Neuroscience as a new national priority

President Obama: “Now, it’s time to get to work.”

NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/science/obama-to-unveil-initiative-to-map-the-human-brain.html

 

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Increasing adult hippocampal neurogenesis is sufficient to improve pattern separation.

Sahay A, Scobie KN, Hill AS, O’Carroll CM, Kheirbek MA, Burghardt NS,
Fenton AA, Dranovsky A, Hen R. Increasing adult hippocampal neurogenesis is sufficient to improve
pattern separation. Nature. 2011 Apr 3

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature09817.html

Abstract after the break.

Frontiers in Neuroscience Journal

The journal, Frontiers in Neuroscience, edited by Idan Segev, has made it Volume 3, issue 1.  Launching last year at the Society for Neuroscience conference, its probably the newest Neuroscience-related journal.

I’m a fan of it because it is an open-access journal featuring a “tiered system” and more.  From their website:

The Frontiers Journal Series is not just another journal. It is a new approach to scientific publishing. As service to scientists, it is driven by researchers for researchers but it also serves the interests of the general public. Frontiers disseminates research in a tiered system that begins with original articles submitted to Specialty Journals. It evaluates research truly democratically and objectively based on the reading activity of the scientific communities and the public. And it drives the most outstanding and relevant research up to the next tier journals, the Field Journals.

Human 2.0: New Minds, New Bodies, New Identites

The MIT Media Lab is holding a conference on May 9th, “Human 2.0: New Minds, New Bodies, New Identites” which will launch a number of new initiatives centered around the goal of inventing a better future via direct engineering of the human. Amongst these things will be the initiation of the MIT Center for Human Augmentation, and the launch of a number of novel applied Neurotechnology Projects.

Guest speakers on May 9th will include MIT professors (Roz Picard, Hugh Herr, myself, etc.) and many acclaimed speakers such as Oliver Sacks and John Donoghue. Registration may be close to being full, but it will be webcast.

More information at:
http://h20.media.mit.edu

— posted by Ed

Amputee Controls And Feels Bionic Arm as Her Own

(UPDATE 03-05-2007 – Upon closer inspection, it is clear that while the surgery has enabled the woman to have sensation in the nerves of her missing hand when the surface of her chest is touched, the arm she is fitted with at the time of publication did not relay sensory signals from the arm back to her chest. As soon as she is fitted with an arm that has the appropriate sensors, however, she will not have to undergo further surgery to have this kind of direct feedback. Thanks to astute readers for pointing this out.)

The Guardian reports on an article published today in the Lancet about a successful surgical procedure giving an amputee a bionic arm that both responds to motor commands from her remaining motor nerves to control it and provides sensory feedback to sensory nerves when it is touched. If there was any doubt left, the worlds of neural prosthetics and brain-machine interfaces have officially collided.

The Lancet article is accompanied by two movies of the woman using the arm that you should really check out.

Given the recent progress in the decoding of motor signals from the brain and older progress on sensory feedback from neural prosthetics, this was to be expected. Nonetheless, watching this woman use her arm brings the message home in a visceral way. The spooky thesis of MIT CSAIL’s Rodney Brooks that “we will become a merger between flesh and machines” is one step closer today.

Help Please: Future of Neural Engineering: From Job perspective

Dear Members,
I am a prospective graduate student interested in taking up Neural Engineering under EE or Biomedical Engg for research. But I have a lot of concerns and need help from a person who knows about the field well.
1. I have studied VLSI, DSP, Image Processing, Wireless Communication, Control Systems and Embedded Systems as graduate and undergraduate courses and have some research interest in Neural Networks and Machine Learning(That’s how I got interested in Neural Engg and Prosthetics). Which of these subjects will be of help in Neural Engg/Prosthetics research. Which will be of most relevance. Please list them in the order of relevance(high->low).
2. What are the applications of the research ?
3. What is the research and JOB scope for this field? Are there any companies who recruit people with this specialisation? How is the job scene in academia? How many univs are doing research in this field in US? Please let me know about the career progression in academia, like how much time does it take to get full time academic position after PhD?
4. Especially, what are the applications of this research in Robotics?
5. What are the current problems and research themes in universities?
6. What imaging technologies are used in this research?

Though my queries may seem a bit ameteuristic, it is very important for me to get clarity on these doubts.
Hope my queries will be answered.
Thanking all of you in advance,
sudhi

place for mol biologist in neuroprosthetics?

Im a molecular/cellular neurobiologist. I do however, have a deep interst in neural prosthetics, bionics research. Is there a place for me in this field?

Prozac leads to neurogenesis of neural progenitors

Fluoxetine targets early progenitor cells in the adult brain — Encinas et al. 103 (21): 8233 — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

One of the first mechanistic attempt at explaining the effects of SSRIs. But how do new progenitors affect depression? Maybe this is an epiphenomenon. Maybe not.

TR: Future of Neurotechnology

Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact

I don’t know too much about Zach Lynch, other than that he has a blog and refers to his company as the “neurotechnology market authority”, but there are some interesting tidbits from the TR interview:

TR: Research suggests that antidepressants are effective partly because they stimulate neurogenesis. So companies such as BrainCells, based in San Diego, CA, are screening compounds that promote growth of neural stem cells in the brain. They say these drugs could bring new therapies for depression and, eventually, neurodegenerative diseases.

ZL: It’s an exciting area, and the investment community is certainly interested. But the jury is still out.

TR: We’re also starting to see a new kind of therapy for brain-related illnesses — electrical stimulation. Various types of stimulation devices are now on the market to treat epilepsy, depression, and Parkinson’s disease. What are some of the near- and far-term technologies we’ll see with this kind of device?

ZL: We’re seeing explosive growth in this area because scientists are overcoming many of the hurdles in this area. One example is longer battery life, so devices don’t have to be surgically implanted every five years. Researchers are also developing much smaller devices. Advanced Bionics, for example, has a next-generation stimulator in trials for migraines.

In the neurodevice space, the obesity market is coming on strong. Several companies are working on this, including Medtronics and Leptos Biomedical. In obesity, even a small benefit is a breakthrough, because gastric bypass surgery [one of the most common treatments for morbid obesity] is so invasive.

In the next 10 years, I think we’ll start to see a combination of technologies, like maybe a brain stimulator that releases L-dopa [a treatment for Parkinson’s disease]. Whether that’s viable is a whole other question, but that possibility is there because of the microelectronics revolution.

The real breakthrough will come from work on new electrodes. This will transform neurostimulator applications. With these technologies, you can create noninvasive devices and target very specific parts of the brain. It’s like going from a Model T to a Ferrari. Those technologies will present the real competition for drugs.

Social isolation delays the positive effects of running on adult neurogenesis

Social isolation delays the positive effects of running on adult neurogenesis – Nature Neuroscience

From the Apr 9, Nature Neurosci:

Social isolation delays the positive effects of running on adult neurogenesis
Alexis M Stranahan, David Khalil & Elizabeth Gould

Social isolation can exacerbate the negative consequences of stress and increase the risk of developing psychopathology. However, the influence of living alone on experiences generally considered to be beneficial to the brain, such as physical exercise, remains unknown. We report here that individual housing precludes the positive influence of short-term running on adult neurogenesis in the hippocampus of rats and, in the presence of additional stress, suppresses the generation of new neurons. Individual housing also influenced corticosterone levels—runners in both housing conditions had elevated corticosterone during the active phase, but individually housed runners had higher levels of this hormone in response to stress. Moreover, lowering corticosterone levels converted the influence of short-term running on neurogenesis in individually housed rats from negative to positive. These results suggest that, in the absence of social interaction, a normally beneficial experience can exert a potentially deleterious influence on the brain.