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Tag Archives: brain
Ephaptic coupling: Could be how brains coordinate
I love it when scientists say things like this: “I firmly believe that understanding the origin and functionality of endogenous brain fields will lead to several revelations regarding information processing at the circuit level, which, in my opinion, is the level at which percepts and concepts arise,” Anastassiou says. “This, in turn, will lead us [...]
Posted in Impact: Neuroscience Also tagged biophysics, consciousness, electric field, endogenous, ephaptic coupling, neuron, neuroscience, spike field, synapse, thought 3 Comments
Wearable robotics: Adding proprioception
It’s a big word, proprioception. Think of it as sensory feedback. Your body provides this feedback continuously as you move. If you move your arm, the nerves in muscles and joints send a stream of positioning information, telling your brain about the position of the arm. Proprioception makes it possible for you to move your [...]
Posted in News: Neuroscience Also tagged ALS, exoskeleton, feedback loop, mind-machine interface, motor cortex, proprioception, robot arm, wearable robotics 1 Comment
Neuroscience: The brain’s got rhythm
Much of neuroscience, the study of the brain, is in the business of deconstruction – of reducing the brain into ever smaller parts: Regions, neurons, neural chemistry, molecular biology. This is vital research and a typical main path for many sciences. However, it’s not the only path. Another one leads in the other direction – [...]
Posted in News: Neuroscience Also tagged cell assemblies, coordination, cortical rhythms, neural integration, neuroscience, oscillatory phase coupling 1 Comment
The animal brain replays memories to map its environment
“The point of the cognitive map is flexibility. It gives animals the ability to plan novel paths within their environment,” said Redish [A. David Redish, University of Minnesota Medical School, USA]. “This replay process may be an animal’s way of learning how the world is interconnected, so it can plan new routes or paths.” [Source: [...]
Posted in News: Neuroscience Also tagged cognition, cognitive map, hippocampus, memory, neurons, replay Leave a comment
Brain memory is actively cleared
We forget, a lot. It’s always been assumed that we forget either because new information is coming in and ‘overwrites’ (replaces) older memories, or because memory just sort of degrades. There’s some kind of selection at work, of course, because some things we forget more readily than others. A new study by a team from [...]
Posted in News: Neuroscience Also tagged memory, molecular biology, neurons, neuroscience, protein, Rac Leave a comment
Update: fMRI reveals conscious activity in vegetative brains
Scanning brains for medical reasons is commonplace. “Dr. House” does it, all the time. However, scanning brains for communications…that may be something else. What else? SciTechStory covered the news of a European study, in which one patient in a vegetative state (clinically unconscious) communicated with the research team by thinking of specific activities, which were [...]
Prions bad. Prion shaping good – for memory
Understanding how memory in the brain works remains one of the most difficult and insight-resistant issues in neuroscience. Also, like most things about the brain (human brains, any brains), the more we look, the more complex it becomes. The research by a team from Kansas and New York (USA) on prion-like proteins is a good [...]
Posted in News: Proteomics Also tagged CPEB, memory, neuroscience, prions, proteins, virus Leave a comment
Brain cancer genome sequenced
The cost of sequencing a human genome has come down, way down; and the value of doing it is going up. Here’s a very good example: scientists at the University of California Los Angeles (USA) recently completed the sequencing of the DNA from a type of brain cancer cell line, a glioblastoma known as U87. [...]
Posted in News: Major Disease Cure Also tagged cancer, DNA, GBM, genetic, genome, glioblastoma, U87 Leave a comment
Stem cells to neurons to live transplant
You know stem cell research is gaining on practical applications when it can go from Petri dish to the in vitro environment. In this case, scientists at Stanford Medical School (California, USA) started with embryonic stem cells. These undifferentiated cells were cultivated in a Petri dish to exhibit initial characteristics of cortical (brain) neuron cells [...]
A coordinate system in the brain
In 2005 the Norwegians found them in rats. Now, in 2009, they were found in humans. ‘They’ – are location memory cells in the brain. They appear to be specialized neurons that work in some coordinated fashion. It’s something like having a coordinate system hard-wired into the brain, so as you move about the environment, [...]
Also tracking: Science and tech disappointments
Turning the year to a new decade is bound to produce a wide variety of retrospectives. Lists are always popular. I came across an interesting list the other day at the Scientific American site: 10 Science Letdowns of the New Millennium by Katherine Harmon. The original is presented as a slide show. Why, I’m not [...]
Posted in Impact: General Also tagged alternative energy, anti-science, cancer, cars, climate change, electric cars, evolution, exobiology, genetics, global warming, HIV, neurology, paleontology, power grid, science, space, technology 1 Comment
IBM Cortical Simulator – more brain than a cat
Modeling brain function with a supercomputer is an ongoing scientific project, now spanning decades. Of course, as the computers become increasingly powerful, the results begin to look more realistic – and that creates a paradox…
Posted in News: Computer Power Also tagged brain function, computer power, cortical simulator, IBM Leave a comment
The visual cortex can learn to do speech and language