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thinkahol *

Natural brain state is primed to learn - life - 19 August 2011 - New Scientist - 0 views

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    Apply the electrodes... Externally modulating the brain's activity can boost its performance. The easiest way to manipulate the brain is through transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), which involves applying electrodes directly to the head to influence neuron activity with an electric current. Roi Cohen Kadosh's team at the University of Oxford showed last year that targeting tDCS at the brain's right parietal lobe can boost a person's arithmetic ability - the effects were still apparent six months after the tDCS session (newscientist.com/article/dn19679). More recently, Richard Chi and Allan Snyder at the University of Sydney, Australia, demonstrated that tDCS can improve a person's insight. The pair applied tDCS to volunteers' anterior frontal lobes - regions known to play a role in how we perceive the world - and found the participants were three times as likely as normal to complete a problem-solving task (newscientist.com/article/dn20080). Brain stimulation can also boost a person's learning abilities, according to Agnes Flöel's team at the University of Münster in Germany. Twenty minutes of tDCS to a part of the brain called the left perisylvian area was enough to speed up and improve language learning in a group of 19 volunteers (Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1162/jocn.2008.20098). Using the same technique to stimulate the brain's motor cortex, meanwhile, can enhance a person's ability to learn a movement-based skill (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0805413106).
thinkahol *

Gesture-based computing takes a serious turn - tech - 12 August 2010 - New Scientist - 0 views

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    Controlling a computer just by pointing at the screen seems weird at first - but perhaps it's something we are going to get used to
thinkahol *

Mind-reading marketers have ways of making you buy - life - 09 August 2010 - New Scientist - 0 views

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    Why ask people what they think of a product when you can just scan their brains instead? New Scientist explores the brave new world of neuromarketing
thinkahol *

Artificial life forms evolve basic intelligence - life - 04 August 2010 - New Scientist - 0 views

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    Digital organisms not only mutate and evolve, they also have memory - so how long before they acquire intelligence too?
thinkahol *

Virtual walkers lead the way for robots - tech - 06 August 2010 - New Scientist - 0 views

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    Given a few simple rules and some major computing power, animated characters adopt a human-like gait - and soon robots could too
thinkahol *

Giant balloons could clear out space junk - space - 04 August 2010 - New Scientist - 0 views

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    Helium balloons are known for pulling things up, but they could be a great way to drag defunct satellites down to Earth, a team of engineers says.
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