brain activity Archives - Amazing Health Advances

Dementia Surging Among Younger Adults at Unprecedented Rates, Study Reveals

The AHA! Team — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 05:04:20 +0000

News Staff via NaturalHealth365 – Young minds are deteriorating faster than anticipated, with early-onset dementia diagnoses rising at an alarming rate among young adults. This growing trend is profoundly affecting working-age individuals and their families. In fact, recent findings published in Neurology Journals highlight the increasing prevalence and incidence of early-onset dementia, shedding light on the significant mental health challenges faced by those under 65. Beyond the individuals themselves, dementia takes a toll on their loved ones and society as a whole. As more young and middle-aged adults are diagnosed, the burden on our healthcare system – and its associated costs – continues to escalate. The growing global crisis of early-onset dementia Finnish researchers recently analyzed the prevalence and incidence of early-onset dementia – defined as dementia occurring before age 65 – over a span of just over a decade. Their findings revealed that incidence rates were higher than previously reported and showed a progressive increase throughout the 11-year study period. However, it’s important to note that the data was limited to two regions in Finland: Northern Savonia in Eastern Finland and Northern Ostrobothnia in the north. Further insights were provided by a systematic review published in JAMA Network Further insights were provided by a systematic review published in JAMA Network, which analyzed 95 studies on early-onset dementia. This global review found that the standardized prevalence of early-onset dementia averaged 119 cases per 100,000 individuals aged 30 to 64. Alarmingly, the incidence among individuals aged 30 to 34 showed an increase of 1.1 cases per 100,000. These findings show that early-onset dementia is not confined to Finland or specific regions but represents a growing global health challenge. Natural solutions for maintaining cognitive performance You can take steps to proactively defend against the development of early-onset dementia. A diet highlighted by Mediterranean foods, meaning wild fish, organic olives, nuts, and leafy greens, is beneficial to brain health. Foods rich in antioxidants, such as organic dark chocolate, bell peppers, berries, and tomatoes, also help prevent dementia. Moreover, fish, walnuts, and other foods with omega-3 fatty acids improve brain functionality, helping to slow the progression of dementia and cognitive decline. Like other body sites, the brain needs sufficient blood flow to function at peak performance. Engage in strength training and aerobic exercises to boost blood flow to your brain. Mental stimulation also helps ward off dementia. Continue your quest for knowledge through lifelong learning. If you struggle to remember things, play cognitive training games or enroll in a class or two at your local community college. Even socialization plays a role in keeping the mind sharp and your spirit high. Engage in social activities with neighbors, family, and friends. If you are isolated, consider volunteering or joining others for Bingo Night or other local events that provide much-needed mental stimulation. Minimize the stress in your life, and you’ll find that your mind isn’t nearly as crowded. You’ll think more clearly with sufficient sleep. Engage in daily meditation for 10 minutes and practice mindfulness exercises to keep your mind sharp. Though study results are mixed, there is some evidence that herbal supplements such as turmeric (curcumin) and ginkgo biloba promote cognitive function. If you drink alcohol, limit your intake, as alcohol is a subtle poison that kills brain cells. Editor’s note: Discover the best strategies to avoid and reverse the signs of dementia, own the Alzheimer’s and Dementia Summit created by NaturalHealth365 Programs. Sources for this article include: Neurology.org NIH.gov Studyfinds.org To read the original article click here.

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Study: Key Differences in How Male & Female Brains Process Threats

The AHA! Team — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 05:25:35 +0000

McGill University via News-Medical – A new study has uncovered significant differences in how male and female mice process threats, even as they exhibit similar behavioral responses. The discovery suggests that including both male and female subjects in neuroscience research will lead to more accurate conclusions and ultimately better health outcomes. Understanding the influence of sex on brain function can help explain why males and females develop certain psychiatric disorders at different rates or with different symptoms, the researchers said. “Unless we thoughtfully and rigorously integrate sex into biomedical research, a huge amount of the population may be underserved by scientific knowledge,” said McGill University Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Neurogenomics Rosemary Bagot, who led the study. “Our work shows that sex is an important variable to consider, even if initial observations don’t necessarily show clear sex differences. If males and females are using different brain circuits to solve similar problems, they may be differently vulnerable to stress and respond differently to treatments.” Rosemary Bagot, Associate Professor, McGill University How brain circuits process threats and cues The study focused on two related brain circuits and their roles in processing information about threats and the cues that predict them. The researchers trained mice to recognize a sound that signaled a threat and another sound that meant safety. By observing brain activity, the team saw how communication between different brain areas processed these signals. Then, they temporarily turned off each brain connection to see how it affected the mice’s reactions, helping them understand how the brain handles threats. “We found that even though male and female mice respond similarly to threats, the brain circuits underlying these responses are not the same,” Bagot said. For female mice, a connection between two specific brain areas (the medial prefrontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens) played a key role. The study found that in male mice, a different connection (between the ventral hippocampus and the nucleus accumbens) was more important for handling the same situation. It was previously assumed that similar behavior meant similar brain function. Now, the researchers are exploring how sex impacts brain circuits in processing threats, focusing on the role of sex hormones and different learning strategies. This research is supported by funding from CIHR. Source: McGill University Journal reference: Muir, J., et al. (2024). Sex-biased neural encoding of threat discrimination in nucleus accumbens afferents drives suppression of reward behavior. Nature Neuroscience. doi.org/10.1038/s41593-024-01748-7. To read the original article click here.

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Brain Cell Grafts in Monkeys Jump-Start Human Trial for New Parkinson’s Treatment

The AHA! Team — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 05:21:55 +0000

University of Wisconsin–Madison via Newswise – People with Parkinson’s disease are receiving a new treatment in a clinical trial started after University of Wisconsin–Madison scientists demonstrated the safety and feasibility of the therapeutic delivery method in a study of non-human primates. People with Parkinson’s disease are receiving a new treatment in a clinical trial started after University of Wisconsin–Madison scientists demonstrated the safety and feasibility of the therapeutic delivery method in a study of non-human primates. Parkinson’s disease damages neurons in the brain that produce dopamine, a brain chemical that transmits signals between nerve cells. The disrupted signals make it progressively harder to coordinate even simple movements and cause rigidity, slowness and tremors that are the disease’s hallmark symptoms. Patients are typically treated with drugs like L-DOPA to increase dopamine production. Although the drugs help many patients, they present complications and lose their effectiveness over time. Parkinson’s disease damages neurons in the brain that produce dopamine Researchers at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center successfully grafted brain cells called dopaminergic neuronal progenitor cells into the brains of cynomolgus macaque monkeys. California-based Aspen Neuroscience provided the cells, grown from multiple lines of human induced pluripotent stem cells, along with key pieces of the equipment for delivering them to specific parts of the brain. “By the time of diagnosis, it is common for people with Parkinson’s to have lost the majority of dopaminergic neurons, leading to progressive loss of motor and neurological function,” explains Edward Wirth III, an expert in cell therapies, study co-author and Aspen’s chief medical officer. “To replace these lost cells, we must target a very specific area of the brain with a high degree of surgical precision. Utilizing the latest advances in intraoperative MRI guided techniques, the patient’s new cells are transplanted, a few microliters at a time, to the exact area where they are most needed.” Working with potential cell therapies in pursuing treatments for Parkinson’s disease is a particular specialty of the team at Marina Emborg’s lab and their primate center colleagues. “Using autologous cells, a patient’s own cells, avoids the need to use immunosuppression to keep the patient’s body from rejecting or attacking the graft,” says Emborg, a UW–Madison professor of medical physics. “Aspen has developed the technological methods for manufacturing, for quality control, that makes it feasible at scale to make autologous cells and get them to the patients.” The researchers’ results in non-human primates, which supported Aspen’s successful Investigational New Drug application to the Food and Drug Administration to begin human trials, were published today in the Journal of Neurosurgery. “This study was an important step in our work to bring the promise of a cell-replacement therapy to people with Parkinson’s disease” “This study was an important step in our work to bring the promise of a cell-replacement therapy to people with Parkinson’s disease,” says Andrés Bratt-Leal, study co-author, Aspen Neuroscience co-founder and senior vice-president of research and development. “The results were instrumental in opening our first-in-human trial and informing how we deliver patients’ own cells to them in the study.” The UW–Madison scientists, led by Parkinson’s researcher Emborg, took up the Aspen-funded work fresh off their own success (published in 2021) reversing Parkinson’s symptoms in monkeys by grafting neurons grown from the monkeys’ own cells, called an autologous transplant. The 2021 study, using cells grown by UW–Madison stem cell researcher Su-Chun Zhang, added new dopamine-producing neurons to each animal’s brain through injections guided in real time by MRI to an area of the brain called the putamen. Dopamine production increased dramatically, as did the monkeys’ motor skills. At the same time, symptoms of depression and anxiety were reduced. The new study was designed to test the delivery of Aspen’s human cells. Wirth and Aspen scientists worked with Emborg’s team to bridge the monkey-to-human application. While Emborg’s previous study administered cells to the putamen through the top of the skull, the Aspen study examined cell administration through the back of the skull — an angle that could allow surgeons to reach their target with fewer insertions of the apparatus that delivers the new cells into the brain. “The core idea is to decrease the risk of infection, the trauma, the surgical time the patient spends under anesthesia,” Emborg says. “The fewer tracks you have to follow through the brain, the better for all of that.” Six monkeys received grafts of the human neurons Six monkeys received grafts of the human neurons through two paths in each side, or hemisphere, of their brains, with more cells deposited on one side of the brain than the other. A control group of three animals underwent the procedure without the cell delivery. “In tissue samples taken seven and 30 days after the procedures, we found the grafted cells persisted in five of the animals,” Emborg says. The researchers confirmed the presence of Aspen’s human neurons in the monkeys’ brains, finding more cells in the hemispheres that were injected with a higher dose, more cells in the 30-day tissue samples compared to the seven-day samples and the presence of a protein produced by young neurons working to integrate with neighboring cells — all signs the cells grafts were successful. It was a true collaboration, according to Emborg — between the Aspen scientists, her lab and the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center veterinarians and staff — to validate the company’s procedures and equipment before study co-author Paul Larson, a neurosurgeon at Banner – University Medical Center Tucson and professor of neurosurgery at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson, began Aspen’s first-in-human trial with people with Parkinson’s in April. The work done to refine the logistics, surgical equipment and techniques in the animal procedures will inform the way patients in the human trial receive and recover from the new therapy, providing hope for those struggling with a debilitating disease. “Our results were all so exciting,” Emborg says. “And then, when I saw they had been able to begin with a human patient this spring, I just had tears in my eyes.” To read the original article click here.

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Improving Vision with At-Home Brain Exercises

The AHA! Team — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 08:08:57 +0000

John Jeffay via Israel21c – RevitalVision offers a unique intervention for people with eyesight challenges, treating the brain where images are processed. Doctors told Amit Azulay again and again that she’d never be able to drive because of medical conditions affecting her eyesight. She proved them wrong — using a unique piece of software developed by a startup in Israel that has been clinically proven to improve vision. Despite suffering nystagmus (involuntary eye movements) and albinism, her eyesight became good enough to apply for a license (see her delighted response to the news here). Amit, aged 25, is one of many patients who say the online training exercises have literally changed their lives. RevitalVision offers a unique intervention for people with eyesight challenges. It doesn’t treat the eye. It treats the brain. The eye is the hardware, providing the best optical signal it can. But in many cases, the brain struggles to process that signal. That could be because of medical conditions including diabetes, glaucoma or AMD (age-related macular degeneration). It could be a cataract patient whose hardware has been upgraded (cloudy lenses replaced with clear ones) but whose software (the brain) hasn’t caught up. Or somebody who’s had laser surgery but now has blurry vision resulting from reduced contrast sensitivity and still has to wear glasses. Or somebody with “lazy eye” (amblyopia) whose brain sidelines signals from the eye that doesn’t work as well as the other. Or somebody who’s borderline for wearing glasses and would prefer not to. RevitalVision addresses all these problems, and more, with a structured program that trains the brain to better make sense of the blurry signals it receives. Screams of joy RevitalVision’s program typically involves three half-hour, at-home computer sessions per week for two or three months. Patients are trained via a dedicated app. The result, says Yair Yahav, the company’s CEO, is a measurable improvement in vision of 20% to 25%, equivalent to an extra two or more lines on a standard eye chart or, in many cases, the difference between a driving license and no license. “Some patients come to our premises in Modi’in [central Israel], where we have a team of optometrists,” he tells ISRAEL21c. “About once a week I hear screams of joy from a patient in another room who now has good enough vision to qualify for a driving license. We have people who are literally crying. “They’ve been told their whole life that there’s no way, forget it, you’ll never be able to drive. “Then they come to us and if they’re missing just one or two lines [on the eye chart], that’s the average, we tell them they have an 85% to 90% chance of success.” One patient testimonial is from a woman who couldn’t read the label on her medicine, or see well enough to sign a check. She now can. Another, a graduate student with congenital nystagmus, always had to sit at the front of the class to read the board. Now she can sit anywhere. “It’s really lifechanging for many, many people,” says Yahav. Image processing He explains the science behind what they do. “The quality of the image we see depends both on image capturing and image processing,” he says. “We don’t treat the lens of the eye; we treat the brain by enhancing its ability to process visual information, which results in significant vision improvement.” The brain training is based on a “Gabor patch,” which looks like a grid of blurry black and white stripes on a gray background. It was invented by Dennis Gabor, who was born in Hungary, fled the Holocaust, invented holography, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1971. His seemingly simple image perfectly matches the shape of the receptive fields of neurons, or nerve cells, in the part of the brain that processes visual information. Repeatedly stimulating those neurons improves their performance, just like physical exercise at the gym builds muscle, says Yahav. Shoring up weaknesses RevitalVision uses an algorithm to understand exactly where the weaknesses lie for each patient. In a typical on-screen exercise, the patient sees three images pop up, two of a Gabor patch and one of a blank. They have to click, using their computer’s mouse, to indicate which is which. The exercises get harder and harder, with the Gabor patch appearing less clear or further toward the edge of the patient’s field of vision. All the time, the algorithm is assessing responses and adjusting the images it displays accordingly. “Our software maps the patient’s cortical deficits, neurons that do not respond well. Then the algorithm tailors specific stimulation to match those deficits,” says Yahav. “Once the patient is consistently answering correctly, the software knows that’s the exact threshold, the maximum vision of the patient in this exercise, and moves on to the next one. “We are training the neurons to be more responsive and restoring the basic mechanism of visual processing in the brain,” he says. FDA approved Yahav says RevitalVision has “the only regulated product approved by the FDA with clinical claims to improve vision for a variety of eye diseases and impairments.” Some products approved to treat amblyopia, he says, are not for those over the age of nine. RevitalVision builds on pre-Internet technology developed in Israel, which it acquired from another company. This technology was launched commercially two years ago as a web-based product available by direct purchase or through an eyecare specialist. So far, the company’s product has treated 15,000 patients. “We’ve raised $7 million so far and we’re raising another $6 million. Now we are scaling up,” says Yahav. The company received a grant from the Israel Innovation Authority during its product development stage, and is conducting trials at Shamir Medical Center associated with Tel Aviv University. It currently employs six people in Israel, six in India and one in the UK. The potential market is so huge that the biggest challenge right now is to spread the word, says Yahav. For more information, click here. To read the original article click here.

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New Brain-Computer Interface Allows Man with ALS to ‘Speak’ Again

The AHA! Team — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 08:20:41 +0000

UC Davis Health via Newswise – Technology developed by UC Davis Health restores interpersonal communication A new brain-computer interface (BCI) developed at UC Davis Health translates brain signals into speech with up to 97% accuracy — the most accurate system of its kind. The researchers implanted sensors in the brain of a man with severely impaired speech due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The man was able to communicate his intended speech within minutes of activating the system. A study about this work was published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, affects the nerve cells that control movement throughout the body. The disease leads to a gradual loss of the ability to stand, walk and use one’s hands. It can also cause a person to lose control of the muscles used to speak, leading to a loss of understandable speech. The new technology is being developed to restore communication for people who can’t speak due to paralysis or neurological conditions like ALS. It can interpret brain signals when the user tries to speak and turns them into text that is ‘spoken’ aloud by the computer. “Our BCI technology helped a man with paralysis to communicate with friends, families and caregivers,” said UC Davis neurosurgeon David Brandman. “Our paper demonstrates the most accurate speech neuroprosthesis (device) ever reported.” Brandman is the co-principal investigator and co-senior author of this study. He is an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Neurological Surgery and co-director of the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab. The new BCI breaks the communication barrier When someone tries to speak, the new BCI device transforms their brain activity into text on a computer screen. The computer can then read the text out loud. To develop the system, the team enrolled Casey Harrell, a 45-year-old man with ALS, in the BrainGate clinical trial. At the time of his enrollment, Harrell had weakness in his arms and legs (tetraparesis). His speech was very hard to understand (dysarthria) and required others to help interpret for him. In July 2023, Brandman implanted the investigational BCI device. He placed four microelectrode arrays into the left precentral gyrus, a brain region responsible for coordinating speech. The arrays are designed to record the brain activity from 256 cortical electrodes. “We’re really detecting their attempt to move their muscles and talk,” explained neuroscientist Sergey Stavisky. Stavisky is an assistant professor in the Department of Neurological Surgery. He is the co-director of the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab and co-principal investigator of the study. “We are recording from the part of the brain that’s trying to send these commands to the muscles. And we are basically listening into that, and we’re translating those patterns of brain activity into a phoneme — like a syllable or the unit of speech — and then the words they’re trying to say.” Faster training, better results Despite recent advances in BCI technology, efforts to enable communication have been slow and prone to errors. This is because the machine-learning programs that interpreted brain signals required a large amount of time and data to perform. “Previous speech BCI systems had frequent word errors. This made it difficult for the user to be understood consistently and was a barrier to communication,” Brandman explained. “Our objective was to develop a system that empowered someone to be understood whenever they wanted to speak.” Harrell used the system in both prompted and spontaneous conversational settings. In both cases, speech decoding happened in real time, with continuous system updates to keep it working accurately. The decoded words were shown on a screen. Amazingly, they were read aloud in a voice that sounded like Harrell’s before he had ALS. The voice was composed using software trained with existing audio samples of his pre-ALS voice. At the first speech data training session, the system took 30 minutes to achieve 99.6% word accuracy with a 50-word vocabulary. “The first time we tried the system, he cried with joy as the words he was trying to say correctly appeared on-screen. We all did,” Stavisky said. In the second session, the size of the potential vocabulary increased to 125,000 words. With just an additional 1.4 hours of training data, the BCI achieved a 90.2% word accuracy with this greatly expanded vocabulary. After continued data collection, the BCI has maintained 97.5% accuracy. “At this point, we can decode what Casey is trying to say correctly about 97% of the time, which is better than many commercially available smartphone applications that try to interpret a person’s voice,” Brandman said. “This technology is transformative because it provides hope for people who want to speak but can’t. I hope that technology like this speech BCI will help future patients speak with their family and friends.” The study reports on 84 data collection sessions over 32 weeks. In total, Harrell used the speech BCI in self-paced conversations for over 248 hours to communicate in person and over video chat. “Not being able to communicate is so frustrating and demoralizing. It is like you are trapped,” Harrell said. “Something like this technology will help people back into life and society.” “It has been immensely rewarding to see Casey regain his ability to speak with his family and friends through this technology,” said the study’s lead author, Nicholas Card. Card is a postdoctoral scholar in the UC Davis Department of Neurological Surgery. “Casey and our other BrainGate participants are truly extraordinary. They deserve tremendous credit for joining these early clinical trials. They do this not because they’re hoping to gain any personal benefit, but to help us develop a system that will restore communication and mobility for other people with paralysis,” said co-author and BrainGate trial sponsor-investigator Leigh Hochberg. Hochberg is a neurologist and neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brown University and the VA Providence Healthcare System. Brandman is the site-responsible principal investigator of the BrainGate2 clinical trial. The trial is enrolling participants. To learn more about the study, visit braingate.org or contact braingate@ucdavis.edu. A complete list of coauthors and funders is available in the article. Caution: Investigational device. Limited by Federal law to investigational use. To read the original article click here.

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Dad’s Quest to Aid Son Leads to Stroke-Recovery Technology

The AHA! Team — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 08:31:39 +0000

John Jeffay via Israel21c – BRAIN.Q helmet’s tailored, low-intensity, low-frequency electromagnetic stimulation aims to enhance and accelerate the brain’s recovery after stroke. Yaron Segal has, like many thousands of enterprising Israelis, identified a problem. And like so many in a country driven by technological innovation, he’s established a startup to find a solution. But he’s not so interested in the payday “exit” that attracts most entrepreneurs in the Startup Nation. His ultimate goal is to find a treatment for his son Lear, born 23 years ago born with familial dysautonomia, a rare and progressive genetic neurological disorder. Segal is not an obvious candidate for the job. He trained as a physicist, specializing in climate, satellites, and three-dimensional models of the atmosphere. But when Lear was diagnosed at the age of three months, Segal decided that he would devote his energy, passion and intellect to finding an effective treatment. Remarkable discoveries He isn’t there yet, but in the long – and often frustrating – process of trying, he has made some remarkable discoveries about the brain’s ability to repair itself, and has developed a treatment that has the potential to help stroke patients live more independent lives. Segal is confident that the same technology will, at some point in the future, also benefit people living with depression, PTSD, ADHD, spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries and other brain-related conditions … and familial dysautonomia. His noninvasive, cloud-based “brainwave helmet” activates a low-intensity electromagnetic field around the patient’s head. In clinical trials with stroke patients, it was demonstrated the treatment significantly improved outcomes in the treated group compared to the control group. It is believed that the investigational technology device encourages the growth of new links between brain cells – links that can get broken by a trauma, or in the case of familial dysautonomia, never existed in the first place. BRAIN.Q, the startup Segal cofounded in 2016, now has 25 staff in Israel and the USA and has attracted $50 million in funding. The crazy guy Segal was, as he puts it, “the crazy guy” who became convinced that the adult brain was capable, with encouragement, of repairing itself. Not completely, but significantly. His theory flew in the face of received medical wisdom. “Neuroplasticity” is the brain’s ability to change and adapt throughout a person’s life and reorganize its structure, functions and connections in response to new experiences, learning or environmental changes. But that couldn’t happen fully in damaged parts of the brain where there is no neural activity – until Segal’s breakthrough. He started experimenting in 2010, funded by friends and family, and within two years he’d shown that mice and rats could, with an early form of his treatment, learn to walk and function again after suffering a brain injury or a broken spinal cord. A potential investor showed the raw data from Segal’s experiment to an expert, who simply refused to accept it was possible. The dismissive response, Segal recalls, was: “I don’t believe it happened. You cannot revive links between cells.” Segal was disappointed but not dismayed. The next step was to test his breakthrough on humans. Faster recovery In a clinical trial conducted in India, stroke patients received the BRAIN.Q therapy using an earlier version of the device for 45 minutes a day, for two months. “The data points to faster recovery of the treated group, indicating that BRAIN.Q’s treatment may not only improve the overall recovery after stroke, but also shorten the recovery period. We hope to test this hypothesis in our ongoing clinical trial,” says Segal. “Some recovered dramatically in the first month, some in the second, depending on how injured the brain was. “People regained everyday function so that they didn’t need help with eating or changing clothes or bathing. “After two months of treatment someone who couldn’t move their legs and was in a wheelchair could walk. Sometimes with a stick, but they could walk.” Tools to fix the problem Stroke is a leading cause of adult disability worldwide. BRAIN.Q’s treatment reduces disability and enhances the potential for recovery. “We are affecting the brain directly, but in a non-invasive manner,” says Segal. “We are affecting the ability of the brain to regenerate connections between cells. “I don’t want to push the brain to do something that it can’t do by itself. I want to harness its natural pattern of waves,” he explains. “You can take a tow truck and drive your broken car all around the city. But I want to take it to the mechanic who will use simple tools and fix the problem.” How did he feel when he saw how the first patients had recovered? “I wanted to cry,” he says. He goes on to relate the story of a woman in Israel who suffered a spinal cord injury in a car crash and has regained control of her legs and bowels, thanks to BRAIN.Q. And there are many more examples. BRAIN.Q, based at the Hebrew University’s Givat Ram campus in Jerusalem, is now conducting trials of the investigational device at patients’ homes after they’ve been discharged from the hospital. “In the beginning I was the CEO because there was nobody else in the company,” says Segal. “Then I became the chief technical officer and now I’m chief of innovation because I think this is where I’m doing the best work I can do.” Can he help his son? Although his son Lear’s diagnosis set him on this journey, Segal eventually honed in on treating strokes because, in neurological terms, they are less complex than familial dysautonomia (also known as Riley-Day syndrome). Familial dysautonomia, particularly prevalent among individuals of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, affects the autonomic nervous system that controls involuntary bodily functions such as breathing, swallowing, digestion, tear production and muscle stability. Lear doesn’t have natural tears, can’t drink liquids, has to eat condensed food, and needs to be held while attempting to walk. In addition, he had spinal fusion surgery at the age of 10. “The most serious situation is when he is in crisis, meaning that whenever he has stress, his autonomic nervous system tries to balance his blood pressure, temperature and chemical balance, and fails. His body goes into ‘panic’ conditions, very similar to those when a normal person is bitten by a snake — he starts to vomit, his blood pressure skyrockets, his temperature increases,” Segal says. “The only way to help him is using medication that brings his autonomic nervous system to a halt, causing it to reset and resume normal operation.” Segal is hopeful that, in time, BRAIN.Q will find a way to re-grow neural links in people with this condition. Meanwhile, he is gratified that the technology can aid stroke patients. For more information, click here. To read the original article click here.

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New Technique Connects Lab-Grown “Neural Organoids” to Resemble Brain Circuits

The AHA! Team — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 08:33:29 +0000

Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo via News-Medical – Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is extremely prevalent among adults, affecting over 800 million individuals worldwide. The idea of growing a functioning human brain-like tissues in a dish has always sounded pretty far-fetched, even to researchers in the field. Towards the future goal, a Japanese and French research team has developed a technique for connecting lab-grown brain-mimicking tissue in a way that resembles circuits in our brain. It is challenging to study exact mechanisms of the brain development and functions. Animal studies are limited by differences between species in brain structure and function, and brain cells grown in the lab tend to lack the characteristic connections of cells in the human brain. What’s more, researchers are increasingly realizing that these interregional connections, and the circuits that they create, are important for many of the brain functions that define us as humans. Previous studies have tried to create brain circuits under laboratory conditions, which have been advancing the field. Researchers from The University of Tokyo have recently found a way to create more physiological connections between lab-grown “neural organoids,” an experimental model tissue in which human stem cells are grown into three-dimensional developmental brain-mimicking structures. The team did this by linking the organoids via axonal bundles, which is similar to how regions are connected in the living human brain. “In single-neural organoids grown under laboratory conditions, the cells start to display relatively simple electrical activity, when we connected two neural organoids with axonal bundles, we were able to see how these bidirectional connections contributed to generating and synchronizing activity patterns between the organoids, showing some similarity to connections between two regions within the brain.” – Tomoya Duenki, co-lead author of the study The cerebral organoids that were connected with axonal bundles showed more complex activity than single organoids or those connected using previous techniques. In addition, when the research team stimulated the axonal bundles using a technique known as optogenetics, the organoid activity was altered accordingly and the organoids were affected by these changes for some time, in a process known as plasticity. “These findings suggest that axonal bundle connections are important for developing complex networks,” explains Yoshiho Ikeuchi, senior author of the study. “Notably, complex brain networks are responsible for many profound functions, such as language, attention, and emotion.” Given that alterations in brain networks have been associated with various neurological and psychiatric conditions, a better understanding of brain networks is important. The ability to study lab-grown human neural circuits will improve our knowledge of how these networks form and change over time in different situations, and may lead to improved treatments for these conditions. Source: Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo Journal reference: Osaki, T., et al. (2024). Complex activity and short-term plasticity of human cerebral organoids reciprocally connected with axons. Nature Communications. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-46787-7. To read the original article click here.

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“Brain Training” May Be an Effective Treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

AHA Publisher — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 08:00:41 +0000

Lawson Health Research via EurekAlert – LONDON, ON – Neurofeedback, also called ‘brain training,’ consists of exercises where individuals regulate their own brain activity. In a new study from Lawson Health Research Institute and Western University, researchers have found that neurofeedback may be an effective treatment for individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Published in NeuroImage: Clinical, the clinical trial found that neurofeedback was effective in reducing symptoms of PTSD. “Brain connectivity involves different parts of the brain communicating with each other and helps to regulate states of consciousness, thought, mood and emotion,” explains Dr. Ruth Lanius, scientist at Lawson, professor at Western’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and psychiatrist at London Health Sciences Centre. “Individuals with PTSD tend to have disrupted patterns of brain connectivity, but our research suggests they can exercise their brains to restore patterns to a healthy balance.” Neurofeedback uses a system called a neurofeedback loop in which a person’s brain activity is measured through sensors placed on the scalp and displayed back to them using a computer interface. This allows the individual to complete exercises and visually see the results. The trial tested neurofeedback with a total of 72 participants, including 36 participants with PTSD and 36 healthy control participants. Of those with PTSD, 18 were randomized to participate in neurofeedback treatment while the other 18 acted as a comparison group. The study found that the severity of PTSD symptoms decreased in participants randomized to receive neurofeedback treatment. After treatment, 61.1 per cent of participants no longer met the definition for PTSD. This remission rate is comparable to gold standard therapies like trauma-focused psychotherapy. The research team also used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at St. Joseph’s Health Care London to capture brain scans of participants both before and after participation in the trial. They found that individuals with PTSD experienced positive changes in brain connectivity in the salience network and the default mode network following neurofeedback treatment. “The salience network is involved in detecting threat as part of the ‘fight or flight’ response. It is normally hyperactive in individuals with PTSD. Meanwhile, the default mode network is activated during rest and is involved in autobiographical memory. We often see that this network is less active during rest and functionally disrupted among individuals with PTSD,” says Dr. Andrew Nicholson, affiliated scientist at Lawson. “Neurofeedback helped restore the functional connectivity of both networks to healthier levels.” Dr. Nicholson is an assistant professor at McMaster University and was formerly a post-doctoral fellow at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry. The study involved weekly sessions of neurofeedback over 20 weeks. Participants were asked to reduce the intensity of the brain’s dominant brain wave – the alpha rhythm. Brain activity was visualized as either a still cartoon or a distorted picture. If the alpha rhythm was successfully reduced, the cartoon started playing or the picture started becoming clearer. “Participants were not instructed on how to reduce the alpha rhythm. Rather, each individual figured out their own way to do so,” notes Dr. Lanius. “For example, individuals reported letting their mind wander, thinking about positive things or concentrating their attention.” The team notes the treatment could have a number of clinical implications following further validation. “Neurofeedback could offer an accessible and effective treatment option for individuals with PTSD,” says Dr. Lanius. “The treatment is easily scalable for implementation in rural areas and even at home.” To read the original article click here.

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Newfound Ability to Change Baby Brain Activity Could Lead to Rehabilitation for Injured Brains

AHA Publisher — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 08:00:34 +0000

King’s College London via EurekAlert – Researchers from King’s College London have identified the brain activity for the first time in a newborn baby when they are learning an association between different types of sensory experiences. Using advanced MRI scanning techniques and robotics, the researchers found that a baby’s brain activity can be changed through these associations, shedding new light on the possibility of rehabilitating babies with injured brains and promoting the development of life-long skills such as speech, language and movement. Published recently in Cerebral Cortex, the researcher builds on the fact that learning associations is a very important part of babies’ development but the activity inside the brain that was responsible for learning these associations was unknown and unstudied. Lead researcher, Dr Tomoki Arichi said it is the first time it has been shown that babies’ brain activity can be altered through associative learning – and in particular, brain responses become associated with particular stimuli, in this case, sound. “We also found that when a baby is learning, it actually is activating lots of different parts of the brain, so it is starting to incorporate the ‘wider network’ inside the brain which is important for processing activity,” he said. A total of 24 infants were studied by playing them a sound of a jingling bell for six seconds, coupled with a gentle movement induced by a custom-made 3D printed robot strapped to their right hand. During this time, the resulting brain activity was measured using functional MRI (fMRI). After 20 minutes of learning an association between the two types of stimuli, the babies then just heard the sound on its own and the resulting brain activity was compared to that seen before the period of learning. Dr Arichi said not only do the results provide new information about what is happening inside the normal baby brain when it is learning, but also have implications for the injured brain. If a baby was not capable of processing movement, or movement is not associated with normal activity inside the brain (such might be the case in a baby with cerebral palsy), clinicians could then be able to induce that activity by learning an association with sound, and using the sound simulation to try and amplify and rehabilitate their movement. “With our findings it raises the possibility of trying to do something to help with that through targeted stimulation and learning associations,” Dr Arichi said. “It is possible to induce activity inside the part of the brain that normally processes movement, for instance, just by using a single sound. This could be used in conjunction with rehabilitation or to try and help guide brain development early in life.” When babies are born, they have a new sensory experience around them that is completely different to what they would have been experiencing inside the womb. They must then start to quickly understand their environment and the relationships between different things happening, which is even more important in babies that have injuries to their brain. The researchers sought to understand how babies start to learn these key relationships between different kinds of sensory experiences and how this then contributes to the early stages of overall brain development. “A baby’s brain is constantly learning associations and changing its activity all the time so that it can respond to the new experiences that are around it,” Dr Arichi said. “In terms of influencing patients and interpreting it in a wider context, what it means is that we should be thinking about how we could help with disorders of brain development from a very early stage in life because we know that experience is constantly shaping the newborn brain’s activity.” To read the original article click here.

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