Category Archives: Neuroscience

Neuroscience

Dealing With Coronavirus: It’s OK To Be Anxious – Duke Today

Right now, its OK not to feel OK.

In this unprecedented time of coronavirus-prompted social distancing, its unlikely that a person doesnt encounter some level of anxiety or stress.

But there are ways to approach it, according to three Duke experts who spoke to media Wednesday.

Here are excerpts:

ON BEING NORMAL

Timothy Strauman, professor of psychology and neuroscience:

If youre not feeling unsettled and worried and projecting into the future, then youre not paying attention. This is a momentous change in our lives that none of us anticipated. It has taken us by surprise. If youre not feeling distressed, to me, Id be wondering if youre just not admitting that to yourself.

Yan Li, director of counseling and psychological services, Duke Kunshan University

Dont judge yourself for feeling the way you are. Were human beings and were in a life-threatening situation. Accept it and be compassionate.

ON ONE WAY THIS ORDEAL IS GOOD FOR SOCIETY

Terrie Moffitt, professor of psychology

Some psychologists are comparing the attack of the coronavirus to the bombing attacks on London in World War II. The blitz and the COVID-19 are both scary and isolating. People have to stay home while being reminded constantly of uncontrollable death.

And its dragging along for weeks and weeks. But the other thing that the London Blitz and the COVID-19 have in common is fostering a sense of solidarity. Everyone is in this together. Theres quite a bit of historical evidence that this kind of ordeal can be good for society.

It can slow down our lives and give us a sense of shared purpose. It can provide an opportunity to practice helping others. All these things are good for our mental health.

In 1939 in Britain, ahead of the Blitz, Winston Churchill consulted psychologists and was told the air raids and bombings by Germany were going to cause such terror that millions would go insane. The psychiatric hospitals would be overwhelmed with patients. That turned not to be true then, and its not true now.

HOW LONELINESS AND ISOLATION DIFFER

Terrie Moffitt:

Social isolation and loneliness are very different things. Social isolation is a physical state -- having to be in a place by yourself. Loneliness is different, its a state of mind. Its possible to feel lonely in a room full of people. Its possible to feel lonely at your own birthday party.

Loneliness can be a state of mind and some people carry it with them to new situations. The reverse is also true. A lot of people who experience social isolation never experience loneliness.

Its important for the public to understand that social isolation doesnt automatically mean youll be lonely and depressed and anxious along with it.

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF KNOWING WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL - AND WHAT YOU CANT

Timothy Strauman:

What really is most important to me? What is still under my control? I may not be able to go to the office every day. I may be put into circumstances where my work is interrupted. I cant see the people I love. Its very easy for people to feel like theyre failing. Im letting other people down. That kind of thinking, in combination with this isolation and incredible disruption really does render people vulnerable.

The message Id like to get across is that its very important to stop and identify whats most important, what are the things that are and are not under your control. Are there novel ways, different ways that allow you to be the person you want to be and ride out this crisis?

ON SEEKING HELP

Yan Li:

If you have persistent sadness, anxiety, anger or hopelessness -- all the really vulnerable emotions -- and also lost interest in pleasurable activities and feeling overwhelmed, thats one of the criteria.

Another criteria is significant impairment or change in functions. If you cant sleep, or sleep is disrupted, or if you cant get out of bed, or lose appetite or lose concentration or youre not able to attend to daily hygiene. And also, if you notice impulsive or risky behavior . thoughts of death, dying or suicide. All those are signs that this is the time to seek professional help.

AND FINALLY, A SIMPLE THING YOU CAN DO TO HELP

Timothy Strauman:

Anytime we can focus on someone elses needs, it will take some of the pressure and stress off of us. Building that solidarity is absolutely essential. You really dont have to look very far to find people in dire circumstances. One of the best preventative measures is simply reaching out to somebody and saying, Im here for you.

MEET THE EXPERTS

Yan LiYan Li is associate dean of student affairs and director of Counseling and Psychological Services at Duke Kunshan University in China (she is currently in the United States). She is an expert on issues such as multicultural counseling (culture, gender, sexual orientation and other aspects of diversity), psychology of women and clinical supervision.yan.li3@duke.edu

Terrie MoffittTerrie Moffitt is a professor of psychology. Her expertise is in the areas of clinical mental health research, neuropsychology and genomics in behavioral science. She studies depression, psychosis, and addiction. Moffitt is also interested in the consequences of a lifetime of mental and behavioral disorder on processes of aging.terrie.moffitt@duke.edu

Timothy StraumanTimothy Strauman is a professor of psychology and neuroscience. His research focuses on the psychological and neurobiological processes that enable self-regulation, including the role of self-regulatory cognitive processes in vulnerability to depression and other disorders, and the impact of treatments for depression.tjstraum@duke.edu

Duke experts on a variety of other topics related the coronavirus pandemic can be found here.

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Dealing With Coronavirus: It's OK To Be Anxious - Duke Today

Neuroscience

Heres how video games boost visual attention of expert players – Hindustan Times

Long-term experience of action real-time strategy games such as World of Warcraft, Age of Empires, and Total War can cause long-term changes in the brain and leads to improvements in temporal visual selective attention, according to a study.

These games, which can be won through strategic planning, selective attention, sensorimotor skills, and teamwork place considerable demands on the brain.

Published in the journal, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, the study shows that expert players of real-time strategy games have faster information processing, allocate more cognitive power to individual visual stimuli and allocate limited cognitive resources between successive stimuli more effectively through time.

Our aim was to evaluate the long-term effect of experience with action real-time strategy games on temporal visual selective attention, said study researcher Diankun Gong from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.

In particular, we wanted to reveal the time course of cognitive processes during the attentional blink task, a typical task used by neuroscientists to study visual selective attention, Gong added.

To study the effect of gaming on temporal visual selective attention, the research team selected 38 volunteers, healthy young male students.

Half of the volunteers were expert players of the typical action real-time strategy game League of Legend, where teammates work together to destroy the towers of an opposing team.

They had played the game for at least two years and were masters, based on their ranking among the top seven per cent of players.

The others were beginners, with less than six months experience of the same game, and ranked among the bottom 30-45 per cent.

All volunteers were seated in front of a screen and tested in a blink task, with 480 trials over a period of approximately two hours.

The greater a volunteers tendency to blink targets, the less frequently he would press the correct button when one of the two targets appeared on the screen, and the worse he did overall in the task.

The volunteers also wore EEG electrodes on the parietal (i.e. sides and top) region of their scalp, allowing the researchers to measure and localise the brains activity throughout the experiment.

We found that expert League of Legend players outperformed beginners in the task. The experts were less prone to the blink effect, detecting targets more accurately and faster, and as shown by their stronger P3b (positive-going amplitude), gave more attentional cognitive resources to each target, said study co-author Weiyi Ma from the University of Arkansas in the US.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed. )

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Heres how video games boost visual attention of expert players - Hindustan Times

Neuroscience

Watch and Learn: How the Brain Gains Knowledge Through Observation – SciTechDaily

Humans have a number of ways to learn how to do new things. One of those ways is through observation: watching another person perform a task, and then doing what they did. Think of a child that learns how to adult by observing their parents as they pay for groceries or make a phone call.

It has long been theorized that there are two types of observational learning: imitation and emulation. Imitation is when one person copies another persons behaviors to achieve the same goal. For example, if you watch the numbers a person dials to open a safe so that you, too, can open it. Emulation, on the other hand, occurs when someone watches another person achieve a goal, infers their goals, and then works to achieve those same goals without copying the other persons actions. In this case, you might watch the person open the safe, see there are valuables inside, and then later cut it open with a saw.

A new study conducted at Caltech has shown how the brain chooses between the two neural systems responsible for each of these kinds of learning. The study, which appears in the journal Neuron, reveals for the first time how the brain chooses which strategy to employ when faced with an observational learning task.

The research was led by Caroline Charpentier, a postdoctoral scholar in neuroscience who works in the lab of John ODoherty, professor of psychology in the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Depending on the context, sometimes imitation works best, and sometimes emulation is more reliable. Here we wanted to show whether and how the brain can keep track of both strategies in parallel and adaptively pick the best strategy in a given context, Charpentier says.

In the study, participants were placed in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine so their brain activity could be monitored while they performed an observational learning task. Once in the machine, they were presented with virtual slot machines that would dispense three colors of tokens: red, green, or blue. Only one of those token colors had monetary value at a given time, but the participants were not told which color that was. The only information they were provided directly was the probability that a particular slot machine would dispense a token of a given color.

When emulation of another persons goals becomes too difficult, the brain resorts to imitative learning. Credit: Caltech

In most of the trials, the participants were asked to observe another person play the slot machines, and were told that this person had full knowledge of which color was valuable. By watching the other person pick which slot machine to play, they could gain information that would help improve their chances of receiving a valuable token when it was their turn to play.

However, because it was important for the researchers to discern which observational learning strategy the participants were using when they played the slot machine after watching the other people take a turn, the researchers created two different trial scenarios. In one scenario, the participant was permitted to play the same slot machine as the person they had been observing. Since they played the same machine, the participant could mimic the behavior of the other person and thus engaged in imitative observational learning. In the other scenario, the participant could not play the same machine, which prevented them from simply imitating the other players actions and forced them to use an emulation learning strategy.

Charpentier says the fMRI data showed that each of these strategies correlated with activity in specific parts of the brain.

Imitation tends to rely on regions that we refer to as the mirror system of the brain, which is active both when someone performs an action, such as grabbing an object off the table, or when they watch someone else perform that same action, she says. The emulation strategy mapped more to the mentalizing network, which is used for inferring another persons thoughts and goals, or basically putting yourself in someone elses shoes and trying to think what they would think.

Charpentier adds that once the research team had completed the participants brain scans, they were able to build a mathematical model of how participants learn from the observed player and chooses between the slot machines. The model suggests that the decision of which strategy to employ is determined by how reliable the emulation strategy is, and results show evidence for this reliability of emulation signal in several brain areas.

If emulation is reliable, these regions are more active and emulation is more likely to be used, while if emulation is not reliable or too uncertain these regions are less active and we prefer imitation, she says. In other words, our behavior is a mix of both strategies and the brain can weigh in on which one is best at any point in time.

Charpentier says that, going forward, she would like to investigate the interactions of the regions of the brain involved in observational learning, or their so-called functional connectivity. In addition, she would like to see if the brain follows a similar model for choosing between other types of learning: if, for example, a person has to choose between learning from experience or learning from observation.

Reference: A Neuro-computational Account of Arbitration between Choice Imitation and Goal Emulation during Human Observational Learning by Caroline C. Charpentier, Kiyohito Iigaya and John P. ODoherty, 17 March 2020, Neuron.DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2020.02.028bioRxiv: 10.1101/828723

The paper, titled, Neuro-computational account of arbitration between choice imitation and goal emulation during human observational learning, appears in the March 17 issue of Neuron. Charpentiers co-authors include Kiyohito Iiyaga and John ODoherty. Funding for the research was provided by the National Institute of Mental Health (Caltech Conte Center for the Neurobiology of Social Decision-Making).

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Watch and Learn: How the Brain Gains Knowledge Through Observation - SciTechDaily

Neuroscience

Researchers Have Demonstrated the Ability to Implant Ultrathin, Flexible Neural Interface Into the Brain – Technology Networks

Researchers have demonstrated the ability to implant an ultrathin, flexible neural interface with thousands of electrodes into the brain with a projected lifetime of more than six years. Protected from the ravaging environment of internal biological processes by less than a micrometer of material, the achievement is an important step toward creating high-resolution neural interfaces that can persist within a human body for an entire lifetime.

The results, appearing online April 8 in the journal Science Translational Medicine, were published by a team of researchers led by Jonathan Viventi, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Duke University; John Rogers, the Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Neurological Surgery at Northwestern University; and Bijan Pesaran, professor of neural science at New York University.

Trying to get these sensors to work in the brain is like tossing your foldable, flexible smartphone in the ocean and expecting it to work for 70 years, said Viventi. Except were making devices that are much thinner and much more flexible than the phones currently on the market. Thats the challenge.

The human body is an unforgiving place to live if youre an uninvited guest especially if youre made of polymers or metal. Besides attacks from the surrounding tissues and immune system, foreign objects must be able to stand up to a corrosive, salty environment.

Engineering electrical devices that can withstand this assault is an even more daunting prospect. Current long-term implantable devices are almost universally hermetically sealed within a laser-welded titanium casing. Think of a pacemaker, for example.

Building water-tight, bulk enclosures for such types of implants represents one level of engineering challenge, Rogers said. Were reporting here the successful development of materials that provide similar levels of isolation, but with thin, flexible membranes that are one hundred times thinner than a sheet of paper.

But when it comes to the human brain, space and flexibility is of the essence. There is no room for rigid devices with millimeter-thick walls. These challenges mean that existing neural interfaces can sample only about a hundred sites, which pales in comparison to the tens of billions of neurons that make up the human brain. Any attempt to make these devices larger invariably runs into the hurdle of wiring logisticsbecause each sensor requires its own wire, size constraints quickly become an issue.

Viventi and his colleagues have been working on a different approach.

You need to move the electronics to the sensors themselves and develop local intelligence that can handle multiple incoming signals, said Viventi. This is how digital cameras work. You can have tens of millions of pixels without tens of millions of wires because many pixels share the same data channels.

Through their work, the researchers have already demonstrated flexible neural devices just 25 micrometers thick with 360 electrodes. But previous attempts to keep them safe from harm inside the body have failed, as even the tiniest defect can thwart the entire effort.

We tried a bunch of strategies before. Depositing polymers as thin as is required resulted in defects that caused them to fail, and thicker polymers didnt have the flexibility that was required, said Viventi. But we finally found a strategy that outlasts them all and have now made it work in the brain.

All it took was perfection.

In the new paper, Viventi, Rogers, Pesaran and their colleagues demonstrate that a thermally grown layer of silicon dioxide less than a micrometer thick can ward off the hostile environment within the brain, degrading at a rate of only 0.46 nanometers per day. And because this form of glass is biocompatible, any trace amount that dissolves into the body should not create any problems of its own.

They also show that, even though the glass encapsulation is not conductive, the devices electrodes can detect neural activity through capacitive sensing. This is the same sort of technology that can detect the movements of a finger on a smartphones touchscreen. They implanted a 64-electrode neural interface into a rat for over a year and a 1,008-electrode neural interface into the motor cortex of a monkey reaching to a touchscreen.

Successfully deploying the device in monkeys doing human-like tasks is a huge leap forward, said Perasan. Now we can refine our technology to help people suffering brain disorders.

Based on these results and experiments to heat the devices to simulate longer periods of time, the researchers believe their devices could withstand implantation for more than six years.

While these results are enormous steps forward in comparison to current state-of-the-art devices, theyre not anywhere near the level of the researchers aspirations. Viventis student is currently working to scale the prototype up from 1,000 electrodes to more than 65,000. And they expect that by using commercial foundries to make the electrodes, which are far superior to their own capabilities, that the performance of their neural interface will increase greatly both in terms of signal quality and surviving within the human body.

One of our goals is to create a new type of visual prosthetic that interacts directly with the brain that can restore at least some sight capacity for people with damaged optic nerves, said Viventi. But we can also use these types of devices to control other types of prosthetics or in a wide range of neuroscience research projects.

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Researchers Have Demonstrated the Ability to Implant Ultrathin, Flexible Neural Interface Into the Brain - Technology Networks

Neuroscience

Mount Sinai researchers discover a novel role for dopamine that impacts gene expression related to cocaine abuse – Science Codex

Scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have discovered a new role for the brain chemical dopamine that is independent of classic neurotransmission. The new role appears to be critical to changes in gene expression related to chronic exposure to, or abuse of, cocaine, according to a study published Friday, April 10, in the journal Science.

"Our study provides the first evidence of how dopamine can directly impact drug-induced gene expression abnormalities and subsequent relapse behavior," says Ian Maze, PhD, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, and Pharmacological Sciences, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and lead author of the study. "Beyond transmission of signals between neurons in the brain, we have found that dopamine can be chemically attached to histone proteins, which causes cells to switch different genes on and off, affecting regions of the brain that are involved in motivation and reward behavior. This biochemical process significantly affects cocaine vulnerability and relapse when perturbed by drugs of abuse."

The study revolves around DNA and how it works to form each person's individual biological map. Each cell in the body contains two meters of DNA, the blueprint for all functions of all cells in the body. This DNA is wound around spools of histone proteins (proteins that package DNA in the nucleus of cells, and are heavily prone to chemical modifications that aid in the regulation of gene expression) into structures referred to as nucleosomes. When DNA encoding a specific gene is wound tightly within the spool, that gene is less likely to be expressed. When the gene is not wound as tightly, it is more likely to be expressed. This can affect many functions of a given cell.

Dopamine, known as the feel-good neurotransmitter, is a chemical that ferries information between neurons. The brain releases it when we eat food that we crave or while we have sex, contributing to feelings of pleasure and satisfaction as part of the natural reward system. This important neurochemical boosts mood, motivation, and attention, and helps regulate movement, learning, and emotional responses. Dopamine also enables us not only to see rewards but to take action to move toward them.

Vulnerability to relapse during periods of cocaine withdrawal is believed to result from functional rewiring of the brain's reward circuitry, particularly within mid-brain regions, such as the ventral tegmental area (VTA). The research team discovered that a protein called transglutaminase 2 can directly attach dopamine molecules to histone proteins (a process called histone dopaminylation or H3Q5dop) which, in turn, affects the histone-DNA spool to enable environmentally regulated alterations in gene expression. They found that histone dopaminylation plays a critical role in fueling heightened vulnerability to relapse over a prolonged period of time. Specifically, accumulation of H3Q5dop in the VTA can, in effect, hijack the reward circuitry, making it difficult to distinguish between good and maladaptive behavior. The study found, however, that reducing H3Q5dop in rats programmed to undergo withdrawal from cocaine significantly reversed cocaine-mediated gene expression changes and reduced cocaine-seeking behavior.

"The question that has always challenged neuroscientists is, what are the underlying molecular phenomena that drive increased vulnerability to drug relapse in people," says Ashley Lepack, PhD, a researcher in the Department of Neuroscience, The Friedman Brain Institute, in Dr. Maze's lab at Mount Sinai, and first author of the study. "Our research is shedding valuable light on this area by identifying histone dopaminylation as a new, neurotransmission-independent role for dopamine that hasn't been implicated before in brain pathology."

"We believe these findings represent a paradigm shift in how we think of dopamine, not just in the context of drug abuse, but also potentially in other reward-related behaviors and disorders, as well as in neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's, where dopamine neurons are dying," says Dr. Maze. "In this case, the question becomes, 'could this neuronal death be due, in part, to aberrant dopaminylation of histone proteins?' "

In a study published last year, Dr. Maze and his team found that another neurotransmitter, serotonin, a chemical involved in the regulation of mood, acts in a similar way as dopamine on gene expression inside brain cells.

"When we observed this unique signaling mechanism with serotonin, we decided to look at other neurotransmitters, particularly dopamine, and found that it could also undergo this type of chemical modification on the same histone protein," explains Dr. Maze.

Early-stage work with human post-mortem tissues has demonstrated to Dr. Maze that strong parallels may well exist, but that basic questions around biochemical function still remain before human trials can begin. "From a therapeutic standpoint, we've started to identify from rodent models the mechanisms that can actually reverse aberrant and addictive behaviors," says Dr. Maze, "and that knowledge could be vital to moving this novel research into the clinic."

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Mount Sinai researchers discover a novel role for dopamine that impacts gene expression related to cocaine abuse - Science Codex

Neuroscience

Neuroscience Antibodies & Assays Market Increasing Demand with Leading Player, Comprehensive Analysis and Forecast 2026 – https://sciencein.me/

New Jersey, United States:The Neuroscience Antibodies & Assays Market is analyzed in depth in the report, with the primary aim of providing accurate market data and useful recommendations so that players can achieve strong growth in the future. The report is compiled by experts and experienced market analysts, which makes it very authentic and reliable. Readers have a thorough analysis of historical and future market scenarios to get a good understanding of market competition and other important issues. The report provides comprehensive information on market dynamics, key segments, key players and various regional markets. It is a complete set of in-depth analysis and research on the Neuroscience Antibodies & Assays market.

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Neuroscience Antibodies & Assays Market was valued at USD 2.42 Billion in 2018 and is projected to reach USD 5.14 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 9.7% from 2019 to 2026.

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Table of Content

1 Introduction of Neuroscience Antibodies & Assays Market1.1 Overview of the Market1.2 Scope of Report1.3 Assumptions

2 Executive Summary

3 Research Methodology of Verified Market Research3.1 Data Mining3.2 Validation3.3 Primary Interviews3.4 List of Data Sources

4 Neuroscience Antibodies & Assays Market Outlook4.1 Overview4.2 Market Dynamics4.2.1 Drivers4.2.2 Restraints4.2.3 Opportunities4.3 Porters Five Force Model4.4 Value Chain Analysis

5 Neuroscience Antibodies & Assays Market, By Deployment Model5.1 Overview

6 Neuroscience Antibodies & Assays Market, By Solution6.1 Overview

7 Neuroscience Antibodies & Assays Market, By Vertical7.1 Overview

8 Neuroscience Antibodies & Assays Market, By Geography8.1 Overview8.2 North America8.2.1 U.S.8.2.2 Canada8.2.3 Mexico8.3 Europe8.3.1 Germany8.3.2 U.K.8.3.3 France8.3.4 Rest of Europe8.4 Asia Pacific8.4.1 China8.4.2 Japan8.4.3 India8.4.4 Rest of Asia Pacific8.5 Rest of the World8.5.1 Latin America8.5.2 Middle East

9 Neuroscience Antibodies & Assays Market Competitive Landscape9.1 Overview9.2 Company Market Ranking9.3 Key Development Strategies

10 Company Profiles10.1.1 Overview10.1.2 Financial Performance10.1.3 Product Outlook10.1.4 Key Developments

11 Appendix11.1 Related Research

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Neuroscience Antibodies & Assays Market Increasing Demand with Leading Player, Comprehensive Analysis and Forecast 2026 - https://sciencein.me/

Neuroscience

In a Time of Pandemic, What Do People Want to Watch? – Broadcasting & Cable

"To find out, we captured viewers neurologic immersion a second-by-second measurement of what is most valued by the brain while people watched some of the most popular shows on TV and streaming services." -Paul J. Zak, founder, Immersion Neuroscience

Quarantines. Shelter at home. Sickness. Death. These themes have taken over our lives in the era of COVID-19, from conversations with friends to the news we watch and the information we share online. Its a lot like passing a car wreck as hard as we may try, we just cant look away.

In fact, most of us are glued to the news. In the past two weeks local news viewership has increased 11%, and cable news viewership has skyrocketed 73% from the same time last year. Of course, it should be expected that video consumption will go up as more people are confined to their homes. The new norm of self-isolation can be boring, lonesome and depressing, and theres no better way to pass the time than binge watching our favorite shows. But besides the news, what else are people watching? Is all this doom and gloom really what our brains value the most?

Our company recently put this to the test, utilizing the latest advancements in neuroscience technology to assess what people's brains value in the age of the pandemic. Is it more COVID info? TV dramas? Comedies?

To find out, we captured viewers neurologic immersion a second-by-second measurement of what is most valued by the brain while people watched some of the most popular shows on TV and streaming services. Why neurologic immersion? By measuring people's brains using a small sensor worn on the arm rather than asking them what they believe they like we get a far more accurate response. All of our testing was completed remotely while dozens of participants relaxed in the comfort and safety their homes and captured in the cloud.

The programming we assessed ranged from singing competitions to popular comedies and dramas, as well as a network news story about COVID deaths for comparison.

To no surprise, news about COVID-19 generated high immersion in participants. We all want to stay up to date with the latest developments, right? But when participants watched the staff of Dunder Mifflin in the hit-TV sitcom, The Office, neurologic immersion was an astonishing 36% higher producing by far the highest immersion response in our study. For comparison, The Masked Singer, Foxs popular reality singing competition, was only marginally more immersive than the news, at 2% higher.

The other shows we tested were valued significantly lower by participants' brains, despite their popularity among critics and audiences. These included the Netflix cooking show Salt, Fat, Acid Heat (-21%), Amazon Primes drama Too Old to Die Young (-26%) and the Netflix documentary about opioid addiction The Pharmacist (-31%).

So, while news viewership is up, it's not actually what our brains are craving, despite what a viewer might tell you. The brain doesnt lie, and what viewers brains want right now is something funny, familiar and easy to digest.

If youre in the content business, consider giving the people what they really want in this time of pandemic. No, not a vaccine. What we need is the next Friends, Seinfeld or The Office. It might just be the key to saving our sanity until this crisis passes.

Immersion Neuroscience is an advanced predictive software company unlocking neuroscience to measure what people love.

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In a Time of Pandemic, What Do People Want to Watch? - Broadcasting & Cable

Neuroscience

Funding roundup: At-home medical exams and a Parkinson’s treatment – MedCity News

Tyto Cares kit includes a connected otoscope among other things

Numerous startups offering telehealth or remote monitoring solutions closed funding rounds this week, despite slowing activity due to the Covid-19 pandemic. One of them is Tyto Care, a startup with a platform for at-home medical exams. It actually includes a kit with several tools that can allow physicians to remotely listen to a patients heart, measure their temperature, and image their throat and ears. Several hospitals in Israel, including Sheba Medical Center, deployed its technology to care for patients remotely.

On the biotech side, there were some notable rounds, too, including $70 million for Aspen Neuroscience, which is developing a new treatment for Parkinsons disease. The company was founded by Scripps Research Professor Emeritus Jeanne Loring, who developed a way to turn pluripotent skin cells derived from skin cells or other adult cells into neurons that produce dopamine.

Read more about the companies that recently raised funding:

Tyto Care

Funding amount: $50 million

Headquarters: New York, Israel

Tyto Care, a company that lets people conduct at-home medical exams, already saw rising demand before the Covid-19 pandemic. The company said it saw threefold growth in sales last year and has continued to see its users increase during the pandemic. Its at-home telehealth kit includes a handheld device with attachments that allow physicians to remotely listen to the heart and lungs, measure temperature, and look at the throat and ears during an exam.

The company closed an oversubscribed $50 million round, co-led by Insight Partners, Olive Tree Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures. Tyto Care plans to use the additional funds to further expand its footprint in the U.S., Europe and Asia, and add new features to its platform, such as home diagnostics.

Aspen Neuroscience

Funding amount: $70 million

Headquarters: San Diego, California

Aspen Neuroscience is developing a treatment for Parkinsons disease using a patients own cells. The company uses induced pluripotent stem cells to make dopamine-producing neurons, which are affected by the disease.

The company closed a $70 million series A round, led by New York-based healthcare investor OrbiMed, with participation from ARCH Venture Partners, Frazier Healthcare Partners, Domain Associates, Section 32 and Sam Altman.

We are impressed by the progress Aspen has made to date against its goals to develop innovative therapies to treat Parkinson disease and encouraged by the broader investment communitys support of the company, OrbiMed Managing Partner Jonathan Silverstein said in a news release.

The company plans to use the capital to fund the development of its lead candidate, including completing studies needed to submit an investigational new drug application to the FDA, and recruiting for clinical trials.

Tango Therapeutics

Funding amount: $60 million

Headquarters: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Tango Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focusing on developing cancer therapies, closed a $60 million series B round. The company is working on developing treatments to counteract the loss of tumor suppressor genes, reverse cancer cells ability to evade the immune system, and identify new combinations that are more effective than single-agent therapies. The oversubscribed financing was led by Boxer Capital, with additional new investors in Cormorant Asset Management and Casdin Capital.

SonderMind

Funding amount: $27 million

Headquarters: Denver, Colorado

SonderMind, a startup that matches users with in-network therapists, raised $27 million in funding. The series B round was led by prominent VC General Catalyst and F-Prime Capital. Existing investors include the Kickstart Seed Fund, Di?ko Ventures and Jonathan Bush.

The company has a large network of behavioral providers in Colorado, and is expanding in Texas and Arizona. It plans to use the proceeds of the funding round to expand its partnership with payors, employers and health systems.

SilverCloud

Funding amount: $16 million

Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts

SilverCloud has seen an uptick in users tapping into its mental health programs for depression, anxiety and other conditions. The company raised a $30 million series B round, led by MemorialCare Innovation Fund, the VC arm of MemorialCare Health System. Other participating investors included LRVHealth, OSF Ventures and UnityPoint Health Ventures.

So far, the company had drummed up partnerships with more than 300 companies. Notably, it was also one of the products selected for Express Scripts first digital health formulary. SilverCloud said it would use the additional funds to expand access to mental health support services for healthcare professionals, as well as their families and their patients.

CyberMDX

Funding: $20 million

Headquarters: New York

Healthcare security startup CyberMDX closed a $20 million funding round. Sham, a French risk management and insurance provider, led the funding round, with participation from Pitango Venture Capital and Oure Ventures.

CyberMDX monitors a providers network for threats to its IT systems, connected medical devices, and other IoT devices. The company said it will use the $20 million to expand its platform to new markets.

Photo credit: Tyto Care

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Funding roundup: At-home medical exams and a Parkinson's treatment - MedCity News

Neuroscience

This Is How We Can Train Ourselves to Become More Compassionate – Thrive Global

Richard Davidson studies the science behind meditation and positive emotions including kindness and compassion. A neuroscience professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a meditation practitioner himself, Davidson puts meditators into brain scanners and looks at how the practice changes their neural connections. We discuss his belief that humans are hard-wired for compassion and love, the use and potential misuse of meditation and how our wellbeing requires committed practices, much like going to the gym or exercising our physical health. (Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.)

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1. What does neuroscience tell us about kindness and compassion?

One of the things that weve learned is that there is a really important distinction between empathy and compassion. They look totally different in the brain. Empathy is taking on the emotions of another. If someone else with whom youre empathizing is in pain or is anxious, the empathizer activates networks in the brain associated with pain and anxiety. It may be helpful to do that just a little bit to get a taste of what theyre experiencing. But if you envision experiencing that in a more enduring way, it really could be toxic. A lot of health care providers and other people on the front line often talk about compassion fatigue. Its not compassion fatigue, its empathy fatigue. They are taking on the anxiety, the pain, the fear, the suffering of others and over time that can really be toxic. Compassion is different it is the disposition to relieve another persons suffering and it involves activating networks in the brain that are important in positive emotion and in caring and these are totally different networks than the networks that are activated in empathy.

2. Are people predisposed to either compassion or empathy?

There are large individual differences in how a person expresses their empathy and the extent to which they show empathy versus compassion. Weve studied this in young children, for example by having an adult simulate getting fingers stuck in a clipboard and showing a facial expression of pain. If a three-year-old toddler sees an adult injure herself, there are some toddlers that wince in pain, some begin to cry, others go and kiss the finger of the experimenter and really try to relieve the distress. Theres tremendous variation probably due to both early learning and to genetic factors. We really dont know in detail what theyre due to but we do know that these qualities of compassion can be learned, cultivated and developed.

3. If meditation practices make people more present, how do compassion and kindness fit into the equation? Is mindfulness a morally neutral practice?

Well, in some sense its neutral. Although all meditation practices come from different contemplative traditions and are embedded within an ethical framework, which is often part of the religious context from which those practices are derived. But I also believe that there is a universal ethics that is not explicitly religious and that can be conveyed in a secular form, like the ethics of non-harm. Its important to recognize that meditation is kind of like sports. There are literally hundreds of varieties and they are meant to accomplish different sorts of goals. In order to promote optimal human flourishing, there are many different components that need to be nourished. Mindfulness is one component. But if you just nurture mindfulness, it would be equivalent to going to the gym and just working out on your upper body. Its only activating and exercising one piece of the overall puzzle.

4. Youve advocated for calling some meditations attention training instead. Would that help to reach more people, or by secularising the practises do you remove some part of their essence?

Youre asking a very important question and there arent simple answers. I believe that it is important to place these practices within an ethical framework. It doesnt need to be a religious framework. If all you did is attention training, with a form of mindfulness thats completely stripped from the ethical framework, you can become a more mindful killer. But if its embedded within the proper ethical framework, we think that will decrease the likelihood that these practices will be abused.

5. Youve spoken before about how the same mechanisms in the brain that facilitate adversity can also allow our awakening. Can you talk more about that?

Well, the simple answer is its the mechanism of plasticity. Our brains are changing wittingly or unwittingly, constantly. And when we are subjected to adversity, our brains are being changed by the adversity unwittingly. We dont choose to become captives of adversity, it just happens. But the very same mechanisms in our brain that change in response to adversity can be harnessed so that we can actually engage them to promote human flourishing.

6. How does your brain imaging work relate to this?

Most importantly, the imaging work shows us that the brain can change with very little intervention. It doesnt take much to begin to see objective changes in the brain. It doesnt mean that those changes will stick. It simply means that theyre accessible. And just like physical exercise: we know if we go to the gym and work out for two weeks and then stop exercising, we will eventually revert back to our base. So too with the mind, we need to keep practicing. But the data show us that it doesnt take much to get these changes going in the first place.

7. Why do you think were hardwired to be compassionate? That would come as a surprise to many people, especially in this political moment.

The evidence comes from a study of very young infants. If you take a three to six month old infant and expose them to, for example, puppets that are playing altruistically, where one puppet is helping another puppet versus another scenario with the same puppets, where theyre playing aggressively and selfishly, the infants prefer the altruistic encounter. There are many behavioural ways of assessing the preference of a young infant. We can see which puppet it reaches for, we can see where it smiles more, we can track the eye movements of an infant. All of those measures show that 95% of young babies prefer the altruistic encounters. These kinds of data show us that pro sociality is built in to us, kind of like how language is built in. But in order for us to cultivate language we need to be raised in a normal linguistic immunity community. So we think of compassion in the same way that other scientists might think of language.

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This Is How We Can Train Ourselves to Become More Compassionate - Thrive Global

Neuroscience

Commentary: Why teenagers may be the downfall of preventing the spread of the coronavirus – CALmatters

As the rest of us hunker down in place or, donning our masks and gloves, venture tentatively outdoors, there is a subset of individuals particularly maladapted to this coronavirus pandemic lifestyle.

No doubt youve seen some of them mingling in public spaces, socializing in large groups laughing, talking, kissing. You may even be one of the 42 million unfortunate adults to have one in your home during this era of COVID-19.

What is it about teenagers?

As an epidemiologist and behavioral researcher in Los Angeles, I develop strategies to promote healthier decisions among adolescents, particularly for the prevention of HIV. Through this work, I often draw from research in neuroscience, psychology and behavioral economics to better understand why humans in general, and adolescents in particular, make decisions that are not in their best interest.

Of no surprise to parents and educators anywhere, teenagers are particularly susceptible to errors in judgement that lead to risk-taking. Recent studies of the adolescent brain provide evidence that the unique development of neural networks during adolescence can make these individuals hypersensitive to immediate rewards and less equipped to regulate their impulses. It also suggests that adolescents may be less able to resist social pressure, especially when they are aroused or excited.

This predisposition toward impulsivity could explain in part why individuals in this age group drive recklessly with friends, participate in binge drinking, or even gather in groups amid a worldwide pandemic. Behaviors which seem to reflect a decayed moral sensibility perhaps have more to do with the state of their brains than the state of their souls.

Teenage risk-taking could also be linked to the unique ways in which younger individuals evaluate new information. Humans undergo a process of belief updating, in which we adjust our prior beliefs based on new facts. A persons nave belief that the earth is flat, for instance, might be updated upon learning that one can circumnavigate the world.

The extent to which new information can shift beliefs can depend on whether it is good or bad; we are, in general, more apt to incorporate good news into our beliefs and discount the bad. And, while all are susceptible to this bias, adolescents are particularly inclined to demonstrations of irrational optimism.

So, in the not-so-hypothetical event of a pandemic, adolescents may be more likely to discount news about the severity of the novel coronavirus, focusing instead on the fact that they are unlikely to die from COVID-19.

Adolescents are not to be released from all personal responsibility. While their brains are still developing, they nonetheless have brains. Still, their susceptibility to social pressure and tendency toward optimism could inform how we, as public health practitioners, family members, friends and the general public, can encourage safer behaviors.

First, we must acknowledge that communicating the threat of disease may have limited impact. Reality is a bitter pill to swallow right now, and one that teenagers are likely to spit out. Second, we should find ways to make social distancing immediately rewarding.

Research suggests that social approval and acceptance are massively gratifying and strong motivators for behavior change, and so young people may be more inclined to engage in social distancing if they are publicly lauded as paragons on social media. Along these lines, as teenagers are particularly apt to respond to social pressure, we should seek to communicate information about social norms (i.e., informal standards of behavior). If teenagers learn that majority of their peers engage in social distancing, they are likely to follow suit.

In this crucial moment in history, the welfare of our society depends on mutual collaboration from every member. Our actions, and their consequences, are not our own. And yet we often cannot force people to behave the way we want, especially teenagers. We must find better ways to persuade these individuals to take greater care, for their safety as well as our own.

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Jessica Londeree Saleska is a post-doctoral fellow at UCLAs Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, [emailprotected] Her current research centers on the use of behavioral economic principles to encourage health behaviors to prevent HIV transmission.

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Commentary: Why teenagers may be the downfall of preventing the spread of the coronavirus - CALmatters