Mind Technology

CNN.com - Warriors of the future will 'taste' battlefield - Apr 25, 2006

2006-04-26T07:16:00.000-07:00

CNN.com - Warriors of the future will 'taste' battlefield - Apr 25, 2006

"By routing signals from helmet-mounted cameras, sonar and other equipment through the tongue to the brain, they hope to give elite soldiers superhuman senses similar to owls, snakes and fish."

United Press International - NewsTrack - 'Word-vision' brain area confirmed

2006-04-19T21:45:00.000-07:00

Scientists confirm the function of the creatively named Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) of the brain: United Press International - NewsTrack - 'Word-vision' brain area confirmed

French neuroscientists have ended a long controversy, confirming a specific area of the human brain plays a causal role in our ability to recognize words.

Humans have an uncanny ability to skim through text, instantly recognizing words by their shape -- even though writing developed only about 6000 years ago, long after humans evolved.

The New 'Mad' Scientists

2006-04-19T10:28:00.000-07:00

Belgian neuroscientists studied what happened when test subjects stayed up all night after playing Duke Nukem. The answer: Sleep deprivation made it harder to remember the layout of the game. Annalee Newitz has the scoop.

AlterNet: MediaCulture: The New 'Mad' Scientists: "It turns out that sleeping allows the brain to reorganize our spatial memories, moving them from the short-term memory zone of the hippocampus to the long-term memory zone of the striatum (an area of the brain also associated with body movement). So, if you stay up all night killing aliens and go to work or school the next day, you won't remember very well the layout of the game you played."

More details from the BBC: Duke Nukem sheds light on brain

Singularity Summit at Stanford May 13

2006-04-13T17:08:00.000-07:00

Stanford is hosting an event that will feature such visionaries as Ray Kurzweil and Douglas Hofstadter speaking about the future of human intelligence--and superintelligence. Expect lots of big thinking, grandiose vision-making, mind-bending futurism, and at least one attempt to have someone appear remotely via a life-size holographic display.

The Singularity Summit at Stanford: "The Stanford University Symbolic Systems Program and the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence announced today the Singularity Summit at Stanford, a one-day event free to the public, to be held Saturday, May 13, 2006 at Stanford Memorial Auditorium, Stanford, California.

The event will bring together leading futurists and others to examine the implications of the 'Singularity' -- a hypothesized creation of superintelligence as technology accelerates over the coming decades -- to address the profound implications of this radical and controversial scenario."

Human brains are still evolving.

2006-04-11T09:15:00.000-07:00

Human brains are still evolving:

University of Chicago geneticist Bruce Lahn recently published the results of a study demonstrating that two key genes connected to brain size are currently under rapid selection in populations throughout the globe.

"The jury is still out on what this means because we aren't entirely sure what these genes do," said Lahn. "It's possible they just control size and shape of the brain, rather than cognition. But the data is pretty compelling that the brain is evolving."

Some radical thinkers suggest human evolution needs to move even faster, with a little help from science.

"Biological evolution is too slow for the human species," said Ray Kurzweil, futurist and author of The Singularity Is Near. "Over the next few decades, it's going to be left in the dust."

More information in this Wired News article by Annalee Newitz: Getting Evolution Up to Speed

Why Some Kids Are Smarter - Technology Review

2006-03-30T08:26:00.000-08:00

Scientists studied kids over a period of several years, doing MRI scanning of their brains periodically. They found that the prefrontal cortexes of smarter kids started out thinner, but grew more rapidly between ages 5 and 12 than the cortexes of kids with ordinary intelligence. (In this case, "intelligence" is taken to mean how well the children scored on a standard IQ test.) The Impact of Emerging Technologies: Why Some Kids Are Smarter - Technology Review

Diffusion tensor imaging

2006-03-27T09:33:00.000-08:00

Technology Review: Diffusion Tensor Imaging - Kevin Lim's research is helping scientists understand schizophrenia

The Lie Behind Lie Detectors

2006-03-17T09:42:00.000-08:00

Wired News commentator Jennifer Granick examines the shortcomings of current polygraph tests, which are highly unreliable, and compares them to the emerging field of fMRI lie detection.

Under laboratory conditions, fMRI technology might be 90 percent accurate in determining whether individuals in a test group of Americans are lying about taking a watch or a ring. But it's useless for employee screening, convicting the guilty, identifying terrorists at the airport or separating innocents from enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay -- at least at the moment.

At some point soon, these high-tech lie detectors will be cheap, accurate, portable and unobtrusive enough to replace the polygraph in incident investigations. But we are a long way from reading minds.

Wired News: The Lie Behind Lie Detectors

uwnews.org | University of Washington News and Information

2006-02-14T13:08:00.000-08:00

uwnews.org | University of Washington News and Information: "Brain images of children with dyslexia taken before they received spelling instruction show that they have different patterns of neural activity than do good spellers when doing language tasks related to spelling. But after specialized treatment emphasizing the letters in words, they showed similar patterns of brain activity. These findings are important because they show the human brain can change and normalize in response to spelling instruction, even in dyslexia, the most common learning disability."

The Impact of Emerging Technologies: Big Brain Thinking - Technology Review

2006-02-13T08:29:00.000-08:00

The Impact of Emerging Technologies: Big Brain Thinking - Technology Review: "Bill Newsome is obsessed with a lingering question: How does consciousness arise from brain function? He feels the best way to answer that question is by implanting an electrode into his own brain -- and seeing how the electric current changes his perception of the world."

When thinking can hurt

2006-02-07T10:39:00.000-08:00

Scientists discover that the dendrites in the brains of Alzheimer's patients and sufferers from AIDS dementia "bead" -- when they receive signals from the neuron, they curl up and disappear, preventing communication with other neurons. As a result, thinking actually causes more damage to these people's brains. Remember that the next time you say "My brain hurts."

When thinking can hurt -- Newsday.com: "Gelbard and Bellizzi saw that the dendrites growing in the damaged brain were beading - creating a foxhole and disappearing. The synapse couldn't function properly. Then - surprise - the beading stopped and the dendrite's disappearing act was over. The synapse was also restored.

Gelbard and his colleagues realized that the beading - the disappearing act - was associated with functional deficits in the cell. When inflammation wasn't present, normal cell-to-cell communication flowed."

MRI - Brain Images That Show Structure And Function, Yale School Of Medicine

2006-02-06T10:37:00.000-08:00

MRI - Brain Images That Show Structure And Function, Yale School Of Medicine: "Yale School of Medicine researchers report a novel technique for jointly studying structural and functional changes in the brain based upon an advanced statistical approach called joint independent component analysis. "

We are moving ever closer to the era of mind control

2006-02-06T10:36:00.000-08:00

In this opinion piece, Steven Rose asks, "what if brain imaging could predict future behaviour, or indicate guilt or innocence of a crime?" He discusses fMRI "lie detectors," military interest in remote brain-scanning, and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which can be used to affect thoughts and perceptions -- perhaps leading to a form of mind control.

Rose is a biology professor at the Open University and the author of the forthcoming Better Humans? The Politics of Human Enhancement and Life Extension, to be published by Demos and the Wellcome Trust this week. (The book is available as a free PDF -- just click on the preceding link.)

The Observer | Comment | We are moving ever closer to the era of mind control

Who Really Won the Super Bowl? by Marco Iacoboni

2006-02-06T08:24:00.000-08:00

UCLA Neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni did an "instant science" experiment in which his team performed fMRI scans on subjects watching Super Bowl commercials, in an attempt to determine which commercials were most effective. Iacoboni looked for active "mirror neuron" areas -- the parts of the brain active when you make an action and also when you see somebody else making the same action. (Last week I blogged another neuroscientist's ruminations, also on Edge.org, on how mirror neurons form the basis for empathy and perhaps all of human culture. See V.S. Ramachandran: Mirror Neurons and the Brain in a Vat)

The results were published today, one day after the big game. With just five research subjects, the sample size is pretty small. Still, it was apparently enough that Iacoboni is willing to say which ads were the best and which performed the worst. Iacoboni writes that he'll have a more detailed analysis later today.

Who Really Won the Super Bowl?

Memory and the hippocampus: New research

2006-02-02T12:59:00.000-08:00

Newswise | A Fork in Memory Lane: The Hippocampus and Recognition:

"Recollection, as defined by memory specialists, is the ability to call up specific details about an encounter, while familiarity is simply knowing that someone or something has been encountered before. Both are elements of recognition memory and both, new research suggests, are functions of the brain’s hippocampus.

Published in the Feb. 2 issue of the journal Neuron, the University of California, San Diego study contradicts a recent body of work which maintains that the hippocampus is involved only in recollection."

Slashdot | Brain Scans to Identify Liars?

2006-01-31T08:47:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post ran an article on using fMRI to figure out when people are lying. Here's the discussion on Slashdot:

Slashdot | Brain Scans to Identify Liars?

Newswise | Meditation, Relaxation Work Equally Well for Anxiety Disorders

2006-01-30T08:51:00.000-08:00

A study comparing transcendental meditation with relaxation techniques and biofeedback has found that all three are approximately equally effective in reducing stress and anxiety.

Newswise | Meditation, Relaxation Work Equally Well for Anxiety Disorders

MIRROR NEURONS AND THE BRAIN IN A VAT By V.S. Ramachandran

2006-01-28T22:01:00.000-08:00

MIRROR NEURONS AND THE BRAIN IN A VAT By V.S. Ramachandran

Wired 14.02: Buddha on the Brain

2006-01-27T15:25:00.000-08:00

Richard Geirland in Wired has a very balanced story on the Dalai Lama's dalliance with neuroscience (and vice versa). There is some interesting research on meditation and brain activity, cited in this story. (For more details, see Richard Goleman's interesting overview of a scientific conference with the Dalai Lama, Destructive Emotions.)

The Dalai Lama wants to use meditation as a scientific tool for understanding how consciousness works, since it can provide a way of doing controlled first-person experimentation. Likewise, he's interested in what science can tell us about brain physiology and how the brain works. But Geirland cuts to the heart of the conflict: Scientists who cozy up to a religious leader like the Dalai Lama run the risk of tainting the objectivity of their work.

The fact that many of the neuroscientists protesting the Dalai Lama's appearance at a recent conference are Chinese adds another layer to the controversy.

Wired 14.02: Buddha on the Brain

The Impact of Emerging Technologies: Your Brain on Booze - Technology Review

2006-01-26T08:49:00.000-08:00

The Impact of Emerging Technologies: Your Brain on Booze - Technology Review: "a new technology, known as Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), is allowing researchers to examine how alcohol affects [the brain's] fine-scale wiring."

When Bad People Are Punished, Men Smile (but Women Don't) - New York Times

2006-01-24T09:30:00.000-08:00

When Bad People Are Punished, Men Smile (but Women Don't) - New York Times: "In the study, when male subjects witnessed people they perceived as bad guys being zapped by a mild electrical shock, their M.R.I. scans lit up in primitive brain areas associated with reward. Their brains' empathy centers remained dull."

A Shocker: Partisan Thought Is Unconscious - New York Times

2006-01-24T09:28:00.000-08:00

A Shocker: Partisan Thought Is Unconscious - New York Times: "Using M.R.I. scanners, neuroscientists have now tracked what happens in the politically partisan brain when it tries to digest damning facts about favored candidates or criticisms of them. The process is almost entirely emotional and unconscious, the researchers report, and there are flares of activity in the brain's pleasure centers when unwelcome information is being rejected."

Apples are good for your brain.

2006-01-24T08:50:00.000-08:00

An apple a day keeps the doctor away -- but the equivalent of 2-4 apples a day helps protect brain cells from oxidizing (in mice anyway) and improves mental performance -- especially in older brains.

Newswise | Age-Related Memory Improvement Linked with Consumption of Apple Products: "Supplementation by apple juice fully protected the aged mice from the oxidative stress caused by the nutrient-deficient diet. In addition, stronger mental acuity resulted when the aged mice consumed the human equivalent of 2-3 cups of apple juice or approximately 2-4 apples per day. “We believe that this effect is due to the apple’s naturally high level of antioxidants,” states Shea. Previous research with his colleagues also determined that it is not the sugar and energy content of the apple juice, but the antioxidant attributes of apple juice that are responsible for the positive effects."

Here's the abstract.

Immune system may also help brain -- Newsday.com

2006-01-24T08:36:00.000-08:00

Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have discovered that the immune system may play a role in stimulating the growth of brain cells. According to the researchers, immune cells called T-lymphocytes can help stimulate the growth of neurons in the brain.

"T-lymphocytes normally enter the brain to patrol for signs of infection. But scientists have discovered that these immune cells recognize a normal brain protein as foreign and mount an immune response by pumping out activated microglia, cells that produce inflammation. These microglia support the birth of new neurons in these brain regions."

Immune system may also help brain -- Newsday.com

Here's the press release:

WEIZMANN INSTITUTE SCIENTISTS SUGGEST THAT IMMUNE CELLS HELP TO MAINTAIN COGNITION AND BRAIN CELL RENEWAL

MRI: Like the Invention of the Telescope

2006-01-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

Technology Review has a feature on brain imaging techniques that could improve the way doctors diagnose and treat psychiatric ailments. Part I is online today: Finding Bipolar Disorder with MRI

Part 2 has some information on MRI spectroscopy, a new technique.

Part 3: Scientists use MRI to detect brain abnormalities in premature infants

The feature looks to be a good overview of MRI and its impact on brain science. Although MRI technology is now about 15 years old, it is only now--with the recent introduction of fMRI--beginning to revolutionize the field. One telling quote:

MRI has become, says Robert Desimone, director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, "the most powerful tool for studying the human brain. I liken it to the invention of the telescope for astronomers." Desimone notes that the arrival of the telescope did not immediately revolutionize the scientific understanding of the universe. That took time, as researchers learned how to use their new tool.