In March 2015, Li-Huei Tsai set up a tiny disco for some of the mice in her laboratory. For an hour each day, she placed them in a box lit only by a flickering strobe. The mice — which had been engineered to produce plaques of the peptide amyloid-β in the brain, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease — crawled about curiously. When Tsai later dissected them, those that had been to the mini dance parties had significantly lower levels of plaque than mice that had spent the same time in the dark.
Tsai, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, says she checked the result; then checked it again. “For the longest time, I didn’t believe it,” she says. Her team had managed to clear amyloid from part of the brain with a flickering light. The strobe was tuned to 40 hertz and was designed to manipulate the rodents’ brainwaves, triggering a host of biological effects that eliminated the plaque-forming proteins. Although promising findings in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease have been notoriously difficult to replicate in humans, the experiment offered some tantalizing possibilities. “The result was so mind-boggling and so robust, it took a while for the idea to sink in, but we knew we needed to work out a way of trying out the same thing in humans,” Tsai says.
Tsai’s study was the first glimpse of a cellular response to brainwave manipulation. “Her results were a really big surprise,” says Walter Koroshetz, director of the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland. “It’s a novel observation that would be really interesting to pursue.”
[...] In addition to potentially leading to treatments, these studies could break open the field of neural oscillations in general, helping to link them more firmly to behaviour and how the brain works as a whole.
[...] Whatever their role, Tsai mostly wants to discipline brainwaves and harness them against disease. Cognito Therapeutics has just received approval for a second, larger trial, which will look at whether the therapy has any effect on Alzheimer’s disease symptoms. Meanwhile, Tsai’s team is focusing on understanding more about the downstream biological effects and how to better target the hippocampus with non-invasive technologies.
For Tsai, the work is personal. Her grandmother, who raised her, was affected by dementia. “Her confused face made a deep imprint in my mind,” Tsai says. “This is the biggest challenge of our lifetime, and I will give it all I have.”
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @10:02AM (5 children)
for an hour every day, just in case.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday March 05 2018, @12:22PM
40 Hz - that's close to the fluorescent lights, tho, only a bit lower - probably enough to be annoying.
Yeah, but those were for mice, humans have a larger... mmm... "cranial cavity", perhaps the resonant frequency is lower; like, I don't know, how many times a second can you bounce a thought on the inner side of your skull?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @01:04PM (2 children)
Strobe lights and disco music? Doesn't that violate the Geneva Conventions?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday March 05 2018, @09:43PM
Apparently the noise (or was it music) was banned from the TFS It was only present in the title. A non-quoted part of TFA actually mentioned it in passing.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @04:01AM
Torture have alvays been a staple treatment for any "spirit" desease. Perhaps they did get something here... not that I'd wanted it for myself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @07:52PM
The Old Age Home of the future - painted pink, pink noise, strobing LEDs. All just in time for that 60's generation to experience it all over again!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @10:26AM (5 children)
Ahhh... I wonder if those old fluorescent tubes in the office actually kept me from becoming senile? I thought the flickering was quite annoying, but not worth making much of a fuss over.
I do fear the senility part though... one of my Uncles had it. I think I would rather do it Dad's way and do the Cancer thing. But maybe if God smiles on me and my family, when its my time, a quiet nocturnal shutdown.
I would say the best way to go would to be shot by a jealous husband - but fooling around like that is just not my thing.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @12:22PM (2 children)
Bad news. You are already senile if you think you see a smiling magic sky being.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @05:43AM (1 child)
Well, I am of the opinion that if one gets his spirituality from anything else than God himself, through meditation and personal research, one does not become a servant of God, rather he becomes a servant of the entity who he listened to, and, regretfully, actually believed. If I believed God was a magic sky faerie, I consider you have every right to claim my senility. Hell, even I would claim it.
Personally, I see God as Entropy. Energy. Physics. Even Love. I see electromagnetic phenomena, that is a part of God I am seeing. God's Law. No man can put it asunder. Works the same for everyone, not a respecter of persons. Based solely on observation, I feel we are far too complex of design to have come from slime+time. Whatever it is, this thing is intelligent. I am quite a small collection of atomic particles by comparison, and somehow am I intelligent? Or am I an interface to God? I have no way to know.
I have listened to enough men... to come to the conclusion that very few actually understand that which they preach. Most of them are nothing more than beggars, trying to make a living through handouts. Psychological warfare on poor ignorant people, scaring them out of their meager resources. I have even heard preachermen telling poor people to even go take out a loan in order to "plant their seed". Where "planting the seed" was defined as sending a thousand bucks to a rich man, who makes no bones about how rich he is.
No wonder people are abandoning religion in droves. Most people are intelligent enough to see through the crap and are refusing this manipulation. I've refused it too.
If anything, religion made a "none" out of me.
Read the Bible... you will find even Jesus Christ had the same problem with religions. They even up and killed Him because He would not cower to them.
I know its a stale post... but I had to get it out of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @07:20AM
Your feelings on the matter may be a little biased and you may also not understand the scale at which you speak.
There are an estimated 1,000,000,000,000 species on Earth
Foxes took less than 50 years to domesticate
Dogs were domesticated about 15,000 years ago
Life has been around for about 4,000,000,000 years
https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=138446&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click [nsf.gov]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_red_fox [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_history_of_life [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @12:31PM (1 child)
no need to fool around for that. jalousie is irrational,only the apparence of potential fooling around is required
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @12:56PM
If your jalousie is irrational, have it convicted into a mental institution and switch to traditional shutters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalousie_window [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Monday March 05 2018, @03:25PM
I used to have an Apple IIgs with its works RGB monitor. The firmware could be set to 50 or 60 Hz for Euro or US frequencies. The flicker on 50 Hz was unbearable, much more so than with a TV. Maybe faster phosphors?! Anyway, despite being in Euroland, I set it to 60 Hz whenever possible. I don't want to imagine how bad my headaches would have become from 40 Hz. But great to know that the headache actually comes from rattling amyloid plaques, that rattle best at 40 Hz. Or so.
(Score: 3, Funny) by rts008 on Monday March 05 2018, @03:51PM (5 children)
I know language changes over time, but 'pink noise' sounds like someone describing their experience from an acid trip in the 1970's.
The association makes it hard for me to take this seriously.
Maybe they should try 'orange noise', which is allegedly 'louder, more vibrant' according to Burn-out Barry(an acid loving schoolmate from high school).
Is there 'color to noise' table/chart now that I'm unaware of?
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Monday March 05 2018, @04:06PM (3 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colors_of_noise [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Monday March 05 2018, @05:05PM (2 children)
Thank you. I was perplexed, but that cleared the confusion away.
I admit that I still find it strange to describe EM spectra as pressure waves. :-)
Is this when I can use the 'get off my lawn', and 'turn that crap down' phrases to establish my geezer cred? :-)
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Monday March 05 2018, @06:00PM
The term "pink noise" has been in use for at least 40 years, so no.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday March 05 2018, @07:31PM
Sound isn't EM though. However, since the application of logarithmic scales is useful in fields outside the study of sound, it's not uncommon to hear statistical distributions described using terms like that.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by DannyB on Monday March 05 2018, @06:57PM
Pink noise is that which gradually forces a one directional change in one's sexual orientation. Towards the pink end of the spectrum.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.