Gizmodo

Posts Tagged “

Brain

communication

Synthetic Telepathy = In, Note Passing = Out

With $4 million from the US Army, scientists at UC Irvine will study synthetic telepathy, otherwise known as sending and receiving messages using your mind. The scientists believe that this amazing new form of communication could benefit stroke victims who can't speak—but also aid soldiers in the battlefield. If it becomes popular enough, it will of course be abused by middle-school gossips and guys hoping to be like Mel Gibson in that crappy movie, too. Here's how the eggheads plan to make it work: More »

this is your brain

Amazing DSI Brain Scanning Visualizes Your Mind's Inner Workings In 3D

What's that monkey thinking about when he's mushing down that banana or tossing feces at you? Well, you're looking at it—this is a map of where a macaque's thoughts live. It's made possible by new 3D visualization algorithms developed by neuroscientists at Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston which render a brain's billions of individual neuron connections in full-color 3D, with each visible strand representing several tens of thousands of the too-small-to-image neural pathways. It's all done by simply applying new processing to existing MRI scan data, and thankfully, it works on human brains too.
More »

binoculars

Brainwave Binoculars Will Pick Out The Things You Looked At, But Didn't See

Pentagon gadget lab DARPA has just earmarked $6.7 million to develop "brain-wave binoculars." Electrodes placed on the user's scalp record electrical brain activity in an attempt to use the cranium's unrivaled ability to spot patterns. With time, the binoculars can learn to identify objects that would normally pique the user's interest and direct them towards it. The binoculars are supposed to help soldiers out in the field by pointing out tanks or enemy combatants that they may have seen, but not noticed. More »

computers

Psychic Computer Sees Words Inside Your Brain

Computer science is definitely reaching the danger zone when actual words can be spotted using MRI scans. In the image above, researchers from the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh predict what the words "celery" and "airplane" look like when someone thinks of them, and then they compare the prediction to actual brain scans, with frightening similarity. The study was "calibrated" with nine students, each thinking of 58 different words. Tom Mitchell, one of the lead researchers, told Reuters the goal is to determine how the brain organizes information, but how do we know Dr. Mitchell won't abuse this newfound power by, say, winning a billion dollars on Jeopardy? We don't, is my point. [Reuters]

brain probe

Scientists Working on Matrix-esque Brain-Computer Interface

A team at Caltech is working on a MEMS-based robot probe that will be able to slowly creep electrodes into your brain to connect up to specific neurons. Creepy indeed, but with potential uses for advanced control of prosthetic limbs, Luke Skywalker-style. But the idea has greater potential for "state-of-the-art experimental techniques for electrophysiology." according to team-leader Michael Wolf. And that's just got me picturing the neural probes of The Matrix. More »

apple

Close Call: Apple's OS X Almost Looked Exactly Like OS 8 (From the Book Inside Steve's Brain)

There's a gem of a story—one of many—in Leander Kahney's new book, Inside Steve's Brain, about the biggest OS X mistake Apple never made: The original plan UI was to take the old crusty crap interface from Mac OS Classic and drop it on top of the core. Thankfully Steve Jobs called the entire UI team a "bunch of idiots" and they used the beautiful tech demo mockups as the basis for what you see on leopard's OS today. Close call, eh? More »

fronkonsteen

Open-Skull Brain-Machine Interface to Control Robotic Limbs

A neurosurgery team at Osaka University is now installing brain-machine interfaces directly into patients' heads. They claim the invasive open-skull surgery allows control over robotic limbs with the mind more accurately. In fact, in trials with four test subjects, their method has more than 80% accuracy. More »

brain machine

Brain Machine Sunglasses Are Psychedelic, Hallucinatory, Fabulous

Here's a brain machine made from an old pair of shades with customized lenses by Okini393939. Stick 'em on and you have an instant meditation session thanks to the flashing lights and sound. I particularly like the instructions he put on the inside of the lenses—check it in the pic below. More »

nanotechnology

Nanobots Get Brains, Scarecrows So Freakin' Jealous

We love this quote from Dr. Anirban Bandyopadhyay of Japan's National Institute for Materials Science:
...this is the first time we have created a nano-brain.
Is anyone else a little flushed after reading that? Here's the story: More »

medical gadgets

Micro-Camera Implanted in Mouse's Brain Watches for Parkinson Tremors

Scientists have injected a mouse with a chemical that makes its brain glow where there's activity, and implanted a tiny camera directly inside the hippocampus to watch what's going on. The team at Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan are using the 0.1-inch-long camera to look for information on brain activity that causes tremors. They hope the results may lead to better treatments for Parkinson's disease, and if successful they may also experiment with humans. We can't imagine how strange it would be to know your brain's being watched from inside your head. [Fareastgizmos]

brain games

SegaToys Brain Checker Flirts With Your Prefrontal Cortex

The SegaToys Brain Checker is a handheld game that allows you to get your gray matter flexing. Given the Japanese content of the source, we are not too sure what the Brain Checker will actually involve, but derivations of Dr. Kawashima's Brain Age games are to be expected. From the screenshots available, the game will involve picture and number based puzzles on a pocket sized LCD screen, which will attempt to get your prefrontal cortex all hot and sweaty. More »

oldie but goodie

Brain Age Creator Developing Intelligent Toyotas for Old People

First he developed Brain Age, a hit Nintendo DS game that helps keep people's brains fit well into their golden years. Now, the same guy, Ryuta Kawashima, is working with Toyota to make cars that help the older folks who perhaps didn't do all the mental calisthenics they should have. More »

man vs. beast

Chimpanzees Beat College Students at Computerized Brain Test

You know that game in Brain Age where you get a quick look at a batch of numbers then have to tap them in numerical order after they're hidden? In news that must please the good Dr. Kawashima to no end, scientists at Kyoto University have found that five-year-old chimps are able to perform a (very) similar feat much faster than a group of nine able-minded college students on a touchscreen test bed that resembles the best-selling DS game.
More »

protect your brain

Xenith X1 Helmet Helps American Football Players Think Good and Stuff

With all of the news about football players and concussions these days, it is about time that the helmet was redesigned to offer more protection. The folks at Xenith are hoping to offer a solution with the X1, a helmet that features 18 shock absorbing discs that release air slowly to reduce the force of an impact. These Aware-Flow Shock Absorbers, along with an innovative comfort fit system called Fit Seeker make for a helmet that promises to greatly reduce sudden movements of the head that cause concussions. More »

second life

Second Life Gets Brain Controls


A brain-computer interface (BCI) system has been developed by the Keio University Biomedical Engineering Laboratory that allows a Second Life avatar to be controlled simply by a user's thoughts. By using a electrode-equipped headpiece that receives signals from the brain's motor cortex which is connected to a EEG machine, the thought- moving data is sent to the BCI system. More »

electrifying research

Shocking Pac-Man Helps Scientists with Fear Studies

A version of Pac-Man that administers electric shocks to gamers has been shedding light on how the human brain reacts to danger. Researchers at the Wellcome Trust Center for Neuroimaging at UCL found that the closer the gamers got to danger, the more impulsive was their response. "In effect, the less free will you will have," explained the study leader, Dean Mobbs. More »

high contrast

Crimson & Black DS Lite Unboxing

Remember that Crimson & Black Nintendo DS Lite that was supposed to be packaged with Brain Age 2? Well they actually went through with it and Gamepro got their hands on one for an unboxing session.[Gamepro via Kotaku]

are you ready for some brain damage?

Safer Football Helmet Sends Impact Data to Sidelines

A few of us here at the Giz spent quite a bit of time on the football field in our youth, and after one too many ditzy posts are wishing we would've worn a football helmet like this one when we were out there busting some asses on the gridiron. This high-tech helmet has sensors inside that can tell just how hard you've gotten your bell rung, then transmits that info to doctors on the sidelines who might promptly bench you once you've reached the limits of consciousness, or at least the point of physical injury. More »