FUTURE OF NEUROSCIENCE Flashcards
What is Alzheimer’s disease characterized by?
- progressive dementia
- memory impairment
then failure of:
- language skills
- spatial orientation
- abstract thinking
- judgement
What is Alzheimer’s pathology associated with?
- visible neurofibrillary tangles
- amyloid plaques
- neuron loss
Are plaques/tangles pathological?
debate ranges
- disease then plaque
- plaque then disease
When do pathological changes of AD start?
15+ years before symptoms
How do early onset cases of AD give us clues to causes?
most cases of AD are sporadic and occur in people over 60
genetic mapping of rare familial cases revealed the important role of the amyloid precursor protein (APP)
What are the major genetic contributors to early onset AD?
1) mutations in APP
2) mutations in PSEN1 (presenillin 1)
3) mutations in PSEN2
2 AND 3: γ-secretase complex
What is the strong genetic component of late onset AD?
1) APOE gene estimated to account for ~50% of late onset genetic risk
- predominant apolipoprotein of the HDL complex in the brain
- importantly, found to bind to Ab (perhaps promoting clearing/uptake)
- people homozygous for APOE E4 allele are 15X more likely to get AD
- heterozygotes are 4X more likely
- E4 allele binds Ab less strongly than other alleles
What alleles are a major AD risk factor?
APOE alleles
- less Aβ in CSF is interpreted as being because more is building up in the brain
- mouse models suggest APOE may clear Aβ from brain
What is a treatment for AD?
treatment with antibodies against Aβ
ie. drug lecanemab
Large Scale Projects/AI/BMI
- beyond morphology – multimodal big data
- patch-clamp recordings from 8 cells at once
- game-ifying neuroscience
- ‘Blue Brain’ project to stiulate brain (goal is to model brain using supercomputers)
- reverse engineering the brain
- modeling the brain toward artifical intelligence
- neuralink and BMIs
- future of BMIs is broad (and likely commerical)
Modeling the brain toward artifical intelligence – Blue Brain Project
- if we build it correctly it should speak and have an intelligence and behave very much as a human does
- really difficult to say how much detail is needed for consciousness to emerge – this project hows to find out how much detail is needed for the machine to really take off and become conscious
What are brain-to-brain interfaces (BBIs)?
- EEG ‘reads’ activity in the senders
- transcranial magnetic stimulation conveys information to the receiver via occipital lobe (visual cortex)
- senders have additional information about the state of the game
What do touch neurons on a mouse’s back elicit?
dopamine release during mating
Why does COVID result in loss of smell?
- SARS-CoV-2 infection depletes sustentacular cells from nasal epithelium
- SARS-CoV-2 infection non-cell-autonomously reduces OR expression in OSNs
- OR expression changes drive by nuclear reorganization
Can people function normally with only one brain hemisphere?
yes
