Researchers in US tracked the neural data from people while they were speaking
Reading minds has just come a step closer to reality: scientists have developed artificial intelligence that can turn brain activity into text.
While the system currently works on neural patterns detected while someone is speaking aloud, experts say it could eventually aid communication for patients who are unable to speak or type, such as those with locked in syndrome.
Continue reading...After a week on a high fat, high added sugar diet, volunteers scored worse on memory tests
Consuming a western diet for as little as one week can subtly impair brain function and encourage slim and otherwise healthy young people to overeat, scientists claim.
Researchers found that after seven days on a high fat, high added sugar diet, volunteers in their 20s scored worse on memory tests and found junk food more desirable immediately after they had finished a meal.
Continue reading...Researchers use 3D glasses, films and food to test whether cuttlefish use stereopsis to find prey
There are some questions in science that can only be answered by strapping a pair of 3D glasses to an unsuspecting cuttlefish and setting it loose in an underwater movie theatre.
That, at least, was the thinking of a team of researchers who set themselves the task of working out how the marine molluscs know how far away prey is before launching their explosive, tentacled attacks.
Continue reading...Brain scans of Romanian orphans adopted in UK show early neglect left its mark
Children who experience severe deprivation early in life have smaller brains in adulthood, researchers have found.
The findings are based on scans of young adults who were adopted as children into UK families from Romania’s orphanages that rose under the regime of the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu.
Continue reading...Debate needed over research with ‘potential for something to suffer’, neuroscientists say
Neuroscientists may have crossed an “ethical rubicon” by growing lumps of human brain in the lab, and in some cases transplanting the tissue into animals, researchers warn.
The creation of mini-brains or brain “organoids” has become one of the hottest fields in modern neuroscience. The blobs of tissue are made from stem cells and, while they are only the size of a pea, some have developed spontaneous brain waves, similar to those seen in premature babies.
Continue reading...French patient’s breakthrough could lead to brain-controlled wheelchairs, say experts
A French man paralysed in a nightclub accident has walked again thanks to a brain-controlled exoskeleton, providing hope to tetraplegics seeking to regain movement.
The patient trained for months, harnessing his brain signals to control a computer-simulated avatar to perform basic movements before using the robot device to walk. Scientists described the trial results as a breakthrough.
Continue reading...Study funded by Facebook aims to improve communication with paralysed patients
Doctors have turned the brain signals for speech into written sentences in a research project that aims to transform how patients with severe disabilities communicate in the future.
The breakthrough is the first to demonstrate how the intention to say specific words can be extracted from brain activity and converted into text rapidly enough to keep pace with natural conversation.
Continue reading...Taking a stroll with Shane O’Mara is a risky endeavour. The neuroscientist is so passionate about walking, and our collective right to go for walks, that he is determined not to let the slightest unfortunate aspect of urban design break his stride. So much so, that he has a habit of darting across busy roads as the lights change. “One of life’s great horrors as you’re walking is waiting for permission to cross the street,” he tells me, when we are forced to stop for traffic – a rude interruption when, as he says, “the experience of synchrony when walking together is one of life’s great pleasures”. He knows this not only through personal experience, but from cold, hard data – walking makes us healthier, happier and brainier.
We are wandering the streets of Dublin discussing O’Mara’s new book, In Praise of Walking, a backstage tour of what happens in our brains while we perambulate. Our jaunt begins at the grand old gates of his workplace, Trinity College, and takes in the Irish famine memorial at St Stephen’s Green, the Georgian mile, the birthplace of Francis Bacon, the site of Facebook’s new European mega-HQ and the salubrious seaside dwellings of Sandymount.
Continue reading...Diplomats had reported falling ill after what was thought to be ‘acoustic attack’
Brain scans of US embassy staff who became ill in mysterious circumstances while serving in Cuba have found potential abnormalities that may be related to their symptoms.
The scans taken from 40 US government workers who suffered strange concussion-like symptoms during their deployment to Havana revealed that particular brain features looked different to those in healthy volunteers.
Continue reading...Environmental crisis clouding scientific objectivity about plants’ feelings, says botanist
The gardening gloves are off. Frustrated by more than a decade of research which claims to reveal intentions, feelings and even consciousness in plants, more traditionally minded botanists have finally snapped. Plants, they protest, are emphatically not conscious.
The latest salvo in the plant consciousness wars has been fired by US, British and German biologists who argue that practitioners of “plant neurobiology” have become carried away with the admittedly impressive abilities of plants to sense and react to their environments.
Continue reading...Working memory of older group temporarily improves to match younger group in study
A decline in memory as a result of ageing can be temporarily reversed using a harmless form of electrical brain stimulation, scientists have found.
The findings help explain why certain cognitive skills decline significantly with age and raise the prospect of new treatments.
Continue reading...Jody Williams and Mary Wareham were leading lights in the campaign to ban landmines. Now they have autonomous weapons in their sights
It sounds like something from the outer reaches of science fiction: battlefield robots waging constant war, algorithms that determine who to kill, face-recognition fighting machines that can ID a target and take it out before you have time to say “Geneva conventions”.
This is no film script, however, but an ominous picture of future warfare that is moving ever closer. “Killer robots” is shorthand for a range of tech that has generals salivating and peace campaigners terrified at the ethical ramifications of warfare waged via digital proxies.
Continue reading...Doctors could use Crispr tool to inject benign virus into foetus’s brain to ‘switch on’ key genes
Scientists are developing a radical form of gene therapy that could cure a devastating medical disorder by mending mutations in the brains of foetuses in the womb.
The treatment, which has never been attempted before, would involve doctors injecting the feotus’s brain with a harmless virus that infects the neurons and delivers a suite of molecules that correct the genetic faults.
Continue reading...Toronto researchers believe the drug can also help those with depression, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s
An experimental drug that bolsters ailing brain cells has raised hopes of a treatment for memory loss, poor decision making and other mental impairments that often strike in old age.
The drug could be taken as a daily pill by over-55s if clinical trials, which are expected to start within two years, show that the medicine is safe and effective at preventing memory lapses.
Continue reading...For years western policymakers have tried to establish what causes individuals to be radicalised. Now a pioneering study has used medical science to gain fresh insight into the process – in the brains of potential jihadists.
University College London (UCL) researchers were part of an international team that used neuroimaging techniques to map how the brains of radicalised individuals respond to being socially marginalised. The findings, they claim, confirm that exclusion is a leading factor in creating violent jihadists.
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