Scientist-led conferences at Harvard, Stanford and MIT

Macquarie University’s Kaixin Zhang and Ewa Goldys have developed a sensor that detects cytokines in the living brain. The signaling molecules, secreted by glia cells, affect mood, cognition and behavior. The optical fiber sensor’s surface is treated with a capture protein that monitors the release of cytokine molecules in discrete and targeted parts of the brain.  The goal is…

Clifford Jack and Mayo Clinic colleagues have proposed a biomarker, not behavior, based standard for Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis. Instead of defining the disease through symptoms such as memory or thinking problems, the researchers focus on biological changes, including brain plaques and tangles, determined by brain scans and spinal fluid tests. The new approach can help…

Robert Hampson, and Wake Forest and USC colleagues, have developed a prosthetic system that uses a person’s own memory patterns to facilitate the brain’s ability to encode and recall memory. A recent study showed participants’ short-term memory performance showed a 35 to 37 percent improvement over baseline measurements. The study focused on improving episodic memory, which is…

Mindstrong Health, led by Paul Dagum and Tom Insel, has completed a study suggesting that passive measures from smartphone use could be a continuous ecological surrogate for laboratory-based neuropsychological assessment. Smartphone use of 27 subjects who had received a gold standard neuropsychological assessment was analyzed for 7 days. Digital biomarkers with high correlations (p < 10−4) for working…