| |
|
|
| |
|
|
Scientists Transfer Memory Between Snails
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American:
UCLA neuroscientists reported Monday that they have transferred a memory from one animal to another via injections of RNA, a startling result that challenges the widely held view of where and how memories are stored in the brain. The finding from the lab of David Glanzman hints at the potential for new RNA-based treatments to one day restore lost memories and, if correct, could shake up the field of memory and learning. The researchers extracted RNA from the nervous systems of snails that had been shocked and injected the material into unshocked snails. RNA's primary role is to serve as a messenger inside cells, carrying protein-making instructions from its cousin DNA. But when this RNA was injected, these naive snails withdrew their siphons for extended periods of time after a soft touch. Control snails that received injections of RNA from snails that had not received shocks did not withdraw their siphons for as long.
Glanzman's group went further, showing that Aplysia sensory neurons in Petri dishes were more excitable, as they tend to be after being shocked, if they were exposed to RNA from shocked snails. Exposure to RNA from snails that had never been shocked did not cause the cells to become more excitable. The results, said Glanzman, suggest that memories may be stored within the nucleus of neurons, where RNA is synthesized and can act on DNA to turn genes on and off. He said he thought memory storage involved these epigenetic changes -- changes in the activity of genes and not in the DNA sequences that make up those genes -- that are mediated by RNA. This view challenges the widely held notion that memories are stored by enhancing synaptic connections between neurons. Rather, Glanzman sees synaptic changes that occur during memory formation as flowing from the information that the RNA is carrying.
The study has been published in the journal eNeuro.
http://www.eneuro.org/content/early/2018/05/14/ENEURO.0038-18.2018 |
|
|
|
| |
|
| There are no conversations. |
| |
|
|
|
|
| David Eagleman |
I know one lab that studies nicotine receptors and all the scientists are smokers, and another lab that studies impulse control and they're all overweight. |
| Aravind Adiga |
Nothing gives us greater pride than the importance of India's scientific and engineering colleges, or the army of Indian scientists at organizations such as Microsoft and NASA. Our temples are not the god-encrusted shrines of Varanasi, but Western scientific institutions like Caltech and MIT, and magazines like 'Nature' and 'Scientific American.' |
| Tammy Baldwin |
In my grandfather's lab, scientists did independent research, and peers reviewed and commented on its merits. Politics, he taught me, had no place in the scientific process. |
| Thomas R. Insel |
Neuroscientists talk a lot about brain circuits. In fact, the word 'circuit' is probably misleading. We do not know where most circuits begin and end. And unlike an electrical circuit, brain connections are heavily reciprocal and recursive, so that a direction of information flow can be inferred but sometimes not proven. |
| Billy Graham |
When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost. |
| Teri Garr |
I'm wondering if they haven't reported all the people with MS, because if all of the cases were reported, the government would have to step in and give more financial aid to us. |
| Nina Fedoroff |
Myths about the dire effects of genetically modified foods on health and the environment abound, but they have not held up to scientific scrutiny. And, although many concerns have been expressed about the potential for unexpected consequences, the unexpected effects that have been observed so far have been benign. |
| Thomas R. Insel |
Most of our brain cells are glial cells, once thought to be mere support cells, but now understood as having a critical role in brain function. Glial cells in the human brain are markedly different from glial cells in other brains, suggesting that they may be important in the evolution of brain function. |
| Douglas Feith |
If you live in Israel and you see the way life is there and then you go abroad and see the way Israel is reported on, the way that Israel gets reported on night after night is simply pictures of bombings or military actions. |
| Johnny Galecki |
Scientists are not these guys in lab coats deep in the inner bowels of universities and hospitals with their Bunsen burners. They're the people molding the culture that we live in, the future of our culture, and the technology we rely on every day. |
|
|
|
|
Sleep Deprivation Disrupts Brain-Cell Communication, Study Finds (npr.org)
A new study published in the journal Nature Medicine found that sleep deprivation causes the bursts of electrical activity that brain cells use to communicate to become slower and weaker. "The finding could help explain why a lack of sleep impairs a range of mental functions, says Dr. Itzhak Fried, an author of the study and a professor of neurosurgery at the University of California, Los Angeles," reports NPR. From the report:
The finding comes from an unusual study of patients being evaluated for surgery to correct severe epilepsy. As part of the evaluation, doctors place wires in the brain to find out where a pat...
|
| |
|
|
|
MEMORY
One of the processes important in perception is the comparing of current input with similar past experience. When we see a friend, a memory image of his face is presented to our consciousness along with the sensation of his actual present appearance. This memory image (which can be called a schema) blends with the current sensation, so that the perception is a combination of the two. The relative strengths of each source of information probably vary from person to person. Some primarily perceive the memory image, with the sensory input serving as confirmation of the identification. For others, the memory image may be so weak that reorientation and identification is continually necessary. Though the construction and recall of this image is not clearly understood, it must be partial...
This post is a comment.
|
| |
|
|
|
Study Finds Flaw In Emergent Gravity https://phys.org/news/2018-08-flaw-emergent-gravity.html
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org:
In recent years, some physicists have been investigating the possibility that gravity is not actually a fundamental force, but rather an emergent phenomenon that arises from the collective motion of small bits of information encoded on spacetime surfaces called holographic screens. The theory, called emergent gravity, hinges on the existence of a close connection between gravity and thermodynamics. Emergent gravity has received its share of criticism, however, and a new paper adds to this by showing that the holographic screen surfaces described b...
|
| |
|
|
|
A 2013 study from Emory University found that mice trained to fear a specific odor would pass their emotions on to their offspring and future generations. Scientists applied electric shocks to mice as they exposed them to the smell of cherry blossoms. The mice then bred, and both the children and grandchildren of the affected rodents demonstrated a fear of cherry blossoms the first time they smelled them.
“Our results allow us to appreciate how the experiences of a parent, before even conceiving offspring, markedly influence both structure and function in the nervous system of subsequent generations,” Dr. Brian Dias of the Emory University department of psychiatry said to the Daily Telegraph. “Such a phenomenon may contribute to the etiology and potential intergenerational transmission of risk for neuropsychiatric disorders such as phobias, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.”
...
|
| |
|
|
|
Tantalizing But Preliminary Evidence of a 'Brain Microbiome'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine:
We know the menagerie of microbes in the gut has powerful effects on our health. Could some of these same bacteria be making a home in our brains? A poster presented here this week at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience drew attention with high-resolution microscope images of bacteria apparently penetrating and inhabiting the cells of healthy human brains. The work is preliminary, and its authors are careful to note that their tissue samples, collected from cadavers, could have been contaminated. But to many passersby in the exhibit hall, the possibility t...
|
| |
|
|
|
Researchers Create 'Sans Forgetica,' a Memory-Boosting Font (cnn.com) 5
CNN reports on a new font that is purposely designed to more easily help students recall academic materials they read. From the report: "Australian researchers say their new font, called Sans Forgetica, could be the tool to help people retain information. The typeface, which slants to the side and has gaps in the middle, is not easy on the eyes. But according to the team at RMIT University in Australia who conceived Sans Forgetica, it has the perfect combination of 'obstruction' needed to recall information. The multidisciplinary team of typographic design specialists and psychologists said they designed Sans Forgetica using the learning principle called 'desirable difficulty.' The principle means that when obstructi...
|
| |
|
|
|
Probably has to do with how you think about numbers. It's not easy for everyone to remember phone numbers. Phone numbers are grouped into parts. You have an area code, then three digits, then four digits. You might have an association in your head for area codes. I know when I think of a friend I think of where they grew up and then I remember the area code, then I just have to remember 7 digits. From what I read about memory techniques, it's easier to remember if you have an image or association. You could do something like, assign a person, place, and action to each digit. Then in three digit groupings, if you have a number like 517, you could say 5 is the person 'Santa', 1 is the location 'the zoo' and 7 is 'eating a cake' and then you'd remember that image and be able to get the number back from your mapping. There are lots of tricks like this for names, numbers, etc. I think people probably subconsciously develop some sort of less complicated representations and certain things ar...
This post is a comment.
|
| |
|
|
|
Contractors Lose Jobs After Hacking CIA's In-House Vending Machines
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechRepublic:
Today's vending machines are likely to be bolted to the floor or each other and are much more sophisticated -- possibly containing machine intelligence, and belonging to the Internet of Things (IoT). Hacking this kind of vending machine obviously requires a more refined approach. The type security professionals working for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) might conjure up, according to journalists Jason Leopold and David Mack, who first broke the story A Bunch Of CIA Contractors Got Fired For Stealing Snacks From Vending Machines. In their BuzzFeed post, the...
|
| |
|
|
|
In addition to the psychological literature there is some information about the psychology of money
available in the financial literature. Close to the beginning of her best selling book, The 9 Steps To
Financial Freedom, financial planner Suze Orman states ? most of my clients biggest problems in life
today - even those that appear on the surface not to be money related - are connected with their early
formative experiences with money.? She recommends to her readers, as the first step toward financial
...
This post is a comment.
|
| |
|
|
|
Screen Time Changes Structure of Kids' Brains, NIH Study Shows
Brain scans of adolescents who are heavy users of smartphones, tablets and video games look different from those of less active screen users, preliminary results from an ongoing study funded by the National Institutes of Health show, according to a report on Sunday by "60 Minutes." That's the finding of the first batch of scans of 4,500 nine- to 10-year-olds. Scientists will follow those children and thousands more for a decade to see how childhood experiences, including the use of digital devices, affect their brains, emotional development and mental health.
...
|
| |