Brain
Helping Advance Huntington’s Disease Research By Using AI To Map the Human Brain
Neurodegenerative diseases are disorders that progressively affect neurons in the brain, altering their function and causing their death. They include many different disorders, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, which are among the top causes of disability and death and cost hundreds of billions of dollars per year in the U.S. alone (1). Huntington’s disease …
Using Machine Learning Tools To Reveal How Memories Are Coded In The Brain
Researchers working in The N.1 Institute for Health at the National University Of Singapore (NUS), led by Assistant Professor Camilo Libedinsky from NUS Psychology, and Senior Lecturer Shih-Cheng Yen from the Innovation and Design Programme at NUS Engineering, have discovered that a population of neurons in the brain’s frontal lobe contain stable short-term memory information within dynamically-changing neural …
How Memories Are Formed And Retrieved By The Brain Revealed In A New Study
Try to remember that last dinner you went out for. Perhaps you can remember the taste of that delicious pasta, the sounds of the jazz pianist in the corner, or that boisterous laugh from the portly gentleman three tables over. What you probably can’t remember is putting any effort into remembering any of these little …
MIT Researchers Develops A Slimy Worm Robot For Less Invasive Surgeries
MIT engineers have developed a magnetically steerable, thread-like robot that can actively glide through narrow, winding pathways, such as the labrynthine vasculature of the brain. In the future, this robotic thread may be paired with existing endovascular technologies, enabling doctors to remotely guide the robot through a patient’s brain vessels to quickly treat blockages and …
See How Our Brains Group Words By Meaning In Surprisingly Complex Semantic Maps
A groundbreaking new study from the Gallant Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley is transforming how scientists understand language organisation in the brain. Published in Nature on 28 April 2016, the paper ‘Natural Speech Reveals the Semantic Maps That Tile Human Cerebral Cortex’ reveals that we use our entire brain – and not just the temporal lobe, as once believed – to group …
Remote Control Of The Brain Is Coming: How Will We Use It?
Controlling the minds of others from a distance has long been a favourite science fiction theme – but recent advances in genetics and neuroscience suggest that we might soon have that power for real. Just over a decade ago, the bioengineer Karl Deisseroth and his colleagues at Stanford University published their paper on the optical control …
An Electronic Chip That Makes ‘Memories’ Is A Step Towards Creating Bionic Brains
What better way to build smarter computer chips than to mimic nature’s most perfect computer – the human brain? Being able to store, delete and process information is crucial for computing, and the brain does this extremely efficiently. Our new electronic chip uses light to create and modify memories, moving us closer towards artificial intelligence …
Brain-Machine Interfaces Are Getting Better And Better – And Neuralink’s New Brain Implant Pushes The Pace
Elon Musk grabbed a lot of attention with his July 16 announcement that his company Neuralink plans to implant electrodes into the brains of people with paralysis by next year. Their first goal is to create assistive technology to help people who can’t move or are unable to communicate. If you haven’t been paying attention, …
Planes Don’t Flap Their Wings: Does AI Work Like A Brain?
In 1739, Parisians flocked to see an exhibition of automata by the French inventor Jacques de Vaucanson performing feats assumed impossible by machines. In addition to human-like flute and drum players, the collection contained a golden duck, standing on a pedestal, quacking and defecating. It was, in fact, a digesting duck. When offered pellets by …