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Category Archives: Mind Building
Health24.com | Brain ‘zap’ might rejuvenate ageing memory
It’s common for folks to become less sharp as they age, taking a little longer to do maths in their heads or work out a knotty problem. But scientists might have a potential solution.
Brain stimulation using extremely weak electrical current might be able to reverse this and restore youthful vigour to ageing minds, a new laboratory study suggests.
Age-related effects not unchangeable
The memory performance of people aged 60 to 76 equalled that of twenty-somethings after they got 25 minutes of electrical stimulation to specific regions of their ageing brains, researchers found. Working memory is the ability to temporarily retain information needed for processing.
The effect lasted for at least 50 minutes after the brain stimulation stopped and likely extends for hours longer, said lead researcher Robert Reinhart. He’s an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Boston University.
The results were also similar to those seen in a group of people in their 20s, the study authors said.
The study results not only provide new insights into age-related working memory decline, “but they also show us that the negative age-related effects are not unchangeable,” Reinhart said. “We can bring back the more superior working memory function you had when you were much younger.”
Working memory is a fundamental building block of the human thought process, he explained.
“It’s been called … the workbench of the mind or the sketch pad of the mind. It’s where people reason, problem solve, plan and make decisions,” Reinhart said.
Unfortunately, this “fragile and precious cognitive resource” declines as you get older, he added.
Synchronising brainwaves
Reinhart and his colleagues suspect this decline occurs because different brain regions involved in working memory become out-of-sync with one another. The brain operates through rhythmic waves of electrical impulses, and if those impulses lose their rhythm, the ability to think can become disordered as well.
To test this, they designed a special EEG (electroencephalogram) cap. It contains electrodes that direct low-level electrical current to the neocortex and frontal lobes – the brain regions that play a major role in working memory, Reinhart said.
“These are evolutionarily the most advanced parts of the human brain,” he noted. “They’re what make us special as humans.”
This electrical stimulation is intended to synchronise the brainwaves among the different regions of the brain, allowing them to better communicate and work together, the study authors said.
The researchers tested the cap on 42 older adults (aged 60 to 76), asking them to perform working memory tasks with and without brain stimulation on separate days. The sensors allowed the researchers to precisely tune the stimulation to the individual electrical frequencies in each person’s brain.
“During stimulation, the person would experience some slight tingling, itching or poking sensation roughly underneath the electrodes that are delivering the electrical current,” Reinhart said, adding that the feeling went away after half a minute as people got used to it.
Effect may be longer lasting
While receiving active brain stimulation, the seniors’ working memory improved to the level of adults aged 20 to 29 who performed the same tasks as a “control” group, the investigators found.
The improvements in brain function were correlated with increased brainwave interactions in the left temporal and prefontal cortex, the findings showed.
Although the researchers only tracked brain activity for 50 minutes following stimulation, Reinhart believes that the effect is longer lasting.
“We didn’t see the effects coming down to baseline or even trending down to baseline levels, so my guess is the effects last longer than 50 minutes,” Reinhart said. “We just haven’t done that duration experiment to see exactly when they do come down to baseline.”
Electrical stimulation already is used to improve motor function in patients with Parkinson’s disease, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility to think this could also boost a person’s ability to think and reason, said Keith Fargo, director of scientific programmes and outreach at the Alzheimer’s Association.
More research needed
“Ultimately, brain is brain. Sometimes the output you want is the correct motor movement, and sometimes the output is answering correctly on a memory test,” Fargo said.
“The concept is sound,” he added. “It’s not crazy that this could work in dementia.”
However, Fargo cautioned against getting too enthusiastic, since a lot more research is needed before this becomes available to the public.
“People who read about this, I don’t want them to think they can go to the doctor the next week and receive a stimulating treatment, but it is possible in the future something like that might occur,” Fargo said. “It’s still pretty far away from the clinic.”
The study was published online in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Image credit: iStock
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Health24.com | Be wary of robot emotions: ‘Simulated love is never love’
When a robot “dies”, does it make you sad? For lots of people, the answer is “yes” – and that tells us something important, and potentially worrisome, about our emotional responses to the social machines that are starting to move into our lives.
For Christal White, a 42-year-old marketing and customer service director in Bedford, Texas, that moment came several months ago with the cute, friendly Jibo robot perched in her home office. After more than two years in her house, the foot-tall humanoid and its inviting, round screen “face” had started to grate on her. Sure, it danced and played fun word games with her kids, but it also sometimes interrupted her during conference calls.
‘Like an annoying dog’
White and her husband Peter had already started talking about moving Jibo into the empty guest bedroom upstairs. Then they heard about the “death sentence” Jibo’s maker had levied on the product as its business collapsed. News arrived via Jibo itself, which said its servers would be shutting down, effectively lobotomizing it.
“My heart broke,” she said. “It was like an annoying dog that you don’t really like because it’s your husband’s dog. But then you realise you actually loved it all along.”
The Whites are far from the first to experience this feeling. People took to social media this year to say teary goodbyes to the Mars Opportunity rover when NASA lost contact with the 15-year-old robot. A few years ago, scads of concerned commenters weighed in on a demonstration video from robotics company Boston Dynamics in which employees kicked a dog-like robot to prove its stability.
Smart robots like Jibo obviously aren’t alive, but that doesn’t stop us from acting as though they are. Research has shown that people have a tendency to project human traits onto robots, especially when they move or act in even vaguely human-like ways.
Designers acknowledge that such traits can be powerful tools for both connection and manipulation. That could be an especially acute issue as robots move into our homes – particularly if, like so many other home devices, they also turn into conduits for data collected on their owners.
“When we interact with another human, dog, or machine, how we treat it is influenced by what kind of mind we think it has,” said Jonathan Gratch, a professor at University of Southern California who studies virtual human interactions. “When you feel something has emotion, it now merits protection from harm.”
Scripted reactions
The way robots are designed can influence the tendency people have to project narratives and feelings onto mechanical objects, said Julie Carpenter, a researcher who studies people’s interaction with new technologies. Especially if a robot has something resembling a face, its body resembles those of humans or animals, or just seems self-directed, like a Roomba robot vacuum.
“Even if you know a robot has very little autonomy, when something moves in your space and it seems to have a sense of purpose, we associate that with something having an inner awareness or goals,” she said.
Such design decisions are also practical, she said. Our homes are built for humans and pets, so robots that look and move like humans or pets will fit in more easily.
Some researchers, however, worry that designers are underestimating the dangers associated with attachment to increasingly life-like robots.
Longtime AI researcher and MIT professor Sherry Turkle, for instance, is concerned that design cues can trick us into thinking some robots are expressing emotion back toward us. Some AI systems already present as socially and emotionally aware, but those reactions are often scripted, making the machine seem “smarter” than it actually is.
“The performance of empathy is not empathy,” she said. “Simulated thinking might be thinking, but simulated feeling is never feeling. Simulated love is never love.”
Human-like speech and facial expressions
Designers at robotic startups insist that humanising elements are critical as robot use expands. “There is a need to appease the public, to show that you are not disruptive to the public culture,” said Gadi Amit, president of NewDealDesign in San Francisco.
His agency recently worked on designing a new delivery robot for Postmates – a four-wheeled, bucket-shaped object with a cute, if abstract, face; rounded edges; and lights that indicate which way it’s going to turn.
It’ll take time for humans and robots to establish a common language as they move throughout the world together, Amit said. But he expects it to happen in the next few decades.
But what about robots that work with kids? In 2016, Dallas-based startup RoboKind introduced a robot called Milo designed specifically to help teach social behaviours to kids who have autism. The mechanism, which resembles a young boy, is now in about 400 schools and has worked with thousands of kids.
It’s meant to connect emotionally with kids at a certain level, but RoboKind co-founder Richard Margolin says the company is sensitive to the concern that kids could get too attached to the robot, which features human-like speech and facial expressions.
So RoboKind suggests limits in its curriculum, both to keep Milo interesting and to make sure kids are able to transfer those skills to real life. Kids are only recommended to meet with Milo three to five times a week for 30 minutes each time.
Image credit: iStock
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Conscious Growth Club Private Portal Walkthrough Video
Here’s a short walkthrough video showing what the Conscious Growth Club member portal and forums look like on the inside. Enjoy!
Enrollment is only open for less than 3 more hours – till midnight Pacific time today (May 1st). So this is your last call!
Doctors Removed a Tick From This Boy’s Eardrum After He Complained of a Buzzing Noise in His Right Ear
Many people have felt a "ringing" in their ears at some point or another, which can be symptomatic of tinnitus, a condition that affects up to one-fifth of people.
But a little boy in Connecticut received a different, rather odd, diagnosis after picking up on "buzzing" noises in his right ear. The 9-year-old didn't have tinnitus, but, instead, a tick had become embedded in his eardrum after he played outside at school. (Yes, you read that correctly.)
His story was published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. The case report explains, "A 9-year-old boy presented to the pediatric otolaryngology clinic with a sensation of the presence of a foreign body in his right ear. He also reported that he had heard buzzing noises in his right ear 3 days earlier. He lived in Connecticut and had been playing outdoors at school."
The boy didn't experience pain or a loss of hearing, the report says. "On physical examination, a tick was seen on the right tympanic membrane with surrounding inflammation," the report explains. The tympanic membrane is more commonly known as the eardrum. The removal of the tick was attempted at the otolaryngology clinic, but the removal procedure, which involved an instrument called an operative microscope, failed. "The patient was subsequently transferred to the operating room for removal of the tick while he was under general anesthesia. The tick was again seen attached to the tympanic membrane; the tick's [mouth] was buried beneath the epidermal layer of the tympanic membrane," the new report says.
RELATED: This 10-Year-Old's Feet Were Covered in Green and Black Lesions After Insects Infested Her Skin
The tick was successfully removed with an operative microscope and another tool called a day hook. "Subsequent pathological testing identified the tick as Dermacentor variabilis," the report says. "After extraction of the tick, the patient had no signs or symptoms suggestive of systemic illness, and he was treated with ciprofloxacin eardrops for an abrasion of the tympanic membrane. One month later, the patient was doing well; he had no fever or rashes, and the tympanic membrane had healed well."
We'll leave you with this advice: Be aware of your surroundings if you plan on spending time in wooded areas during the summer months.
RELATED: 15-Year-Old Contracts Rare Disease After Getting a Toy Stuck Up Her Nose for Years
Walnuts may help lower blood pressure for those at risk of heart disease
When combined with a diet low in saturated fats, eating walnuts may help lower blood pressure in people at risk for cardiovascular disease, according to a new Penn State study.
In a randomized, controlled trial, researchers examined the effects of replacing some of the saturated fats in participants’ diets with walnuts. They found that when participants ate whole walnuts daily in combination with lower overall amounts of saturated fat, they had lower central blood pressure.
According to the researchers, central pressure is the pressure that is exerted on organs like the heart. This measure, like blood pressure measured in the arm the traditional way, provides information about a person’s risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD).
Penny Kris-Etherton, Distinguished Professor of Nutrition at Penn State, said the study suggests that because walnuts lowered central pressure, their risk of CVD may have also decreased.
“When participants ate whole walnuts, they saw greater benefits than when they consumed a diet with a similar fatty acid profile as walnuts without eating the nut itself,” Kris-Etherton said. “So it seems like there’s a little something extra in walnuts that are beneficial — maybe their bioactive compounds, maybe the fiber, maybe something else — that you don’t get in the fatty acids alone.”
Alyssa Tindall, recent student in Dr. Kris-Etherton’s lab and a new Ph.D. graduate in nutrition, said the study was one of the first to try to uncover which parts of the walnuts help support heart health.
“Walnuts contain alpha-linolenic acid — ALA — a plant-based omega-3 that may positively affect blood pressure,” Tindall said. “We wanted to see if ALA was the major contributor to these heart-healthy benefits, or if it was other bioactive component of walnuts, like polyphenols. We designed the study to test if these components had additive benefits.”
For the study, the researchers recruited 45 participants with overweight or obesity who were between the ages of 30 and 65. Before the study began, participants were placed on a “run-in” diet for two weeks.
“Putting everyone on the same diet for two weeks prior to the start of the study helped put everyone on the same starting plane,” Tindall said. “The run-in diet included 12 percent of their calories from saturated fat, which mimics an average American diet. This way, when the participants started on the study diets, we knew for sure that the walnuts or other oils replaced saturated fats.”
After the run-in diet, the participants were randomly assigned to one of three study diets, all of which included less saturated fat than the run-in diet. The diets included one that incorporated whole walnuts, one that included the same amount of ALA and polyunsaturated fatty acids without walnuts, and one that partially substituted oleic acid (another fatty acid) for the same amount of ALA found in walnuts, without any walnuts.
All three diets substituted walnuts or vegetable oils for five percent of the saturated fat content of the run-in diet, and all participants followed each diet for six weeks, with a break between diet periods.
Following each diet period, the researchers assessed the participants for several cardiovascular risk factors including central systolic and diastolic blood pressure, brachial pressure, cholesterol, and arterial stiffness.
The researchers found that while all treatment diets had a positive effect on cardiovascular outcomes, the diet with whole walnuts provided the greatest benefits, including lower central diastolic blood pressure. In contrast to brachial pressure — which is the pressure moving away from your heart and measured with an arm cuff in the doctor’s office — central pressure is the pressure moving toward your heart.
Tindall said that the results — recently published in the Journal of the American Heart Association — underline the importance of replacing saturated fat with healthier alternatives.
“An average American diet has about 12 percent calories from saturated fat, and all our treatment diets all had about seven percent, using walnuts or vegetable oils as a replacement,” Tindall said. “So, seeing the positive benefits from all three diets sends a message that regardless of whether you replace saturated fats with unsaturated fats from walnuts or vegetable oils, you should see cardiovascular benefits.”
Kris-Etherton added that the study supports including walnuts as part of a heart-healthy diet.
“Instead of reaching for fatty red meat or full-fat dairy products for a snack, consider having some skim milk and walnuts,” Kris-Etherton said. “I think it boils down to how we can get the most out of the food we’re eating, specifically, ‘how to get a little more bang out of your food buck.’ In that respect, walnuts are a good substitute for saturated fat.”
Experimental drug shows promise for genetic form of ALS
An early stage trial of an investigational therapy for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) suggests that people could tolerate the experimental drug and, in exploratory results, the experimental drug was linked to possible slower progression in people with a genetic form of the disease caused by mutations in a gene called superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1). The preliminary study released today will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 71st Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, May 4 to 10, 2019.
ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. People with ALS lose the ability to initiate and control muscle movement, which often leads to total paralysis and death. The average life span after diagnosis is two to five years. Approximately 10 percent of all ALS cases are genetic and about a fifth of those are caused by SOD1 gene mutations.
“The treatment that we researched in this study, an antisense oligonucleotide called tofersen (BIIB067), works by targeting and reducing protein created by the mutated gene,” said study author Timothy M. Miller, MD, PhD, of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo., and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. “That mutated protein is toxic and leads to ALS by damaging the nerve cells that control movement. Our research aimed to decrease the production of that protein.”
This component of the study involved 50 people with ALS who had an SOD1 genetic mutation. Participants received five doses of either 20, 40, 60 or 100 milligrams (mg) of the experimental drug, or placebo, through a lumbar puncture, or spinal tap, over approximately 3 months. Researchers examined the safety, dosage and exploratory efficacy of the experimental drug.
Researchers found that the 10 people who were given 100 mg of the experimental drug had a 37 percent reduction of the SOD1 protein in spinal fluid when compared to 12 people who received the placebo.
Miller, who received the 2018 Sheila Essey Award for ALS Research from the American Academy of Neurology, the ALS Association and the American Brain Foundation said, “Lower concentrations of the protein in the spinal fluid suggest that there were also lower concentrations in the brain and spinal cord. Such reductions could lead to preservation of motor neurons and slow progression of the disease, but more study is needed to examine this further.”
Researchers also found that those on the 100 mg dose scored better on tests that measure breathing capacity, muscle strength, and how well people functioned on activities, when compared to people who were given a placebo. On the scale that measures how well people functioned on activities, with 48 points being the highest possible score, patients who received the 100 mg dose experienced an average 1.1 point decline compared to people who were given a placebo who experienced an average 5.3 point decline. Given the short duration of treatment, the observed difference between 100 mg and placebo-treated patients was more apparent in patients with rapidly progressing SOD1 ALS.
The most common side effects were mild to moderate and included headache, pain due to the procedure and post lumbar puncture syndrome.
Limitations of the study include its small number of participants and short time frame. More studies are needed to see if the experimental drug works in larger groups of people and over longer periods of time.
The study was supported by Biogen. Biogen licensed the global rights to develop, manufacture and commercialize tofersen (BIIB067) from Ionis Pharmaceuticals.
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