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Mars Base

InteraXon looking for crowdfunding for Muse, a brainwave-sensor headband (w/ Video) - 0 views

phys.org/...brainwave-sensor-headband.html

scibyte69

shared by Mars Base on 24 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • crowd source funding site
  • Muse is a headband device based on electroencephalography (EEG) sensor technology combined with a sophisticated smartphone app that allows the wearer's brainwaves to be monitored.
  • sensors
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • monitor alpha (resting state) and beta (active state) brainwaves
  • converted to a signal that is broadcast, via Bluetooth technology, to the user's smartphone
  • claims that Muse can be used to learn new ways to relax, recognize lapses in concentration, build self-confidence, and gain more control of one's thoughts, overall
  • app includes a series of lessons and exercises designed to teach the user how to manipulate brain waves using visual feedback
Mars Base

U.S. FDA Approves Possible Alzheimer's Test - ScienceInsider - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...roves-possible-alzheimers.html

scibyte42 Alzheimer

shared by Mars Base on 12 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a radioactive compound for evaluating people with cognitive impairment for Alzheimer's disease
  • Amyvid, binds to amyloid plaques, the calling card of Alzheimer's disease in the brain
  • before a PET scan, Amyvid allows doctors to see whether amyloid has begun to build up
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • negative test reduces the likelihood
  • a positive test does not necessarily confirm
  • concerns: that it could be overused in general
  • and there will be
  • both false positives and false negatives
  • medical community is going to have to develop its own standards
Mars Base

Brain's Drain: Neuroscientists Discover Cranial Cleansing System: Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

medical

shared by Mars Base on 16 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • researchers christened the network the "glymphatic" system,
Mars Base

Australians implant 'world first' bionic eye - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...-implant-world-bionic-eye.html

scibyte61 eyes

shared by Mars Base on 30 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Bionic Vision Australia (BVA), a government-funded science consortium, said it had surgically installed an "early prototype" robotic eye in a woman with hereditary sight loss caused by degenerative retinitis pigmentosa
  • pre-bionic eye", the tiny device is attached to Dianne Ashworth's retina and contains 24 electrodes which send electrical impulses to stimulate her eye's nerve cells.
  • device only works when it is connected inside the lab
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • be used to explore how images were "built" by the brain and eye.
  • Feedback from the device will be fed into a "vision processor" allowing doctors to determine exactly what Ashworth sees when her retina is subjected to various levels of stimulation
  • team is working towards a "wide-view" 98-electrode device that will provide users with the ability to perceive large objects such as buildings and cars, and a "high-acuity" 1,024-electrode device
  • high-acuity device are expected to be able to recognise faces and read large print
  • Every time there was stimulation there was a different shape that appeared
  • switched on the device in their laboratory last month after Ashworth had fully recovered from surgery
Mars Base

Researches find poop-throwing by chimps is a sign of intelligence - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...owing-chimps-intelligence.html

scibyte24

shared by Mars Base on 01 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • researchers studying such behavior have come to the conclusion that throwing feces, or any object really, is actually a sign of high ordered behavior
  • they are the only other species besides humans that regularly throw things with a clear target in mind
  • watching chimps in action for several years and comparing their actions with scans of their brains to see if there were any correlations between those chimps that threw a lot
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • those that didn’t or whether they’re accuracy held any deeper meaning
  • chimps that both threw more and were more likely to hit their targets showed heightened development in the motor cortex
  • more connections between it and the Broca’s area, which they say is an important part of speech in humans
  • Such findings led the term to suggest that the ability to throw is, or was, a precursor to speech development in human beings
  • those that could throw better also appeared to be better communicators within their group
  • better throwing chimps didn’t appear to posses any more physical prowess than other chimps
  • throwing didn’t develop as a means of hunting, but as a form of communication within groups
  • throwing stuff at someone else became a form of self expression
Mars Base

Do Dolphins Speak Whale in Their Sleep? - ScienceNOW - 2 views

news.sciencemag.org/...hins-speak-whale-in-their.html

scibyte30 dolphins sleep

shared by Mars Base on 21 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Researchers discovered the dolphins' midnight melodies by accident
  • Every day, as music and sounds of the sea play in the background, they show off their swimming, jumping, and ball-catching skills for an adoring audience and squawk and whistle just like dolphins should
  • But at night, they make strange noises that researchers believe are imitations of humpback whale songs included in the performance soundtrack
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • Ethologist
  • and her colleagues had hung underwater microphones in the tank because little is known about what dolphins sound like at night
  • One night, they suddenly heard 25 new sounds (see below) that the dolphins had never made before
  • dolphins are known for mimicry
  • researchers examined their complex daytime environment to determine
  • zeroed in on the new soundtrack that Planète Sauvage was playing during performances
  • included music, sea gulls' calls, the dolphins' own whistles, and humpback whale calls
  • researchers used a computer program to compare auditory recordings of the whale
  • showed that the two sounds were very similar
  • the dolphins had been captive their entire lives, they couldn't have picked them up from real whales
  • the team asked 20 human volunteers to listen to humpback whale sounds and wild dolphin sounds
  • researchers played the nighttime vocalizations and asked the volunteers whether the sounds came from a whale or a dolphin
  • About 76% of the time, the volunteers classified the imitations as sounds from real whales
  • Because the dolphins didn't make these noises during the show, the finding suggests that they waited to practice the sounds hours later.
  • the shows prime the animals to learn and remember information
  • find out whether the dolphins are asleep and dreaming when they mimic
  • dreams help dolphins etch new information into their memories, just like in humans
  • capture electroencephalogram recordings of the dolphins' brains at night
  • a biologist at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom who studies animal vocalization, says that the idea that dolphins might delay their rehearsals for hours is intriguin
  • isn't convinced from the small number of recordings that the researchers obtained that the dolphins were imitating whales
  • dolphins make so many different sounds that it's difficult to pin down one as an imitation of a particular source
  • songbirds rehearse their imitations of other noises at night, so he thinks it's not unlikely that dolphins might do the same.
Mars Base

Write to Me Only With Thine Eyes - ScienceNOW - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...o-me-only-with-thine-eyes.html

scibyte56 communication

shared by Mars Base on 26 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • People "locked in" by paralyzing disorders
  • have long relied on blinks or facial twitches to build sentences one letter at a time
  • Over three 30-minute sessions, he trained six volunteers
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • For the volunteers, who couldn't see what they were writing, it was like writing with a pen that had run out of ink
  • some participants had a harder time of learning to control their eye movements than others
  • by the end of the sessions most could freely draw legible letters and numbers
  • reverse phi motion." The illusion helped reveal that when the brightness of an object changes rapidly; our brain "sees" the object moving in the opposite direction.
  • Mars Base on 26 Jul 12
     
    ckly as they can write with a pen. In addition to providing a new medium for self-expression, the technique challenges traditional ideas about the limits of human vision. In 1970, illusionist and cognitive psychologist Stuart Anstis of the University of California, San Diego, was playing around
Mars Base

Eye implants make vision-restoring progress - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...implants-vision-restoring.html

Scibyte55 RestoringVision

shared by Mars Base on 18 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Second Sight’s Argus II, a retinal prosthesis already on the market in Europe
  • Bio-Retina from NanoRetina, which is to start clinical trials next year
  • Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System was developed to provide electrical stimulation of the retina to induce visual perception
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • system includes an antenna, an electronics case, and electrode array
  • designed to bypass damaged photoreceptors altogether
  • video camera in the glasses captures a scene
  • video is sent to a small patient-worn computer VPU where it is processed and transformed into instructions sent back to the glasses via a cable
  • transmitted wirelessly to the antenna in the implant
  • signals are sent to the electrode array, which emits small pulses of electricity. The pulses bypass the damaged photoreceptors and stimulate the retina’s remaining
  • Users of the Argus II bionic eye say that they can see rough shapes and track the movement of objects; they can slowly read large writing.
  • Anticipation is high, meanwhile, for a bionic retina that has been designed to restore sight at less cost and with a different technique
  • Bio-Retina developed by Nano Retina does not make use of an external camera
  • vision-restoring sensor is placed inside the eye, on top of the damaged retina
  • 24×24-resolution (576-pixel) sensor atop the damaged retina. The device generates a grayscale image
  • implant is inserted through an incision in the eye
  • procedure takes 30 minutes and requires only local anesthesia
  • transforms naturally received light into an electrical signal that stimulates the neurons, which send the pictures received by Bio-Retina to the brain
  • rechargeable, battery-powered mini-laser on a pair of eyeglasses powers the implant wirelessly
  • anticipated recover time is up to one week
  • patients able to distinguish faces and to be able to look from side to side with their eyes rather than needing to turn their heads
Mars Base

Computer Game-Playing Shown to Improve Multitasking Skills: Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte101

shared by Mars Base on 05 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • a study published this week in Nature
  • convincingly shows that if a game is tailored to a precise cognitive deficit, in this case multitasking in older people, it can indeed be effective
  • the study found that a game called NeuroRacer can help older people to improve their capacity to multitask
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • the effect seems to carry over to tasks in everyday life and is still there after six months
  • The study also shows how patterns of brain activity change as those cognitive skills improve
  • NeuroRacer is a three-dimensional video game in which players steer a car along a winding, hilly road with their left thumb, while keeping an eye out for signs that randomly pop up
  • If the sign is a particular shape and colour, players have to shoot it down using a finger on their right hand
  • draws on a mix of cognitive skills just as real life does — such as attention focusing, task switching and working memory
  • first recruited around 30 participants for each of six decades of life, from the 20s to the 70s
  • confirmed that multitasking skills as measured by the game deteriorated linearly with age
  • then recruited 46 participants aged 60–85
  • put them through a 4-week training period with a version of NeuroRacer that increased in difficulty as the player improved
  • After training, subjects had improved so much that they achieved higher scores than untrained 20-year-olds
  • the skill remained six months later without practice
  • scientists also conducted a battery of cognitive tests on the participants before and after training
  • Certain cognitive abilities that were not specifically targeted by the game improved and remained improved
  • working memory and sustained attention
Mars Base

March 29 - Today in Science History - Scientists born on March 29th, died, and events - 0 views

www.todayinsci.com/...3_29.htm

scibyte124 LookingBackMar

shared by Mars Base on 23 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Coca-Cola
  • In 1886, the first batch of Coca Cola was brewed over a fire in a backyard in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. John Pemberton had created the concoction as a cure for "hangover," stomach ache and headache. He advertised it as a "brain tonic and intellectual beverage," and first sold it to the public a few weeks later on 8 May. Coke contained cocaine as an ingredient until 1904, when the drug was banned by Congress.
  • Mars Base on 23 Mar 14
     
    Coca-Cola
Mars Base

This Insect Has The Only Mechanical Gears Ever Found in Nature | Surprising Science - 0 views

blogs.smithsonianmag.com/...cal-gears-ever-found-in-nature

scibyte102 BiologicalGear ViewerFeedback

shared by Mars Base on 16 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • To the best of our knowledge, the mechanical gear
  • evenly-sized teeth cut into two different rotating surfaces to lock them together as they turn
  • was invented sometime around 300 B.C.E. by Greek mechanics who lived in Alexandria
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • Issus coleoptratus
  • juveniles
  • The researchers’ high-speed videos showed that the creatures
  • , is believed to be the first functional gearing system ever discovered in nature
  • The finding,
  • used electron microscopes and high-speed video capture to discover the existence of the gearing and figure out its exact function.
  • To jump, both of the insect’s hind legs must push forward at the exact same time
  • The reason for the gearing, they say, is coordination
  • have an intricate gearing system that locks their back legs together, allowing both appendages to rotate at the exact same instant, causing the tiny creatures jump forward.
  • cocked their back legs in a jumping position, then pushed forward, with each moving within 30 microseconds
  • if one tooth breaks, it limits the effectiveness of the design
  • 30 millionths of a second
  • the skeleton is used to solve a complex problem that the brain and nervous system can’t
  • The gears are located at the top of the insects’ hind legs
  • and include 10 to 12 tapered teeth, each about 80 micrometers wide (or 80 millionths of a meter).
  • In all the Issus hoppers studied, the same number of teeth were present on each hind leg, and the gears locked together neatly
  • adults of the same insect species don’t have any gearing—as the juveniles grow up and their skin molts away
  • the adult legs are synchronized by an alternate mechanism (a series of protrusions extend from both hind legs, and push the other leg into action).
  • hypothesize that this could be explained by the fragility of the gearing
  • jump at speeds as high as 8.7 miles per hour
  • isn’t such a big problem for the juveniles, who repeatedly molt and grow new gears before adulthood
  • for the mature Issus, replacing the teeth would be impossible
  • There have been gear-like structures previously found on other animals
  • but they’re purely ornamental
Mars Base

Dextrose rub helps newborns with low blood sugar | Body & Brain | Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/..._newborns_with_low_blood_sugar

scibyte104

shared by Mars Base on 25 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Newborns with low blood sugar face the prospect of a trip to the intensive care unit and intravenous infusions of glucose
  • rubbing a sweet gel onto the insides of babies’ cheeks
  • Low blood sugar in newborns, or neonatal hypoglycemia, occurs when the tiny body needs more glucose to meet energy needs than is available in the bloodstream
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Prolonged hypoglycemia risks neurological injury.
  • Low blood glucose shows up in 5 to 15 percent of otherwise healthy newborns as measured by blood tests
  • Doctors typically don’t run the analysis on every newborn
  • If they spot low blood sugar symptoms such as poor color, seizures, irritability, lethargy, jittery behavior and a lack of interest in feeding, doctors are more likely to call for the blood test
  • many infants with low blood glucose don’t have such symptoms
  • report designates at-risk infants as those who are born preterm, have diabetic mothers, or are either large or small for their gestational age
  • new study, the researchers identified 237 apparently healthy newborns who had one of those risk factors or who were feeding poorly
  • Half of the babies were randomly assigned to get a gel made of dextrose, a form of glucose, rubbed on the inner cheeks up to six times over 48 hours; the rest received a placebo gel
  • During the following week, 30 babies getting the placebo gel were placed in intensive care for hypoglycemia while only 16 of those getting the dextrose gel needed such care for the condition
  • Dextrose had been tried in the 1990s as an oral rub for infants but wasn’t fully tested or put into widespread use
Mars Base

Breakthrough therapy allows four paraplegic men to voluntarily move their legs - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...araplegic-men-voluntarily.html

scibyte126

shared by Mars Base on 08 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Four young men who have been paralyzed for years achieved
  • moving their legs—as a result of epidural electrical stimulation of the spinal cord
  • All four participants were classified as suffering from chronic, motor complete spinal cord injuries and were unable to move their lower extremities prior to the implantation of an epidural stimulator
  • ...42 more annotations...
  • The stimulator delivers a continuous electrical current to the participants' lower spinal cords, mimicking signals the brain normally transmits to initiate movement
  • an initial study, published in May 2011
  • evaluated the effects of epidural stimulation in the first participant
  • who recovered a number of motor functions as a result of the intervention
  • three years later, the key findings documented
  • detail the impact of epidural stimulation in a total four participants, including new tests
  • What is revolutionary
  • is that the second, third and fourth participants
  • were able to execute voluntary movements immediately following the implantation and activation of the stimulator.
  • The participants' results and recovery time were unexpected, which led researchers to speculate that some pathways may be intact post-injury and therefore able to facilitate voluntary movements.
  • Two of the four subjects were diagnosed as motor and sensory complete injured with no chance of recovery at al
  • Because of epidural stimulation, they can now voluntarily move their hips, ankles and toes
  • groundbreaking for the entire field and offers a new outlook that the spinal cord, even after a severe injury, has great potential for functional recovery.
  • In epidural stimulation, the electrical current is applied at varying frequencies and intensities to specific locations on the lumbosacral spinal cord
  • corresponding to the dense neural bundles that largely control the movement of the hips, knees, ankles and toes
  • With the participants, once the signal was triggered, the spinal cord reengaged its neural network to control and direct muscle movements.
  • When coupling the intervention with rehabilitative therapy, the impact of epidural stimulation intensified
  • Over the course of the study, the researchers noted that the participants were able to activate movements with less stimulation, demonstrating the ability of the spinal network to learn and improve nerve functions
  • uncovered a fundamentally new intervention strategy that can dramatically affect recovery of voluntary movement in individuals with complete paralysis, even years after injury
  • The belief that no recovery is possible and complete paralysis is permanent has been challenged
  • Beyond regaining voluntary movement, the research participants have displayed a myriad of improvements in their overall health
  • increases in muscle mass and regulation of their blood pressure, as well as reduced fatigue and dramatic improvements to their sense of well-being.
  • all four men were able to bear weight independently, as reported by the team
  • The study offers hope that clinical therapies can be developed to advance treatment for the nearly 6 million Americans living with paralysis, including nearly 1.3 million with spinal cord injuries.
  • The four paralyzed participants ranged in neurological level from C7–T5 and were at least two years post-injury at the time of the intervention
  • Two of them had been rated "A" on the American Spinal Injury Association's classification system, meaning they had absolutely no sensation or cognition below the site of their injury
  • surprising the scientists, who believed at least some of the sensory pathway must be intact for epidural stimulation to be successful.
  • With this study, the investigators show that their findings about a motor complete patient regaining movement, as published three years ago in The Lancet, were not an anomaly
  • At the present time,
  • there are no effective evidence-based treatments for chronic spinal cord injury
  • , the implications of this study for the entire field are quite profound, and we can now envision a day when epidural stimulation might be part of a cocktail of therapies used to treat paralysis
  • first learned that a patient had regained voluntary control as a result of the therapy, we were cautiously optimistic
  • The research was funded by the Reeve Foundation and the National Institutes of Health
  • the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, the Kessler Foundation, the University of Louisville, the Jewish Hospital and St. Mary's Foundation, the Frazier Rehab Institute and University Hospital.
  • Investing in epidural stimulation
  • Now that spinal stimulation has been successful in four out of four patients, there is evidence to suggest a large cohort of individuals,
  • previously with little realistic hope of any meaningful recovery from spinal cord injury, may benefit from this intervention
  • how we see motor complete spinal cord injury
  • don't have to necessarily rely on regrowth of nerves in order to regain function
  • observed this in four out of four people suggests that this is actually a common phenomenon in those diagnosed with complete paralysis
  • The scientists are optimistic that the therapy intervention will continue to result in improved motor functions
  • based on observations from the research, there is strong evidence that with continued advancements of the epidural stimulator, individuals with complete spinal cord injuries will be able to bear weight independently, maintain balance and work towards stepping
Mars Base

EyeWire gamers help researchers understand retina's motion detection wiring - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...mers-retina-motion-wiring.html

scibyte130 eyes

shared by Mars Base on 06 May 14 - No Cached
  • A team of researchers working at MIT has used data supplied by gamers on EyeWire to help explain how it is that the retina is able to process motion detection
  • the team describes how they worked with gamers at EyeWire and then used the resulting mapped neural networks to propose a new theory to describe how it is the eye is able to understand what happens when something moves in front of it.
  • Scientists have known for quite some time that light enters the eye and strikes the back of the eyeball where photoreceptors respond
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Those photoreceptors send information they receive to another type of neural cell known as bipolar cells
  • they in turn convert received signals to another signal format which is then sent to what are known as starburst amacrine cells (SACs)
  • Signals from the SAC are sent via the optic nerve to the brain
  • scientists believe they have a pretty good idea about how the whole process works for static images, they have not been able to get a handle on what happens when images sent to the eyeball have information about things that are moving
  • In this new effort, the researchers sought to do just that—via assistance from thousands of gamers on the EyeWire game playing site
  • The problem with figuring out how nerve cells work in the eye, of either mice or humans, is the inability to watch what happens in action—everything is too tiny and intricate
  • To get around that problem, researchers have been building three dimensional models on computers
  • even that gets untenable when considering the complexity and numbers of nerves involved
  • That's where the EyeWire gamers came in, a game was created that involved gamers creating mouse neural networks—the better they were at it the more points they got
  • only the best at it were invited to play
  • The result was the creation of a model that the researchers believe is an accurate representation of the cells involved in processing vision, and the networks that are made up of them
  • the rest was up to the research team
  • They noted that in the model, there were different types of bipolar cells connecting to SACs—some connected to dendrites close to the cells center, and others connected to dendrites that were farther away
  • Prior research had shown that some bipolar cells take longer to process information than others
  • The researchers believe that the bipolar cells that connect closer to the center are of the type that take longer to process signals
  • This, they contend, could set up a scenario where the center of the SAC receives information from both types of bipolar cells at the same time—and that, they suggest, could be how the SAC comes to understand that motion—in one direction—is occurring
  • The researchers suggest their theory can be real-world tested in the lab, and expect other teams will likely do so
  • If they are right, the mystery of how our eyes detect motion will finally be solved.
Mars Base

'Scarecrow' Rover Goes Off-Roading in Dumont Dunes - Mars Science Laboratory - 0 views

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...index.cfm

scibyte135 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 04 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Curiosity’s Stunt Double
  • Scarecrow has a full-size version of Curiosity's wheels and other driving equipment, but doesn't have the "brains."
  • Engineers use it to test drive on different types of terrain
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • engineers scour the Dumont Dunes area and look for the best spot to practice driving over dunes like those Curiosity may drive over on Mars
  • a course of sand ripples for the Scarecrow rover to drive over. On Mars, the Curiosity rover may cross similar sand ripples on its way to Mount Sharp
  • Engineers test the rover’s driving skills on soft sand ripples
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