Our current approach to treating chronic pain is drug-based, but a vaccine-based approach can cut addiction out of the equation. In this video, Big Think contributor Lou Reese, co-founder of United Neuroscience, explains how soon we may soon be able to vaccinate people, en masse, against pain!
The evidence is far less clear than popular media might lead you to believe.
By: richard roberts and roger kreuz
You may have heard that learning another language is one method for preventing or at least postponing the onset of dementia. Dementia refers to the loss of cognitive abilities, and one of its most common forms is Alzheimer’s disease. At this time, the causes of the disease are not well understood, and consequently, there are no proven steps that people can take to prevent it. Nonetheless, some researchers have suggested that learning a foreign language might help delay the onset of dementia.
Researchers found that using a computer, playing games, and participating in social activities may reduce the risk of mild cognitive impairment.
New research suggests that playing games, using a computer, and having a rich social life can keep mild cognitive impairment at bay.
Our brains go through changes as we get older, and some people may experience issues with memory, thinking, or judgment.
“Get Out of My Head!”
For now, the phrase “Get out of my head,” is a lighthearted joke uttered when someone shares the same thought as a friend or colleague. But thanks to research in telepathic communications and computer technology by a team from the University of Washington, it could become a literal directive in the future.
Or, perhaps you’ll want to invite someone into your mind to help you solve a tricky problem. After all, two (or three) heads are better than one.
Hailed as a pioneer by Photonics Media for his previous discoveries of supercontinuum and Cr tunable lasers, City College of New York Distinguished Professor of Science and Engineering Robert R. Alfano and his research team are claiming another breakthrough with a new super-class of photons dubbed “Majorana photons.” They could lead to enhanced information on quantum-level transition and imaging of the brain and its working.
Alfano’s group based its research on the fact that photons, while possessing salient properties of polarization, wavelength, coherence and spatial modes, take on several forms. “Photons are amazing and are all not the same,” Alfano says.
Their focus “was to use a special super-form of photons, which process the entanglement twists of both polarizations and the wavefront … and would propagate deeper in brain tissues, microtubules and neuron cells, giving more fundamental information of the brain than the conventional photon forms.”
Hallucinations are spooky and, fortunately, fairly rare. But, a new study suggests, the real question isn’t so much why some people occasionally experience them. It’s why all of us aren’t hallucinating all the time.
In the study, Stanford University School of Medicine neuroscientists stimulated nerve cells in the visual cortex of mice to induce an illusory image in the animals’ minds. The scientists needed to stimulate a surprisingly small number of nerve cells, or neurons, in order to generate the perception, which caused the mice to behave in a particular way.
“Back in 2012, we had described the ability to control the activity of individually selected neurons in an awake, alert animal,” said Karl Deisseroth, MD, Ph.D., professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. “Now, for the first time, we’ve been able to advance this capability to control multiple individually specified cells at once, and make an animal perceive something specific that in fact is not really there—and behave accordingly.”
Dr. Wim Melis from the University of Greenwich is working on deconstructing and reconstructing audio signals with extremely high accuracy.
Audio is captured and, from there, converted into a spiking signal—the type the brain uses. This is then fed into the brain and reconstructed as a 90–100 percent replica of the original sound.
Current technologies, known as cochlear implants, only achieve a fraction of this. They do the work of damaged parts of the inner ear (cochlea) to provide sound signals to the brain, whereas hearing aids make sounds louder.
