Category Health/Medical

Prefrontal cortex shapes memory formation by modulating hippocampal encoding

Neurons in the prefrontal cortex “teach” neurons in the hippocampus to “learn” rules that distinguish memory-based predictions in otherwise identical situations, suggesting that learning in the present helps guide learning in the future, according to research conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published April 5 in the journal Neuron. The study investigated memory flexibility and interference, the mechanisms by which the brain interprets events and anticipates their likely outcomes. The hippocampus is a temporal lobe brain structure for remembering recent events...

Scanning electron microscopy images of F. prausnitzii grown in LYBHI medium.

Oral administration of a commensal gut microbe, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, improves fatty liver in mice. F. prausnitzii is considered one of the most important bacterial indicators of a healthy gut. Due to the central role of liver in the whole body metabolism, fatty liver is a major health problem. In Finland alone, it affects around 1,000,000 people of the general population and has an occurrence of 90% among obese individuals. Humans with high liver fat content had less F. prausnitzii and more inflammation in the subcutaneous adipose tissue. The researchers, therefore, decided to study whether oral F...

This image shows neural activity during sleep differs between older and younger adults. Credit: Courtesy of Matthew Walker and Bryce Mander

Restorative, sedative-free slumber can ward off mental and physical ailments. As we grow old, our nights are frequently plagued by bouts of wakefulness, bathroom trips and other nuisances as we lose our ability to generate the deep, restorative slumber we enjoyed in youth. But does that mean older people just need less sleep? Not according to UC Berkeley researchers, who argue in an article published April 5 in the journal Neuron that the unmet sleep needs of the elderly elevate their risk of memory loss and a wide range of mental and physical disorders.

“Nearly every disease killing us in later life has a causal link to lack of sleep,” said Matthew Wa...

Scientists have created porous ‘egg-box’ structured nanofibers using seaweed extract. Credit: American Chemical Society

Seaweed, the edible algae with a long history in some Asian cuisines, and which has also become part of the Western foodie culture, could turn out to be an essential ingredient in another trend: the development of more sustainable ways to power our devices. Researchers have made a seaweed-derived material to help boost the performance of superconductors, lithium-ion batteries and fuel cells.

“Carbon-based materials are the most versatile materials used in the field of energy storage and conversion,” Dongjiang Yang, Ph.D., says. “We wanted to produce carbon-based materials via a really ‘green’ pathway...