New research at MIT might be a game-changer for Alzheimer’s. But you don’t have to wait to strengthen your brain’s memory system.
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Category: neuroscience – Page 972
This has been worked on since WWII using various methods that never fully worked out. However, our technology has advance; so it could be within reach this time.
An expert from Rutgers University Newark explores the proper role of neuroscience in defense and war efforts, and how technologies designed with this science can be misused to harm people.
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What could once only be imagined in science fiction is now increasingly coming to fruition: Drones can be flown by human brains’ thoughts. Pharmaceuticals can help soldiers forget traumatic experiences or produce feelings of trust to encourage confession in interrogation. DARPA-funded research is working on everything from implanting brain chips to “neural dust” in an effort to alleviate the effects of traumatic experience in war. Invisible microwave beams produced by military contractors and tested on U.S. prisoners can produce the sensation of burning at a distance.
What all these techniques and technologies have in common is that they’re recent neuroscientific breakthroughs propelled by military research within a broader context of rapid neuroscientific development, driven by massive government-funded projects in both America and the European Union. Even while much about the brain remains mysterious, this research has contributed to the rapid and startling development of neuroscientific technology.
And while we might marvel at these developments, it is also undeniably true that this state of affairs raises significant ethical questions. What is the proper role – if any – of neuroscience in national defense or war efforts? My research addresses these questions in the broader context of looking at how international relations, and specifically warfare, are shaped by scientific and medical expertise and technology.
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Depression Treatment
Posted in biotech/medical, neuroscience, wearables
The Happy Headband. Take my money.
The Fisher Wallace Stimulator® is a wearable neurostimulation device that is cleared by the FDA to treat depression and anxiety. During each 20-minute treatment session, the device gently stimulates the brain to produce serotonin and other neurochemicals that reduce depression and anxiety (and support healthy mood and sleep). The device has been proven to be safe and effective in multiple published studies conducted at top institutions such as Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital.
Over 6,000 healthcare practitioners, including 2,000 board-certified psychiatrists, have used the device to treat over 20,000 patients since 2009. Most patients experience results within the first two weeks of daily use.
Summary: Researchers have discovered a link between nerve clusters in the brain and the amount of force generated by a physical action.
Source: Oxford University.
Researchers have found a link between the activity in nerve clusters in the brain and the amount of force generated in a physical action, opening the way for the development of better devices to assist paralysed patients.
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What if a simple algorithm were all it took to program tomorrow’s artificial intelligence to think like humans?
According to a paper published in the journal Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, it may be that easy — or difficult. Are you a glass-half-full or half-empty kind of person?
Researchers behind the theory presented experimental evidence for the Theory of Connectivity — the theory that all of the brains processes are interconnected (massive oversimplification alert) — “that a simple mathematical logic underlies brain computation.” Simply put, an algorithm could map how the brain processes information. The painfully-long research paper describes groups of similar neurons forming multiple attachments meant to handle basic ideas or information. These groupings form what researchers call “functional connectivity motifs” (FCM), which are responsible for every possible combination of ideas.
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