Lifeboat Foundation

In Brief:

This newly developed bionic eye sends images directly to the brain to restore a tiny fraction of the pixels a normal eye can produce.

There are about 285 million people in the world who suffer from some type of visual impairment. For many years, researchers have been looking for ways to restore eyesight. This year, Australian volunteers are set to receive bionic eyes which should help restore their vision.

Continue reading “This Revolutionary Bionic Eye Sends Images Directly To Your Brain” »

Imagine a condition that leaves you fully conscious, but unable to move or communicate, as some victims of severe strokes or other neurological damage experience.

This is locked-in syndrome, when the outward connections from the brain to the rest of the world are severed. Technology is beginning to promise ways of remaking these connections, but is it our ingenuity or the brain’s that is making it happen?

Continue reading “The future of brain and machine is intertwined, and it’s already here” »

For the first time, a new tool developed at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) allows researchers to interactively explore the hierarchical processes that happen in the brain when it is resting or performing tasks. Scientists also hope that the tool can shed some light on how neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s spread throughout the brain.

Created in conjunction with computer scientists at University of California, Davis (UC Davis) and with input from neuroscientists at UC San Francisco (UCSF), the software, called Brain Modulyzer, combines multiple coordinated views of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data — like heat maps, node link diagrams and anatomical views — to provide context for brain connectivity data.

“The tool provides a novel framework of visualization and new interaction techniques that explore the brain connectivity at various hierarchical levels. This method allows researchers to explore multipart observations that have not been looked at before,” says Sugeerth Murugesan, who co-led the development of Brain Modulyzer. He is currently a graduate student researcher at Berkeley Lab and a PhD candidate at UC Davis.

Continue reading “Brain modulyzer provides interactive window into the brain” »

It’s easy to be jealous of how quickly kids can pick up on things. Researchers are investigating ways to help us regain that youthful neural plasticity.

Pitch black darkness and silence may help some people drift off at night, but others fall asleep better with music, TV or a fan on in the room. For the latter group, a white noise machine or app can be a handy bedside companion, but Cambridge Sound Management claims it has a better option with the Nightingale, a new Internet of Things-enabled system that uses two speakers in a room to create a “sound blanket” that is designed to blend into the background and block disruptive sounds.

Devices like the Snooz are designed to sit by the bed while they give off their comforting soundscapes, but according to CSM, when sound is coming from a single source a listener’s brain can pinpoint it, making it less effective at helping people switch off and drift off. To counter this apparent shortcoming, the Nightingale system comes in pairs, and placing them in different parts of the room creates a more uniform blanket of white noise that the brain can’t precisely locate.

Each unit contains two speakers, and when plugged into an outlet – actually two outlets –, outputs ambience from a selection of 15 different types of soundscapes. The company says the layout of the room is taken into account, and the devices will work even when plugged in behind furniture. Electrical outlet real estate is valuable, so the front of each unit contains two more outlets, to replace the ones it’s hogging.

Continue reading “Nightingale Sleep encourages slumber under a white noise ‘sound blanket’” »

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We are living in a world that is global and exponential. Technology is taking things that used to be scarce and making them abundant—and these forces are reshaping the fields of medicine and healthcare in completely novel ways.

Opening this year’s Exponential Medicine conference in San Diego, Daniel Kraft, the curator of the conference, and faculty chair of Medicine and Neuroscience at Singularity University, took the audience on a whirlwind tour of the latest developments in healthcare and medicine.

Continue reading “‘It’s a Powerful Time to Reshape Healthcare Across the Planet’” »

“Suppose you had access to every person’s brain,” asks Dr. Michael Persinger, “and they had access to yours?” Dr. Persinger, cognitive neuroscientist and professor at Laurentian University in Ontario, is convinced that this is not only possible but is immanent in the coming future. Why? How? In short, his pioneering research shows a strong correlation between the Earth’s magnetic field and the human brain.

If Dr. Persinger is correct, the Earth’s magnetic field is constantly interfacing with our own brains in such a manner as to influence our thoughts, emotions and behaviors. This interface, however, seems to have another effect: Dr. Persinger’s research seems to indicate that the geomagnetic field can store and transmit all the information of every human brain in history. And if we can tap into this informational reservoir, there will be no more secrets. In such a scenario, for example, we can know the true intentions of large corporations, regardless of what they may say through the media. We’d be able to feel and experience the pain of starving people in Africa. This is huge! Pay attention and enjoy!

Continue reading “No More Secrets: Scientist Says the Earth’s Magnetic Field will Enable Telepathy on a Global Scale” »

In Brief.

• Every year, more than 795,000 people in the United States have a stroke.
• A team of scientists has discovered a common mechanism chain leading to brain cell death which involves proteins eating away at a cell’s DNA.

A team of scientists has discovered that, despite having varied causes and symptoms, most brain diseases all share a common mechanism chain leading to brain cell death. The process, aptly named parthanatos after an enzyme called PARP and the Greek god of death, involves proteins eating away at the cell’s DNA.