New brain implant to treat people with memory loss

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 Researchers have developed a brain implant that translates short term memories into longer-term ones and may help dementia sufferers and brain-damaged patients retain their memory. 

 

Researchers at the University of Southern California and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center said the prosthesis, which includes a small array of electrodes implanted into the brain, has performed well in laboratory testing in animals and is currently being evaluated in human patients.

Designed originally at USC and tested at Wake Forest Baptist, the device builds on decades of research by Ted Berger and relies on a new algorithm created by Dong Song, both of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

The development also builds on more than a decade of collaboration with Sam Deadwyler and Robert Hampson of the Department of Physiology & Pharmacology of Wake Forest Baptist who have collected the neural data used to construct the models and algorithms.

When brain receives the sensory input, it creates a memory in the form of a complex electrical signal that travels through multiple regions of the hippocampus, the memory centre of the brain.
At each region, the signal is re-encoded until it reaches the final region as a wholly different signal that is sent off for long-term storage. If there's damage at any region that prevents this translation, then there is the possibility that long-term memory will not be formed.

That's why an individual with hippocampal damage (for example, due to Alzheimer's disease) can recall events from a long time ago - things that were already translated into long-term memories before the brain damage occurred - but have difficulty forming new long-term memories.

Song and Berger found a way to accurately mimic how a memory is translated from short-term memory into long-term memory, using data obtained by Deadwyler and Hampson, first from animals, and then from humans.

Their prosthesis is designed to bypass a damaged hippocampal section and provide the next region with the correctly translated memory.

In experiments, Hampson and Deadwyler read the electrical signals created during memory formation at two regions of the hippocampus in patients who had electrodes implanted in their hippocampi to treat chronic seizures.
 
The information was then sent to Song and Berger to construct the model.

The team then fed those signals into the model and read how the signals generated from the first region of the hippocampus were translated into signals generated by the second region of the hippocampus.

In hundreds of trials conducted with nine patients, the algorithm accurately predicted how the signals would be translated with about 90 per cent accuracy.

"Being able to predict neural signals with the USC model suggests that it can be used to design a device to support or replace the function of a damaged part of the brain," Hampson said.

Sleep May Strengthen Long-Term Memories of Immune System

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Deep sleep may strengthen the immune system's memory of an encounter with a bacteria or virus, helping the body recognise a previous infection and respond quickly, researchers suggest.

"While it has been known for a long time that sleep supports long-term memory formation in the psychological domain, the idea that long-term memory formation is a function of sleep effective in all organismic systems is in our view entirely new," said Jan Born of the University of Tuebingen in Germany.

The immune system "remembers" an encounter with a bacteria or virus by collecting fragments from the bug to create memory T cells, which last for months or years and help the body recognise a previous infection and quickly respond.

These memory T cells appear to abstract "gist information" about the pathogens, as only T cells that store information about the tiniest fragments ever elicit a response.
The selection of gist information allows memory T cells to detect new pathogens that are similar, but not identical, to previously encountered bacteria or viruses.

Studies in humans have shown that long-term increases in memory T cells are associated with deep slow-wave sleep on the nights after vaccination.

The findings support the view that slow-wave sleep contributes to the formation of long-term memories of abstract, generalised information, which leads to adaptive behavioural and immunological responses.

"If we didn't sleep, then the immune system might focus on the wrong parts of the pathogen," Born said in an article published in the journal Trends in Neurosciences.

"For example, many viruses can easily mutate some parts of their proteins to escape from immune responses. If too few antigen-recognising cells (the cells that present the fragments to T cells) are available, then they might all be needed to fight off the pathogen," Born said.

"In addition to this, there is evidence that the hormones released during sleep benefit the crosstalk between antigen-presenting and antigen-recognising cells, and some of these important hormones could be lacking without sleep," Born said.

Born said that future research should examine what information is selected during sleep for storage in long-term memory, and how this selection is achieved.

"In order to design effective vaccines against HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, which are based on immunological memory, the correct memory model must be available," he said.

"It is our hope that by comparing the concepts of neuronal and immunological memory, a model of immunological memory can be developed which integrates the available experimental data and serves as a helpful basis for vaccine development," he said. 

A 10-minute walk break can reverse vascular dysfunction

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 By breaking up desk time with a short 10-minute walk, you can offset the harm that prolonged sitting causes to vascular health, suggests new research. 

 

"Our study found that when you sit for six straight hours, or the majority of an eight-hour work day, blood flow to your legs is greatly reduced," said lead author of the study Jaume Padilla, assistant professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at University of Missouri School of Medicine in the US.

"We also found that just 10 minutes of walking after sitting for an extended time reversed the detrimental consequences," Padilla noted.

During the study, the researchers compared the vascular function of 11 healthy young men before and after a period of prolonged sitting.

The findings indicated that blood flow in the popliteal -- an artery in the lower leg -- was greatly reduced after sitting at a desk for six hours.

Researchers then had the participants take a short walk, and found that 10 minutes of self-paced walking could restore the impaired vascular function and improve blood flow.

"When you have decreased blood flow, the friction of the flowing blood on the artery wall, called shear stress, is also reduced," Padilla said.

"Moderate levels of shear stress are good for arterial health, whereas low levels of shear stress appear to be detrimental and reduce the ability of the artery to dilate. Dilation is a sign of vascular health. The more the artery can dilate and respond to stimuli, the healthier it is," Padilla noted.

The findings appeared in the journal Experimental Physiology.

Make Your Fire Extinguisher

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 Dissolve one pound of salt and half a pound of sal-ammoniac in two quarts of water and bottle the liquor in thin glass bottles holding about a quart each. Should a fire break out, dash one or more of the bottles into the flames, and any serious outbreak will probably be averted.

Judge Upcoming Weather Changes by Sight

The traveler, setting off in the early morning, will find a fairly sure guide as to the weather he is likely to encounter by watching a very small distant cloud. If the cloud grows gradually larger, then unsettled, rainy weather will probably come. But if the cloud decreases in size, the day should be a fine one.

Stop Your Eye Glasses from Fogging Up

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 The moisture which collects on eyeglasses causes a great deal of trouble, but if the glasses are rubbed daily with soap, and well polished afterwards, a very thin, invisible film of soap remains, which has the effect of preventing the condensation of moisture on the glass.