The actor Bruce Willis was diagnosed with aphasia in April 2022—updated in February 2023 to frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Now, a major advancement is helping develop new treatments for some people with motor neuron diseases, including FTD and ALS, possibly including a nasal spray that could help prevent the genetic disease.
The connections between different regions of the brain responsible for language processing depend on which language you grew up with.
Nita Farahany, professor of law and philosophy at Duke University, has written a new book, The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology (Macmillan), which explores how our lives may be impacted by the use of brain-computer interfaces and neural monitoring devices.
Farahany argues that the development and use of neurotech presents a challenge to our current understanding of human rights. Devices designed to measure, record, and influence our mental processes—used by us or on us—may infringe on our rights to mental privacy, freedom of thought, and mental self-determination. She calls this collection of freedoms the right to cognitive liberty. IEEE Spectrum spoke with Farahany recently about the future and present of neurotech and how to weigh its promises—enhanced capabilities, for instance, including bionics and prosthetics and even a third arm —against its potential to interfere with people’s mental sovereignty.
Author, Nita FarahanyMerritt Chesson.
Follow our step-by-step video guide for growing cerebral organoids, or brain organoids, from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs). We’ll walk you through embryoid body formation, induction, expansion, and organoid maturation.
0:35 — Embryoid Body Formation.
2:57 — Induction.
4:07 — Expansion.
6:42 — Organoid Maturation.
View a printable protocol on how to grow cerebral organoids: https://bit.ly/38hvMDA
Explore resources for neural organoid research: https://bit.ly/34ZGWun.
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In the current edition of The Lancet Neurology, researchers of the Human Brain Project (HBP) present the novel clinical uses of advanced brain modeling methods. Computational brain modeling techniques that integrate the measured data of a patient have been developed by researchers at AMU Marseille as part of the HBP. The models can be used as predictive tools to virtually test clinical hypotheses and strategies.
To create personalized brain models, the researchers use a simulation technology called The Virtual Brain (TVB), which HBP scientist Viktor Jirsa has developed together with collaborators. For each patient, the computational models are created from data of the individually measured anatomy, structural connectivity and brain dynamics.
The approach has been first applied in epilepsy, and a major clinical trial is currently ongoing. The TVB technology enables clinicians to simulate the spread of abnormal activity during epileptic seizures in a patient’s brain, helping them to better identify the target areas. In January, the team had presented the detailed methodology of the epilepsy work on the cover of Science Translational Medicine.
Johns Hopkins researchers break ground on new field of ‘organoid intelligence’.
According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, a “biocomputer” powered by human brain cells could be developed within our lifetime. This technology is expected to exponentially expand the capabilities of modern computing and open up new areas of research.
The team’s plan for “organoid intelligence” was outlined in a recent article published in the journal Frontiers in Science.
Summary: Using a new technology called The Virtual Brain, researchers are able to create personalized computerized brain models of individual patients based on their anatomy, structural connectivity, and brain dynamics.
Source: Human Brain Project.
In the current edition of The Lancet Neurology, researchers of the Human Brain Project (HBP) present the novel clinical uses of advanced brain modeling methods.
Prof. Madeline A. Lancaster (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Cambridge, UK) on “Modeling human brain development in cerebral organoids”, at the FENS-SfN Summer School 2018 on Neural stem cells, brain organoids and brain repair, which was held on 3–9 June 2018 in Bertinoro, Italy.