper published in Scientific Reports. any neuroscience textbooks really only devote a few pages to multisensory interaction,
Shimojo and postdoctoral scholar Noelle Stiles have exploited these crossmodal mappings to stimulate the visual cortex with auditory signals that encode information about the environment.
The researchers do not exactly know yet what each sensory region of the brain is doing
WHY THE BRAIN CROSS-PROCESSES uditory regions are activated upon hearing sound, as are the visual regions,
The visual part of the brain, when processing images, maps objects to spatial location, fitting them together like a puzzle piece,
To learn more about how the crossmodal processing happens in the brain, the group is currently using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri) data to analyze the crossmodal neural network. These preexisting neural connections provide an important starting point for training visually impaired people to use devices that will help them see.
and the brain automatically processes images and information for seamless interaction with the environment. Current devices for the blind and visually impaired are not so automatic or intuitive to use,
when your visual cortex is activated? But our research has shown that the visual cortex can be activated by sound,
indicating that we don really need our eyes to see. It very profoundee trying to give blind people a visual experience through other senses.
#These serotonin neurons were built in a dish Serotonin, a neurotransmitter involved in regulating mood and mental states, has been linked to numerous neurological
and mental illnesses, including depression. But because there has been no way to obtain live human serotonin neurons to study these diseases,
most serotonin research has been done with lab animals. Now, researchers have generated human serotonin neurons from human fibroblasts,
the cells that give rise to connective tissue in the body. The researchers say that their findings are applicable to generating many other previously inaccessible human cell types,
providing a boon to medical research and drug discovery. ur work demonstrates that the precious serotonin neurons hidden deep inside the human brain can now be created in a petri dish,
says lead author Jian Feng, professor in the department of physiology and biophysics in the University at Buffalo School of medicine and Biomedical sciences.
builds on previous studies showing that human fibroblasts can be converted to neurons, using specialized transcription factors that bind to genes,
The new research demonstrates the first direct conversion of human fibroblasts into serotonergic neurons, Feng says.
These nduced serotonergic neuronsbehave like serotonin neurons in the human brain. e know the cells were converted to serotonergic neurons
because they express proteins that are only found in neurons that produce serotonin, Feng explains. hey are electrophysiologically active
and the selective uptake of serotonin. he researchers found that they could produce induced serotonergic neurons from fibroblasts by introducing four genes that control the development of serotonin neurons. hese genes change how the human genome,
so that the cell switches from a lung cell to a serotonin neuron, says Feng. ith this new technology,
scientists can generate serotonin neurons from patients who suffer from serotonin-related mental illnesses, says Feng.
While the paper focuses on converting lung fibroblasts to serotonin neurons Feng group has also been working on generating serotonin neurons from human skin cells,
which would be an even easier and less invasive process. Such induced serotonin neurons would be extremely beneficial
since they can be generated from individual patients suffering from illnesses involving the neurotransmitter. hese patient-specific serotonin neurons will be very useful to the discovery of new drugs for diseases ranging from depression
and anxiety to obsessive-compulsive disorder and many others, says Feng. hey will not only allow researchers to study why certain individuals develop a disease
and tissues his research shows that it is possible to convert one type of cell into other types that have been difficult to access, such as neurons or heart cells,
a compound that deactivates pain receptors in the brain. nzymes make and break molecules, said Stephanie Galanie,
in order to craft a molecule that emerged ready to plug pain receptors in the brain. In Science, the study authors acknowledge that a new process to make opioid painkillers could increase concerns about the potential for opioid abuse. e want there to be an open deliberative process to bring researchers and policymakers together
and infections in the developing brains. However, researchers from The Hospital for Sick Children (Sickkids) and the Research Institute of the Mcgill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) have uncovered evidence for genetic causes of CP that may precipitate a change in the clinical
and infections in the developing brains. However, researchers from The Hospital for Sick Children (Sickkids) and the Research Institute of the Mcgill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) have uncovered evidence for genetic causes of CP that may precipitate a change in the clinical
the leptin-in-antibody protein effectively could not cross from the bloodstream into the brain
#Where Glia Meets Axon: New Technique to Better Understand Myelination Since the early part of the 20th century,
scientists have been trying to better understand the intricacies surrounding neuronal development. In particular, the process by which glial cellspecifically, Schwann cellsreate their fatty insulating layer that encircles the axons of peripheral neurons.
While the interactions between these two cell types hold the key to healthy brain function and cognition,
studying the discrete mechanisms of these connections has been notoriously difficult. Yet now, scientists at the University of Buffalo (UB) Hunter James Kelly Research Institute (HJKRI) have developed a new method for
The cellular interactions that trigger the production of myelin are especially hard to pinpoint since the point of contact is buried essentially between the intertwined myelin layers and neuronal plasma membrane."
"Myelin is made by a glial cell wrapping around an axon cell, "explained senior author M. Laura Feltri, M d.,professor of biochemistry and neurology in the Jacobs School of medicine and Biomedical sciences at UB."
"To study myelin, you really need to study both cells. The glial cell wraps like a spiral around the axon, so every time you try to study the region of contact between the two cells,
you end up studying the whole combination. It's very hard to look just at the interface."
"This work may help to provide much-needed insight into demyelinating diseases such Krabbe Leukodystrophy, MS,
"In Krabbe's, for example, the problem is not just that there isn't sufficient myelin,
but that the glial cell is not providing proper support to the neuron. But to figure out exactly what's going wrong, we needed a better way to study that interface, Dr. Feltri noted.
The findings from this study were published recently in Nature Communications through an article entitled patial mapping of juxtacrine axo-glial interactions identifies novel molecules in peripheral myelination.
The new technique described in the current study involves using the neuron as a trigger to attract glial cells.
are necessary for the production of myelin.""Using this method, we can isolate the portion of a cell that comes in contact with another cell,
because the dysfunction of glial cells end up impairing the interactions with neurons, which, as a result, suffer
"Similarly, neurodegenerative diseases like Huntington's disease or Lou Gehrig's, that were considered unique diseases of neurons in the past,
are considered now diseases of cellular communications between neurons and glial cells
#Protein Based Sensors Expand Synthetic biology Repertoire Engineering proteins to detect specific DNA, RNA, or peptide sequences may not be a new idea,
"tpa has a direct effect on the brain as it can interact with neurons, this is why tpa can't be given for a few hours after a stroke has been diagnosed."
An individual could send signals to the hand from the brain in order to control the prosthesis but received no tactile sensory data in return, making it difficult to direct precise movements.
The feat was accomplished by running wires connected to electrodes on the patient's sensory cortex (the part of the brain responsible for identifying tactile sensations)
and motor cortex (the part that directs body movements) to the prosthesis. The mechanical hand that interfaces with the DARPA tech was developed by the Applied Physics laboratory at Johns hopkins university.
and interpreted by the subject's brain. During laboratory testing, the patient was blindfolded while researchers touched each of the hand's bionic fingers.
and nurture nerve cell formation, these devices have been tested successfully in the bodies of living rats in a laboratory.
Y-shaped sensory and motor branch axon bundles found in the sciatic nerve has been achieved.""The exciting next step would be to implant these guides in humans rather than rats,
This osetta Stonegene has revealed a period early in the brain development when treatments may be most effective in preventing schizophrenia manifesting in the first place.
and partly because studying a living brain is very difficult. However, recent studies have begun to make some headway in understanding the biology of mental health conditions by looking at the gene mutations carried by people diagnosed with such problems.
We now know that many of the genes involved in mental health conditions carry instructions for creating the proteins in the brain synapses.
These are the connections between neurons that allow them to communicate with one another. But despite knowing about hundreds of mutations associated with schizophrenia,
we do need not to look at human neurons because we can use mice instead and we only need a single mutation rather than the several gene mutations that normally give rise to the condition.
In our studies on DISC1 mice, we have found that the gene has an important function during an early period of brain development.
the animal grows up with a lack of brain plasticity (the ability to change neural pathways over time) in the synapses that were trying to form at the time.
Targeting Schizophrenia Vulnerable Period Different parts of the brain may mature at different times but most cortical areas go through a similar sequence of development.
Therefore, different areas are all likely to go through the vulnerable period at some point in their development.
One of the challenges for the future is to discover what these ritical periodsare for different areas of the brain.
The interaction between gene mutations and brain development may have made it difficult to understand how the long list of risk factors can cause problems in the adult brain.
#Scientists Control Brain cells Using Sound waves The ability to control brain cells with sound waves sounds like science fiction, right?
By using genetically modified neurons coupled with microbubbles, the researchers have demonstrated they can control the movements of nematodes.
The process alled sonogenetics ses sound waves to turn neurons on and off. The study is published in the journal Nature Communications,
and details how sound waves can target brain, heart, and muscle cells to control movement. A similar technique, called optogenetics, is currently in practice
and uses light pulses to control neurons. Just like a switch in your house turns your lights on and off,
light can be used to turn neurons on and off. Special light-sensitive channel proteins are added to specific neurons
and are activated then with focused lasers. However, the procedure gets tricky when it comes to cells deep inside the body.
The brain and other tissue can get in the way, scattering the light, and in order to reach certain cells,
additional tool to manipulate neurons and other cells in the body.""Chalasani and his team conducted their research on nematodes, a type of roundworm.
and as a result showed the neurons could be controlled by ultrasound. So far, the work has only been performed on worms.
whether this could work in a mammalian brain, "Chalasani says in a statement. His group has begun already testing the approach in mice."
it may be possible to make target human neurons temporarily susceptible to the ultrasound signal in a clinical setting for certain neurological treatments."
and brainsaid Dr Gray, who researches HIV replication in brain cells. o completely eradicate HIV from the infected individual, that is, where there a complete elimination of every HIV infected cell in the body,
Debate rages between those who blame the formation of tau protein tangles within neurons, and those who believe a buildup of beta amyloid plaques are the main cause.
impeding the capacity of neurons to avoid the buildup of tau. Gan sought a drug that would prevent acetylization from occurring."
protecting brain cells and improving the rodents'memory. While there is as yet no evidence that salsalate has similar effects in humans,
a much rarer condition where tau proteins affect the motor centers of the brain b
#New Experiment Confirms Fundamental Symmetry In Nature With the help of the Large hadron collider (LHC) heavy ion detector ALICE (A large Ion Collider Experiment),
collagens, muscle fibers, miniature brain structures, and branching artery patterns made of biological matter have all been produced using the technique.
and it will soon be applied to other drugs. his is the first in a line of central nervous system products Aprecia plans to introduce as part of our commitment to transform the way patients experience taking medication,
#Doctors can now put drugs straight into brains Doctors can now inject drugs straight into people brains,
and microbes can't get through to our clean brain and cause it problems. But it filters out good and intentional molecules too,
developing special molecules that can trick the BBB into think that they should be let through by exploiting the mechanism that let nutrients into the brain.
where they can then release the therapeutics they need, straight into the nervous system. Doctors have been trying to get through the barrier
if it went straight into the brain. At the moment, they are placed into the blood and then find their way around the body.
Scientists hope that the discovery can be used to deliver iologics straight into the brain. They are special drugs based on protein
and grown in a lab. Those drugs can eventually be used to treat brain diseases, doctors hope,
But the discovery could help provide new understandings of the way that the biochemistry of the brain and body works, in the meantime e
#'Brain training'game helps people with schizophrenia live a normal life Patients who played the game regularly for a month were four times better than non-players at remembering the kind of things that are critical for normal, day-to-day life,
The computer game was based on scientific principles that are known to rainthe brain in episodic memory, which helps people to remember events such as where they parked a car
so anything that can improve the ability of the brain to remember everyday events will help them to lead a normal life,
which has led scientists to find ways of training the brain through computer-based games. e need a way of treating the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia, such as problems with episodic memory,
Dr John Coates, a fellow in neuroscience and finance at the University of Cambridge who specialises in the biology of risk taking and stress, said he is now getting bout one call a weekfrom financial institutions,
he told The Independent. eople are just wrapping their brain around this idea that if your body a mess,
While prosthetics have previously been able to be controlled directly from the brain, it is the first time that signals have been sent successfully the other way. ee completed the circuit,
but without feedback from signals traveling back to the brain it can be difficult to achieve the level of control needed to perform precise movements. y wiring a sense of touch from a mechanical hand directly into the brain,
The prosthetics work by running wires from the part of the brain that controls movement into the special hand,
Inspired by the human brain, the network nodes change as they are fed information, simulating the human process of learning by experience.
and control signals from the brain-with the rather simple physics of springlike limb behavior.
Using an"Avatar"-like bio-robotic motor system that integrates a real muscle and tendon along with a computer controlled nerve stimulator acting as the avatar's spinal cord
That is, the electrical system-in this case the body's nervous system-drives the mechanical system-the leg's muscle-tendon unit-at a frequency which provides maximum'bang for the buck'in terms of efficient power output.
"In locomotion, resonance comes from tuning the interaction between the nervous system and the leg so they work together,
#Brain's Wiring Linked to Good, Bad Behavioral Traits The way our brains are wired may reveal a lot about us,
according to new research co-authored by scientists at Washington University in St louis. For example, people with ositivebehavioral traits,
such as sharp memories, many years of education and robust physical endurance, have stronger neural connections between certain brain regions than people with egativetraits, such as smoking, aggressive behavior and a family
The study, published recently in the journal Nature Neuroscience, is among the first fruits of the Human Connectome Project (HCP),
University of Minnesota and Oxford university in the United kingdom. Describing the findings as mpressive, Washington University School of medicine in St louis neuroscientist Marcus E. Raichle,
and successful lives from those who are not so successfulbased in part on the activity and anatomy of their brains.
The HCP brings together a global consortium of researchers working to map the structural and functional connections of the healthy, living human brain.
Designed to study how brain connectivity relates to individualsskills and behavior the project will provide researchers with detailed, high-resolution MRI brain scans on 1, 200 volunteers.
The new study, based on data from the first 500 volunteers scanned as part of the HCP,
looked closely at a series of brain regions involved in high-level cognition, like memory and imagination, including a network that remains active
when the brain is relatively idle. Earlier research by Raichle, the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Distinguished Professor of Medicine, played a pivotal role in the discovery of brain regions now known as the efault mode network.
These regions become active when the brain seemingly is at rest and not actively engaged in a task.
For the new study the researchers examined a HCP database that included resting-state connectomes from about 460 people ages 22 to 35 years,
Smith and his colleagues ran a massive computer analysis to examine how brain connectivity patterns correlated with individual behavioral traits, such as age, socioeconomic status, history of drug abuse, personality traits and various
The study found that participants with strongly connected brain networks also scored high on behavioral measures usually considered to be positive,
substance use and poor sleep quality. his study provides intriguing insights into how behavior is related to the incredibly complex brain networks that make each of us a unique individual,
In an interview with Nature News, Raichle cautioned that the findings of this study do not establish a cause-and-effect relationship between strong brain network connections and positive behavioral traits or between weak connections and negative traits.
While the brain connection patterns are clear across the 461 volunteers in this study there a lot of work that needs to be done before brain scans could be used to predict what sorts of skills
or behavior we might expect from a particular individual. Once these causal relationships are understood better,
it could be possible to push brains toward the oodend of the axis, Barch told Nature News. Barch said that it is likely that the variation in brain connectivity
and traits seen across individuals reflects a complex dance between environment and biology. Understanding the precise nature of these causal influences will help lead to the design of better interventions to help move the brain and behavior toward the positive end of the spectrum i
#New Material Could Turn Water into Fuel Scientists have designed theoretically a new material that could help supply the world with clean energy by turning water into fuel,
to help those with spinal cord injuries learn to walk again. After a fall out of a second-story window caused Pollock's catastrophic spinal cord injury in 2010,
physicians told him any return of sensation or function below his waist was out of the question. Pollock, who has been blind for 16 years,
and pierced his spinal cord in two places--that he was, essentially, a passenger in the exoskeleton.
In the lab of V. Reggie Edgerton, professor of integrative biology and physiology, neurobiology and neurosurgery, Pollock had attached electrical patches to the skin over his spinal cord.
this week to the world largest international society of biomedical engineers, said the electrical stimulation to the spinal cord appears to reawaken neurons there.
Once abuzz, those spinal neurons appear to recognize sensations sent up by the moving lower limbs
Even if the brain is out of the loop, the spinal cord appears to retain some of the"automaticity"that allows people with full function to initiate
and make movements with little to no conscious effort, says Edgerton.""After the injury there a lot of functional capability that remains,"Edgerton said."
the Ekso appears to remind the spinal cord what walking"feels"like. And as the spinal cord responds by initiating muscle movement,
the Ekso's sensors and motors adjust, and provide less stepping power. Challenged to do more,
the reawakened spinal cord neurons may to a point, continue to relearn their old ways. Whether that process leads a paralyzed patient to walk again depends on the extent and location of his or her spinal cord injury
said Edgerton.""If they practice and regain 50%of control, that highly significant,"said Edgerton,
#Simple Chemical Stops Prion Disease Mad cow, scrapie and Creutzfeld-Jakob disease are all diseases of the brain that debilitate before they kill,
Infectious prions get into the brain after people or animals eat food that is contaminated with them.
Eventually, the proteins replicate to the point where they form plaques that can kill brain cells, and give the brain the"spongy"appearance that is characteristic of prion diseases (the diseases are called formally transmissible spongiform encephalopathies).
10 Things You Didn't Know About the Brain Exactly how prions kill the cells is still under some debate,
Aguzzi said, but there's no doubt that the proteins replicate rapidly once they start linking up with certain proteins in brain cells,
and it only takes a few prions to start the process. Prions are also really hard to get rid of.
#Another Fatal Brain Disease May Come from the Spread of'Prion'Proteins A rare and fatal brain disorder called multiple system atrophy (MSA) may be caused by a newly discovered prion, a protein similar to the ones
Eventually, the buildup of misfolded proteins can cause lesions to form in the brain, leading to disease."
the researchers said. 10 Things You Didn't Know About the Brain A new prion Patients with MSA can experience tremors,
Studies show that patients have a buildup of the alpha-synuclein protein in certain brain cells.
In the new study, the researchers took brain tissue from 14 patients with MSA, and injected that material into mice that had been engineered genetically to have a mutation in the alpha-synuclein gene.
when instruments used during brain surgery are cleaned without using certain methods. This is because traditional disinfection methods don't work to get rid of prions.
because brain tissue from MSA patients did not cause disease in normal mice. Rather brain tissue from MSA patients caused disease only in mice that were engineered genetically to have a mutant alpha-synuclein protein.
In contrast,"true"prions can cause disease in normal mice, Sim said.)""The problem with branding something a prion is it induces fear,
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