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mad neuroscience
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Neuroscience
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mad neuroscience
mad medicine
Stick Your Severed Spine Back Together with a New Biochemical Gel
Severed spines may not mean paralysis for much longer. Inject a special gel into mice with severed spinal cords and six weeks later the mice are back on their feet. It's a pretty neat trick, one that scientists at Northwestern accomplish by impregnating the gel with biochemical signals that hinder the growth of scar tissue and promote growth of myelin, the sheath that protects nerve cells and fosters their growth. More »
electrical engineering
Ultrathin, Rubbery Circuits Bring Us One Step Closer to Google Brain Implants
A new kind of computer circuit printed on ultrathin rubber would make the perfect "brain wrapper," says its inventor. Usually computer circuits are etched on rigid, plastic boards, but University of Illinois researcher John Rogers has successfully placed circuits on a rubbery material that can bend and stretch. Many groups have been working on developing this technology, but Rogers is the first to demonstrate that his bendy circuits actually work. Rogers says the circuits could wrap around part or all of the brain, to monitor its electrical activity. Or — in future applications — to interface with your brain, perhaps using antennae to establish a wireless neural link to the internet so you can be Googling with your mind. 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 »
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 »
neuroarm
Most precision brain surgery is done with robotic assistance, but there's one place robots can't go: inside MRI brain scanners. Enter the neuroArm, a robot specially designed to work inside the powerful magnet of an MRI — and guided by the detailed images the MRI creates. Developed by surgeons and robotics experts at University of Calgary, the neuroArm combines the best of telepresence surgery with the best imaging technology. But how do you create a sophisticated robot, with delicate actuators, that can withstand being destroyed by a giant magnet? We've got the answer, and cool videos of the arm in action, below.
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A Robot That Does Brain Surgery Guided by MRI
Most precision brain surgery is done with robotic assistance, but there's one place robots can't go: inside MRI brain scanners. Enter the neuroArm, a robot specially designed to work inside the powerful magnet of an MRI — and guided by the detailed images the MRI creates. Developed by surgeons and robotics experts at University of Calgary, the neuroArm combines the best of telepresence surgery with the best imaging technology. But how do you create a sophisticated robot, with delicate actuators, that can withstand being destroyed by a giant magnet? We've got the answer, and cool videos of the arm in action, below.
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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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futurism
The Pros and Cons of a Google Brain Implant
In John Varley's upcoming scifi novel Rolling Thunder, everyone has a brain implant that lets them google information constantly. And many futurists are saying this technology will become a reality long before we colonize Mars. The question isn't whether we'll have google brain implants (or the futuristic search engine equivalent), but how we'll handle them. What exactly would be the plusses and minuses of being able to google information instantaneously in your head, without anybody knowing you're doing it? More »
mad neuroscience
Manipulating a Single Protein in Your Brain Creates "Autistic Savants"
Some autistics are known as "autistic savants" because they develop a genius in one subject, such as mathematics or art. New research shows this syndrome can be induced by tinkering with one protein in the brain which is responsible for building synapses, the brain structures that help neurons talk to each other. Neuroscientists at MIT (pictured) bred rats that lacked this protein, known as Shank1, and discovered the creatures could do spacial learning an extremely rapid clip, though they showed other signs of severe autism. These neuroscientists' work could go in two directions: curing some kinds of autism, and inducing selective superintelligence. More »
futurism
Do Women Predict the Future Differently Than Men Do?
Men and women have such different perspectives that many pop psychologists say they must think about the future differently too. But if that's what you believe, new evidence from brain scans done on men and women will shake your faith. Last year, Harvard cognitive scientists Donna Addis and Daniel Schacter asked men and women to do a series of mental exercises while in an fMRI brain scanner. First they had to remember a recent event, and then they had to imagine a future event in great detail. The results of these "mental time travel" experiments were surprising. More »
developmental neuroscience
Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking
Human infants are born with an innate mathematical ability that allows them to count large numbers of objects more easily than groups of two or three. A new study of 4.5 month old infants' "number sense" suggests that emphasizing language before numbers is the wrong way to teach kids about the world. Babies can figure out when there's been a change in the number of a large group of objects before they can understand language. Therefore communicating with toddlers via numbers could become the best way to shape young minds. More »
mad science
Neuroscience Explains Why You Get Pleasure From Hurting Yourself
It turns out there is a neurological explanation for why people scratch and cut themselves, and spank each other for pleasure. Inflicting small amounts of physical pain, whether from scratching your skin vigorously or doing something more extreme, deactivates the parts of your brain associated with unpleasant or painful emotions. Though scientists have long speculated that there was some kind of neurological payoff from self-inflicted pain, a study published yesterday demonstrated precisely why your brain gets a reward when you hurt your body. 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 »
mad science
A Chemical That Improves Memory (and Cures Loneliness)
Social isolation makes people stressed out and forgetful, but soon a drug could cure this problem. Late last year, scientists isolated a brain enzyme that triggers the "loneliness" feelings during periods of solitude. Replenishing that enzyme in the brain could enhance memory and relieve stress when you're spending a lot of time by yourself working (or space traveling). 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 »
neuroscience
Regrow Nerves in Your Spine
Getting your spine crushed doesn't have to mean paralysis. In fact, there is new evidence that nerves in the spine can regrow and be rerouted around damaged areas to connect with the brain. According to Discovery News . . . More »
neuroscience
You've probably heard about synaesthesia, the glamorous neurological condition in which people's senses get swapped so that they smell colors and feel words. Now a group of roboticists and bioengineers have got a working prototype of a little machine that gives you the synaesthetic ability to feel things you see. This tiny device attaches to your fingertip, using a camera to translate visual images into feelings by activating a little vibrator attached to the sensitive nerves in your finger. So you wave your hands around and "feel" objects across the street.
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Fully-Functioning Synaesthesia Machine
You've probably heard about synaesthesia, the glamorous neurological condition in which people's senses get swapped so that they smell colors and feel words. Now a group of roboticists and bioengineers have got a working prototype of a little machine that gives you the synaesthetic ability to feel things you see. This tiny device attaches to your fingertip, using a camera to translate visual images into feelings by activating a little vibrator attached to the sensitive nerves in your finger. So you wave your hands around and "feel" objects across the street.
More »
