Archive for the ‘neuroscience’ category: Page 973
Mar 23, 2016
Research Shows That Our Brains Are Ready for Teleportation
Posted by Andreas Matt in category: neuroscience
New research shows that teleportation doesn’t break our brains. In fact, our brains are able to keep up and can even register how fast the teleportation process occurs and how far one travels when they are transported.
Even though we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of teleportation technology, we already have a pretty good idea about how the brain handles the experience of being “beamed” from one place to another. Or at least, we think that we do.
New research indicates that, rather than becoming a confused and sputtering morass as a result of the experience, our brains are able to keep up and can even register how fast the teleportation process occurs and how far one travels when they are transported.
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Mar 23, 2016
My Beautiful Broken Brain — Official Trailer — Netflix [HD]
Posted by Sean Brazell in categories: education, neuroscience
Stunning and beautifully heartfelt documentary of a young woman, stripped of her most cherished abilities, fighting hard to reclaim her life in the face of the indifferent cruelty that defines the natural world.
“A stroke stripped her of the skills she needs to function. This documentary captures the strange new world she inhabits, teeming with color and sound. Only on Netflix March 18th.”
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Mar 23, 2016
DARPA Wants to Hack Your Nervous System to Turn You Into a Super-Spy
Posted by Sean Brazell in categories: cyborgs, encryption, neuroscience
Imagine mastering instruments, learning to tango and becoming fluent in French — in months, weeks, even days. No, it’s not science fiction: A new program by the government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency aims to tweak your nervous system to make you learn better and faster.
The goal of the new DARPA program, called Targeted Neuroplasticity Training, is to stimulate your peripheral nervous system, the network of nerves on the outside of your brain and spinal cord, to facilitate the development of cognitive skills. If it works, TNT could become a faster and cheaper way to train people on foreign languages, intelligence analysis, cryptography and more.
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Mar 23, 2016
Neurons on a chip let drones smell bombs over a kilometer away
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: computing, drones, neuroscience
Neurons still remain the most powerful piece of computation machinery on the face of the planet. More to the point, nobody throws up their hands in despair when a screwdriver removes a flathead screw better than their fingernail can, and yet the parallel is an apt one. The circuitry of the human brain has not been honed by evolution to be especially good at playing the game of Go, any more than evolution has fine-tuned our fingernails for removing screws.
Which is not to say there is no room for surprise in today’s world of rapidly advancing technological achievement. What is more impressive, however, is when computers exhibit greater skill than humans at tasks evolution has been perfecting for millions of years like exercising a sense of smell. And yet such advancements are taking place right beneath our noses, metaphorically speaking.
Continue reading “Neurons on a chip let drones smell bombs over a kilometer away” »
Mar 21, 2016
Resurrection and Biotechnology
Posted by Ira S. Pastor in categories: biotech/medical, disruptive technology, Elon Musk, futurism, human trajectories, neuroscience, posthumanism, Ray Kurzweil, Skynet, transhumanism
“He is not here; He has risen,” — Matthew 28:6
As billions of Christians around the world are getting ready to celebrate the Easter festival and holiday, we take pause to appreciate the awe inspiring phenomena of resurrection.
In religious and mythological contexts, in both Western and Eastern societies, well known and less common names appear, such as Attis, Dionysus, Ganesha, Krishna, Lemminkainen, Odin, Osiris, Persephone, Quetzalcoatl, and Tammuz, all of whom were reborn again in the spark of the divine.
Mar 21, 2016
DNA from Mysterious ‘Denisovans’ Helped Modern Humans Survive
Posted by Sean Brazell in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, neuroscience
Genetic mutations from extinct human relatives called the Denisovans might have influenced modern human immune systems, as well as fat and blood sugar levels, researchers say.
Very little is known about the Denisovans. The first evidence of them was discovered in Denisova Cave in Siberia in 2008, and DNA from their fossils suggests they shared an origin with Neanderthals but were nearly as genetically distinct from Neanderthals as Neanderthals were from modern humans.
Previous work found that any modern humans with ancestry outside of Africa inherited about 1.5 to 2.1 percent of their DNA from Neanderthals. In contrast, prior research suggested that substantial levels of Denisovan ancestry are found only in the Pacific islands of Melanesia. Scientists are increasingly uncovering the effects of Neanderthal ancestry on modern humans, from potential immune boosts to increased risks for depression, obesity, heart attacks, nicotine addiction. However, relatively little was known about the effects of Denisovan ancestry.
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Mar 20, 2016
DARPA using peripheral nerve stimulation to accelerate learning
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, neuroscience
The body’s branching network of peripheral nerves connects neurons in the brain and spinal cord to organs, skin, and muscles, regulating a host of biological functions from digestion to sensation to locomotion. But the peripheral nervous system can do even more than that, which is why DARPA already has research programs underway to harness it for a number of functions—as a substitute for drugs to treat diseases and accelerate healing, for example, as well as to control advanced prosthetic limbs and restore tactile sensation to their users.
Now, pushing those limits further, DARPA aims to enlist the body’s peripheral nerves to achieve something that has long been considered the brain’s domain alone: facilitating learning. The effort will turn on its head the usual notion that the brain tells the peripheral nervous system what to do.
The new program, Targeted Neuroplasticity Training (TNT), seeks to advance the pace and effectiveness of a specific kind of learning—cognitive skills training—through the precise activation of peripheral nerves that can in turn promote and strengthen neuronal connections in the brain. TNT will pursue development of a platform technology to enhance learning of a wide range of cognitive skills, with a goal of reducing the cost and duration of the Defense Department’s extensive training regimen, while improving outcomes. If successful, TNT could accelerate learning and reduce the time needed to train foreign language specialists, intelligence analysts, cryptographers, and others.
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