July 13, 2010 by sean.

Texas researchers grow new brain cells with experimental Alzheimer’s drug [via Reuters and YahooNews]:

The researchers’ work, done on rodents, builds on findings that all mammals, including humans, make brain cells throughout their lives. Most of these die, but this drug helps more of the baby cells survive and grow to become functioning brain cells.

“We make new neurons every day in our brain,” Andrew Pieper of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview. “What our compound does in allow more of them to survive.”

The compound is called P7C3 for now, and the researchers have already started tweaking it to make it more effective. They said it seems safe and appears to work even when taken as a pill.

Posted in science, neuroscience, learning theory | No Comments »

May 6, 2010 by sean.

Researchers from University College London have developed a digital tool that allows people to attach memories to objects in the form of text, audio or video [via PhyOrg]:

Posted in innovation, science, software, collective intelligence | 1 Comment »

April 9, 2010 by sean.

University of Oxford scientists look for biological roots of religion:

“There is a lot of evidence that religious beliefs flow very naturally from the way the mind is designed,” Dr. Shackelford says. It has long been believed, he says, that atheism is a harder position to maintain because it goes against the natural instinct to want to attach some kind of meaning to phenomena we can’t explain. “Perhaps religion is natural, but not inevitable.” [via GlobeAndMail.com]

Posted in psychology, science, neuroscience | No Comments »

October 27, 2009 by sean.

A research collaboration led by biologists and neuroscientists at the University of Pennsylvania has found a molecular pathway in the brain that is the cause of cognitive impairment due to sleep deprivation. Just as important, the team believes that the cognitive deficits caused by sleep deprivation, such as an inability to focus, learn or memorize, may be reversible by reducing the concentration of a specific enzyme that builds up in the hippocampus of the brain [via ScienceDigest].

Posted in psychology, science | No Comments »

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.”

Posted in science, neuroscience, bionics, augmented cognition | No Comments »

September 3, 2009 by sean.

Bionic medicine continues to evolve as a potential treatment or cure for paralysis, deafness, blindness, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy and more [see full article in New Scientist].

For example, Eberhard Fetz’s lab at the University of Washington in Seattle is testing:

a new treatment that might one day cure paralysis, which is typically caused by a broken connection in the spinal cord. Though much work has focused on using stem cells to regrow damaged nerve fibres, some researchers believe that an electronic bypass like this is equally viable.

The idea is to implant electronic chips in the relevant regions of the brain to record neural activity. Then a decoder deciphers the neural chatter, often from thousands of neurons, to figure out what the brain wants the body to do. These messages must then be relayed - ideally wirelessly - to electrodes that deliver a pulse of electricity to stimulate the muscles into action. Such “brain chips” are already restoring hearing to the deaf and vision to the blind, and helping to stave off epileptic fits, so the idea isn’t as far-fetched as it might sound.

Posted in science, neuroscience, bionics | 1 Comment »

July 19, 2009 by sean.

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April 29, 2009 by sean.

Researchers at the University of Pannonia, Hungary demonstrate how sparrrows solve problems more quickly as a group than as individuals [via scienceblogs]:

Liker and Bokony’s sparrow experiments are the first to show that large animal groups outperform smaller ones at problem-solving tasks where they have to invent new techniques. House sparrows are a good choice for a study like this. They are very social birds that live in flocks of anywhere from a few individuals to a few hundred. They are opportunists that use their relatively large brains to find food in all sorts of new environments.

Posted in science, collective intelligence | No Comments »

April 21, 2009 by sean.

Posted in mathematics, science | No Comments »

February 22, 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]

Posted in innovation, science, augmented cognition | No Comments »

February 4, 2009 by sean.

Posted in innovation, science, learning theory, social networks | No Comments »

February 4, 2009 by sean.

Interesting article on hypothetical relationship of social and biological energy patterns [via wired]:

The human race may be caught in a biological catch-22, in which sustainable reproduction rates can only be achieved by consuming more energy.

So hypothesizes Melanie Moses, a University of New Mexico computer scientist who wonders if human societies are bound by size-dependent rules of network efficiency seen elsewhere in the biological world.

If the implications of this seem bleak, take heart: people are born to break the rules.

Moses invokes the Metabolic Theory of Energy, which explains the relationship between mammalian size, lifespans and reproduction rates — the bigger a body, the longer it lives, with fewer offspring — as a function of cardiovascular networks. As the sum length of capillaries and arteries increases, nutrient flow efficiency drops. The less efficient an animal’s networks, the more difficult it becomes to acquire the energy needed for raising a child.

Compare the size-lifespan-reproduction curve to the relationship between human economic growth and reproduction rates, and the parallels are eerie.

Posted in science, social networks | No Comments »

February 3, 2009 by sean.

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February 3, 2009 by sean.

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January 28, 2009 by sean.

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December 28, 2008 by sean.

LiveScience.com explores brain prosthetics, artificial cells, regrown bone, wearbale kidneys and even new corpora cavernosa [you’ll have to look it up] in Top 10 Technologies for the Bionic Human.

Posted in science, bionics | No Comments »

December 28, 2008 by sean.

Dr. Jerald Block writes in the latest issue of the American Journal Of Psychiatry that “people who send large numbers of text messages and emails may have a mental disorder” [via smh.com.au]:

“[I]nternet addiction” was a “common disorder” that deserved inclusion in a manual of mental disorders used by health professionals.

Those with the condition suffered withdrawal symptoms of anger and tension when a computer was inaccessible, and often lost their sense of time through excessive use… Other symptoms included feeling “the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use”, and having arguments, lying, social isolation and fatigue.”

Posted in science, pervasive computing | No Comments »

December 28, 2008 by sean.

Allen Institute for Brain Science encouraging open collaboration and personal philantropy re: brain research [via economist.com]:

Clearly the model of providing a freely accessible database is a successful one. In a sense, we have challenged other researchers to offer greater access to their findings. Will they take the challenge? My bet is that over the next 18 months we are going to see more open access and more collaboration.

In the next decade we will make great strides in uncovering the complex network of gene interactions that govern every major brain disease and will create effective therapies through traditional drug discovery or new methods for modifying gene activity. Just as the use of cardiac pacemakers or artificial knees is common today, a new generation of implantable pacemakers for the brain will be widely used to treat everything from depression to addiction and Parkinson’s disease.

Our increasing knowledge will shed light on how information is processed and stored in the human brain at a molecular level. Even now, scientists are already mimicking the brain’s information-processing capabilities to create a new generation of computer processes. We are going to get far better at this as our understanding of the brain improves.

Private philanthropy will continue to grow and help to accelerate scientific discovery. I believe we are nearing a tipping-point in brain research where the discoveries, treatments and cures will come more quickly than the questions. Private dollars, combined with broader adoption of open collaboration and data-sharing models, will help push us over the top. Success will follow.

Posted in science, neuroscience, collective intelligence, social networks | No Comments »

December 14, 2008 by sean.

Posted in science, user-created content, social networks | No Comments »

December 14, 2008 by sean.

“British archaeologists have unearthed an ancient skull carrying a startling surprise — an unusually well-preserved brain. Scientists said Friday that the mass of gray matter was more than 2,000 years old — the oldest ever discovered in Britain. One expert unconnected with the find called it ‘a real freak of preservation.’” [via Yahoo News]

Posted in science, neuroscience | No Comments »

November 19, 2008 by sean.

More on “brain training” [via techradar]:

Researchers at the Universite de Montreal found that cognitive workouts for athletes can boost their reaction speeds by up to 53 per cent.

Professor Jocelyn Faubert put a dozen football, tennis and hockey players through multiple object-tracking exercises, then measured their ability to absorb and manage lots of information simultaneously.

Posted in games and simulations, science, neuroscience, bionics | No Comments »

November 18, 2008 by sean.

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November 18, 2008 by sean.

Researchers use game theory to explain how natural selection can prevent individuals in a species from evolving toward a single optimum personality [via PhysOrg]:

“More generally, the question of ‘why personality variation evolves’ requires a more complex answer, which we’re only just starting to unravel as evolutionary biologists,” [Sasha Dall of the University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus] said. “The chances are that there isn’t just one reason, and which particular reason is relevant depends on the context.

So far, our social awareness reason is one of the few that has been proposed to explain variation in a cooperative context. Social awareness also appears to work in an aggressive context: individuals adopt consistent levels of aggression to avoid getting in real fights, since if someone can predict you’re going to be aggressive, they will avoid provoking you; individual differences arise via frequency dependence again, as the more aggression there is around you, the less you should bother fighting – this is the famous Hawk-Dove game outcome.”

Posted in games and simulations, science | No Comments »

November 11, 2008 by sean.

One step closer to the bionic eye [via govtech]:

Engineers at the University of Washington have developed contact lenses with integrated circuitry. The lenses have the same properties as traditional contacts and were worn by lab rabbits for 20-minute stretches without displaying ill effects. A possible use for such lenses might be personal displays. Drivers could see vehicle information or wearers could access their own private video display and surf the Web or watch movies. The circuitry is made of metal strands less than 10 nanometers wide — thinner than a hair strand. Engineers are also working on integrating LEDs into the bionic lenses to enhance the lenses’ display capabilities.

Posted in science, bionics | No Comments »

November 9, 2008 by sean.

Right out of an early William Gibson cyberpunk novel, doctors are testing clectronic implants and electromagnetic pulses to address failures of psychoactive drugs to treat depression [via ieee spectrum]:

Depression is distressingly common, affecting more than 120 million people around the world and sucking tens of billions of dollars out of the global economy through the cost of care and lost productivity. It’s also deadly. Every year 850 000 people worldwide take their own lives, and 9 out of 10 of them are suffering from depression, another mental illness, or substance abuse. Statistics show that of those who had had treatment for depression just through visits to a doctor’s office, 2 percent ultimately committed suicide, as did 4 percent of those who had to be hospitalized for depression.

Twenty-five percent of people with depression have no access to any form of mental health care; of those who do have access to care, only a quarter seek treatment. Of those who consult doctors, some 80 percent find relief in the form of drugs or some kind of talk therapy, such as cognitive therapy… But some of these methods [for electrically manipulating specific portions of the brain with implanted electrodes, electric current, or magnetic fields] are already showing great promise for treating such other mental maladies as bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and bulimia…

[V]agus nerve stimulation [is a] pacemakerlike device about the size of a pocket watch, implanted under the skin of the chest… that [uses] electric pulsing [that] completely quashes the symptoms of depression [in about 16 percent of patients]. It was approved as a depression therapy, for use in conjunction with drugs, by government regulators in the European Union and Canada in 2001. Last June, it became the first psychiatric device to be reviewed and approved in the United States, which has more stringent requirements for medical devices. Nevertheless, a number of psychiatrists remain unconvinced that the therapy works in enough people to outweigh the risk and cost of surgery.

Posted in science, neuroscience | No Comments »

November 8, 2008 by sean.

When the recently deceased Michael Crichton wrote about cloning dead animals in 1991’s Jurassic Park it was still science fiction [via MailOnline]:

Scientists have created clones of a mouse that had been dead and frozen for 16 years.

It is the first time they have been able to clone a frozen animal.

The Japanese researchers say their work will benefit mankind - and could be used to bring back extinct animals such as the woolly mammoth or sabre tooth tiger.

Posted in scifi, science | No Comments »

September 18, 2008 by sean.

University of Utah biologist Dennis Bramble and Harvard University paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman suggest that efficient running has a role in human evolution [via Discover Magazine]:

In the 1970s, Carrier was assisting with Bramble’s studies of how dogs, horses, and people regulate breathing while running. A marathoner himself, Carrier began to wonder about the role of endurance running in human evolution. People, he noted, can shed heat quickly—not by panting, like most animals, but by perspiring through millions of sweat glands. A lack of fur also helps dissipate heat more quickly.

Posted in science | No Comments »

September 7, 2008 by sean.

Rap about world’s largest science experiment becomes YouTube hit [via Daily Telegraph]:

After 14 years, the European particle physics lab near Geneva, known by its French acronym CERN, is preparing to switch on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), designed to seek out new particles including the long-awaited Higgs boson responsible for making things weigh what they do, the possible source of gravity called dark matter, as well as probe the differences between matter and its “evil twin” antimatter.

Now a larky but accurate rap song explaining the point of the 17 mile circumference machine, which formally starts up on September 10, has made a star of Kate McAlpine, 23, aka “alpinekat”, who stars with her friends in a YouTube video that has been downloaded more than 400,000 times.

Posted in science, fun | No Comments »

August 31, 2008 by sean.

Can someone really recite Pi to 22,514 digits in 5 1/2 hours without making a single mistake and then go on to learn a complex foriegn language [Icelandic no less!] in seven days? See for yourself…

Posted in science, neuroscience | No Comments »

August 16, 2008 by sean.

A fascinating diversion into political speech data via Bruce Eisner:

A major reason that Obama’s rhetoric seems to soar so high is that our expectations have sunk so low.

In a new book, The Anti-Intellectual Presidency, Elvin T. Lim subjects all the words ever publicly intoned by American presidents to a thorough statistical analysis—and he finds, unsurprisingly, an alarmingly steady decline. A century ago, Lim writes, presidential speeches were pitched at a college reading level; today, they’re down to eighth grade, and if the trend continues, next century’s State of the Union addresses will be conducted at the level of “a comic strip or a fifth-grade textbook.” (“Iran’s crawling with bad guys: BAP!”)

Since 1913, the length of the average presidential sentence has fallen from 35 words to 22. Between Nixon and the second Bush, the average presidential sound bite shrank from 42 seconds to 7. Today’s State of the Unions inspire roughly 30 seconds of applause for every 60 seconds of speech. Although it’s tempting to blame the sorry state of things on the current malapropist-in-chief, Bush is only the latest flower (though, obviously, a particularly striking one) on a very deep weed.

Our most brilliant presidents, Lim says, often work hard to seem publicly dumb in order to avoid the stain of elitism—amazingly, Bill Clinton’s total rhetorical output checks in at a lower reading level than Bush’s. Clinton’s former speechwriters told Lim that their image-conscious boss always demanded that his speeches be “more talky”; today, he’s widely remembered as a brilliant speaker who never gave a memorable speech.

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August 9, 2008 by sean.

Wired Magazine reports on how “swimmers, cyclists and even gymnasts making the most of tech — and legal — performance enhancements” [via Wired.com]:

In order to make perfect strokes during training, the U.S. crew team members watch their progress on a VR-style goggle set that receives a live feed of their movements as they row. With this feed, they are able to see instantly if their torsos are misaligned. By evaluating themselves in real time, the rowers learn to perfect their form. Once the race starts, however, they’ll ditch the glasses.

Posted in science, fun, bionics | No Comments »

July 20, 2008 by sean.

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

Posted in science, augmented cognition | No Comments »

March 30, 2008 by sean.

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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.

Posted in science, neuroscience, augmented cognition | No Comments »

March 13, 2008 by sean.

Swarm Intelligence may not be complexity emerging from simple interactions after all [from MSNBC LiveScience]:

Although ants are noted for their communal cooperation, the ranks of ant royalty are actually riddled with cheating and corruption, a new study finds.

Posted in science, collective intelligence | No Comments »

December 15, 2007 by sean.

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