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Category: neuroscience – Page 1,192

FDA study using genetically engineered cells to treat cancer kills three people

(NaturalNews) Earlier this month, Juno Therapeutics, a pioneer in the field of treating cancer using genetically engineered cells, had to halt the development of its lead treatment after the death of three leukemia patients enrolled in the study.

The Seattle-based biotech company reported that the deaths of all three patients, who were in their 20s, were linked to swelling in the brain. The swelling occurred after the company added a second chemotherapy drug to the treatment procedure.

The news of the patient deaths is a big blow for the biotech startup that is developing a new experimental therapy known as chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (or CART) immunotherapy. The setback will likely delay the company’s aim of introducing it to the market by 2017, Juno executives said in a conference.

System controls robots with the brain

More update on controlling drones with BMI.

Using wireless interface, operators control multiple drones by thinking of various tasks.

A researcher at Arizona State University has discovered how to control multiple robotic drones using the human brain.

A controller wears a skull cap outfitted with 128 electrodes wired to a computer. The device records electrical brain activity. If the controller moves a hand or thinks of something, certain areas light up.

Uploading my brain waves to the cloud, Azure IoT Hub and Emotiv brain interface

Nice read by Microsoft on their BMI efforts.

I have been reading a lot about brain interfaces and that the Tesla S can be summoned with the brain and that people have started having competitions with drones controlled by brain waves. I have recently acquired an Emotiv Insight® as shown in Figure 1 and have been doing some testing with it.

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Figure 1, brain interface Emotiv Insight® Microsoft Azure

It really does work pretty good. I was able to get it up and running in less than an hour and accessing the online tool (cpanel.emotivinsight.com/BTLE) allowed me to fit the device on my head making sure all the sensors were connected to my brain, as shown in Figure 2.

Microsoft uses BBC Micro Bit and virtual reality to prepare autistic kids for jobs

Good work by Microsoft.

Autism is a spectrum disorder, meaning not all people that meet the classification have identical behaviors. Some of these folks are very functional, while others may struggle more to socialize, or not be able to hold jobs.

According to Microsoft, 85 percent of those with Autism do not hold full-time employment. This is unfortunate, as some of those with the classification are likely falling through the cracks — capable of work, but not equipped. Luckily, the Windows-maker, in association with CASPA and Dennis Publishing, is aiming to change this with some unlikely tools — the BBC Micro Bit and HTC Vive virtual reality solution.

“The participants — aged between seven and 19 — were taught to code using the BBC micro: bit — a programmable mini-computer that features an LED display, accelerometer, compass, micro USB plug and external battery pack. They learned to light up the LEDs, and change that display by moving and turning the micro: bit”, says Microsoft.

How Nikola Tesla Used ‘Spirituality’ & Philosophy To Learn About Reality, ‘Limitless’ Energy & Science

I will say that many great innovators and inventors had some sort of spiritualism that they drew from to provide another angle on how to see/ perfect an idea or innovation. Jobs, Tesla, Edison, Bell, da Vinci, Carver, etc.

The Properties of Space.

Science works best when in harmony with nature. If we put these two together, we can discover great technologies that can only come about when the consciousness of the planet is ready to embrace them. One example is “free energy,” also known as “zero-point energy,” which utilizes the substance that exists all around us and converts it into usable energy. This would give us a limitless source of energy, and would practically wipe out all poverty on the planet. (more on this later in the article)

The properties of space have been postulated by many, from ancient Vedic philosophy, Eastern Mystics, various ancient civilizations throughout human history all the way to Descartes, Einstein, Newton and more. Humans are curious beings, and our quest to discover “what is” will never end.

The mind isn’t locked in the brain but extends far beyond it

There is a lot of truth to this article especially as you look at how the mind responds/ reacts to situations, ideas, etc. has also other factors involved such as how a person overall immune system is responding, chemical balance of a person’s system, etc. So, this reconfirms that thinking and being human goes far beyond a replica of a brain in a system.

Where is your mind? Where does your thinking occur? Where are your beliefs? René Descartes thought that the mind was an immaterial soul, housed in the pineal gland near the centre of the brain. Nowadays, by contrast, we tend to identify the mind with the brain. We know that mental processes depend on brain processes, and that different brain regions are responsible for different functions. However, we still agree with Descartes on one thing: we still think of the mind as (in a phrase coined by the philosopher of mind Andy Clark) brainbound, locked away in the head, communicating with the body and wider world but separate from them. And this might be quite wrong. I’m not suggesting that the mind is non-physical or doubting that the brain is central to it; but it could be that (as Clark and others argue) the mind extends beyond the brain.

To begin with, there is a strong case for thinking that many mental processes are essentially embodied. The brainbound view pictures the brain as a powerful executive, planning every aspect of behaviour and sending detailed instructions to the muscles. But, as work in robotics has illustrated, there are more efficient ways of doing things, which nature almost certainly employs. The more biologically realistic robots perform basic patterns of movement naturally, in virtue of their passive dynamics, without the use of motors and controllers. Intelligent, powered control is then achieved by continuously monitoring and tweaking these bodily processes, sharing the control task between brain and body.

Neural connections mapped with unprecedented detail

Nice.

A team of neuroscientists at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, in Lisbon, has been able to map single neural connections over long distances in the brain. “These are the first measurements of neural inputs between local circuits and faraway sites”, says Leopoldo Petreanu, who led the research. In doing so, Petreanu and co-authors Nicolás Morgenstern and Jacques Bourg have also discovered that the wiring of the brain is more complex than previously thought. Their results have been published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

“We want to understand the structure of the brain, but the wiring diagram we have of the brain is still very rough”, says Petreanu. “Except at the local level, we don’t know how individual axons [the fibers projected by neurons] connect.”

Thanks to a novel technique involving neural stimulation with laser light developed at their lab, the scientists were able to track the activity of individual axons, in the mouse brain, between a brain structure called the thalamus and the part of the visual cortex which receives, by way of the thalamus, the visual stimuli from the retinas.

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