Free Republic

A new paper from Germany posted on April 5, 2023 proves that the spike protein accumulates in the brain and causes death of brain cells (which would certainly explain a great deal of what we see around us). (click here) Key findings: “Our results revealed the accumulation of the spike protein in the skull marrow, brain meninges, and brain parenchyma.” “The injection of the spike protein alone caused cell death in the brain, highlighting a direct effect on brain tissue.” “we observed the presence of spike protein in the skull of deceased long after their COVID-19 infection, suggesting that the...

University of Washington Health Sciences/UW Medicine Summary: A team of scientists have invented a device that can control neural circuits using a tiny brain implant controlled by a smartphone. The device could speed up efforts to uncover brain diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, addiction, depression, and pain. A team of scientists in Korea and the United States have invented a device that can control neural circuits using a tiny brain implant controlled by a smartphone. Researchers, publishing in Nature Biomedical Engineering, believe the device can speed up efforts to uncover brain diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, addiction, depression, and pain....

Unlike most cells in our bodies, the neurons in our brain can scramble their genes, scientists have discovered. This genome tampering may expand the brain’s protein repertoire, but it may also promote Alzheimer’s disease, their study suggests. “It’s potentially one of the biggest discoveries in molecular biology in years,” says Geoffrey Faulkner, a molecular biologist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, who wasn’t connected to the research. “It is a landmark study,” agrees clinical neurologist Christos Proukakis of University College London. Scientists first discovered that certain cells could shuffle and edit DNA in the 1970s. Some immune cells...

In a mysterious addition to the brain’s family of cells, researchers have discovered a new kind of neuron—a dense, bushy bundle (above) that is present in people but seems to be missing in mice. These “rosehip neurons,” were found in the uppermost layer of the cortex, which is home to many different types of neurons that inhibit the activity of other neurons. Scientists spotted the neurons in slices of human brain tissue as part of a larger effort to inventory human brain cells by combining microscopic study of brain anatomy and the genetic analysis of individual cells. The cells were...

Unlike Bill Clinton, Barack Obama never tried to say he didn't inhale. In his 1995 memoir "Dreams of My Father," Obama writes about smoking pot almost like Dr. Seuss wrote about eating green eggs and ham. As a high school kid, Obama wrote, he would smoke "in a white classmate's sparkling new van," he would smoke "in the dorm room of some brother" and he would smoke "on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids." He would smoke it here and there. He would smoke it anywhere. Now a soon-to-be published biography by David Maraniss entitled "Barack Obama: The...

Now, researchers from the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, CA, and the University of California-San Francisco reveal they have successfully reversed learning and memory deficits in mouse models of Alzheimer's through transplantation of healthy brain cells. The team transplanted inhibitory neuron progenitors - early-stage brain cells that can change into mature inhibitory regulator cells - into the hippocampus of two mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. One mouse model possessed the apoE4 gene, while the other had the apoE4 gene alongside a build-up of amyloid-beta - a protein also believed to play a role in Alzheimer's development. The researchers found that...

Sleep loss may be more serious than previously thought, causing a permanent loss of brain cells, research suggests. In mice, prolonged lack of sleep led to 25% of certain brain cells dying, according to a study in The Journal of Neuroscience. If the same is true in humans, it may be futile to try to catch up on missed sleep, say US scientists. They think it may one day be possible to develop a drug to protect the brain from the side-effects of lost sleep. …

This was proven by a study by Grethe Jensen and co. (1993), who meticulously counted neurons in matched samples of non-alcoholics and alcoholics. What they found was that there was no real difference in the density or overall number of neurons between the two groups. In every group, those who drank moderately on a regular basis throughout their lives always had a diminished chance of becoming mentally impaired in their old age compared to those who didn't drink at all or almost never drank. Now for the negative (there's a lot when it comes to intemperate alcohol consumption, so I'll...

DURHAM, N.C. – Zinc has been found to play a critical role in regulating communication between cells in the brain, possibly governing the formation of memories and controlling the occurrence of epileptic seizures. A collaborative project between Duke University Medical Center researchers and chemists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been able to watch zinc in action as it regulates communication between neurons in the hippocampus, where learning and memory processes occur – and where disrupted communication may contribute to epilepsy. "We discovered that zinc is essential to control the efficiency of communication between two critical populations of nerve...

A research breakthrough has proven that it is possible to reprogram mature cells from human skin directly into brain cells, without passing through the stem cell stage. The unexpectedly simple technique involves activating three genes in the skin cells; genes which are already known to be active in the formation of brain cells at the fetal stage. The new technique avoids many of the ethical dilemmas that stem cell research has faced. For the first time, a research group at Lund University in Sweden has succeeded in creating specific types of nerve cells from human skin. By reprogramming connective tissue...

Brain cells don't need to be in your head in order to learn something, a new study suggests. The results show brain cells living in a lab dish can be taught to keep time. The neurons, relocated from the outer layer of a rat brain to the inside of a lab dish, could fire for specific amounts of time depending on how they were trained. The findings shed light on a puzzle scientists are still grappling with - exactly how the brain tells time. Much of what humans do in their everyday lives relies on the brain's ability to perceive...

The identification of a new marker is making it possible to track brain stem cells for the first time, U.S. researchers report. The achievement is already opening doors to new research into depression, early childhood development and multiple sclerosis, the team's senior author said. "This is a way to detect these cells in the brain, so that you can track them in certain conditions where we suspect that these cells play a certain role," explained Dr. Mirjana Maletic-Savatic, an assistant professor of neurology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. "This is also very applicable for situations where...

THURSDAY, July 20 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers say they're gaining greater insight into how the brain's own stem cells may trigger one of the deadliest forms of cancer. The stem cells -- which can turn into a variety of brain cells -- appear to carry a receptor that pulls in a specific chemical. If the cells get over-stimulated by the chemical, that may lead to tumor formation. The discovery, "might lead to better understanding of early growth" of brain malignancies, said study co-author Arturo Alvarez-Buylla, a professor of neurological surgery at the University of California, San Francisco. As a result,...

University of Florida researchers have shown ordinary human brain cells may share the prized qualities of self-renewal and adaptability normally associated with stem cells. Writing online today (Aug. 16) in Development, scientists from UF's McKnight Brain Institute describe how they used mature human brain cells taken from epilepsy patients to generate new brain tissue in mice.  Furthermore, they can coax these pedestrian human cells to produce large amounts of new brain cells in culture, with one cell theoretically able to begin a cycle of cell division that does not stop until the cells number about 10 to the 16th power....

Drinking alcohol boosts the growth of new nerve cells in the brain, research suggests. But while this might sound good in theory, the Swedish team believe these new cells could contribute to the development of alcohol dependence. Mice fed moderate quantities of alcohol grew extra brain cells, but also showed a preference for alcohol over water. The Karolinska Institute research appears in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology. Brain growth Lead researcher Professor Stefan Brene said: "We believe that the increased production of new nerve cells during moderate alcohol consumption can be important for the development of alcohol addiction and other...

Scientists Create Brain Cells, Predict Possible Rapid Development of Treatments for Alzheimers and Parkinson's WASHINGTON, June 14, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - American researchers have found a method of growing batches, or lines, of fully mature brain cells. This has often been predicted as the end of such neurological diseases as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s. The ethical new technique mimics the brain’s own natural process of changing stem cells into neurons. For the moment, the research has been confined to mice, but the researchers are hopeful that their work can soon be transferred to human patients. Bjorn Scheffler, a neuroscientist at Florida...

Light exercise a tonic to keep the brain young Study for first time shows lifelong exercise decreases cellular aging in the brain GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- People don't have to run marathons to keep their brain cells in shape -- regular, light activity may do the trick. In the first study to show that lifelong exercise decreases cellular aging in the brain, scientists from the McKnight Brain Institute of the University of Florida say that moderately active rats have healthier DNA and more robust brain cells than their less active counterparts. The research was presented today (Nov. 12) at the Society...

Making Brain Cells Scientists have announced they've found a way to coax adult hair follicle stem cells into becoming brain cells. Hair-brained? Scientists at AntiCancer, Inc. of San Diego have coaxed adult stem cells in mice into turning into neurons, the nerve cells of the brain. Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors say, the results of their work suggests a new "source of undifferentiated multi-potent stem cells." Stem cells are different from other cells because they can change into specialized cells the body needs, the body maintain and repair itself. Many scientists are working to...

Nanoparticles originally developed for industry have an unexpected effect: They triple or even quadruple the life of rat brain cells, suggesting that they could help extend human lifespan and decrease age-related health problems. It has been predicted that nanotechnology will revolutionize modern medicine, through such things as new materials that are more easily absorbed by human cells. Discovering the health effects of one such material, a nano-oxide particle, involved a collaboration between a molecular biologist and a nanoscientist at the University of Central Florida. Antioxidant nanotechnology The two researchers are Beverly Rzigalinski, an assistant molecular biology professor, and Sudipta Seal,...