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Archive for the ‘neuroscience’ category: Page 951

Feb 25, 2016

Doctors implant 3D-printed vertebrae in ‘world’s first’ surgery

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, biotech/medical, cyborgs, neuroscience

Just Amazing


Ralph Mobbs, a neurosurgeon at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, made medical history in late 2015 when he successfully replaced two vertebrae with custom made prosthesis. The patient, in his 60s, suffered from Chordoma, a particularly nasty form of cancer that had formed on his top two vertebrae and threatened to cinch off his spinal cord as it grew. That would have left him a quadriplegic. Complicating matters, those top two vertebrae are what allow you to turn and tilt your head, so it’s not like doctors can easily fashion a replacement out of bone grafted from another part of the patient’s body. They have to fit perfectly and that’s where the 3D printers come in.

Mobbs worked with Anatomics, an Australian medical device manufacturer, to craft perfect replicas of the patient’s top two vertebrae out of titanium. This is the first time that these two particular neck bones have been printed and installed. “To be able to get the printed implant that you know will fit perfectly because you’ve already done the operation on a model … It was just a pure delight,” Mobbs told Mashable Australia. “It was as if someone had switched on a light and said ‘crikey, if this isn’t the future, well then I don’t know what is’.”

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Feb 25, 2016

Quantum Algorithms and Their Discontents

Posted by in categories: chemistry, computing, information science, life extension, materials, neuroscience, quantum physics, robotics/AI, security, space

Interesting read; however, the author has limited his view to Quantum being only a computing solution when in fact it is much more. Quantum technology does offer faster processing power & better security; but, Quantum offers us Q-Dots which enables us to enrich medicines & other treatments, improves raw materials including fuels, even vegetation.

For the first time we have a science that cuts across all areas of technology, medical & biology, chemistry, manufacturing, etc. No other science has been able to achieve this like Quantum.

Also, the author in statements around being years off has some truth if we’re suggesting 7 yrs then I agree. However, more than 7 years I don’t agree especially with the results we are seeing in Quantum Networking.

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Feb 24, 2016

Beauty and the brain

Posted by in category: neuroscience

How our brains view beauty is also from heredity.


British neurobiologist Semir Zeki says human brains work alike and we have a shared inheritance in the way we perceive beauty Who do you think is beautiful? Apparently all our votes would more or less go to the same person. Wherever we are from in the world, man or woman, Indian or South American, the way we experience beauty is pretty much the same. Because our brains work similarly, and as humans, we have a shared inheritance. Listening to British neurobiologist Semir Zeki is sure to leave one mesmerised about our understanding of the way our brains work.

Zeki, a frontrunner in the fairly nascent field of neuro-aesthetics, was in Bengaluru recently for the British Council’s lecture series “Science and Beyond”. A professor of neuro-aesthetics at the University College London, Zeki specialises in studying the primate visual brain, neural correlates of the experience of love, desire, beauty, within the field of neuro-aesthetics. In his award-winning study conducted across people of various races and cultures, the question he addressed was ‘What are the neural mechanisms that are engaged when you experience beauty?’. “I have not asked anything about the concept of beauty, the nature of beauty or anything like that. All I can tell you is that when you experience beauty, regardless of the source – whether it is visual, musical or mathematical, its correlated activity is in the same part of the brain.

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Feb 24, 2016

5 Ways Brain-Computer Interfaces Could Change The World — And Us

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, cyborgs, neuroscience

Current experiments with brain-computer interfaces have allowed an amputee to “feel” with his prosthetic hand — what other wonders will we achieve with this technology?

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Feb 24, 2016

Could SKIN CELLS help cure brain tumors?

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Scientists at the University of North Carolina have turned skin cells into cancer-hunting stem cells (in green) that destroy brain tumors (pink) — a discovery that could lead to the first treatment in more than 30 years.

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Feb 24, 2016

These headphones apparently make your brain release happy drugs

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

https://youtube.com/watch?v=IpFbPHwFL1s

Headphone that releases dopamine.


They claim to stimulate dopamine release.

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Feb 22, 2016

This VR Company Helps Soldiers Cope With War Injuries

Posted by in categories: augmented reality, biotech/medical, neuroscience, virtual reality

MindMaze has received $100 million to further medical research and launch a VR gaming system.

For a soldier who has endured an amputation, severe phantom limb pain can be debilitating.

Virtual reality company MindMaze has designed a medical virtual reality, augmented reality, and motion capture video game system that immerses the amputee in a virtual environment, where moving the existing arm will move the non-existing arm of the avatar. Neuroscientist and MindMaze founder and CEO Tej Tadi says this “mirroring” tricks the brain into believing the severed limb is actually there, and has proven benefits in phantom pain management.

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Feb 22, 2016

Terence Mckenna’s ‘cyberdelic’ predictions for Virtual Reality 25 years on

Posted by in categories: computing, cyborgs, life extension, neuroscience, transhumanism, virtual reality

Cannot wait to hear Mckenna’s perspective on BMIs for brain connection to all things digital, and microbots used to extend life as well as bionic body parts.


Famed psychonaut Terence Mckenna envisioned a very radical approach of bridging psychedelics with virtual reality to create a supercharged version of consciousness in which language, or rather the meaning behind what we speak, could be made visual in front of our very eyes.

In Mckenna’s “cyberdelic” future of virtual reality, artists and the revival of art, would be at the forefront of innovation, according to a talk he gave to a German audience in 1991.

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Feb 22, 2016

Virtual reality treatment helps depression patients in study

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience, virtual reality

Here is a concept; “could VR be used to rehabilitate criminals to experience through VR what their victims have experienced?” I do know in the recent 20 yrs a part of rehabilitation has included the criminal facing their victims so that the criminal develops a new level of empathy. However, could VR be a better solution? And, should it be?


LONDON, Feb. 15 (UPI) — Depression patients who interacted with characters in a virtual reality environment were less critical and more compassionate toward themselves, researchers found in a small study in England.

Researchers at University College London found some of the self-directed negativity of people feel in depression can be mitigated through role-playing in virtual reality.

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Feb 22, 2016

Depression Treatment: Virtual Reality A New Therapy To Reduce Depressive Symptoms

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience, virtual reality

People may soon use virtual reality to treat their depression and to be less critical and more compassionate towards themselves, a new study shows. A new virtual reality therapy has effectively reduced depressive symptoms of patients with some reporting significant drop in depression severity.

In the study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry Open, patients claim virtual reality therapy changed their response to real-life situations in which they would previously have been self-critical.

The findings come from the analysis of the effect of the therapy to 15 depression patients, aged 23 to 61. Researchers, from University College London (UCL) and ICREA-University of Barcelona, asked the participants to wear a virtual reality headset to see from the perspective of a life-size “avatar” or virtual body.

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