As we get older, our cognitive skills go down. There will be problems related to memory, attention, perception and problem solving will never be as easy as when we used to be younger. But scientists from the University of Iowa appear to have found a way to stop and even reverse these effects of aging. They are claiming that cognitive skills of test subjects aged 50 and over have been improved by playing a specific video game.

Prof. Fredric Wolinsky and his team assigned a group of volunteers to do 10 hours of computer-based crossword puzzles (as a control). While three other groups were told to play a video game known as Road Tour. One group played in a lab for 10 hours, another one for 14 hours, and the last group for 10 hours at home. The Road Tour game briefly shows a vehicle and then asks the player to find it from a rotating circle of vehicles. There will be distractions and higher levels of course will be more challenging.

After a year of tests, it has been found that an average of three years’ worth of cognitive improvement has been achieved by those who played the game for 10 hours, and that increases to four years for the 14 hour group. Meanwhile, the control group showed improvement in “concentration, nimbleness with shifting from one mental task to another, and the speed at which new information is processed”.

Of course, it is a known fact that the best way to keep the brain in good working condition is to give it work. And the more variety of work it gets the better. Experts have suggested many ways, such as reading, meditation, exercise, working with numbers and more, to keep the brain in good form. And now you can add one more to that list.

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Optogenetics is the process which allows us to use light to activate neurons or other cells, a technology which is helping scientists to understand more about how the brain works. The procedure involves the delivery of light to the desired region in the brain and now that can be done more easily all thanks to the new LEDs you see above.

Currently, fiber optic cables wired to a test animal’s brain are used to deliver light. The new LEDs, measuring as small as single cells, can be injected into the brain using a micro-injection needle.

The lights are printed onto the end of an extremely thin flexible plastic ribbon which provides power to the LEDs via an energy-harvesting module mounted on top of the animal’s head. The module can be removed from the head when not being used, unlike using fiber optic cables which requires that the animal is tethered to a laser that supplies light.

The image below shows LEDs in the brain of a test animal.

The LEDs were developed by a team led by Prof. John A. Rogers from the University of Illinois and Prof. Michael R. Bruchas from Washington University. Check out the video below to know more about their study and do leave your thoughts below. Would you like to light up your brain?

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Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have made a breakthrough in human brain controlled robotic arm manipulation thanks to a new study.  The patient assisting with the study was a 52 year old paralyzed woman.

The researchers placed two sensors on the motor cortex portion of her brain, and each sensor was able to pick up the electrical impulses of approximately 200 brain cells.  This then allowed the woman to control the robotic arm after only two days of training.  Over that time her skills steadily increased and after only 3 months of use, her task completion rate climbed to a never before seen 91.6 percent with task completion time being as much as 30 seconds faster.

While mind controlled robot manipulation is not new technology, the amount of coordination which was seen in this study was impressive.

The one problem that is holding back progress on the issue is the fact that scar tissue will form and build up around the sensors places on the brain.  This tissue over time impedes the signal that is transmitted to the computer.  While thinner sensors would help with this issue, researchers are trying to think even farther ahead with wireless sensors.

There is no timeline of when this technology will be a practical solution for those suffering from paralysis and fitted with prosthetics, but the new developments are encouraging and will hopefully be available for consumers in the not-too-distant future.

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In some ways, you could think of the human brain as a complex computer. And like any complex computer, with the right resources, it can be hacked. And now, researchers have apparently figured out a backdoor hack into the human brain, gaining access to your most private of information.

This comes by way of researchers from the Universities of Geneva, California (Berkeley) and Oxford. They connected a number of students with an off-the-shelf Emotive brain-computer interface (BCI). This device measures brain wave activity and through analysis of this data, scientists are able to glean some information for you. More specifically, they looked at the P300 brain signal.

When there is a target stimulus, the P300 signal spikes in recognition. For example, they might get the students to start thinking about the PIN code they have for their debit card and they start showing the different digits on a screen. Even on a subconscious level, the student’s P300 will spike when a familiar number (like the first digit in their PIN) is displayed. Researchers say that through this kind of methodology, they’re able to reduce the entropy (random data) by 10 to 40 percent, resulting in “marked improvements over random guessing.”

There’s more work to be done and the methodology is far from perfect, but it goes to show you that your brain can be “hacked” and your brain waves are already betraying your innermost secrets.

[Source]

Photo Credit: Mondolithic Studios

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The brain is without a doubt the most complex organ in the human body, and that is why creating a synthetic natural brain is a very difficult task. But it appears like scientists are getting closer and closer to completing the task of making a machine that behaves like a natural brain. Scientists involved in the BrainScaleS project, a collaboration between 15 research institutions, are trying to create hardware which emulates parts of a natural brain.

According to senior researcher Dr. Johannes Schemmel, “Our goal is to create a working system that will be located in Heidelberg, but accessible online to scientists all over the world”.

Their aim is to construct “neuromorphic hardware” or electronic systems that will rely on transistors and microchips to recreate the behavior of synapses. Their first prototype is an 8 inch large wafer consisting of 51 million artificial synapses. Although that sounds big, it represents just a tiny fraction of a working brain.

The completed hardware is expected to be capable of re-creating neurological processes 10,000 times faster than those in a natural biological system. Schemmel says, “That means that if we want to study a behaviour [in the nervous system] that would take a few minutes in the real biology, it will only take us split seconds”.

But the only problem is that hardware is not as flexible as biology. As Schemmel said, “Come new fundamental findings from biologists, we might just have to change our hardware from scratch”. That’s where software is useful as it can be easily re-programmed. But Schemmel says, “Modeling is essential for neuroscience. If we don’t have models to reconstruct the performance of neurones and synapses, we will never understand how the brain works. We can’t just stuff all this into equations, the behaviour of each individual cell is far too complex for that”.

If the project is a success, we could see great developments in the field of robotics, medicine and neurology. And just in case you are wondering, there is less chance for synthetic brain equipped robots to take over the world.

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In the study, the researchers first conditioned rats to associate nausea with saccharin by lacing the substance with lithium. But after administering a chemical to block the PKMzeta molecule in the rats’ brains, they almost immediately forgot the conditioning and took a liking to the sweets again.

To test the opposite effect, the researchers paired an aversive learning model with genetic engineering to produce an over-expression of the enzyme. By using a virus to infect the neocortex with the PKMzeta gene, the production of the naturally-occurring enzyme increased and led to greater memory function in the rats.

But when PKMzeta was replaced with a mutant inactive form of the enzyme, the process erased memory similar to the way the chemical blocker used previously had done.

“One explanation of the memory enhancement is that PKMzeta might go to some synapses, or connections between brain cells, and not others,” said New York-based Todd Sacktor of the SUNY Downstate Medical Center. “Overexpressed PKMzeta may be selectively captured by molecular tags that mark just those brain connections where it’s needed – likely synapses that were holding the memory from the training.”

The researchers say manipulation of the PKMzeta molecule appears to have the same effects regardless of when it’s used or how long it’s been since the creation of a targeted memory.

“This pivotal mechanism could become a target for treatments to help manage debilitating emotional memories in anxiety disorders and for enhancing faltering memories in disorders of aging,” said National Institutes of Mental Health Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D.

But the procedure’s results seem to apply to multiple memories stored in the target brain area, rather than specific memories as would be the target in therapeutic applications.

We can only hope this breakthrough isn’t further examined by the “mad” type of scientists, or we can expect very effective brainwashing on the horizon.

[GizMag via

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Children’s cells are still growing and dividing and their thin skulls don’t absorb as much of the radiation, experts say, meaning they’re not only at risk from developing brain tumours but DNA damage too.

In Britain, more than 50 percent of 7-year-old children own a cell phone, 75 percent of 10-year-olds, and more than 90 percent at age 16. This may be a “huge time bomb,” says Powerwatch.

While the British health authority isn’t looking to ban children from using cell phones, they do advise parents to only let their children use the phones in emergency situations.

To avoid harm, children should use text messages, hands-free kits or speakerphone functions to avoid putting the phone directly against their head, according to the BMJ Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

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Researchers in Germany have found that the brain discards information one bit per active neuron per second. It looks like the old adage “in one ear and out the other” has some solid science behind it.

The brain codes information in the form of electrical pulses, or spikes. Each one of the brain’s 100 billion neurons act as receivers and transmitters. When a spike enters a neuron, an electrical discharge, or action potential, forms on the neuron’s cell membrane. The neuron will give an electrical input to its neighbour only if the potential exceeds a certain value. Therefore, an activity pattern is quickly lost or “forgotten” through tiny changes. This means the signal transmission in the brain is extremely chaotic, as much depends on the performance on individual neurons.

The findings indicate that the brain’s main switching centre, the cerebral cortex, is specifically tailored to process brief snapshots of the outside world. Whether those brief snapshots get retained is a completely different story altogether… what were we talking about again?

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