Tag: brain
Meet Dr Louise Morpeth, CEO at Digital Self-Management Support System: Brain In Hand
Few companies have the privilege to help enrich people’s lives on a daily basis. At Brain in Hand, we have…
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Laser brain therapy offers hope to epilepsy sufferers in England
Live Brain Cells Playing Pong in a Dish Could Illuminate Mind’s Mechanics – CNET
Scientists taught a Petri dish of brain cells to play Pong better than I can
Signs of deadly brain disease can be seen 9 years before diagnosis – are you at risk?
DEMENTIA signs start nine years before a doctor can spot it, according to a study.
People who get Alzheimer’s disease start flunking memory and thinking tests nearly a decade before a diagnosis.
![](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/pw4hk4-senior-old-man-feeling-692539795.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
Around one million Brits have dementia and it is the UK’s biggest cause of death[/caption]
Cambridge University experts say early hallmarks could be used to screen people and start treatment earlier.
Lead author Dr Nol Swaddiwudhipong said: “When we looked back at patients’ histories, it became clear that they were showing some cognitive impairment several years before their symptoms became obvious enough to prompt a diagnosis.
“The impairments were often subtle, but across a number of aspects of cognition.
“This is a step towards us being able to screen people who are at greatest risk.”
Read more on dementia
The study, published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia, used data from half a million Brits aged 40 to 69.
Scientists looked at health data and scores on tests of reaction time, memory, problem solving and grip strength.
People with below average results were more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease or frontotemporal dementia in the next nine years.
Brain diseases, including Parkinson’s, were also more common in people with worse overall health or who had recently had a fall.
Most read in Health
Almost one million Brits have dementia and it is the leading cause of death in the UK.
Patients do not usually get diagnosed until their symptoms affect daily life.
There is no treatment but experts hope drug trials will be more successful if the condition can be caught earlier.
Senior author on the study, Dr Tim Rittman, added: “People should not be unduly worried if, for example, they are not good at recalling numbers.
Read More on The Sun
“Even some healthy individuals will naturally score better or worse than their peers.
“We would encourage anyone who has any concerns or notices that their memory is getting worse to speak to their GP.”
Scientists taught brain cells to play legendary ‘Pong’ game
![ping pong video game](https://helios-i.mashable.com/imagery/articles/06NFczwPstrcKti1tHYv64Q/hero-image.jpg)
Brain cells now know the irresistible lure of the classic arcade game “Pong.” A peer-reviewed study in Neuron from Australian biotech company Cortical Labs show how neurons are not only capable of playing a version of the table tennis game, but that they can adapt and get better the longer they play.
The study’s authors set up a game-like simulation by putting human stem cells and mouse embryonic cells in a dish equipped to capture and stimulate the cells’ electric activity. Scientists then simulated a Pong-like environment in the dish, aptly called “DishBrain,” by delivering inputs to electrodes to mimic the presence of a Pong ball. In real-time they recorded how cells, acting as paddles in this scenario, responded. This was then translated into whether or not the cells, “intercepted” the ball.
Throughout the 486 games played, scientists discovered that the more Pong the cells played, the better they got. Both human and mouse cell cultures missed the initial serve less and achieved longer rallies over time. We know that cells are capable of using feedback to learn and adapt because, well, animal life wouldn’t exist otherwise. But this marks the first time that scientists were able to harness this ability “for a goal-directed behavior,” the study read.
![visualization of the dishbrain system that created a pong-like game environment](https://helios-i.mashable.com/imagery/articles/06NFczwPstrcKti1tHYv64Q/images-1.fill.size_2000x1223.v1665614150.png)
Credit: Cortical Labs
Creating an environment that controls the sentience and self-organizing capabilities of cells, effectively means we can simulate intelligence. “This is the new way to think about what a neuron is,” Dr. Brett Kagan, the study’s lead author and chief scientific officer of Cortical Labs told the Guardian. The cells’ historic Pong game has big potential. It could provide valuable insight into the study of neurological diseases like epilepsy and dementia. Generally speaking, it represents a “sandbox” for testing the effects of drugs and genetic variants with “exactly the same computing (neuronal) elements found in your brain and mine,” said Karl Friston, co-author and theoretical neuroscientist at University College London in the announcement.
Naturally, the next step in this research is to add booze. For the cells, that is. “We’re trying to create a dose response curve with ethanol – basically get them ‘drunk’ and see if they play the game more poorly, just as when people drink,” said Kagan.
If you’ve ever played Pong, or any other arcade game drunk, you might be able to predict the results. We are, after all, governed by these Pong-playing neurons.
Scientists got lab-grown human brain cells to play ‘Pong’
Researchers who grew a brain cell culture in a lab claim that they taught the cells to play a version of Pong. Scientists from a biotech startup called Cortical Labs say it’s the first demonstrated example of a so-called “mini-brain” being taught to carry out goal-directed tasks. ”It is able to take in information from an external source, process it and then respond to it in real time,” Dr. Brett Kagan, lead author of a paper on the research that was published in Neuron, told the BBC.
The culture of 800,000 brain cells is known as DishBrain. The scientists placed mouse cells (derived from embryonic brains) and human cells taken from stem cells on top of an electrode array that was hooked up to Pong, as The Age notes. Electrical pulses sent to the neurons indicated the position of the ball in the game. The array then moved the paddle up and down based on signals from the neurons. DishBrain received a strong and consistent feedback signal (effectively a form of stimulus) when the paddle hit the ball and a short, random pulse when it missed.
The researchers, who believe the culture is too primitive to be conscious, noted that DishBrain showed signs of “apparent learning within five minutes of real-time gameplay not observed in control conditions.” After playing Pong for 20 minutes, the culture got better at the game. The scientists say that indicates the cells were reorganizing, developing networks and learning.
“They changed their activity in a way that is very consistent with them actually behaving as a dynamic system,” Kagan said. “For example, the neurons’ ability to change and adapt their activity as a result of experience increases over time, consistent with what we see with the cells’ learning rate.”
Future research into DishBrain will involve looking at how medicines and alcohol affect the culture’s ability to play Pong, to test whether it can effectively be treated as a stand-in for a human brain. Kagan expressed hope that DishBrain (or perhaps future versions of it) can be used to test treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s.
Meanwhile, researchers at Stanford University cultivated stem cells into human brain tissue, which they transplanted into newborn rats. These so-called brain organoids integrated with the rodents’ own brains. After a few months, the scientists found that the organoids accounted for around a third of the rats’ brain hemispheres and that they were engaging with the rodents’ brain circuits. As Wired notes, these organoids could be used to study neurodegenerative disorders or to test drugs designed to treat neuropsychiatric diseases. Scientists may also look at how genetic defects in organoids can affect animal behavior.