Amazingly Detailed Map Reveals How the Brain Changes With Aging:
Last week, in a technological tour-de-force, a European team from the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden, led by Dr. Seth G.N. Grant at the University of Edinburgh, redefined impossibility with a paper in Science. Peering into the brains of mice at different ages—one day, one week, and all the way up to an elderly 18 months—the team constructed maps of roughly 5 billion synapses, outlining a timeline of their diversity and numbers in over 100 different brain regions with age.
[...] In their new study, the team built a time map of synapses in the mouse brain, which they call the “lifespan synaptome architecture,” or LSA. The project is part of the Mouse Lifespan Synaptome Atlas, which comes with an assortment of tools for researchers to dig into to better understand how our brains age with time.
To build their synaptic timeline, the team analyzed the brain of a type of transgenic mice that have some proteins in their synapses highlighted with a fluorescent protein. The team picked ten points in their lifespan, covering the entire range of newly born to adolescent to adulthood and the elderly.
Journal Reference:
Mélissa Cizeron, Zhen Qiu, Babis Koniaris, et al. A brain-wide atlas of synapses across the mouse lifespan [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.aba3163)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @02:42PM (8 children)
Now that Vulcan is downsizing, I wonder what is going to happen to his brain mapping project
and to all of the research they've done.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @02:59PM
They'll translate the map for mouse brains. Oh, wait...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @03:07PM (1 child)
It will be used to make glossy magazine covers for Venture Capitalist Monthly as an incentive to bored billionaires to donate millions of dollars to vanity projects that glorify unearned wealth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @09:32PM
That's is a mightly Communist statement. I hope it won't catch up with you in 20 years when all old databases will be scoured, and people exhibiting sympathy for Communism will get blacklisted.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday June 17 2020, @05:00PM (4 children)
Substitute Ferengi brains. Continue research. Accumulating new results (on Ferengi brains) to existing results (on Vulcan brains).
Publish.
See if anyone will notice.
Everyone happy.
Is there a chemotherapy treatment for excessively low blood alcohol level?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @05:18PM (2 children)
> Kelloggs Corn Flakes, while commercially successful, was a total failure at preventing masturbation.
??
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @05:20PM
You've clearly been eating them wrong.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Wednesday June 17 2020, @07:15PM
It was two Kelloggs brothers. About 1900 or thereabout. One ran an institution for the criminally insane. The other created the cereal to help control various urges at the other brother's request. One or both of them were Seventh Day Adventists. There are more details, as I seem to recall, on Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_flakes [wikipedia.org]
Is there a chemotherapy treatment for excessively low blood alcohol level?
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday June 17 2020, @06:14PM
Most will not notice because the results will be buried behind a paywall.
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @03:05PM (5 children)
Note to authors, for your next paper, let some of the mice run free in a large, interesting area...then compare with similar mice that live in typical lab cages. My bet is that the results are very different.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @03:24PM (2 children)
Yeap. The ones in the cages are still there, the ones let run free transited the guts of my cat a long time ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @04:06PM (1 child)
Keep your damn cat out of my experiment!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @07:15PM
It is believed brains are quantum mechanical in nature, you need a Schrodingers cat just to clean up corrupted data. . . .
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday June 17 2020, @04:16PM (1 child)
They're Pinky and The Brain
Yes, Pinky and The Brain
One is a genius
The other's insane.
They're laboratory mice
Their genes have been spliced
They're dinky
They're Pinky and The Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain
Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain
Brain.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Thursday June 18 2020, @02:13AM
"I think so, Brain. But, me and Pippy Longstocking. I mean, what would the kids look like?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @03:32PM (1 child)
Max called, the mice escaped from Manticore again.
Max is Hhhhot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @04:05PM
https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Frankie_and_Benjy [fandom.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @09:50PM (1 child)
I read the article hoping to learn how the brain of an ancient like Aristarchus differs from ours, and then I find out it's just another "in mice" article. #InMiceNotUs
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Thursday June 18 2020, @02:17AM
Hmm. Making a mouse model of Aristarchus' brain for research. Now there's an idea! Wonder if NIMH would be up for funding it. (Just don't so any rats or you'll end up having to move Mrs. Brisby all over again.)