Cells normally associated with protecting the brain from infection and injury also play an important role in rewiring the connections between nerve cells. And, constant generation of new pathways and networks among brain cells is critical in learning and keeping the mind sharp.
Category: neuroscience – Page 1,298
I’m creating telepathy technology to get brains talking
Brain-to-brain communication is becoming a reality, says Andrea Stocco, who sees a future where minds meet to share ideas.
You are working on brain-to-brain communication. Can one person’s thoughts ever truly be experienced by another person?
Each brain is different. And while differences in anatomy are relatively easy to account for, differences in function are difficult to characterise. And then we have differences in experience – my idea of flying could be completely unlike your idea of flying, for example. When you think about flying, a bunch of associated experiences come into your mind, competing for your attention. We somehow need to strip away the individual differences to grasp the basic, shared factors.
But it seems possible. Other researchers have been able to use information collected from a group of people to make surprisingly successful, if basic, predictions about what another individual is thinking.
What do you need to transmit information between brains?
The idea is to record one person’s brain activity using a non-invasive device such as an EEG, which involves wearing a cap of electrodes. A computer program filters out what is thought to be the relevant brain activity, and this is recreated in another person using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) – a non-invasive technique that induces an electrical current in their brain.
Can You Download Knowledge Into Your Brain With Electricity?
A cognitive neuroscientist and his team at HRL Laboratories in Malibu, California, seem to have achieved the impossible.
According to a press release, the team “measured the brain activity patterns of six commercial and military pilots, and then transmitted these patterns into novice subjects as they learned to pilot an airplane in a realistic flight simulator.”
Monkeys Controlling Wheelchairs With Only Their Minds
Researchers at Duke have developed a wireless brain interface that allows monkeys to control a robotic wheelchair using only their minds.
Chinese start-up on track to deliver artificial intelligence-on-a-chip
He pointed out that Horizon Robotics will finish designing its first AI chip for smart home appliances by June and make it commercially available by early 2017.
Mainland Chinese start-up Horizon Robotics, founded by the former head of online search giant Baidu’s Institute of Deep Learning, claims it is on pace to bring chips with built-in artificial intelligence (AI) technology to market.
“General processors are too slow for AI functions. A dedicated chip will dramatically increase the speed of these functions,” Yu Kai, the founder and chief executive of Horizon Robotics told the South China Morning Post.
Founded in Beijing in July, Horizon Robotics is developing chips and software that attempt to mimic how the human brain solves abstract tasks, such as voice and image recognition, that are difficult for regular computer programmes. It also makes sensors for smart devices.
Dopamine Headphones
Prepare to feel music like you never have before…
