Bioscience News - GEG Tech top picks

Neural processes (yellow) and pre- and post-synaptic proteins (teal and magenta) in a mouse brain. Gao et al/Science 2019

Ed Boyden once penned a short practical essay titled “How To Think,” and the passage above was his #1 rule. He was 28 years old and launching his own neuroscience research group at MIT. He’d already published findings that would win him the prestigious Brain Prize for helping to develop “arguably the most important technical advance in neuroscience in the past 40 years,” according to the chairman of the prize selection committee. 

EPFL scientists propose a new way of understanding how the brain processes unconscious information into our consciousness. According to the model, consciousness arises only in time intervals of up to 400 milliseconds, with gaps of unconsciousness in between.

Working with Halo Neuroscience in San Francisco, California, the sports group is testing whether stimulating the brain with electricity can improve the performance of ski jumpers by making it easier for them to hone their skills. Other research suggests that targeted brain stimulation can reduce an athlete’s ability to perceive fatigue. Such technologies could aid recovery from injury or let athletes try 'brain doping' to gain a competitive advantage.

Tickle a rat and it will jump for joy, gleefully squeak and beg for more. In addition to describing these delightful reactions to a tickling hand, a new study identifies nerve cells in the brain that help turn rats into squirmy puddles of giggles.

The results, published November 11 in Science, offer insight into how the brain creates glee, an understudied emotion. “People really underrate the positive things — fun, happiness, joy,” says study coauthor Shimpei Ishiyama of Humboldt University of Berlin.

Researchers from Imperial College London, working with the Beckley Foundation, have for the first time visualised the effects of LSD on the human brain. In a series of experiments, scientists have gained a glimpse into how the psychedelic compound affects brain activity. The team administered LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide) to 20 healthy volunteers in a specialist research centre and used various leading-edge and complementary brain scanning techniques to visualise how LSD alters the way the brain works.