New Brain Scans Read People’s Thoughts
From Yahoo News/AFP:
A scan of brain activity can effectively read a person’s mind, researchers said Thursday.
British scientists from University College London found they could differentiate brain activity linked to different memories and thereby identify thought patterns by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
The evidence suggests researchers can tell which memory of a past event a person is recalling from the pattern of their brain activity alone.
“We’ve been able to look at brain activity for a specific episodic memory — to look at actual memory traces,” said senior author of the study, Eleanor Maguire.
The Math Behind Geometric Hallucinations
An interesting article from Plus Magazine on the mathematics of geometric hallucinations (think swirling patterns) and what it says about the brain:
Think drug-induced hallucinations, and the whirly, spirally, tunnel-vision-like patterns of psychedelic imagery immediately spring to mind. But it’s not just hallucinogenic drugs like LSD, cannabis or mescaline that conjure up these geometric structures. People have reported seeing them in near-death experiences, as a result of disorders like epilepsy and schizophrenia, following sensory deprivation, or even just after applying pressure to the eyeballs. So common are these geometric hallucinations, that in the last century scientists began asking themselves if they couldn’t tell us something fundamental about how our brains are wired up.
Brain Becomes Slower But Shrewder With Age
Encouraging news from the boomers’ favorite news service, NPR:
For baby-boomers, there is both good news and bad news about the cognitive health of the aging brain.
Brain researcher Gary Small from UCLA conveys the bad news first: “Reaction time is slower,” he says. “It takes us longer to learn new information. Sometimes it takes us longer to retrieve information, so we have that tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon — where you almost have that word or that thought. That’s typical of the middle-age brain.”
As we age, our ability to multi-task diminishes. “We’re quick, but we’re sloppy when we’re in middle-age. We make more errors when we’re in middle age,” says Small.
The Older, But Wiser, Brain
But Small has found that it’s not all bad news. He points to a continued improvement in complex reasoning skills…
Insomnia May Shrink Your Brain
Uh-oh! Discovery News reports that chronic lack of sleep could end up costing you more than the price of that extra cup of coffee you need to stay awake:
Chronic insomniacs losing out on sleep may also be missing brain matter.
For the first time, brain imaging has linked chronic insomnia to lower gray matter density in areas that regulate the brain’s ability to make decisions and to rest. The research could lead to new treatment plans for people who struggle with sleeplessness.
“The findings predict that chronic insomnia sufferers may have compromised capacities to evaluate the affective value of stimuli,” said Ellemarijie Altena, lead author of the study from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. “This could have consequences for other cognitive processes, notably decision-making.”
The study, published in Biological Psychiatry, compared the white and…
Science & Zen: A Closer Look
Written by Chuan Zhi on the Zen Buddhist Order of Hsu Yun website:
Neuroscience has recently revolutionized the way we envision the mind and the brain. With functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) we can now literally see the brain working in real time as different parts of the brain “light up” in response to various internal and external stimuli. Researchers now better understand not only how we think about things, but also how we feel about things. Emotions of all kinds — empathy, happiness, melancholy, anger, frustration, joy – are all seen as unique brain activities in particular parts of the brain. Researchers are also finding that people differ, often quite dramatically, in the degree to which these specific parts of the brain are active for specific emotions. Some people have a…
10 Profound Innovations Ahead
By Jeremy Hsu for Tech News Daily:
Today’s world looks increasingly like the future. Robots work factory assembly lines and fight alongside human warriors on the battlefield, while tiny computers assist in everything from driving cars to flying airplanes. Surgeons use the latest technological tools to accomplish incredible feats, and researchers push the frontiers of medicine with bioengineering. Science fiction stories about cloning and resurrecting extinct animals look increasingly like relevant cautionary tales.
But even the best of science and technology has yet to solve climate change and famine, or conquer disease. More and more people live on a planet with shrinking resources, which leads to political strife and conflict. Here, we examine some of the hottest areas where researchers hope to forge a better tomorrow.
No. 10. Read My Mind
True mind-reading devices…
Do-It-Yourself Brain Slicing
Ken Hayworth’s machine can automatically slice 2,000,000 cross-sections of a brain, generating 10 quadrillion voxels (10,000,000,000,000,000) of raw image data – enough to finally map the brain’s neuorocircuitry. (”Bulk imaging of such a large volume at the highest resolution would take hundreds of years, but having the ultrathin sections laid bare on a set of tissue plates solves this problem.”)
But his idea suffered rejections from both neuroscientists and graduate schools, “either because he didn’t have the academic background they were expecting, or because the professors wanted a lab slave and not someone with his own plans…”
After his second year of grad school, Hayworth built a brain-slicing prototype that attracted the interest of a Harvard professor interested in high-throughput neural circuit mapping. Together they submitted a proposal to the McKnight Endowment Fund,…
$10 Million Bounty For A Brain-Computer Interface
Peter Diamandis just held a workshop at MIT discussing a $10 million “X-Prize” for building a brain-computer interface!
Besides the ability to communicate by thought, the article argues, a Brain-Computer Interface X Prize “will reward nothing less than a team that provides vision to the blind, new bodies to disabled people, and perhaps even a geographical ’sixth sense’ akin to a GPS iPhone app in the brain.” And one software engineer argues the technology could become commercially available within the next 10 years.
Scientists Identify The Brain’s Emotional IQ Centers – And Prove It With A Marshmallow
People with high emotional intelligence tend to be more successful in life than those with a lower score – even without a higher IQ! (I love how Stanford proved this – using a marshmallow with children!) And now scientists have also pinpointed the brain locations responsible for two kinds of emotional intelligence: experiential and strategic.
Skin Cells Turned Directly Into Neurons
By Clive Cookson for the Financial Times:
Stem cell scientists at Stanford University in California announced “a huge step forward” last night, with the publication of research that turned skin into nerve cells without any intermediate step.
The production of neurons [nerve cells] directly from other adult cells, without making stem cells en route, could transform “regenerative medicine” – providing a plentiful supply of neurons for treating people with degenerative brain diseases such as Parkinson’s or those with spinal injuries.
“We actively and directly induced one cell type to become a completely different cell type,” said Marius Wernig of Stanford’s Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. “These are fully functional neurons. They can do all the principal things that neurons in the brain do.”…
[continues at the Financial Times]
…
What Is Neurodiversity?
Via Technoccult:
Klint Finley: Could you give us a brief overview of what “neurodiversity” means, or at least what it means to you?
Kassiane: Neurodiversity, the word, simply means the whole variety of different brain wirings people have…from the different kinds of normal to the different kinds of not so normal. Then there’s Neurodiversity, the movement which is the shocking idea that people with non standard wiring are human and deserve to be treated as such without being “fixed” first. [...]
Is there a point at which a line is drawn between “neurodiverse” and disabled?
The 2 aren’t mutually exclusive. You can be different and disabled, but being disabled doesn’t keep you from being a human worthy of respect.
Is Getting Naked Good For Your Brain?
This article argues the health benefits of nudity, noting that clothes deprive our brain neurons of vital stimulation, since they strangle our range of motion and cause most of our epidermis to atrophy. “Going shoeless is now recognized as an anti-Alzheimer’s, brain-boosting activity because the sole sensation entices your brain into growing extra, efficient neuron connections, while also increasing brain flexibility.”
“Plus, clothes are a breeding ground for filthy fungi and bad bacterium, causing yeast infections, urinary tract infections, and rotting toenails.”
It also notes the historical precedents for nudity — including the 70,000 Germans who attended naked co-ed schools and naked church services in North Africa, Bohemia, the Netherlands, and England. Even famous people were nudists, including Alexander Graham Bell, Leonard Nimoy, and science fiction author Robert Heinlein.
But in addition to all…
How Marijuana Affects The Brain
A really good graphic from the Wall Street Journal of all places!
Scientists Discover a Controller of Brain Circuitry
Via Science Daily:
By combining a research technique that dates back 136 years with modern molecular genetics, a Johns Hopkins neuroscientist has been able to see how a mammal’s brain shrewdly revisits and reuses the same molecular cues to control the complex design of its circuits.
Details of the observation in lab mice, published Dec. 24 in Nature, reveal that semaphorin, a protein found in the developing nervous system that guides filament-like processes, called axons, from nerve cells to their appropriate targets during embryonic life, apparently assumes an entirely different role later on, once axons reach their targets. In postnatal development and adulthood, semaphorins appear to be regulating the creation of synapses — those connections that chemically link nerve cells.
“With this discovery we’re able to understand how semaphorins regulate the number of…
Taking Ginkgo Biloba Is A ‘Waste of Time’
Kate Devlin writes in the Telegraph:
Elderly people who took Ginkgo biloba every day for six years had as many difficulties with recall as those who took a fake supplement, the largest study of its kind has shown. At least 100,000 people in Britain are thought to regularly take the supplement, which has been widely credited with improving memory and concentration.
Made from the leaves of the Ginkgo tree, the Chinese herbal remedy has been used as a traditional medicine for centuries. It is thought to contain chemicals which help the flow of blood around the body, which advocates believe will help protect the brain against decline.
But the researchers who carried out the latest study warned that the supplement appeared to have no effect on warding off age-related memory problems.
Will The Next Illegal Drug Be “Neurostim”?
“The same neurostim device that uses electric impulses from a brain implant to treat people with Parkinsons Disease can be tweaked by a few millimeters and pulse rates to make cocaine addicts feel like they are high all the time…”
The editor of “Dose Nation” describes the current mass market for “cognitive enhancement” products – and argues there’s real black market potential for pleasure-inducing neurostim products.
“Modern consumers have embraced taking whatever pill or procedure their doctors recommend, so all perspective next-gen neurotechnology should take a page from Big Pharmas playbook and pressure MDs to prescribe invasive cognitive solutions to patients for cosmetic and off-label purposes (and pressure insurance companies to cover the costs)!”
“Mix the glamour of surgical self-improvement with the geekiness of high-tech gadget fetishism and you have a niche cosmetic…
Telepathic Typing?
Why bother to type a document using a keyboard when you can write it by simply thinking about the letters? All it requires is a surgical incision into your skull and a sheet of electrodes on your brain…
A brain wave study presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society shows that people with electrodes in their brains can “type”… using just their minds. The study involved electrocorticography – a sheet of electrodes laid directly on the surface of the brain after a surgical incision into the skull.
“We were able to consistently predict the desired letters for our patients at or near 100 percent accuracy,” explains one Mayo clinic neurologist.
It’s a nice companion to the brain wave applications that can only turn brain waves into music or post Twitter…
Brain Scan Used In Murder Sentencing For First Time
Welcome to the future, from Wired Science:
A defendant’s fMRI brain scan has been used in court for what is believed to be the first time.
Brain scan evidence that the defense claimed shows the defendant’s brain was psychopathic was allowed into the sentencing portion of a murder trial in Chicago, Science reported Monday. Brian Dugan, who had been convicted of the rape and murder of a 10-year-old, was sentenced to death, despite the fMRI scans.
While the possibility of using fMRI data in a variety of contexts, particularly lie detection, has bounced around the margins of the legal system for years, there are almost no documented cases of its actual use.
Brain Of World’s Best-Known Amnesiac Is Mapped
Elizbeth Landau writes for CNN:
Henry Molaison, known as H.M. in scientific literature, was perhaps the most famous patient in all of brain science in the 20th century.
“My daddy’s family came from the South and moved North, they came from Thibodaux Louisiana, and moved north,” Molaison would say. “My mother’s family came from the North and moved South.” Within 15 minutes he might repeat this exact statement twice more, unable to remember that he’d already said it. Scientists studied him for most of his adult life.
This week, researchers are dissecting his brain to figure out exactly which structures contributed to his amnesia, which he suffered for more than 50 years.
At the Brain Observatory at the University of California, San Diego, researchers began slicing H.M.’s brain Wednesday afternoon and streaming the…
