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Tag Archives: neurons
Enhancer RNA (eRNA): More powerful than previously thought
As should be said repeatedly, we don’t know how the brain works. Not yet. Neuroscience is just starting on the vastly complex study of the brain at the molecular level, perhaps the lowest common denominator and the most important. A new study, published April 15 in Nature, by a team of researchers from Harvard Medical [...]
Posted in News: Neuroscience Also tagged ChIP-seq, DNA, epigenetics, eRNA, junk DNA, neuroscience, RNA, RNA-seq Leave a comment
The animal brain replays memories to map its environment
“The point of the cognitive map is flexibility. It gives animals the ability to plan novel paths within their environment,” said Redish [A. David Redish, University of Minnesota Medical School, USA]. “This replay process may be an animal’s way of learning how the world is interconnected, so it can plan new routes or paths.” [Source: [...]
Posted in News: Neuroscience Also tagged brain, cognition, cognitive map, hippocampus, memory, replay Leave a comment
Brain memory is actively cleared
We forget, a lot. It’s always been assumed that we forget either because new information is coming in and ‘overwrites’ (replaces) older memories, or because memory just sort of degrades. There’s some kind of selection at work, of course, because some things we forget more readily than others. A new study by a team from [...]
Posted in News: Neuroscience Also tagged brain, memory, molecular biology, neuroscience, protein, Rac Leave a comment
The potentially polymorphous cell (a revolution in the making?)
One of the hazards of constant bombardment with science or technology announcements heralding something as “breakthrough,” “revolutionary,” “unprecedented,” and the like, is developing superlative fatigue. These results can’t all be great; and they’re not. Sometimes it’s just hype. Sometimes the people involved really do think they’re on to something, but they’re not. Occasionally the superlatives [...]
Posted in Impact: Stem Cells Also tagged DNA, epigenetic, iPS, pluripotent, skin cells, stem cells, totipotent Leave a comment
Stem cells to neurons to live transplant
You know stem cell research is gaining on practical applications when it can go from Petri dish to the in vitro environment. In this case, scientists at Stanford Medical School (California, USA) started with embryonic stem cells. These undifferentiated cells were cultivated in a Petri dish to exhibit initial characteristics of cortical (brain) neuron cells [...]
A coordinate system in the brain
In 2005 the Norwegians found them in rats. Now, in 2009, they were found in humans. ‘They’ – are location memory cells in the brain. They appear to be specialized neurons that work in some coordinated fashion. It’s something like having a coordinate system hard-wired into the brain, so as you move about the environment, [...]
Update: IBM Cortical Simulator
For an excellent critical take on the IBM Cortical Simulator achieving ‘the intelligence of a cat’, read Jonah Lehrer’s Blog. Essential Quote: In the coming years, there will be many grand announcements about supercomputers that attempt to imitate the machinery inside the skull. One way to distinguish between such claims is to look at their [...]
Posted in Impact: Neuro-intelligence Also tagged brain simulation, cortical simulator, IBM, neuroscience Leave a comment
Guanfacine: A possible drug to improve memory in old age