Hasta La Gadget!

We know in the animal kingdom, the human brain is probably considered the cream of the crop as we can do pretty much anything and everything, that is, unless it has to do with going underwater or into space. Then we’ll need some special gear in order to keep our precious brains from exploding in our skulls. But a new experiment may have just shown what the human brain can do when combined with animals.

Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center injected new properties of human brain cells known as astrocytes into mice, using them to boost their learning ability. The astrocytes, which were once thought to be helper cells, gave the group of mice the ability to learn their way through a maze faster than another group of mice that were given extra brain cells from their own species. Not only that, but the human-brain infused mice were also able to quickly associate a particular sound with an electric shock. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: NEXThaler Dry Powder Asthma Inhaler, Smart Wound Dressing Glows Whenever Bacteria Are Around,

This video is the first time scientists have ever been able to image the whole brain of a vertebrate creature in such a way that you can see individual cells and simultaneously how they’re firing and behaving in real time. This is how the brain really, really works—and it’s amazing. More »

The Microsoft Kinect has been hacked to do all sorts of things, and while some of the hacks are for the good of humankind, most are pretty superfluous. But the Microsoft Research Cambridge team has recently put together a Kinect demo which could provide neurosurgeons with interactive 3D visuals which could help them save lives in the operating room.

The prototype system shows how a Kinect could help provide augmented reality visuals which overlay the patient’s MRI or CAT scan data with the real world. This would allow doctors to move around the patients head and visualize problem areas non-invasively, and to help them map out a better action plan before starting surgery.

The system uses a touchscreen tablet with a Kinect duct taped to the back of it, tied to a custom application through the Kinect Fusion API. In the video below shot by IEEE Spectrum, Microsoft Research’s Ben Glocker demonstrates how the system works:

While this particular system isn’t exactly the most portable, it’s still quite impressive, and you could see how combining Kinect tech with some sort of head-mounted display could really change the way surgery is performed. Now if only they could work out a way that you don’t have to lie in that noisy and claustrophobic MRI machine.

A scenario like Planet of the Apes might not be as unrealistic as we think, but fortunately—or at least for right now—it seems like our future overlords will be far less threatening than Caesar and co.. That’s because scientists have discovered that injecting mice with human brain cells can actually make them smarter. All hail our hyper-intelligent, beady-eyed kings. More »

Some would say the internet already lets us share every minute detail of our thoughts, much to our followers’ dismay. Duke University isn’t deterred by our behavior — if anything, it just took oversharing literally by connecting two rats’ minds in an experiment, first in a lab and ultimately online. Electrodes attached to the brain of a host “encoder” rat in Brazil processed the motor-oriented mental activity for a desired behavior, such as pressing a lever on cue, and converted it into a signal that was then received by a “decoder” rat as far away as Duke’s US campus. The majority of the time, the decoder rat performed the same action as the encoder. Researchers also found that rewarding the encoder alongside the decoder created a virtuous loop, as treating the first rat for a job well done focused its attention and improved the signal strength.

We’re not sure that Vulcans would endorse this kind of mind meld, though: apart from immediately depriving the decoder rat of self-control, prolonged testing led to the same rodent developing additional sympathetic reactions to the encoder. There’s also concerns that the test was too binary and didn’t reflect the complexity of the whole brain. All the same, Duke’s study is proof enough that we can export brainwaves in a meaningful way.

Filed under: Science, Alt

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Via: Discovery News

Source: Nature