by M. Bassolino ; M. Franza ; J. Bello Ruiz ; M. Pinardi ; T. Schmidlin ; M.A. Stephan ; M. Solcà ; A. Serino ; O. Blanke @ European Journal of Neuroscience
Researchers tested feeling of embodiment by non-invasive brain stimulation. Instead of traditional visual, tactile or spacial illusions, scientists used magnetic (TMS) and visual (BR) stimulus to interact directly with the body’s representation in the brain.Continue reading
News about Earth on track for hottest year is almost like no news anymore. And as the tragedy goes from front page to weather forecast people seem to pay less and less attention. Scientists must then get a sparkle of obituary/criminal ‘flare’ to draw attention, such as “Severe droughts and devastating flooding being experienced throughout the tropics and sub-tropical zones bear the hallmarks of this El Niño, which is the strongest for more than 15 years” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud.
Similar case can be found when pesticide exposure impairs crop pollination services provided by bumblebees. Researcher Dara Stanley team had to make clear that human-interest crops were at risk, such as apples. Public really care are not for bees, but for their services to humans.
We can celebrate the fact that NIH will no longer support biomedical research on Chimpanzees, as a step forward. There’s a long road ahead though, as “These decisions are specific to chimpanzees. Research with other non-human primates will continue to be valued, supported, and conducted by the NIH.”
As fiancés know, setting a date is a double-edged sword. Goals seem more tangible and apt to plan around, but unkept promises usually end with someone looking foolish.
Pushing the envelope and making plans about the future is what was intended at Among the high-profile thinkers speaking at Global Future 2045: Towards a New Strategy for Human Evolution, Randal A. Koene delivered a speech on brain emulation:Continue reading
Sonogenetics is a technique that allows non invasive activation of specific neurons. This is not totally new, but significantly different from similar results were obtained through light-sensitive neurons for a few years. Let’s recap:
First you have to decide which neurons you plan to interact with. Not trivial, especially if you consider how extensive and intricate neural mappings and brain networks can be – currently beyond scientific precision.
Then you genetic engineer such neurons so that they develop certain features (misexpression of TRP-4 protein channel if you ask) that react to ultrasound stimulus.
And then, you make sure you are able to produce and transmit ultrasound to those neurons in a controlled way. In this point there is a major advance compared to light stimulation, for you don’t have to place a light source directly at the neuron population.
And voila – ultrasound transmission remotely control neural activity.
Scientists Stuart Ibsen, Ada Tong, Carolyn Schutt, Sadik Esener & Sreekanth H. Chalasani published an article describing how they did it. Of course, in a much more accurate manner. And initial results were tested in a nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (a small worm) but implications and potential are very promising.
Far from the initial experiment results of controlling the movements of a worm, many nervous system treatments and deeper understanding of brain mechanisms may benefit from further developments.
Helping brain activity to reach other parts of the body bypassing spinal cord and other nervous system injuries is an advancing technology, as Paralyzed Man Walks Using Brain Power and Woman Controls a Fighter Jet Sim Using Only Her Mind illustrates well.
The somewhat reverse path, though, is not so obvious – use brain to override or neutralize nervous systems signaling. A.M. Youssef, V.G. Macefield, and L.A. Henderson’s paper “Pain inhibits pain; human brainstem mechanisms” is an attempt to bring more light to it:
“Conditioned pain modulation is a powerful analgesic mechanism, occurring when a painful stimulus is inhibited by a second painful stimulus delivered at a different body location.
(…) Human lesion studies show that the circuitry responsible for conditioned pain modulation lies within the caudal brainstem, although the precise nuclei in humans remain unknown. (…)
The expression of analgesia was associated with reduction in signal intensity increases during each test stimulus in the presence of the conditioning stimulus in three brainstem regions(…) Furthermore, the magnitudes of these signal reductions in all three brainstem regions were significantly correlated to analgesia magnitude.
Defining conditioned pain modulation circuitry provides a framework for the future investigations into the neural mechanisms responsible for the maintenance of persistent pain conditions thought to involve altered analgesic circuitry.”
Seth R. Bordenstein and Kevin R. Theis’s “Host Biology in Light of the Microbiome: Ten Principles of Holobionts and Hologenomes” combines impressive qualities. It suggests no less than a holistic redefinition of zoology, botany, and biology. And they are careful to re-state historical achievements of Darwin, Mendel and modern scientists in this new framework; animals and plants are more appropriately understood as a mutli-species association than autonomous individuals. Both at biologic and genetic level.
As a sense of justice welcome the new status of our former ‘junior’ associates, I wonder how the implosion of the self into a multitude of beings fits well in a society that may overvalue individuality. Instead of a dissolution of the self into a common spirituality, we see the multiplication of ‘I’ into multiple individuals. The untold story of mitochondria et alii paints egocentric narrative in a more altruist light.
This does not take the great service such reconstruction may do to science. Excerpts below:
This robot hunt and kill invasive starfish…
Fine. May the starfish ask how non-invasive is the robot?
story from MIT Tech Review
“(…) Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, are in the early stages of developing technology that uses your body as a communication medium, which they say could eventually work as a lower power, more secure alternative to Bluetooth for wearable gadgets like smart watches and fitness and health trackers.(…)
The researchers measured how much of the signal was lost from one body part to the next—arm to arm, or arm to head, for instance—and determined that it was as much as 10 million times less than what’s found with the use of Bluetooth. (…)Continue reading
That aging leads to mortality is a rather obvious conclusion. In some species this is a more statistical true than a biological determination. Researchers investigated mathematical relations between stress resistance, aging, and negligible senescence. Next step would be fix DNA so that the network is more stable.
“We conjectured, therefore, that the lifelong transcriptional stability of an organism may be a key determinant of longevity. We analyzed the stability of a simple genetic-network model and found that under most common circumstances, such a gene network is inherently unstable. Over a time it undergoes an exponential accumulation of gene-regulation deviations leading to death. However, should the repair systems be sufficiently effective, the gene network can stabilize so that gene damage remains constrained along with mortality of the organism”
Read full “Stability analysis of a model gene network links aging, stress resistance, and negligible senescence” by Valeria Kogan, Ivan Molodtsov, Leonid I. Menshikov, Robert J. Shmookler Reis & Peter Fedichev
From Nautilus, by Johnny Bontemps, The Dawn of Life in a $5 Toaster Oven:
“… A vintage General Electric model… for cooking up the chemical precursors of life, he thought. He bought it for $5.
At home in his basement, with the help of his college-age son, he cut a rectangular hole in the oven’s backside, through which an automated sliding table (recycled from an old document scanner) could move a tray of experiments in and out. He then attached a syringe pump to some inkjet printer parts, and rigged the system to periodically drip water onto the tray … in Hud’s laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he directs the Center for Chemical Evolution, a multi-university consortium funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation. …
It simulates the cycles of cool and hot, and wet and dry, that Hud suspects jump-started this evolutionary process, millions of years before the first cellular life forms emerged…
Evolution requires two forces: variation and selection… Polymers can form, break down, and form again with new configurations. That’s variation. … They might fold into shapes that prevent them from breaking apart too quickly, for instance. That’s selection. …
The engine for life and evolution could then be, as Hud says, as simple as “a planet spinning in front of a star…” read full story
I tried to resist but after a while I had to check what’s the fuzz about octopus DNA findings.
“The octopus genome and the evolution of cephalopod neural and morphological novelties” is the paper, by Caroline B. Albertin et alli, that triggered the information treasure hunt in their DNA chest.
Cephalopods have the largest nervous systems among the invertebrates. Camera-like eyes, smart arms, early embryogenesis and great camouflage. Genome sequencing found expansions in genes thought unique of vertebrates. Study found hundreds of genes unique to cephalopods with elevated expression levels, including in the nervous system.
Modafinil has been used to enhance cognitive functions such as concentration and alertness.
This drug was originally designed to help sleeping disorder (narcolepsy).
“Modafinil for cognitive neuroenhancement in healthy non-sleep-deprived subjects: a systematic review” by R.M. Battleday, A-K. Brem presents a new study corroborating those cognitive functions benefits.
Never bad to keep in mind all sorts of psycological, force of habit, social and other forms of potential addictive side effects…
As DNA editing mass production becomes doable, large laboratories with scale can catter to a new service – they manufacture the DNA you edited and see it delivered to your door.
Not as simple, ready and cheap done than said, as “Designing life from scratch: A fledgling field is about to take off” by Lisa M. Krieger explains it better.
Article by Ferris Jabr, illustrated by Jackie Ferrentino, featured in Nautilus
“When we speak of brain cells we usually mean neurons: (…) The rest, known as neuroglia or simply glia, have long lived in the neuron’s shadow.
(…) By the early 1900s, that notion had begun to erode. (…) From the 1960s onward (…) neuroscientists confirmed that glia are the brain’s architects, doctors, police, janitors, and gardeners. In the last five years, researchers have finally brought glia into the limelight as the highly dynamic, incomparably versatile, and indispensable partners of the neuron. Here are five recently discovered roles glia play in the brain:
Wiring – (…) radial glial cells form a widespread lattice of cables along which neurons crawl like inchworms (…) A series of studies in the last three years have also confirmed that some glial cells excrete molecules that promote the formation of new connections between neurons, while others engulf and digest weak and underused synapses, changing the brain’s micro-circuitry throughout life.
Clearing Clutter – (…) Microglia roam about scavenging harmful tangles of proteins, the remains of dead cells, and bits of unneeded DNA. But a study published just last year indicated that microglia are essential for eliminating clumps of amyloid beta and other protein clusters associated with Alzheimer’s and related neurodegenerative disorders. (…)
Helping Neurons Talk – (…) oligodendrocyte precursor cell (OPC) is one of the most unique and active types of glia. (…) OPCs form synapses with neurons and change their own behavior (…)
Helping You Breathe – (…) When glia known as astrocytes detected a drop in blood pH, which would correspond to elevated levels of carbon dioxide, they increased (…) the breathing rate in live rats, eventually bringing more oxygen to the brain. Raising the pH, which would correlate with oxygenated blood, had the opposite effect. (…)
Making You Smart – By absorbing and releasing neurotransmitters, and thereby modifying the availability of these molecules, astrocytes change how frequently and forcefully neurons fire” read full story
It is now long awaited that some day humans will be able to raise human spare parts in other species. Pigs are among the favored donors – perhaps due to the similar diet habits.
As this story by Antonio Regalado reports, researchers are presenting impressive progress in swapping hearts and kidneys among pigs and baboons (that would be us). Get me a new liver and a double dry martini to celebrate, please.
And then we know as well that (other) scientific experiments made mice smarter by inserting human brain cells in them.
Now we just have to be careful how to mix (shake, don’t stir) these practices. Make the pig too smart and I bet it won’t give away a heart so easily.
Even if you think debate over human free will has been conclusive (to say the least) or not agree in aphorisms as definitive judgements on the matter, Hank Pellissier’s “Free Will Does Not Exist – Should it be a Transhumanist Enhancement?” brings a refreshing debate on what would ‘enhanced’ human beings do about their possibility of free will.
“(…) We don’t have free will because human physiology isn’t wired that way. (…)
It is true that certain factions still believe in free will – Religionists and Libertarians – but I’m not in either camp. I’m an atheist social progressive.
Having established my opinion on free will, let’s proceed…(…) Should 100% Free Will be a Transhumanist Goal? (…) I believe free will isn’t available,but it could be attained, at least partially, perhaps through excruciating disciplines… or – definitely – via emerging transhuman technologies.
Returning to the present time, let’s examine the suffering caused by our enslavement to our outdated neurochemistry, which evolved to protect us from pre-civilization menaces. Let’s divide our investigation of the consequences into three categories:
Body – Many people (…) enslaved to physical addictions that render them helpless. (…)
Emotion – Humanity is cursed with negative feelings that injure us with internal pain and agony. (…)
Thought – Our minds often flit spasmodically from one obsession to another, exhausting us with their randomness and superficiality. (…)
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all these problems were eradicated?
Imagine an existence as Free-Will Transhumans, who decided 100% of the time what we wanted to think, feel, and do.. (…)
We’ll begin with options presently available, and continue from there into futuristic, far-out, fantastical possibilities.
Today’s Techniques and Technology – Control of one’s thoughts and feelings can be improved via meditation. (…)
Pharmaceutical Control of our Biochemistry – “Paradise engineering”, advocated by philosopher David Pearce of HedWeb.com, has “abolition of suffering” as its goal. (…)
Memory Erasure and Alteration + Injection of Joyful Invented Memories – Our neurological response to situations is largely determined by memories of similar events. (…)
Rewiring Our Brains, with Wires – Our mental activity currently depends on largely-out-of-our-control neurochemical reactions….” read full article
In “Structural Basis for a Six Nucleotide Genetic Alphabet” published at the Journal of the American Chemical Society researches propose adding a couple of letters.
“Z” and “P” would contribute to the classic double helix structure with similar flexibility and rigitdy. Paper states that this would integrate well with current ‘conventional’ pairs. An ATCGZP DNA could evolve and take a life of its own. Literally. Including evolution and all its unforeseen consequences.
In theory, having an enriched set of building blocks would increase the possibility of creating new proteins and thus potentially useful for medial and scientific purposes. Perhaps one advantage is that such proteins (and other biochemical structures) is the fact that they would be easily marked and spotted as distinguished elements.
A stroll in the field is good for our minds? Sure. Update your repertoire on why it is so with this “Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation” by Gregory N. Bratmana, Paul Hamiltonb, Kevin S. Hahnc, Gretchen C. Dailyd,e,1, and James J. Grossc.
The study approached the question “what mechanism(s) link decreased nature experience to the development of mental illness?”
Researchers suggest “One such mechanism might be the impact of nature exposure on rumination, a maladaptive pattern of self-referential thought that is associated with heightened risk for depression and other mental illnesses. We show in healthy participants that a brief nature experience, a 90-min walk in a natural setting, decreases both self-reported rumination and neural activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex (sgPFC), whereas a 90-min walk in an urban setting has no such effects on self-reported rumination or neural activity.”
In another good piece on CRISPR DNA editing revolution, “Easy DNA Editing Will Remake the World. Buckle Up.” by Amy Maxmen.
“The technique is revolutionary, and like all revolutions, it’s perilous. (…) It could at last allow genetics researchers to conjure everything anyone has ever worried they would—designer babies, invasive mutants, species-specific bioweapons, and a dozen other apocalyptic sci-fi tropes. It brings with it all-new rules for the practice of research in the life sciences. But no one knows what the rules are—or who will be the first to break them.
IN A WAY, humans were genetic engineers long before (…) through selective breeding. But it took time, and it didn’t always pan out.
(…)
Working together, microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier and biochemist named Jennifer Doudna’s teams found that Crispr made two short strands of RNA and that Cas9 latched onto them. (…) Cas9 does something almost magical: It changes shape, grasping the DNA and slicing it with a precise molecular scalpel.
(…) Once they’d taken that mechanism apart, Doudna’s postdoc, Martin Jinek, combined the two strands of RNA into one fragment—“guide RNA”—that Jinek could program. He could make guide RNA with whatever genetic letters he wanted(…) Cas9 protein proved to be a programmable machine for DNA cutting. (…) Doudna’s team published its results in Science.(…)” read full article