Lifeboat Foundation

We’ve been waxing lyrical (and critical) about Apple’s Vision Pro here at TechCrunch this week – but, of course, there are other things happening in the world of wearable tech, as well. Sol Reader raised a $5 million seed round with a headset that doesn’t promise to do more. In fact, it is trying to do just the opposite: Focus your attention on just the book at hand. Or book on the face, as it were.

“I’m excited to see Apple’s demonstration of the future of general AR/VR for the masses. However, even if it’s eventually affordable and in a much smaller form factor, we’re still left with the haunting question: Do I really need more time with my smart devices,” said Ben Chelf, CEO at Sol. “At Sol, we’re less concerned with spatial computing or augmented and virtual realities and more interested in how our personal devices can encourage us to spend our time wisely. We are building the Sol Reader specifically for a single important use case — reading. And while Big Tech surely will improve specs and reduce cost over time, we can now provide a time-well-spent option at 10% of the cost of Apple’s Vision.”

The device is simple: It slips over your eyes like a pair of glasses and blocks all distractions while reading. Even as I’m typing that, I’m sensing some sadness: I have wanted this product to exist for many years – I was basically raised by books, and lost my ability to focus on reading over the past few years. Something broke in me during the pandemic – I was checking my phone every 10 seconds to see what Trump had done now and how close we were to a COVID-19-powered abyss. Suffice it to say, my mental health wasn’t at its finest – and I can’t praise the idea of Sol Reader enough. The idea of being able to set a timer and put a book on my face is extremely attractive to me.

Worth a listen to understand the current reality and the future potential:

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Continue reading “Should we take evolution into our own hands and become transhuman?” »

A human brain-to-brain interaction experiment lets one man’s thoughts control another person’s movements.

Chemical signals from contracting muscles can influence the growth of brain networks, according to new research published in Neuroscience. The study highlights the importance of physical activity to mental health, and the findings could also help contribute to the development of more effective treatments for cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Previous studies had shown that exercise has significant benefits for cognitive health, even when initiated at late stages in life. Exercise has been associated with long-term changes in the hippocampus, a brain region crucial for learning and memory, including increased neurogenesis, synaptogenesis, and enlarged volume.

However, the specific mechanisms through which exercise produces these changes in the hippocampus were not well understood. By uncovering these mechanisms, the authors behind the new study aim to develop exercise-based treatments for cognitive pathologies that affect the hippocampus, such as Alzheimer’s disease, stress, depression, anxiety, and normal aging.

Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin have created a “semantic brain decoder” to guess someone’s thoughts based on brain activity.

During tests, it captured the gist of what someone was thinking, rather than a literal translation. And if participants resisted, it produced gibberish.

The decoder, written about in the journal Nature Neuroscience in May, is novel, said Edmund Lalor, an associate professor of neuroscience at the University of Rochester. But its threat to privacy is minimal.

Researchers have found that well-managed weight through a healthy diet, including Mediterranean-type diets, can help reduce brain aging and improve brain health.

Researchers have long known that brain tumors, specifically a type of tumor called a glioma, can affect a person’s cognitive and physical function.

Patients with glioblastoma, the most fatal type of brain tumor in adults, experience an especially drastic decline in quality of life. Glioblastomas are thought to impair normal brain functions by compressing and causing healthy tissue to swell, or competing with them for blood supply.

Continue reading “Brain Tumors Can Rewire The Brain, And We Just Found Out How” »

Researchers say they have been able to tap a new pool of organ donors to preserve and transplant their hearts: people whose hearts have stopped beating, resulting in so-called circulatory death.

Traditionally, the only people considered to be suitable organ donors were those who have been declared brain-dead but whose hearts and other organs have continued to function.

There’s another group that would be willing to donate if survival wasn’t possible: people who may have severe brain injuries but who are not brain-dead. In these cases, people are considered deceased when their hearts stop beating after withdrawal of life support, also called circulatory death.

Aint necessarily so.

After a comprehensive study, researchers came to a startling conclusion.