Learning What Substance Is Suspected of Causing Alzheimer’s May Throw You Into an Existential Crisis

The Terrorist in the Brain

What can Robin Williams and Bruce Willis teach us about dementia? This article explores the complex biological realities of brain diseases, controversies in Alzheimer's research, the risks of new drugs, and the multi-billion-dollar industry exploiting our fear of cognitive decline.

Can Alzheimer’s really be reversed, as a new documentary claims?

A CNN documentary follows two people with Alzheimer’s who took part in a study to determine if lifestyle changes can reverse symptoms.

We Are Entering the Age of Alzheimer's

We will all be touched by the disease. How are we going to get through this?

The Cognitive Debt of Digging Through Preprints

Your Brain on MIT Media Lab

To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget | Quanta Magazine

Researchers find evidence that neural systems actively remove memories, suggesting that forgetting may be the default mode of the brain.

AI overuse could spark "brain fry," new research finds

The mental strain associated with AI carries "significant costs," researchers find.

What stress does to the brain - Neuroscience News

A new study sheds light on how the brain changes as a result of chronic stress. Selective noradrenaline release rewires connectivity patterns between different brain regions. Activity in the amygdala and networks that process sensory stimuli increased.

Single-cell multiregion dissection of Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease is the leading cause of dementia worldwide, but the cellular pathways that underlie its pathological progression across brain regions remain poorly understood1–3. Here we report a single-cell transcriptomic atlas of six different brain regions in the aged human brain, covering 1.3 million cells from 283 post-mortem human brain samples across 48 individuals with and without Alzheimer’s disease. We identify 76 cell types, including region-specific subtypes of astrocytes and excitatory neurons and an inhibitory interneuron population unique to the thalamus and distinct from canonical inhibitory subclasses. We identify vulnerable populations of excitatory and inhibitory neurons that are depleted in specific brain regions in Alzheimer’s disease, and provide evidence that the Reelin signalling pathway is involved in modulating the vulnerability of these neurons. We develop a scalable method for discovering gene modules, which we use to identify cell-type-specific and region-specific modules that are altered in Alzheimer’s disease and to annotate transcriptomic differences associated with diverse pathological variables. We identify an astrocyte program that is associated with cognitive resilience to Alzheimer’s disease pathology, tying choline metabolism and polyamine biosynthesis in astrocytes to preserved cognitive function late in life. Together, our study develops a regional atlas of the ageing human brain and provides insights into cellular vulnerability, response and resilience to Alzheimer’s disease pathology.

Depression doesn't shrink the brain like we thought it did | New Scientist

For the past decade, depression has been linked to a shrunken hippocampus, which has a vital role in memory. But a large study using up-to-date scanning techniques suggests this may not be the case

Problems of Proliferation — LessWrong

Scientific progress and its perils. TLDR: The vulnerable world hypothesis is likely correct. Once enormous amounts of cognitive labor start getting a…

Brain scans reveal how LSD affects consciousness

Drug researcher David Nutt discusses brain-imaging studies with hallucinogens.

Individual Experience vs. The Cochrane Review

On my decade-long exploration seeking a scientific language for singular evidence.

Safety of Safety Evaluation of Pesticides: developmental neurotoxicity of chlorpyrifos and chlorpyrifos-methyl

Authorization of pesticides for market release requires toxicity testing on animals, typically performed by test laboratories on contract with the pesticide producer. The latter provides the results and summary to the regulatory authorities. For the commonly used pesticide chlorpyrifos, an industry-funded toxicity study concludes that no selective effects on neurodevelopment occur even at high exposures. In contrast, the evidence from independent studies points to adverse effects of current exposures on cognitive development in children. We reviewed the industry-funded developmental neurotoxicity test data on chlorpyrifos and the related substance chlorpyrifos-methyl. We noted treatment-related changes in a brain dimension measure for chlorpyrifos at all dose levels tested, although not been reported in the original test summary. We further found issues which inappropriately decrease the ability of the studies to reveal true effects, including a dosage regimen that resulted in too low exposure of the nursing pups for chlorpyrifos and possibly for chlorpyrifos-methyl, and a failure to detect any neurobehavioral effects of lead nitrate used as positive control in the chlorpyrifos study. Our observations thus suggest that conclusions in test reports submitted by the producer may be misleading. This discrepancy affects the ability of regulatory authorities to perform a valid and safe evaluation of these pesticides. The difference between raw data and conclusions in the test reports indicates a potential existence of bias that would require regulatory attention and possible resolution.

AI Use Appears to Have a "Boiling Frog" Effect on Human Cognition, New Study Warns

A new study claims to offer the first causal link between AI dependency and cognitive erosion. Researchers warn of long-term implications.