Human and mouse neurons became connected via synapses. Credit: Giovanni Cancemi/Shutterstock.com Think of if lost, deteriorated, or diseased brain parts could be regrown in the laboratory and transplanted for a new lease on life. Scientists at the University of California San Diego have gotten us closer to that fact. Human cortical organoids (or 'mini-brains') transplanted...
Credit: Annelisa Leinbach An increase in genetic regulatory aspects explains how modern humans evolved bigger brains than other hominins. The surface area of the human being's cerebral cortex is more than 3 times the dimension of that of the chimpanzee. Neuroscientists have found that particular gene variants are linked to increases in brain surface area. The...
Wake forest medical center Brain electrodes developed to mimic the hippocampus appear to increase the encoding of memories-- and are two times as effective in people with bad memory. A singular form of brain stimulation seems to boost people's capability to remember new details-- by imitating how our brains create memories. Memory prosthesis The "memory prosthesis," which includes...
UConn researchers have developed a way of charging deep brain stimulators that don't require the battery power that's currently standard. Credit: University of Connecticut Implantable deep brain stimulators could aid lots of people with neurological and psychiatric illnesses when conventional therapies stop functioning. Nevertheless, surgery every time the batteries have to be transformed is a...
Researchers developed a "DishBrain" system that associated neurons to a computer running the typical computer game Pong. Within five minutes, the cells commenced "learning" and improved their efficiency. The device of "learning" could entail the free-energy concept, according to which the brain searches for to lessen entropy (unpredictability) in its atmosphere. Recently research announced in...
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain What makes people brain distinct from that of all other animals-- including also our closest primate relatives? In an analysis of cell kinds in the prefrontal cortex of 4 primate species, Yale researchers identified species-specific-- particularly human-specific-- features, they report on Aug. 25th in the journal Science. And they discovered that what...
The main factor is how hardware chips are now set up. Based on the common Von Neumann architecture, the chip isolates memory storage from its central processors. Each computation is one nightmarish Monday morning commute, with the chip constantly shuttling information to and fro from each compartment, forming a notorious "memory wall." If you have...
Neuralink, a company co-founded by Elon Musk, has been working on an implantable brain machine interface since 2016. While it previously showed its progress by showing a Macaque ape managing the cursor in a game of Pong, it still has to start human tests. Now, according to Reuters, Elon Musk has reached out to...
Credit: Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images A recent study published in the journal Nature suggests that when we experience surprise, our brains are more likely to be attentive. Researchers, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, discovered that a hormone called noradrenaline can impact brain activity and behavior in response to unexpected events. Noradrenaline is one of several chemicals...
Identifying how neural activity changes with learning is anything but black and white. Recently, some have presumed that learning in the brain, or biological learning, may be visualized in terms of optimization, which is how learning happens in artificial networks like computers or robots. A new approaches piece co-authored by Carnegie Mellon University and University...
