Walter Jessen – Page 39

Building a Brain in a Supercomputer

March 16, 2011 | by Walter Jessen

Mental illness, memory, perception: they’re made of neurons and electric signals. Henry Markram claims these mysteries of the mind can be solved — and soon. He is building a detailed, realistic computer model of the human brain and its one hundred trillion — that’s 100,000,000,000,000 — synapses.

Markram is the director of the Blue Brain Project at Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne (EPFL), one of two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology located in Lausanne, Switzerland. Founded in 2005 by the Brain and Mind Institute at the EPFL, Blue Brain is a supercomputing project that to study the brain’s architectural and functional principles, and reverse engineer it in order to understand brain function and dysfunction. Blue Brain can model components of the mammalian brain in precise cellular detail and simulate neuronal activity in 3D. Soon Blue Brain will be able to simulate a whole rat brain in real time.

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Brain Awareness Week: Brain Fitness Book Give Away

March 14, 2011 | by Walter Jessen

Here at Highlight HEALTH, we’re very interested in health and wellness, and the evidence-based preventive steps that can be taken to maintain or preclude disease or injury. This same idea applies to brain health: what preventive measures can be taken to improve or retain mental ability and brainpower?

Cognitive decline as you age appears to be largely due to altered connections among brain cells. Keeping the brain active — reading, writing, working crossword or other puzzles, educational courses, memory exercises — appears to strengthen the brain and may build reserves of brain cells and connections.

Today, it’s common to hear the buzzwords “brain fitness”, “brain training” and/or “neuroplasticity”. There are several products available on the market that can help to maintain and/or rebuild cognitive performance. We reviewed the SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness when it was released in 2009. The guide aims to help people make informed decisions about brain health and cognitive fitness, based on the latest scientific research, and to help navigate new products and confusing myths and claims that are part of the emerging brain fitness market.

SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness book give away

For Brain Awareness Week, SharpBrains has generously provided 5 copies of The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness for us to give away. Here’s how it works:

Simply leave a comment below and tell us in 2-3 sentences how brain research can impact health and/or healthcare. Together with Alvaro Fernandez at SharpBrains, we’ll select the 5 best answers and send the authors a copy of The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness.

If you need ideas to help you get started, check out past stories on the brain here at Highlight HEALTH.

Steps to brain fitness

An unhealthy lifestyle can lead to diseases like obesity, diabetes and brain-related health problems, all of which increase the risk of stroke, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. These conditions can be managed and even prevented by a healthy lifestyle. Research shows that brain health is promoted by a healthy lifestyle that includes [1]:

Eating a brain-healthy diet
Staying mentally active
Exercising and keeping fit
Staying socially engaged
Getting plenty of sleep
Managing stress
Protecting your head from trauma
Controlling risk factors
Avoiding unhealthy habits
Understanding your genetic risk

The decision to review your current lifestyle and start making changes for brain health is truly an important choice to make. Following the healthy steps listed above will be effective at any age; however, the earlier you start, the better off you will be. Your goal should be to make a brain-healthy lifestyle a normal part of your everyday.

References

Steps to Brain Fitness. Alliance for Aging Research. 2006.

Brain Awareness Week 2011 at Highlight HEALTH

March 14, 2011 | by Walter Jessen

Brain Awareness Week (BAW) is the global campaign to increase public awareness about the progress and benefits of brain research. Founded and coordinated by the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives and European Dana Alliance for the Brain, every March BAW unites the efforts of organizations worldwide in a week-long celebration of the brain.

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Biomarker Bulletin: March 7, 2011

March 7, 2011 | by Walter Jessen

Biomarker Bulletin is an occasionally recurring update of news focused on biomarkers aggregated at BiomarkerCommons.org. Biomarkers are physical, functional or biochemical indicators of normal physiological or disease processes. The individualization of disease management — personalized medicine — is dependent on developing biomarkers that promote specific clinical domains, including early detection, risk, diagnosis, prognosis and predicted response to therapy.

Sedentary Time Negatively Associated with Cardio-metabolic and Inflammatory Biomarkers.
Taking many breaks from muscular inactivity, even just 1-minute breaks, appears to lower levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) and may result in a smaller waist circumferences. That’s the result of a recent study in the European Heart Journal, which evaluated sedentary time and breaks in sedentary time with continuous cardio-metabolic and inflammatory risk biomarkers.
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center Researchers Identify Biomarkers of Poor Outcomes in Preterm Infants
Researchers at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center have identified biomarkers of poor outcomes in preterm infants that may help identify new approaches to prevention. The study investigated a polymorphism in a gene important for the immune system. Scientists found that the polymorphism raises the risk of bad outcomes in preterm infants, including death, necrotizing enterocolitis (death of intestinal tissue), and gram negative sepsis, an overwhelming infection.
Over-expression of Repetitive, Non-protein Coding DNA Common in Tumor Cells
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center have discovered massive over-expression of certain non-protein coding DNA sequences in common tumor cells. The DNA sequences, called satellite repeats, have not been previously thought to have a role in cancer. The study appears in the journal Science.
Elevated Levels of Cardiac Biomarkers Post-coronary Artery Bypass Surgery Associated with Increased Risk of Death
According to a recent JAMA study, patients who underwent coronary artery bypass graft surgery and had elevated levels of the cardiac enzymes creatine kinase or troponin in the 24 hours following surgery had an associated intermediate and long-term increased risk of death.
Cysteine is a Potential Biomarker for Sleep Apnea
A new study in the journal Chest concludes that the amino acid cysteine may be a biomarker for the development of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). The plasma biomarker was found to be elevated in patients with OSA, independent of obesity status.

Abnormal Heart Rate Turbulence May Predict Heart Disease

March 2, 2011 | by Walter Jessen

According to a study in the February 15 edition of the Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology, abnormal heart rate turbulence is associated with an increased risk of heart disease death in otherwise older, low-risk individuals [1]. Additional studies need to be done in order to understand whether this potential biomarker will be a clinically valuable tool.