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brains
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brains
mad neuroscience
The Data Is In: Brain Implants Can Make You Happy
For over a decade researchers have been treating many different ailments, including depression, with electrodes lodged deep in the brain. Devices like this Soletra brain implant deliver electrical impulses to a targeted brain region, essentially creating artificial activity in an area that the brain won't activate on its own. While there have been anecdotal reports that brain implants can help people with depression or OCD, now there is solid proof. A long-range study being presented at the upcoming meeting of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons demonstrates how patients, over a 10-year period with brain implants, gained increasing control over their moods and obsessive behaviors. More »
salvia
Salvia, also known as salvia divinorum, is a smokable hallucinogen that's still legal in most parts of the world. People order it via the internet and smoke tiny quantities to experience what many call an experience so intense that many people call it "spiritual." The high lasts for just a few minutes, and includes intense visual hallucinations and out-of-body sensations. Now a group of researchers with the United States Department of Energy are studying the drug, watching how it affects the brains of non-human primates, to find out if it has any therapeutic value. Here you can see the brains of several monkeys on salvia. Find out what the researchers discovered below.
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What Happens to Brains Experiencing "One of the Most Potent Hallucinogens Known"
Salvia, also known as salvia divinorum, is a smokable hallucinogen that's still legal in most parts of the world. People order it via the internet and smoke tiny quantities to experience what many call an experience so intense that many people call it "spiritual." The high lasts for just a few minutes, and includes intense visual hallucinations and out-of-body sensations. Now a group of researchers with the United States Department of Energy are studying the drug, watching how it affects the brains of non-human primates, to find out if it has any therapeutic value. Here you can see the brains of several monkeys on salvia. Find out what the researchers discovered below.
More »
mad neuroscience
You Would Be Happier If You Watched Football and Didn't Have Sex
Matthieu Ricard is famous not just because he works with the Dalai Lama, but because a group of neuroscientists have scanned his brain and proven that he's off-the-charts happy. In fact, he's the happiest guy ever to stick his head in an MRI brain scanner, or to wear a zillion EEG sensors on his head (pictured). A couple of years ago, the Buddhist monk took his notoriety from the scientific journals and wrote a self-help book called Happiness. Now he goes to exclusive conferences to teach business execs how to feel happy. If Ricard's own life is any guide, there are just a few ingredients necessary to convert your sad brain into a happy one. More »
brains
Your Consciousness Is Ten Seconds Behind the Present
The time it takes for sensory input to travel along nerves and get processed by the brains means we're always living in the past. Okay, no problem — we can live with a few lost milliseconds. But ten seconds? A new study shows that once our brains make a decision (like "push this button") it takes that long for our conscious minds to become aware of it. More »
neuroscience
A New Street Drug That Boosts Your Brain's Ability to Get High
It turns out the gateway drug for amphetamine addiction is a substance provided by your own brain. The culprit protein is called DAT, so named because it is a dopamine transporter — and dopamine is the feel-good, get-motivated neurotransmitter that keeps you happy, hungry, and full of energy. Just as some people are born with the ability to grow larger muscle mass than others, some are born with the ability to squirt more dopamine into their brains because they have a greater-than-average helping of DAT. People with elevated DAT levels are quite literally better at getting high than people with average levels. How do we know? A group of researchers in North Carolina and Pennsylvania recently bred a group of mice to have DAT levels three times above normal and then gave them speed. Here's what happened. More »
found footage
Frankenhooker Teaches You Probably the Best Way to Get Through Your Homework
Poor Jeffrey's girlfriend has been chopped up by a lawnmower, but luckily he's saved some of her parts (including her head) in a special rejuvenation broth in his mad scientist lab. In this scene from Frankenhooker, Frank "Basket Case" Henenlotter's bloody fun riff on Frankenstein, Jeffrey needs inspiration. He's got to get female body parts to rebuild his girlfriend, and he's got to get them fast. So of course, he drills his brain to "relax" and get some ideas. Maybe next time you're struggling with homework or a big project, you should try this too! It's cheaper than Provigil. [Frankenhooker]
mad science
Rewire the Neurons in Your Brain Just By Looking
Though science fiction tales like Clockwork Orange and Videodrome have toyed with the notion that images from television and movies could rewire people's brains, the idea has always been controversial and unsubstantiated. But now researchers have shown empirically that anything you look at, including movies, changes the the connections between neurons in your brain. In other words, what you see changes your brain at a neurological level. The good news is the parts of your brain devoted to vision can be rewired, which has positive implications for people blinded after strokes. The bad news is that what you see today could have a lasting effect on what you see tomorrow. A particularly powerful negative image might alter your perception of positive images later. More »
mad science
Rejuivenate Your Brain with Umbilical Cord Blood
As brains age, they slowly lose the ability to generate new neurons, which results in a diminishing ability to learn new things and retain memories. But today a group of neuroscientists in Florida announced a strange cure for what amounts to brain decay: blood from the umbilical cords of human infants. When the researchers injected this blood into aging rats, it kickstarted a new round of neurogenesis in their brains, helping them to grow new neurons and shed some other effects of brain aging. Essentially, effects of aging were rolled back. There's tremendous potential here for helping aging humans to regain the plasticity of their youthful minds. More »
mad science
With a little help, our brains can be trained to heal themselves. After a traumatic brain injury, some of your brain cells go into reset mode, reverting to a stem cell-like state. Using these "reset cells," a group of German researchers were able to coax the brains of injured mice to regrow neurons to replace damaged tissue (the images above are micrographs of the cells regrowing over time).
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A "Reset Button" for the Brain Could Cure Alzheimers
With a little help, our brains can be trained to heal themselves. After a traumatic brain injury, some of your brain cells go into reset mode, reverting to a stem cell-like state. Using these "reset cells," a group of German researchers were able to coax the brains of injured mice to regrow neurons to replace damaged tissue (the images above are micrographs of the cells regrowing over time).
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brains
When Heads Explode
I don't know about you, but I love a good exploding head. Ever since I saw psychic mutant head-exploder flick Scanners as a tot, I've tracked all the ways a head can explode in film. Sometimes it just pops like a watermelon dropped off a roof; sometimes it gets all bulgy and eye-poppy; and sometimes it goes slowly, with gradual brain leakage. Of course, science fiction is the perfect vehicle for the exploding head. And here's why. More »
brains
A New Brain Interface Controller for Video Games -- Or Maybe Something Naughtier
Last night a company called Emotiv showed off its latest generation BCI (that's brain-computer interface) controller to a bunch of nerds from the Game Developer Conference — including our sister site Kotaku's brave and fearless Brian Crecente. Basically, you stick this helmet on your head and control what's on screen via brain-generated electricity that's picked up by EEG sensors. Brian wasn't that impressed — as you can see in the video he made, it's not exactly zappy gameplay. But it does open up BCI controllers to the masses in a way that just hasn't happened before. Of course, somebody has already come up with a way to turn this into a sex toy. More »
neuroscience
One Pill Makes You Autistic -- And One Pill Changes You Back
Need to finish that work project, and wish you had the mental intensity to do it? Just take a synapse-regulating inhibitor, induce temporary autism, and you'll want to ignore your friends and do nothing but number-crunching for days. Autism-inducers could become as popular as Provigil among the geek set by 2020. Last night, in fact, a group German researchers announced they'd perfected the method for inducing autism. (They can also cure it.) More »
social control
Brain Scans Reveal That Inflation Gets You Hot
Inflated prices trigger the pleasure centers in your brain more than fair ones. Not only is the idea of buying something expensive more exciting than buying something on sale, but you'll actually get more genuine pleasure out of something expensive — even if it's not worth the cost. A group of social scientists at CalTech and Stanford discovered this not-entirely-unexpected fact when they stuck people into MRI brain scanners and gave them several glasses of wine, assigning each one a random price. More »
medical imaging
This Is What Game Consoles Really Do To Your Brain
Video game tech could literally save your brain. Currently, when your neurologist needs to make a snap judgment about brain surgery, a 3-D brain image like the one above might not be ready for hours — far too long in an emergency. But now the Mayo Clinic is teaming up with IBM to develop ways to create a 3-D image from an MRI or CT scan in minutes, thanks to microprocessor architecture developed for the Sony PlayStation 3, which amps those scans up like Sonic the Hedgehog. Brain image from Harvard. [Computerworld]
mad science
Scientists Use Your Brain to Read Other People's Minds
Your private thoughts could be used to pry information out of somebody else's mind. Today a group of neuroscientists announced they used test subjects' brains to train computers how to "recognize" electrical patterns created by thoughts. Specifically, they trained the computers to recognize thoughts about objects such as hammers and drills. You can imagine how this would come in handy during interrogations: Just stick a person in an MRI and scan her brain for telltale patterns while you ask her what kinds of weapons the bad guys have. So, how did the researchers do it? More »
tabloid science
Electricity in Brain Cells Stronger Than Lightning
Using nanotech devices sensitive to voltage, scientists at the University of Michigan have discovered that cancer cells in the human brain have electrical fields that are stronger than those in lightning bolts. (You can see a top view of the nano gadget at left.) [Technology Review]Freaky storage devices for your embryo and the drug that makes fruit flies gay after the jump. More »
neurotic neuroscience
Neuroscience Explains Why You Are A Spaz
A new study shows that often people flub a movement or do something spastic due to "spontaneous brain activity." These random electrical bursts in the brain can't be explained, but they might help account for why certain people are always dropping dishes or tripping on their own feet. Can't wait for EEG hackers to figure out how to induce freaky physical twitches by zapping their brains. Hey, spasms could be a fetish of the future!Spontaneous brain activity causes "unforced errors" [via New Scientist] More »
