May 3, 2010 by sean.

A couple notworthy posts from Wired’s Danger Room:

Military Wants to Super-Charge Troop Smarts

The Pentagon’s been trying to get ahead of the curve on neuroscience for years, toying with ideas like mind-reading whether people are lying and performance-degrading drugs for enemy combatants. Now, it’s launching a major effort to harness neuroscience in a way that might better prepare soldiers for the mental rigors of modern warfare.

In a series of small business solicitations released last week, the Office of the Secretary of Defense outlined plans for a new “Cognitive Readiness Technology” program with the aim of “making our warfighters as cognitively strong as they are physically strong.”[more]

Pentagon Scientists Inject Necks to ‘Cure’ PTSD

Finding an effective treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder has been a top Pentagon priority for years. And with an estimated one in five veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from PTSD, the military’s been willing to consider anything and everything, including yoga, dog therapy and acupuncture, to alleviate symptoms.

But a small new study out of Walter Reed Army Medical Center might offer more than temporary relief — with nothing more than a quick jab to the neck. [more]

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October 8, 2009 by sean.

Posted in games and simulations, neuroscience, bionics, augmented cognition | 1 Comment »

October 7, 2009 by sean.

Mobilizy, the company from Salzburg, that brought us one of the world’s first Augmented Reality browsers, Wikitude, just released a major upgrade which crosses that significant line between technology and its effects in the ‘real’ world. Their idea was to build a virtual memorial in remembrance of the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. and the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City. The result will be the ability to point their Android and iPhone application at the place where the World Trade Center once stood and witness a 3D rendering of the Twin Towers, once more. [via TechCrunch]

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September 24, 2009 by sean.

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September 5, 2009 by sean.

Augmented Reality layers data on physical space to enhance our ability to see richness that is there but often hidden. Applications for marketing, gaming, education and entertainment are obvious. But can AR help us improve the planet as well? [via Mariamz]:

We move faster and faster in our cyber age, all knowing, ever-connected, always-on. Augmented reality beckons: the devices in our pockets become more powerful and our ability to connect digitally everywhere excites and exhilarates whilst pushing the odd few over the edge into internet rehab. Yet something else is happening scarily fast, something only the most obstinate dare deny.

Posted in innovation, science, pervasive computing, augmented cognition, mobile computing | 1 Comment »

September 5, 2009 by sean.

Another step closer to the bionic brain [via ScienceDaily]:

A model that replicates the functions of the human brain is feasible in 10 years according to neuroscientist Professor Henry Markram of the Brain Mind Institute in Switzerland. “I absolutely believe it is technically and biologically possible. The only uncertainty is financial. It is an extremely expensive project and not all is yet secured.”

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August 29, 2009 by sean.

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August 18, 2009 by sean.

A virtual hand to guide you to your next purchase…

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August 5, 2009 by sean.

Locative Art / Augmented Reality applications which “overlay textual information and pictures over a real-world view of your surroundings” are coming to the iPhone [via geeks. co.uk]:

A new Twitter client makes eye-popping use of the technology and though it uses several parts of the 3GS development system that haven’t “officially” been unlocked by Apple yet, iPhone app TwittAround can’t really be described in words as adequately as it can in this amazing demonstration video. Take a look:

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July 19, 2009 by sean.

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April 20, 2009 by sean.

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March 4, 2009 by sean.

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February 19, 2009 by sean.

“In a study published online today in Nature, researchers at Vanderbilt University report that from fMRI data alone, they could distinguish which of two images subjects were holding in their memory–even several seconds after the images were removed. The study also pinpointed, for the first time, where in the brain visual working memory is maintained.” [via Technology Review]

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February 5, 2009 by sean.

One word: wow! [via wired]:

Pattie Maes of the MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces group demonstrated a wearable computing system that turns any surface into a display screen, becoming a kind of “sixth sense” for the user. The prototype involves an ordinary web cam and battery-powered 3M projector with an attached mirror that are all connected to an internet-enabled mobile phone. The set-up, which costs less than $350, allows the user to project information from the phone onto any surface — walls, the body of another person or even your hand.

Maes showed a video of her student Pranav Mistry who she describes as the genius behind the project. Mistry wore the device on a lanyard around his neck, along with colored Magic Marker caps on four fingers, each one red, blue, green or yellow to allow the camera to distinguish the four fingers. The caps help the camera recognize his hand gestures with software that Mistry created. The gestures can be something as simple as using his fingers and thumbs to create a picture frame that tells the camera to snap a photo, which is saved to his mobile phone. When he gets back to an office, he projects the images onto a wall and begins to size them.

When he encounters someone at a party, the system calls up information about him and projects a cloud of words on the person’s body to help him remember the person or provide more information about him, such as his blog URL, the name of his company, his likes and interests. “This is a more controversial [feature],” Maes said over the audience’s laughter.

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December 18, 2008 by sean.

Interesting–yet polemical–article on scientists who advocate use of “cognitive-enhancing drugs” [via mercatornet]:

Nature conducted an informal survey earlier this year which found that about one in five scientists was using them for help in concentrating or memorising. Although most did not use stimulants, 80 percent defended the right to use them.

Dr Campbell and his colleagues calmly counter and dismiss the obvious objections to their zany proposal: that these drugs are not safe, that parents will force feed their children, that peer pressure will compel people to use them, that poor people can’t afford them and so on. Like all new technologies, cognitive enhancement can be used well or poorly. We should welcome new methods of improving our brain function, they explain.

Even though a couple of the authors have links to pharmaceutical companies, their ultimate goal is not making money by marketing a Viagra for the brain. Some of the enhancements they propose are not drugs at all, but other new technologies like brain stimulation and prosthetic brain chips. Rather, it is to promote the notion of human enhancement, or as it is sometimes called, transhumanism. One of the article’s co-authors is a British transhumanist, John Harris, who seems to have been anointed as Nature’s house ideologue. A sign of the increasing credibility of this idea is that he was described recently by the London Times as one of the “top fifty people who influence the way we eat, exercise and think about ourselves” and one of the world’s top three bioethicists.

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December 1, 2008 by sean.

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November 27, 2008 by sean.

Voice navigation takes a step forward with the new Google iPhone app:

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November 25, 2008 by sean.

The Bionic Brain slides from the DevLearn 2008 conference are now available on patternhunter.com.

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November 16, 2008 by sean.

Scientists [and others] debate the value and results of “brain training” games [via Times Online]:

Susanne Jaeggi, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, may be able to help. She has devised a brain-training game that actually works. It’s a strange, complex game involving sequences of squares on a computer screen, and it definitely improves “fluid intelligence” — the part of your mind that deals directly with the raw newness of experience or, as defined by Jaeggi, “the ability to reason and to solve new problems independently of previously acquired knowledge”.

And there is some evidence that the games in MindFit (mindweavers.com ) do work. Baroness (Susan) Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution, says it does. Short-term memory and basic reaction time are said to be improved by 20 minutes’ play three times a week.

The brain is not, as the brain trainers like to say, a muscle. It is a 1.3-kilogram crème caramel-like mix of fat, water and proteins driven by electricity and chemicals called neurotransmitters. As far as we know, it is, unless it belongs to Kerry Katona, the most complex thing in the universe. It’s made to last, at best, about 100 years. It shrinks and deteriorates with age. By the time you’re 30 you’re probably past your intellectual peak. This is a problem, as we’re living longer and longer, and the danger is that we’ll just get stupider and stupider.

…while others are asking, Is Google making us stupid? [via searchengineland]:

Remapping neural circuitry? Reprogramming the memory! One gets the picture of a gremlin armed with wire cutters and a chain saw, having their way with our cortex. But the fact is, “remapping” and “reprogramming” happens every day. If it didn’t, you’d never remember your phone number or where you lived. The forging of new neural connections and the pruning of old ones are the basic functions of our brains. It’s how our brain works.

But the UCLA findings might indicate something more permanent, something related to the recent discovery that neuroplasticity, once thought to only be present in the very young, is now known to be a property of our brains throughout our lives. By the way, Small’s other work does show a significant divide between the online skills of the young (Digital Natives) and older generations (Digital Immigrants).

First of all, let’s understand how we learn. Learning involves creating new neuronal firing paths. Basically, as we learn we increase the potential of neurons responsible for storing the new knowledge to fire together. Donald Hebbs called it “fire together, wire together”. Each time the network of neurons fires, the potential to fire again is increased. That’s why things get easier, the more we do them.

Speaking of Dr. Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and author of iBrain, he and his colleagues [via UCLA Newsroom]…

have found that for computer-savvy middle-aged and older adults, searching the Internet triggers key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning. The findings demonstrate that Web search activity may help stimulate and possibly improve brain function…

“The study results are encouraging, that emerging computerized technologies may have physiological effects and potential benefits for middle-aged and older adults,” said principal investigator Dr. Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA who holds UCLA’s Parlow-Solomon Chair on Aging. “Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function.”

And with all of this neuro-enhancement going on, others are learning more about how the brain sleeps [via Scientific American]:

If you’re too tired to think straight, it might be because parts of your brain are already asleep at the wheel. A team of neuroscientists from Washington State University is challenging the belief that a specific region of the brain makes the call to hit the sack. Instead, our brains power down in stages, the researchers say. If a certain group of cells in our brain gets fatigued, it simply shuts off. Surrounding areas respond in kind and also begin to doze. Once a critical mass of gray matter reaches this point, our brain calls it a day. The research will appear in the December issue of the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

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October 30, 2008 by sean.

Steven Levy explores Augmented Reality and the Mirror World [via wired]:

[T]he iPhone’s multitouch interface shows the way to harness the Web’s annotations to our physical reality — information about every nail salon, every cul-de-sac, and every person has piled up in what computer scientist David Gelernter calls a “mirror world.” Apple cracked the code that previously made it difficult for mobile users to access this data-rich alternate stratum. (Microsoft hopes to match Apple on this front as its own Surface multitouch technology spreads across tables, plasma screens, and mobile devices.)

We once talked about cyberspace as a distant cosmos, a digital outland that left the physical world behind. An iconic representation of it appeared in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, in which a pizza-delivery guy was the hero of an artificial world known as the Metaverse. This year, breakthroughs like the Wii, Guitar Hero, and the iPhone showed that 21st-century reality is a blend of the digital and physical, with a borderline so blurred it’s not really a line at all.

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July 20, 2008 by sean.

“iTunes allows researchers (radiologists) to save, sort and search personal learning files -augmented intelligence” [via SmartEconomy].

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June 29, 2008 by sean.

Yet another sign that the bionic brain will be in the cloud [via 43 Folders]:

Using your location, OmniFocus can create a custom list of actions to complete nearby. Buying groceries? OmniFocus can show you the closest grocery store and create an instant shopping list.

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June 22, 2008 by sean.

1) What technology advances should small businesses and individual households be taking advantage of and what is the payback to them?

Twenty years ago, there was a lot of hype about Virtual Reality where you could put on a helmet and gloves to “jack in” to cyberspace and navigate virtual worlds. All of that seems quaint if not silly now in a world where always-on access to the internet is taken for granted, especially by people under 40.

High-speed internet and free wifi will increasingly become entry-level requirements to just play in the retail game [unless your core value proposition is to provide a technology-free retreat from the digital world]. Employees will seek options to work from anywhere [not just from home] and commitments to careers within a small business will likely be tenuous given the increasing range of options available. Employers will need to explore options such as eLance [think eBay for contractors] where other companies [including many outside the US] bid for work while displaying satisfaction ratings by employers and even the earnings from previous contracts.

2) How will technology shape small businesses and households five to ten years into the future?

The next five to ten years are arguably headed in the direction of “EOD” [Everything On Demand]. Want to watch your favorite television show? Hit a button and start now. Want a tailored suit with your own custom pattern? Sure, as long as I can take it home today. Want a great meal? Let me order it and have it ready when I hit the door [and don’t expect me to wait to be seated]. Oh, and let me do all of this connected to your free wifi hotspot from my mobile device!

As consumer demands expand and patience approaches zero, many people are willing to pay a premium to minimize any fuss with payments, forms and security [witness the success of the Clear program where people pay $128 a year to avoid those airport checkpoints]. Alternative methods of payment such as PayPal, eBilMe, Bill Me Later and Revolution Money Exchange are paving the way for customers paying in a ways that best suite their needs.

3) What technology trends keep you up at night that should also concern small businesses and households?

One of the most powerful emerging technology trends with the potential for changing the game of business is what many [including Entrepreneur Magazine] are calling “Marketing in the Recommendation Age.” As consumers turn away from traditional advertising and more to the web for help in deciding what products to buy and what companies to trust, businesses both small and large have less control over their brands. Sites such as Amazon, YouTube and eBay have built there success upon peer ratings of quality. And remember that criticism and scandals tend to rise more quickly to the top of Web 2.0 rankings [even if they are not true!] because they make better stories.

Not all of this will be confined to the web as we know it today. Imagine driving in your car and asking your GPS to find the highest-rated Italian restaurants within a five mile radius? Oh, and which ones have the shortest wait? The day is coming and soon!

Instead of trying to control the messages about your business, now is the time to start thinking about encouraging your best customers to be extensions of your brand, to help spread the word and advocate for you because it is in their best interest to do so. People who make excellent recommendation to their friends, family and peers earn their own version of points in the social network. Few people worry about recommending Apple products; Hotmail spread like wildfire by adding a “Want a free email account?” link at the bottom of everyone’s messages. Other successful small businesses leverage their stories to niche groups.

For example, Koyono, a small business based in Ohio, sells premium technology-friendly products to a niche audience of professionals who are fed up with clutter and want to adopt a minimalist, yet fashionable lifestyle.

One question for small business people is, “How do I make it easier for my customers to spread a good story about us?”

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April 22, 2008 by sean.

Wired explores a different Wozniak:

Twenty years ago, Wozniak realized that computers could easily calculate the moment of forgetting if he could discover the right algorithm. SuperMemo is the result of his research. It predicts the future state of a person’s memory and schedules information reviews at the optimal time. The effect is striking. Users can seal huge quantities of vocabulary into their brains. But for Wozniak, 46, helping people learn a foreign language fast is just the tiniest part of his goal. As we plan the days, weeks, even years of our lives, he would have us rely not merely on our traditional sources of self-knowledge — introspection, intuition, and conscious thought — but also on something new: predictions about ourselves encoded in machines.

Given the chance to observe our behaviors, computers can run simulations, modeling different versions of our path through the world. By tuning these models for top performance, computers will give us rules to live by. They will be able to tell us when to wake, sleep, learn, and exercise; they will cue us to remember what we’ve read, help us track whom we’ve met, and remind us of our goals. Computers, in Wozniak’s scheme, will increase our intellectual capacity and enhance our rational self-control.

Posted in neuroscience, learning theory, augmented cognition | No Comments »

March 13, 2008 by sean.

This article from MyTechNews suggest the Bionic Brain may be a nanobot brain:

A tiny chemical “brain” has been invented by Scientists at the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan. With a size of two nanometers, the molecular device is capable of controlling eight of the microscopic nanobot machines simultaneously.

Posted in neuroscience, bionics, augmented cognition | 1 Comment »

March 13, 2008 by sean.

Reuters on the Brain Fitness Industry:

The size of the U.S. market for brain stimulation products — which can range from games such as Nintendo Co Ltd’s Brain Age to programs backed by research showing they can improve memory or other cognitive functions — more than doubled between 2005 and 2007 to $225 million, according to a new report by the consulting group SharpBrains.

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February 27, 2008 by sean.

I saw this a while ago and, until talking with a friend of mine over lunch, forgot how truly amazing it is…

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February 21, 2008 by sean.

Daniel Terdiman of CNET writes about the new Emotiv “headset that seems a little like the one from the James Cameron-written 1995 film, Strange Days, complete with a set of sensors that are built to read your brain waves.

The software then is designed to interpret those brain waves in such a way as to allow users to manipulate objects onscreen with nothing but their mind.

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November 19, 2007 by sean.

Migatti, PARC’s artificial intelligence software for mobile devices, could soon be data-mining your life:

(R)esearchers at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)… have developed software that turns a phone into a thoughtful personal assistant, one that helps people find fun things to do. The software, called Magitti, uses a combination of cues–including the time of day, a person’s location, her past behaviors, and even her text messages–to infer her interests. It then shows a helpful list of suggestions, including concerts, movies, bookstores, and restaurants [via Technology Review]

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October 16, 2007 by sean.

Clive Thompson investigates the science behind Cory Doctorow’s fiction:

This summer, neuroscientist Ian Robertson polled 3,000 people and found that the younger ones were less able than their elders to recall standard personal info. When Robertson asked his subjects to tell them a relative’s birth date, 87 percent of respondents over age 50 could recite it, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so. And when he asked them their own phone number, fully one-third of the youngsters drew a blank. They had to whip out their handsets to look it up. [via Wired]

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October 14, 2007 by sean.

I recently created a YouTube playlist re: Augmented Reality content including some amazing material from Total Immersion:

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October 14, 2007 by sean.

Lifehack.org claims that Your [Un-augmented] Brain is Not Your Friend:

A mind is a terrible thing. Whether because of the brain’s internal structure or the way social and cultural pressures cause our minds to develop and function, in the end the result is the same: minds that are not only easily deceived and frequently deceptive in their own right, but when caught out, refuse to accept and address their errors. If you have a mind — or even half a mind — you might be best off losing it entirely. Barring that, though, there are a few things you should know about the enemy in your head. Before it hurts someone.

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October 14, 2007 by sean.

Some recent developments in the area of human-computer interface promise control of software [including game avatars, soundtracks, and more] via thoughts and emotional responses rather than keyboards or joysticks.

• In Second Life Gets Brain Controls a “brain computer interface” is described that has been developed to allow a person to control their own avatar in Second Life via thought. [via Smart Mobs and Pink Tentacle]
• Emotiv Systems, an electronic-game company from San Francisco, wants people to play with the power of the mind. Starting tomorrow, video-game makers will be able to buy Emotiv’s electro-encephalograph (EEG) caps and software developer’s tool kits so that they can build games that use the electrical signals from a player’s brain to control the on-screen action… S.M.A.R.T. BrainGames, a company based in San Marcos, CA, sells games and EEG caps designed to treat people with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. [via Technology Review]

If you can’t wait for a technology-based solution for improving your brain, you can start with the low tech methods to Get Smart: How to Boost your IQ by 10 points, including:

10. Sit up straight, and close your mouth: Good posture affects our state of mind, and helps us to think more clearly. Wanna prove it to yourself? Try solving some math in your head while slouching, looking at the floor and letting your mouth hang open. Then do the mental math while sitting up straight, keeping your mouth closed and looking forward or slightly upwards. You’ll get the point.

14. Make connections: To grow longer dendrites, do something new. Try learning a new language or developing a skill such as drawing, and you’ll see instant changes in how you think.

20. Graze: To give your brain a steady supply of energy and minerals, eat little and often. Eating large meals shunts blood to your digestive tract, away from your brain.

25. Make friends: Preferably ones with large amounts of frizzy grey hair. Recent research showed that hanging out with boffins can boost your IQ by up to 10 percent.

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September 6, 2007 by sean.

“The Department of Defense’s “Augmented Cognition” video is supposed to represent a plausible scenario for a human-computer interface that uses EEG and other technologies to figure out what to feed to operators, allowing teams to do fast analysis of giant amounts of data.” [via boingboing]

Here’s the video (caution: the movie is 93MB!): Augmented Cognition International Society

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