Summary: Using whole-brain virtual models, researchers simulate the effects of non-invasive neurostimulation on the aging brain. The computational models shed light on the dynamics of brain changes as a result of aging.
Source: Human Brain Project
Human Brain Project researchers have used whole-brain virtual models to simulate what happens when neurostimulation is applied to aging human brains.
These models provide new insight into how the dynamics of a healthy brain change as it grows old, and crucially, could help identify new targets and strategies for therapeutic neurostimulation.
As the brain ages, it “reorganizes” itself: its neurodynamics and the connections between neurons change dramatically, often resulting in a decrease of cognitive functions. Noninvasive brain stimulation techniques, such as applying electrical or magnetic currents, have recently emerged as possible treatments for neurological and degenerative disorders, contrasting and mitigating the natural effects of aging.
However, large scale experimental studies on healthy human brains have obvious ethical implications. A group of Spanish researchers, led by Gustavo Deco from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, were able to overcome these limitations with the help of modeling and simulation.
Their study was published in Cerebral Cortex and used neuroimaging data of 620 healthy adults, collected during previous research – half of them aged over 65 years, the other half below 65 years.
The team looked for key differences between the brain states of the two groups, and identified a brain state similar to the so-called “rich club” region, a network of 12 brain hubs well connected with each other. READ MORE...
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| Desinova Cave, Russia |
Nobody knows who she was, just that she was different: a teenage girl from over 50,000 years ago of such strange uniqueness she looked to be a 'hybrid' ancestor to modern humans that scientists had never seen before.
Only recently, researchers have uncovered evidence she wasn't alone. In a 2019 study analysing the complex mess of humanity's prehistory, scientists used artificial intelligence (AI) to identify an unknown human ancestor species that modern humans encountered – and shared dalliances with – on the long trek out of Africa millennia ago.
"About 80,000 years ago, the so-called Out of Africa occurred, when part of the human population, which already consisted of modern humans, abandoned the African continent and migrated to other continents, giving rise to all the current populations", explained evolutionary biologist Jaume Bertranpetit from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain.
As modern humans forged this path into the landmass of Eurasia, they forged some other things too – breeding with ancient and extinct hominids from other species.
Up until recently, these occasional sexual partners were thought to include Neanderthals and Denisovans, the latter of which were unknown until 2010.
But in this study, a third ex from long ago was isolated in Eurasian DNA, thanks to deep learning algorithms sifting through a complex mass of ancient and modern human genetic code.
Using a statistical technique called Bayesian inference, the researchers found evidence of what they call a "third introgression" – a 'ghost' archaic population that modern humans interbred with during the African exodus.
"This population is either related to the Neanderthal-Denisova clade or diverged early from the Denisova lineage," the researchers wrote in their paper, meaning that it's possible this third population in humanity's sexual history was possibly a mix themselves of Neanderthals and Denisovans. READ MORE...
