Archive for the ‘neuroscience’ category: Page 395
Sep 14, 2015
You’re not irrational, you’re just quantum probabilistic: Researchers explain human decision-making with physics theory
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: neuroscience, quantum physics
The next time someone accuses you of making an irrational decision, just explain that you’re obeying the laws of quantum physics.
A new trend taking shape in psychological science not only uses quantum physics to explain humans’ (sometimes) paradoxical thinking, but may also help researchers resolve certain contradictions among the results of previous psychological studies.
According to Zheng Joyce Wang and others who try to model our decision-making processes mathematically, the equations and axioms that most closely match human behavior may be ones that are rooted in quantum physics.
Sep 14, 2015
Scientists Hope To Resurrect A Dead Girl Who Wanted To Live Inside A Computer
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: computing, life extension, neuroscience
Kim Suozzi died at age 23 from glioblastoma — a deadly brain tumour.
When she died in 2013, she made sure her fight for survival, albeit an unusual one, would not be forgotten.
She wanted to live forever through a computer and chose to have her brain frozen in the hopes that it may one day be resurrected and transformed into digital code.
Sep 14, 2015
Paralyzed Man Successfully Given Prosthetic Hand That Can ‘Feel’
Posted by Bryan Gatton in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, electronics, neuroscience
A 28 year old man who has been paralysed has been given a new sense of touch following a new breakthrough that saw electrodes places directly into the man’s brain.
The research and clinical trial has been carried out by DARPA, the US Military’s research agency. Essentially, the man (who has not been named) is now able to control his new hand and feel people touching it because of two sets of electrodes: one array on the motor cortex, the part of the brain which directs body movement, and one on the sensory cortex, which is the part of the brain which feels touch.
Sep 13, 2015
Changing behavior through synaptic engineering
Posted by Aleksandar Vukovic in categories: biotech/medical, engineering, neuroscience
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School are the first to show that it’s possible to reverse the behavior of an animal by flipping a switch in neuronal communication. The research, published in PLOS Biology, provides a new approach for studying the neural circuits that govern behavior and has important implications for how scientists think about neural connectomes.
New technologies have fueled the quest to map all the neural connections in the brain to understand how these networks processes information and control behavior. The human brain consists of 1011 neurons that make 1015 connections. The total length of neuronal processes in the human brain is approximately 4 million miles long, similar in length to the total number of roads in the U.S. Along these networks neurons communicate with each other through excitatory and inhibitory synapses that turn neurons on or off.
The neuronal roadmap, or connectome, however, doesn’t include information about the activity of neurons or the signals they transmit. How stable are these neural circuits in the brain? Does their wiring constrain the flow of information or the behaviors they control? The complexity of the human brain makes it almost impossible to address these questions.
Sep 13, 2015
A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future
Posted by Aleksandar Vukovic in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience
Cancer claimed Kim Suozzi at age 23, but she chose to have her brain preserved with the dream that neuroscience might one day revive her mind.
By AMY HARMON SEPT. 12, 2015.
Sep 12, 2015
This mind-controlled prosthetic robot arm lets you actually feel what it touches
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, electronics, neuroscience, robotics/AI
The US government said today (Sept. 11) that it’s successfully made a Luke Skywalker-like prosthetic arm that allows the wearer to actually feel things.
At a conference in July, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) presented the achievements it’d had to date in building a robot arm that can be controlled by a human brain. A little over two months later, the agency has announced at another conference that it’s managed to update the technology to give the wearer the feeling of actually being able to sense things with the arm.
Sep 11, 2015
The First Human Head Transplant Will Take Place in 2017
Posted by Albert Sanchez in categories: biotech/medical, computing, genetics, neuroscience
Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero grabbed the world’s attention this past winter when he announced his plans to perform the first human head transplant. Many doubted that such an outrageous procedure would ever see the light of day. Now, Canavero has a date on the books.
Thirty-year-old Russian computer scientist Valery Spiridonov is set to become the world’s first head transplant patient in December 2017. Spiridonov suffers from a rare genetic muscle-wasting condition known as Werdnig-Hoffmann disease. There’s currently no known treatment.
As you might not want to imagine, the procedure will be filled with challenges and uncertainties. There’s the hair-raising possibility that the head will reject the body or vice versa. The spinal cord might not fuse properly. Even if everything goes well, there’s no telling whether Spiridonov’s mental capacities or personality will remain the same. He’s embarking on totally uncharted medical territory.
Sep 11, 2015
Will Scientists Ever Solve the Mystery of Consciousness?
Posted by Sean Brazell in categories: evolution, neuroscience
We still have no idea how the brain produces conscious awareness. In this excellent short video produced by The Economist, various experts are called upon to explain the “hard problem” that is consciousness, and how scientists might solve this profound mystery.
For the video, The Economist gathered together an impressive collection of philosophers and scientists, including David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, Christof Koch, Janet Metcalfe, and Marcus Raichle. Topics discussed include the evolution of consciousness, the binding problem, and theory of mind.
Continue reading “Will Scientists Ever Solve the Mystery of Consciousness?” »
Sep 11, 2015
The 5 common traits of negligibly senescent species
Posted by Valentina Lencautan in categories: biotech/medical, food, life extension, neuroscience
The biology of aging is traditionally studied in fast-living organisms such as mice, worms and fruit flies. Short-lived species certainly have a role to play in this field, but they are only the tip of the iceberg.
Within the natural ecosystem, organisms display a range of aging processes, most often accelerated aging, or gradual aging (in the case of humans), but also, a range of species with slow or even negligible aging, which is known as negligible senescence. Unlike humans, such species have a constant mortality rate for the duration of their lifespan, as well as a constant or even increasing fertility rate. The number of negligibly senescent species which we are currently aware of is likely to grow as more and more are studied and discovered, both in the wild and in the lab.
By studying the processes which give these creatures longer lifespans, there is the possibility that they could be recreated in humans in order to extend our own. How negligible senescence is achieved by each individual species varies, but here are five of the most common traits.
