Group items tagged

"Dozens of microchips scattered over the cortical surface might allow researchers to listen in on thousands of neurons at the same time." These microchips will work to record brain activity and may also "stimulate neurons...to to explore for treating brain disorders like epilepsy and Parkinson's or restoring brain function lost to injury" Currently this system is being tested on rats but there are still challenges to overcome such as how to get the chips across and in the human brain with the goal of being a less invasive alternative and how to organize and collect all the data that could be transmitted.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have revealed results suggesting that personalized deep brain stimulation (DBS) can produce a sustained antidepressant effect by targeting a brain circuit linked to low mood.

They are undifferentiated cells capable of being anything. You might know them as stem cells and now a robot can take them up your nose into your brain. "Researchers have developed a stem cell-based microrobot called "cellbot" capable of delivering stem cells to the brain via intranasal passage using a minimally invasive method. The cellbot has the potential to become a key player in the treatment of neurological disorders such as brain cancer, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease."

It leads to new ways to activate our brain to be more eficient during certain tasks.This achievement helps to identify the roles played by individual neurons in coordinating and carrying out behaviors which could be a cornerstone of future neural interface technologies. This research begins to teach us how the brain processes and executes goal-directed behaviors in higher-order species, giving the knowledge and tools to begin making sense of neural circuitry and coding. (Sanchez, Justin)

DARPA is always a great source! Is this H1, H2, or H3...in your view?

In neuromorphic hardware, calculations are performed by lots of small units that communicate with each other through bursts of activity called spikes and adjust their behavior based on the spikes they receive from others, roughly similar to the biological neural behavior in the brain.

"We've seen everyone trying to get space tourism going ... we need some of the world's greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live." Is it ethical to spend all this money on the future of space when we could be fixing the earth? Short sighted if you ask me and we may need an escape plan...

It reversed age-related inflammation in the body and the brains of older mice, and changed the chemistry of their brain's hippocampus - the region involved in learning and memory - to resemble that of younger mice. The transplant also led to improvements in the older mice's memory, learning and anxiety levels, all of which are affected negatively with age.