Latest news with #AllenInstituteforBrainScience
The Irish Sun
5 days ago
- Health
- The Irish Sun
The early dementia clue that strikes 20 years before first signs – as experts identify ‘stealth phase'
THE first sign of Alzheimer's could appear decades before patients notice memory loss, scientists have revealed. That's because the disease, the most common type of dementia, develops in distinct phases - the first one being the 'stealth' phase. Advertisement 2 Problems with spacial awareness, such as struggling with a sat nav, could be one of the earliest warning signs, according to a study Credit: Getty In a new study, spatial awareness issues, such as struggling with a sat nav or standing awkwardly close to people, were found to be the earliest warning signs - striking up to 20 years before traditional symptoms appeared. Researchers from the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle examined the post-mortem brains of 84 Alzheimer's patients and uncovered evidence of early brain cell death long before damage was visible on scans. They also found the disease two distinct phases, known as 'epochs'. The first phase, the 'stealth' phase, begins decades before Advertisement This typically happens in the part of the brain important for navigation. The second phase seeds a build up of tau and amyloid in the brain - proteins that are key players in the development of Alzheimer's. While most ageing brains contain some levels of these proteins, they can form plaques and tangle, which is thought to trigger more recognised Telltale signs of cognitive collapse, such as Advertisement Most read in Health The researchers used powerful machine learning software to track tau and amyloid. They found even low levels caused damage to key brain cells known as inhibitory neurons. Five simple tests that could indicate dementia Lead author Dr Mariano Gabitto, a neuroscience professor, explained: 'Identifying the earliest neurons lost could be crucial for developing therapeutic interventions to protect them and The researchers now want to determine whether this means they can accurately predict cognitive decline. Advertisement They're confident early intervention during the 'stealth' phase could delay - or even prevent - the progression of the disease. Dr Igor Camargo Fontana, director of scientific conference programming at Alzheimer's Association, told In the UK, approximately 982,000 people are estimated to be living with dementia, including Alzheimer's disease. And the number of people living with dementia is projected to increase to 1.4 million by 2040. Advertisement 2 The researchers believe early intervention during the 'stealth' phase could delay or prevent progression of the disease Credit: Getty While there's currently no cure for Alzheimer's, spotting its symptoms is crucial because early diagnosis and treatment can help manage symptoms, slow the disease's progression, and potentially qualify individuals for clinical trials. One of the most common signs of Alzheimer's disease, especially in the early stage, is forgetting recently learned information, according to the Read more on the Irish Sun Others include forgetting important dates or events, asking the same questions over and over, and increasingly needing to reply on memory aids or family members for things they use to handle on their own. Advertisement Alongside spotting symptoms, it's important to take proactive steps to maintain brain health. Follow the tips below... How to reduce dementia risk Eat a healthy diet Prioritise a Mediterranean diet rich in whole grains, vegetables, nuts, legumes, and oily fish while limiting red meat, refined foods, and sugar. Engage in regular physical activity Aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week. This can include activities like walking, dancing, swimming, or gardening. Manage blood pressure Keep your blood pressure at a healthy level through diet, exercise, and medication if necessary. Quit smoking Quitting smoking can significantly reduce your risk of dementia, as well as other health issues. Keep socially engaged Maintain an active social life, stay connected with loved ones, and participate in community activities. Be mentally stimulated Challenge your brain with activities like learning new skills, reading, or solving puzzles. Get good sleep Prioritise good sleep quality, as research suggests that sleep disturbances may be linked to an increased risk of dementia. Limit alcohol consumption Drinking too much alcohol can increase your risk of falls and other health conditions that are linked to dementia. Manage diabetes If you have type 2 diabetes, manage it effectively to reduce your risk of dementia. Address hearing loss Address hearing loss, as it can be linked to an increased risk of dementia.
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists produce complex map of mouse's brain that could unravel mystery of how ours work
Thanks to a mouse watching clips from 'The Matrix,' scientists have created the largest functional map of a brain to date – a diagram of the wiring connecting 84,000 neurons as they fire off messages. Using a piece of that mouse's brain about the size of a poppy seed, the researchers identified those neurons and traced how they communicated via branch-like fibres through a surprising 500 million junctions called synapses. The massive dataset, published on Wednesday by the journal Nature, marks a step toward unraveling the mystery of how our brains work. Related Scientists shed light on the many ways women's brains change during pregnancy The data, assembled in a 3D reconstruction colored to delineate different brain circuitry, is open to scientists worldwide for additional research – and for the simply curious to take a peek. "It definitely inspires a sense of awe, just like looking at pictures of the galaxies," said Forrest Collman of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in the United States, one of the project's leading researchers. "You get a sense of how complicated you are. We're looking at one tiny part... of a mouse's brain and the beauty and complexity that you can see in these actual neurons and the hundreds of millions of connections between them". How we think, feel, see, talk, and move are due to neurons, or nerve cells, in the brain – how they're activated and send messages to each other. Scientists have long known those signals move from one neuron along fibres called axons and dendrites, using synapses to jump to the next neuron. But there's less known about the networks of neurons that perform certain tasks and how disruptions of that wiring could play a role in Alzheimer's, autism, or other disorders. With the new project, a global team of more than 150 researchers mapped neural connections that Collman compares to tangled pieces of spaghetti winding through part of the mouse brain responsible for vision. Related Scientists produce first and largest brain map of a dead fruit fly The first step: show a mouse video snippets of sci-fi movies, sports, animation, and nature. A team at Baylor College of Medicine in the US did just that, using a mouse engineered with a gene that makes its neurons glow when they're active. The researchers used a laser-powered microscope to record how individual cells in the animal's visual cortex lit up as they processed the images flashing by. Next, scientists at the Allen Institute analysed that small piece of brain tissue, using a special tool to shave it into more than 25,000 layers and take nearly 100 million high-resolution images using electron microscopes. They then painstakingly reassembled the data in 3D. Finally, scientists from Princeton University in the US used artificial intelligence (AI) to trace all that wiring and "paint each of the individual wires a different colour so that we can identify them individually," Collman said. They estimated that microscopic wiring, if laid out, would measure more than 5 km. Related An experimental brain-computer implant is helping a stroke survivor speak again Could this kind of mapping help scientists eventually find treatments for brain diseases? The researchers call it a foundational step, like how the Human Genome Project that provided the first gene mapping eventually led to gene-based treatments. Mapping a full mouse brain is one next goal. "The technologies developed by this project will give us our first chance to really identify some kind of abnormal pattern of connectivity that gives rise to a disorder," said Sebastian Seung, Princeton neuroscientist and computer scientist and another of the project's leading researchers. The work "marks a major leap forwards and offers an invaluable community resource for future discoveries," wrote Harvard neuroscientists Mariela Petkova and Gregor Schuhknecht, who weren't involved in the project. The huge and publicly shared data "will help to unravel the complex neural networks underlying cognition and behaviour," they added.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
A Tiny Piece of Mouse Brain Has Finally Been Mapped in Mindblowing Detail
Trying to grasp the brain's complexity is a little like trying to comprehend the vastness of space – it feels way beyond our scope of understanding. By mapping a small part of a mouse brain down to an amazing level of detail, new research could help us grasp the magnitude of the neurological cosmos inside our heads. Though the volume of brain matter analyzed was barely the size of a grain of sand, the researchers still had to describe the relationships between 84,000 neurons via half a billion synapse connections and 5.4 kilometers (3.4 miles) of neural wiring. The result is the most detailed rendering of a mammalian brain on record, by some distance. The incredible work took nine years to complete from start to finish, and involved more than 150 researchers and 22 institutions along the way, including representatives from Princeton University, Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, and the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. "The brain is this biological tissue inside our heads that makes us see the world, have feelings, make decisions," says neuroscientist Andreas Tolias, now at Stanford University. "What is unique about this data is that it brought, in one experiment, both the structure and the function together." That means scientists were able to see not just the layout of the wiring in the brain, but also the way those wires communicate and work. The mouse used in the study was shown video clips (including some from The Matrix) while moving on a treadmill, with the scientists monitoring brain activity. The mouse's brain was then dissected into 28,000 separate layers. The team used a combination of AI techniques and human checks to untangle the network of neuronal wires, identify connections, then put the tangle together again. This wiring diagram of the brain is known as the connectome. Scientists have previously constructed one for an insect brain, but this is whole other level of complexity, bringing us a step closer to doing the same for the human brain. "The connectome is the beginning of the digital transformation of brain science," says Princeton University neuroscientist H. Sebastian Seung. The uses for this data, which has been made publicly available, are many and far reaching. The human brain is currently way beyond even the best AI models in terms of how quickly and efficiently it can process information, and research like this gives us a better idea why. It's also a promising step forward in the study of brain diseases, including dementia. Digitizing some or all of the brain, and understanding exactly how it's put together, means an improved understanding of how it can go wrong. "The technologies developed by this project will give us our first chance to really identify some kind of abnormal pattern of connectivity that gives rise to a disorder," says Seung. The research has been published in a series of papers in Nature. The 'World's Most Advanced Microchip' Has Been Unveiled Huge 56-Mile Particle Smasher Is Possible, Says CERN Report Quantum Computer Generates Truly Random Number in Scientific First
CBC
10-04-2025
- Science
- CBC
This isn't a galaxy — it's a map of a mouse's brain
Thanks to a mouse watching clips from The Matrix, scientists have created the largest functional map of a brain to date — a diagram of the wiring connecting 84,000 neurons as they fire off messages. Using a piece of that mouse's brain about the size of a poppyseed, the researchers identified those neurons and traced how they communicated via branch-like fibres through a surprising 500 million junctions called synapses. The massive dataset, published Wednesday by the journal Nature, marks a step toward unravelling the mystery of how our brains work. The data, assembled in a 3D reconstruction, coloured to delineate different brain circuitry, is open to scientists worldwide for additional research — and for the simply curious to take a peek. "It definitely inspires a sense of awe, just like looking at pictures of the galaxies," said Forrest Collman, of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, one of the project's leading researchers. "You get a sense of how complicated you are. We're looking at one tiny part … of a mouse's brain, and the beauty and complexity that you can see in these actual neurons and the hundreds of millions of connections between them." How we think, feel, see, talk and move are due to neurons, or nerve cells, in the brain: how they're activated and send messages to each other. Scientists have long known those signals move from one neuron along fibres called axons and dendrites, using synapses to jump to the next neuron. But there's less known about the networks of neurons that perform certain tasks and how disruptions of that wiring could play a role in Alzheimer's, autism or other disorders. "You can make a thousand hypotheses about how brain cells might do their job, but you can't test those hypotheses unless you know perhaps the most fundamental thing — how are those cells wired together," said Allen Institute scientist Clay Reid, who helped pioneer electron microscopy to study neural connections. Uncrossing the wires With the new project, a global team of more than 150 researchers mapped neural connections that Collman compares to tangled pieces of spaghetti winding through part of the mouse brain responsible for vision. The first step: Show a mouse video snippets of sci-fi movies, sports, animation and nature. A team at Baylor College of Medicine did just that, using a mouse engineered with a gene that makes its neurons glow when they're active. The researchers used a laser-powered microscope to record how individual cells in the animal's visual cortex lit up as they processed the images flashing by. WATCH | Allen Institute video reveals largest wiring diagram and functional map of the brain: Next, scientists at the Allen Institute analyzed that small piece of brain tissue, using a special tool to shave it into more than 25,000 layers, each far thinner than a human hair. With electron microscopes, they took nearly 100 million high-resolution images of those sections, illuminating those spaghetti-like fibres and painstakingly reassembling the data in 3D. Finally, Princeton University scientists used artificial intelligence to trace all that wiring and to "paint each of the individual wires a different colour so that we can identify them individually," Collman explained. They estimated that microscopic wiring, if laid out, would measure more than five kilometres. Importantly, matching up all that anatomy with the activity in the mouse's brain as it watched movies allowed researchers to trace how the circuitry worked. WATCH | MICrONS consortium video explores the connections of the brain: The Princeton researchers also created digital 3D copies of the data that other scientists can use in developing new studies. Could this kind of mapping help scientists eventually find treatments for brain diseases? The researchers call it a foundational step, like how the Human Genome Project that provided the first gene-mapping eventually led to gene-based treatments. Mapping a full mouse brain is one next goal. "The technologies developed by this project will give us our first chance to really identify some kind of abnormal pattern of connectivity that gives rise to a disorder," another of the project's leading researchers, Princeton neuroscientist and computer scientist Sebastian Seung, said in a statement. The work "marks a major leap forward and offers an invaluable community resource for future discoveries," wrote Harvard neuroscientists Mariela Petkova and Gregor Schuhknecht, who weren't involved in the project. The huge and publicly shared data "will help to unravel the complex neural networks underlying cognition and behaviour," they added. The Machine Intelligence from Cortical Networks, or MICrONS, consortium was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health's BRAIN Initiative and IARPA, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity.
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists produce complex map of mouse's brain that could unravel mystery of how ours work
Thanks to a mouse watching clips from 'The Matrix,' scientists have created the largest functional map of a brain to date – a diagram of the wiring connecting 84,000 neurons as they fire off messages. Using a piece of that mouse's brain about the size of a poppy seed, the researchers identified those neurons and traced how they communicated via branch-like fibres through a surprising 500 million junctions called synapses. The massive dataset, published on Wednesday by the journal Nature, marks a step toward unraveling the mystery of how our brains work. Related Scientists shed light on the many ways women's brains change during pregnancy The data, assembled in a 3D reconstruction colored to delineate different brain circuitry, is open to scientists worldwide for additional research – and for the simply curious to take a peek. "It definitely inspires a sense of awe, just like looking at pictures of the galaxies," said Forrest Collman of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in the United States, one of the project's leading researchers. "You get a sense of how complicated you are. We're looking at one tiny part... of a mouse's brain and the beauty and complexity that you can see in these actual neurons and the hundreds of millions of connections between them". How we think, feel, see, talk, and move are due to neurons, or nerve cells, in the brain – how they're activated and send messages to each other. Scientists have long known those signals move from one neuron along fibres called axons and dendrites, using synapses to jump to the next neuron. But there's less known about the networks of neurons that perform certain tasks and how disruptions of that wiring could play a role in Alzheimer's, autism, or other disorders. With the new project, a global team of more than 150 researchers mapped neural connections that Collman compares to tangled pieces of spaghetti winding through part of the mouse brain responsible for vision. Related Scientists produce first and largest brain map of a dead fruit fly The first step: show a mouse video snippets of sci-fi movies, sports, animation, and nature. A team at Baylor College of Medicine in the US did just that, using a mouse engineered with a gene that makes its neurons glow when they're active. The researchers used a laser-powered microscope to record how individual cells in the animal's visual cortex lit up as they processed the images flashing by. Next, scientists at the Allen Institute analysed that small piece of brain tissue, using a special tool to shave it into more than 25,000 layers and take nearly 100 million high-resolution images using electron microscopes. They then painstakingly reassembled the data in 3D. Finally, scientists from Princeton University in the US used artificial intelligence (AI) to trace all that wiring and "paint each of the individual wires a different colour so that we can identify them individually," Collman said. They estimated that microscopic wiring, if laid out, would measure more than 5 km. Related An experimental brain-computer implant is helping a stroke survivor speak again Could this kind of mapping help scientists eventually find treatments for brain diseases? The researchers call it a foundational step, like how the Human Genome Project that provided the first gene mapping eventually led to gene-based treatments. Mapping a full mouse brain is one next goal. "The technologies developed by this project will give us our first chance to really identify some kind of abnormal pattern of connectivity that gives rise to a disorder," said Sebastian Seung, Princeton neuroscientist and computer scientist and another of the project's leading researchers. The work "marks a major leap forwards and offers an invaluable community resource for future discoveries," wrote Harvard neuroscientists Mariela Petkova and Gregor Schuhknecht, who weren't involved in the project. The huge and publicly shared data "will help to unravel the complex neural networks underlying cognition and behaviour," they added.
