U.S. scientists have identified a gene in the gray matter of the brain, which they say is responsible for intelligence.
 
These are proteins called " Clotho " which raises brain skills and increases IQ by six points , regardless of the age of the person.
 
Researchers examined the cerebral cortex.
 
According to previous studies cortical thickness is closely related to mental abilities , memory, attention , perceptual awareness , thought and language , but so far there is no evidence exactly which genes are associated with these laws .
 
It turns out that " Clotho " is a powerful stimulant of learning , thinking and memory. This is because the protein increases the strength of connections between nerve cells in the brain.
 
Scientists hope that this discovery will help in the treatment and prevention of various types of dementia.
 
They found that " Clotho " plays a key role in many processes related to starenieto . It is directly related to life expectancy and susceptibility to stroke.
 
Where in this gene has been observed a defect , people start aging prematurely, but when it is stimulated , life could be extended by a few years , while slow bone loss , prevents blood clots occur on and improves overall health of the elderly .
 
Scientists warn that no matter how miraculous it seems this gene probably causes some side effects in the body.
 
During the experiment, they noticed that individuals whose lives went on , proved to much smaller capacities for multiplication.
 
It is also likely " Clotho " cause predisposition to disease of diabetes .

Three-dimensional tissues called “cerebral organoids” can model the earliest stages of brain development.

In an Austrian laboratory, a team of scientists has grown three-dimensional models of embryonic human brains. These “cerebral organoids” are made from stem cells, which are simply bathed in the right cocktail of nutrients and grown in a spinning chamber. Over a few weeks, they arrange themselves into pea-sized balls of white tissue, which recapitulate some of the complex features of a growing brain, including distinct layers and regions.

“This demonstrates the enormous self-organizing power of human cells,” said Jürgen Knoblich from the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Science, who led the study published in Nature today (August 28). “Even the most complex organ—the human brain—can start to form without any micro-manipulation.”

Knoblich cautioned that the organoids are not “brains-in-a-jar.” “We’re talking about the very first steps of embryonic brain development, like in the first nine weeks of pregnancy,” he said. “They’re nowhere near an adult human brain and they don’t form anything that resembles a neuronal network.”

These models will not help to unpick the brain’s connectivity or higher mental functions but they are excellent tools for studying both its early development and disorders that perturb those first steps. For example, Knoblich’s team produced unusually small organoids using stem cells taken from a patient with microcephaly—a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by a small brain. Knocking out microcephaly-associated genes in mice does very little because murine brains develop differently than humans’. The organoids could help to bypass the limitations of these animal models, providing a more accurate representation of human brains.

Madeline Lancaster, a member of Knoblich’s group, created the 3-D models from small clusters of stem cells. She bathed the cells in nutrients that nudge them toward a neural state, embedded them inside a gel for structural support, and grew them in a spinning bioreactor to help them absorb more nutrients. It took a huge amount of work to fine-tune the conditions, but once the team did, the organoids grew successfully within just 20 to 30 days.

Using molecular markers tuned to specific parts of the brain, Lancaster showed that the organoids develop a variety of distinctive zones that correspond to human brain regions like the prefrontal cortex, occipital lobe, hippocampus, and retina. They also included working neurons, which were produced in the right way—they were made by radial glial cells at the innermost layers of the cortex, before migrating to the outer layers.

Other scientists have developed organoids that mimic several human organs, including eyes, kidneys, intestines, and even brains. For example, in 2008, Yoshiki Sasai’s team at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology showed that stem cells can be coaxed into balls of neural cells that self-organize into distinctive layers. But compared to this earlier attempt, the new organoids are “the most complete to date in terms of features that directly resemble those in the developing human brain,” according to Arnold Kriegstein, a stem cell biologist from the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study.

“They really highlight the ability just nudge these human embryonic cells and allow them to self-assemble,” Kriegstein added. “So much of the signalling that goes on and the actual specification of different parts of the brain occur intrinsically in these cells.”

Having refined their technique, the team created a “personal organoid” from a Scottish patient with severe microcephaly, who had several mutations in a gene called CDK5RAP2. They took skin cells from the patient, reprogrammed them into a stem-like state, and used them to grow organoids that ended up much smaller than usual. By dissecting the organoids, the team discovered the reason for this stunted size.

When healthy brains develop, radial glial cells first divide symmetrically to increase their numbers before dividing asymmetrically to produce neurons. In the microcephalic organoids, this switch happens prematurely, and neurons start forming when the pool of radial glial cells is too low. As a result, the brains do not develop enough neurons and end up small. CDK5RAP2 is responsible for this premature switch; when the team added the protein back into the mutant microcephalic organoids, they grew to a normal size.

Wieland Huttner, a neurobiologist from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, said that these results merely confirm what others had already suspected about CDK5RAP2. However, the organoids could be more useful for understanding other microcephaly genes whose roles are still unclear.

For example, mutations in the ASPM gene can shrink a human brain by a third of its normal size, but barely make a dent in the size of a mouse brain. “The mouse brain isn’t good enough for studying microcephaly,” said Huttner. “You need to put those genes into an adequate model like this one. It is, after all, human. It definitely enriches the field. There’s no doubt about that.”

Knoblich cautioned that organoids are unlikely to replace animal experiments entirely. “We can’t duplicate the elegance with which one can do genetics in animal models,” he said, “but we might be able to reduce the number of animal experiments, especially when it comes to toxicology or drug testing.”

In the future, he hopes to develop larger organoids. For the moment, the models cannot get any bigger without a blood supply, and their interiors are dead zones comprised of starving, choking cells. If the team can solve this problem and coax the organoids to continue growing, they might be able to capture later events in brain development, which may be relevant to other disorders, like autism. “That would be a gigantic step forwards,” said Knoblich.

Miniature "human brains" were grown in a laboratory and scientists hope that this will change the understanding of neurological diseases.

Structures with dimensions of pea achieved the same level of growth as in fetal nine weeks, but are not mental abilities.

Research scientists published in the journal "Nature" is already used for the understanding of rare diseases.

Neurologists defined discovery as amazing and wonderful. The human brain is one of the most complex structures in the universe. But scientists from the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences were able to reproduce some of the earliest stages of development of the body in a laboratory.

They used or embryonic stem cells, or cells from the skin of adults to produce part of the embryo that develops into the brain and spinal cord - neuroectoderm. It was placed in the gel droplets to create a scaffold for the development of the tissue, and then in a rotating bioreactor, "food bath", which supplies nutrients and oxygen.

Cells were able to develop and organize in specific areas of the brain such as the cortex, retina and rarely in primary hippocampus, which is closely related to memory in a fully developed brain of an adult. Scientists are convinced that this is similar to a nearby extent (but far from perfect) brain development of an embryo until the ninth week. Tissues reached a maximum of about 4 mm after two months.

"Mini brains" survived nearly one year and not more increased because no blood flow and brain tissue only, so that the nutrients and oxygen can not penetrate to the center of the structure resembling the brain.

"Our organelles are useful for showing the pattern of brain development and to study the causes of the problem in development. Want to move on to the more common disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. They usually occur only in adults, but it was shown that hidden defects occur during brain development, "said one of the researchers, Dr Juergen Noblih.

The technique can be used to replace the mouse and rat in the study of drugs, since the new drugs can be tested on an actual brain tissue. Scientists have managed to create brain cells in a lab before, but this is the closest model to which one is reached in the creation of a human brain.

Scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, in collaboration with colleagues in Germany and the Netherlands, have identified a previously unknown group of nerve cells in the brain. The nerve cells regulate cardiovascular functions such as heart rhythm and blood pressure. It is hoped that the discovery, which is published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, will be significant in the long term in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases in humans.

The scientists have managed to identify in mice a previously totally unknown group of nerve cells in the brain. These nerve cells, also known as 'neurons', develop in the brain with the aid of thyroid hormone, which is produced in the thyroid gland. Patients in whom the function of the thyroid gland is disturbed and who therefore produce too much or too little thyroid hormone, thus risk developing problems with these nerve cells. This in turn has an effect on the function of the heart, leading to cardiovascular disease.

It is well-known that patients with untreated hyperthyroidism (too high a production of thyroid hormone) or hypothyroidism (too low a production of thyroid hormone) often develop heart problems. It has previously been believed that this was solely a result of the hormone affecting the heart directly. The new study, however, shows that thyroid hormone also affects the heart indirectly, through the newly discovered neurons.

"This discovery opens the possibility of a completely new way of combating cardiovascular disease," says Jens Mittag, group leader at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at Karolinska Institutet. "If we learn how to control these neurons, we will be able to treat certain cardiovascular problems like hypertension through the brain. This is, however, still far in the future. A more immediate conclusion is that it is of utmost importance to identify and treat pregnant women with hypothyroidism, since their low level of thyroid hormone may harm the production of these neurons in the fetus, and this may in the long run cause cardiovascular disorders in the offspring."

The study has been financed with grants from the European Molecular Biology Organisation, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Fredrik and Ingrid Thuring Foundation, Karolinska Institutet Foundation, the American Thyroid Association, the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Cancer Society, the Söderberg Foundations, the Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation, the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development, and the Ludgardine Bouwman Foundation.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced that it would invest $ 100 million in a new initiative which aims to highlight how the brain works, and help treat diseases such as epilepsy and Alzheimer's, the BBC reported. The "Human Genome" is transformed genetics. The same should be done with the knowledge of the human brain, Obama said in a speech at the White House.  

"This is a great mystery waiting to be solved. BRAIN Initiative will give scientists the tools they need to get a dynamic picture of the brain to better understand how we think, learn and remember. And this knowledge will be transformation", said Obama.

The project is called Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN). Investment of 100 million dollars will be used to develop new technologies to explore how billions individual cells in the brain interact. Researchers will focus on how the brain record, store and process information, and will explore the relationship between brain function and behavior. Ethics Committee will supervise the research. 

Obama said that investment in science is justified because it will help create jobs and boost the economy. In his words, basic research has been the engine of growth. The announcement of the funding comes after the recent news of the launch of a major European project in the field of neuroscience. Around 80 European research institutions, along with several non-EU countries will participate in the Human Brain Project, costing more than € 1 billion. The project will use the supercomputer models and simulations to reconstruct a virtual human brain.