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Transfer printing microstructures onto novel hydrogel interfaces and customised composite electrodes could increase the compatibility and information transfer between body tissue and electronic devices.

Implantable devices such as pacemakers, cochlear implants, and deep brain stimulation devices enhance the quality of life for many people. Improving the integration of such devices with the body could enable the next generation of brain-machine interfaces (such as, implantable devices that can record and modulate neurological function in vivo) to monitor physiology, detect disease, and deploy bioelectronic medicines.

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Placement of five anode electrodes (left) over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the cathode (right) over the right shoulder (to avoid spurious cognitive effects from cortical excitability) (credit: Justin Nelson et al./ Front. Hum. Neurosci.)

In an experiment at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, researchers have found that transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) of the brain can improve people’s multitasking skills and help avoid the drop in performance that comes with information overload.

The study was reported in a pre-publication paper in the open-access journal Frontiers of Human Neuroscience. It was motivated by the observation that various Air Force operations such as remotely piloted and manned aircraft operations require a human operator to monitor and respond to multiple events simultaneously over a long period of time. “With the monotonous nature of these tasks, the operator’s performance may decline shortly after their work shift commences,” according to the researchers.

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Scientists have discovered a new way to edit DNA that could fix “broken genes” in the brain, cure previously incurable diseases and potentially even extend the human lifespan.

The breakthrough – described as a “holy grail” of genetics – was used to partially restore the sight of rats blinded by a condition which also affects humans.

Previously researchers were not able to make changes to DNA in eye, brain, heart and liver tissues.

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A paralysed woman in the Netherlands is the first to be fitted with a new type of brain implant that allows patients who cannot speak or move to communicate using nothing but their thoughts.

The new implant, which works with a computer interface to help her spell out words and sentences, can be used anywhere, allowing her to communicate with people in the outside world, without medical experts on hand to help.

“This is a world first,” neuroscientist and lead researcher Nick Ramsay, from the University Medical School Utrecht, told CNN. “It’s a fully implantable system that works at home without need for any experts to make it work.”

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Bio Intelligence-based search engine; coming soon. Building blocks if you think about it with the whole Synthetic DNA storage, connected cell circuitry to make buildings, machines, devices, etc. living. We needed quantum in the infrastructure to ensure things like bio-intelligence, autonomous machines, and connected super humans could eventually happen while reducing risks and threats. Now, we’re watching the ramp up of synthetic bio systems. Definitely exciting especially when we could see in our lifetime mobile devices no longer needed.


(Tech Xplore)—Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence is in the news with its smart search engine, Semantic Scholar.

Namely, they are expanding their intelligence-based service into neuroscience research.

Nicola Jones said Friday in Nature that Semantic Scholar “is expanding its corpus of papers to cover some 10 million research articles in computer science and neuroscience.”

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