Tag: neuroscience
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The Dark Side of Microglia: Hidden Drivers of Alzheimerโs Diseaseย
Photo by: geralt from Pixabay 2023 Dementia is the leading cause of death in the UK, yet it remains incurable and poorly treated. Alzheimerโs disease (AD), a subtype of dementia, is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder, characterised by progressive memory loss and cognitive decline, that gradually erodes independence. For decades, efforts to treat AD have focused…
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The Hallucinating Machine: Why AI Needs to Dream
Image Created by Elisa Castagnari with ChatGPT Core argument: Hallucinations in Large Language Models (LLMs) may not be merely errors. They may emerge from the same cognitive dynamics that make human dreaming useful, according to neuroscientist Erik Hoelโs overfitted brain hypothesis, which posits that dreams act as a counterweight to rigid learning. In both biological…
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Ever See TV Static in Your Vision? Hereโs Why.
Photo by: Wojtek Paczeล from Pexels / 2020 Take a second to lift your eyes from the screen, and let them rest on a nearby wall. Does your view appear smooth, clear and unobstructed? Or do you notice something faint, flickering like television static โ hundreds of tiny dots crackling in and out of view?…
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Huntingtonโs Disease May No Longer Be A Life Sentence
[Image created by Claudia Logan with BioRender.com] Huntingtonโs Disease (HD) is a rare, inherited brain disorder which progressively damages nerve and muscle functions, yet until recently had no cure. In 2024, roughly 8,000 people were living with Huntingtonโs in the UK, according to the Huntingtonโs Disease Association UK. The average age of onset is around…
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Mind the Gap! The Future of Spinal Repair
Aidan McConnell-Trevillion discusses the promising results of a 25-year study exploring spinal cord implants and their use in restoring movement after paralysis. Although he highlights the challenges that still remain, he hopes that advances in technology may improve outcomes, bringing us closer to making spinal cord injury a more treatable condition.
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Every breath you take, every memory you make
The way you breathe can influence your brain’s ability to form long-term memories, writes Clara Lenherr.
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Could locusts be the future of bomb detection? The โsurprisingly simpleโ brain mechanism behind locust scent recognition
Lily Sharratt-Davidson explores how researchers attempting to bioengineer bomb-sniffing locusts have discovered that the insectโs sense of smell is governed by an arithmetic neuron mechanism. For several years now a team at Washington University in St. Louis has been researching the odour sensing system of locusts, with the aim of bioengineering locusts that are able…
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Issue 29 Online: EuScireka!
Welcome to the new edition of EuSci Magazine! We will be posting and promoting each article from the magazine individually on our website over the next few weeks. If you want to read the magazine in its full and original form you can either pick one up from many different locations on campus or read…
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What makes us human may come down to the way our neurons process information
Clara Lenherr explores the newly discovered human-specific characteristics of neurons and discusses how the uniqueness of human neurons brings into question what we already know about human cognition. The ability of neurons to carry out complex computations when integrating the thousands of inputs that they receive is thought to be the basis of cognition. The…
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Good news coffee drinkers: caffeine reduces the effect of drowsiness on cognitive performance
Alexandra Lesayova writes about new findings by the University of Western Australia and the University of Sydney on the effect of caffeine on cognition.