{"id":117552,"date":"2020-12-23T03:22:33","date_gmt":"2020-12-23T11:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/2020-in-neuroscience-longevity-and-ai-and-whats-to-come"},"modified":"2020-12-23T03:22:33","modified_gmt":"2020-12-23T11:22:33","slug":"2020-in-neuroscience-longevity-and-ai-and-whats-to-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/2020-in-neuroscience-longevity-and-ai-and-whats-to-come","title":{"rendered":"2020 in Neuroscience, Longevity, and AI\u2014and What\u2019s to Come"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/2020-in-neuroscience-longevity-and-ai-and-whats-to-come3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>Honorable Mentions<\/b><\/p>\n<p>One more scientific brilliance this year is the use of light in neuroscience and tissue engineering. <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2020\/06\/09\/scientists-3d-printed-ears-inside-living-mice-using-light-heres-how-and-why\/\">One study<\/a>, for example, used lasers to directly print a human ear-like structure under the skin of mice, without a single surgical cut. <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2020\/07\/01\/a-highway-to-smell-how-scientists-used-light-to-incept-smell-in-mice\/\">Another<\/a> used light to incept smell in mice, artificially programming an entirely new, never-seen-in-nature perception of a scent directly into their brains. Yet <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2020\/11\/10\/how-scientists-used-vr-and-lasers-to-reprogram-the-brains-gps-system-in-mice\/\">another study<\/a> combined lasers with virtual reality to dissect how our brains process space and navigation, \u201cmentally transporting\u201d a mouse to a virtual location linked to a reward. To cap it off, scientists <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2020\/10\/13\/scientists-found-a-new-way-to-control-the-brain-with-light-no-surgery-required\/\">found a new way<\/a> to use light to control the brain through the skull without surgery\u2014though as of now, you\u2019ll still need gene therapy. Given the implications of unauthorized \u201cmind control,\u201d that\u2019s probably less of a bug and more of a feature.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re nearing the frustratingly slow, but sure, dying gasp of Covid-19. The pandemic defined 2020, but science kept hustling along. I can\u2019t wait to share what might come in the next year with you\u2014may it be revolutionary, potentially terrifying, utterly bizarre or oddly heart-warming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Honorable Mentions One more scientific brilliance this year is the use of light in neuroscience and tissue engineering. One study, for example, used lasers to directly print a human ear-like structure under the skin of mice, without a single surgical cut. Another used light to incept smell in mice, artificially programming an entirely new, never-seen-in-nature [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,6,8,1879],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-robotics-ai","category-space","category-virtual-reality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}