Recent News
- Found: Another molecule needed at the origin of life
- For real: A new way to produce electricity
- New: Single molecule sensor array
- Finally(?)…artificially making blood stem cells in quantity
- Update: Chinese space station
- Looking at the strange face of antimatter
- Life on Mars, if it exists, is below the surface
- A different kind of lens for time
- Oh please, “skinput”
- Update: More Moon water
- Cutting cancer cell immortality short
- First time: Watching the unfolding story of proteins in living cells
- Newly named: Copernicum (element 112)
- Making jet fuel from biomass
- Nanobubbles are really slick
Tag Archives: neuroscience
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 brain, memory, molecular biology, neurons, protein, Rac Leave a comment
New links in neuron impulse generation
Neurons in the brain have complicated electrical systems. In fact, a study by the University of Calgary Hotchkiss Brain Institute, Faculty of Medicine (Canada) has cleared up an important misconception about the way neurons generate signals. Ion channels are used by cells to manage the (minute) difference in electrical charge between the inside and the [...]
Posted in News: Neuroscience Also tagged A-type, cerebellum, electrochemical gradient, ion channels, neuron, synapse, T-type Leave a comment
It’s not a ‘stream’ of consciousness…
In song and story the mind works as a stream of consciousness. Maybe not. Maybe it’s like a film, 24 frames per second but we perceive it as a continuous stream? Maybe it’s something else…like waves perhaps? Or, according to a recently published study from the University of Illinois (USA), at least the visual function [...]
Posted in News: Neuroscience Also tagged cognition, entrainment, perception, stream of consciousness Leave a comment
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 [...]
The Mind Machine Project
Here’s a rant, for your delectation, or distaste:
This month (Jan. 2010) MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. USA) kicks off a five year, five-million dollar (at least) research orgy called the Mind Machine Project (MMP). Machine Mind = Artificial intelligence (AI). Now there’s a concept. Oh wait. We tried that, what? Fifty years ago? [...]
Posted in Spun Also tagged AI, artificial intelligence, Mind Machine Project, supercomputing Leave a comment
Update: IBM Cortical Simulator
For an excellent critical take on the IBM Cortical Simulator achieving ‘the intelligence of a cat’, read Jonah Lehrer’s Blog. Essential Quote:
In the coming years, there will be many grand announcements about supercomputers that attempt to imitate the machinery inside the skull. One way to distinguish between such claims is to look at their cellular [...]
Posted in Impact: Neuro-intelligence Also tagged brain simulation, cortical simulator, IBM, neurons Leave a comment
Two (neuro)memory bits
Here are two bits of news, just announced via press release, about research into the function of memory (human or otherwise).
What a wonderful neurological amalgam is a brain. It seems that whenever science tries to understand the brain with the technique of compartmentalization (part of the process of reductionism), as often as not further research [...]
Posted in Impact: Neuro-memory Also tagged hippocampus, long-term memory, memory, memory erasure, reductionism, short-term memory Leave a comment
It’s a team: Robot brain model and rat recordings
There may be a long way to go before development of an android brain (robotic-human), but the pathways leading there are interesting. The latest announced example is the use of simulated robotic brain model (dubbed “Carl”), based on recordings of rat brain patterns, which will be used to study how the human brain reacts to [...]
Posted in News: General Robotics Also tagged brain model, decision making, rats, robotics Leave a comment
More than a prosthetic, it’s SmartHand
The idea behind most prosthetics is to ‘fill the gap’ of missing limbs – hands, arms, legs, feet. In many cases there is some kind of mechanical articulation. In a few cases there is connection to existing musculature. However research in bioengineering and the ability to do ever more sophisticated procedures involving nerves and muscles [...]
Posted in News: Synthetic Organs Also tagged bioengineering, muscles, nerves, prosthetic hand, synthetic organs Leave a comment
Nano-coating for better neuro-implants
One of the key difficulties with all bio-implants is rejection by the body. Traditionally, rejection had to be fought with relatively powerful immuno-suppressant drugs that tended to have severe side-effects. A lot of effort has gone into finding less problematic ways of reducing rejection, and this new study using nanotechnology is promising:
The new brain implants [...]
Posted in News: Nano-medicine Also tagged biochemistry, implants, nanotechnology, nanotubes Leave a comment
Learning over time better than cramming
We are just beginning to learn how memory works at the molecular and genetic level. Observations about how memory works are now acquiring fundamental explanations. For example:
A new study from the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (The Neuro) of McGill University reveals that different patterns of training and learning lead to different types of [...]
Give memory a rest
It’s been known for some time that there’s a correlation between sleep, rest, and memory. For example, it’s been shown that people who take naps while studying retain more information. A new study from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and a team lead by Professor Yi Zhong has revealed a biochemical and genetic basis for this [...]
Posted in News: Neuro-memory Also tagged biochemistry, genes, memory, Noonan's disease Leave a comment
Reading the brain for motor control – without implants