Nerve-cell transplants help brain-damaged rats fully recover lost ability to learn, critical confirmation. Brain cell grafts do stimulate release of growth factors for neurons, regenerate or reorganize part of the brain, and restore cognitive function, in a process called neural plasticity. Study focused on the hippocampus, considered to be the seat of learning and memory. Further study is needed, especially to understand the underlying repair mechanism and the apparent starring role of growth factor in brain health.

December 11, 2009 in Sci Tech
Tags: brain, transplant

http://kl.am/5xUN

Electrodes placed directly on the surface of peoples’ brains allow them to type just by thinking of letters. ~ how exactly this will be I want to know.

December 8, 2009 in Sci Tech
Tags: brain

http://kl.am/5sGX

Video Scenes Pulled from Peoples’ Thoughts, from brain activity. Would you post your thoughts on Youtube? Also pulling an image out of a person’s brain is a feat that is hard to believe. ~Our world as we know it might change significantly, soon and rather quickly.

December 8, 2009 in cyborgs
Tags: brain, cyborgs

http://kl.am/5rT2

Culturing brain material and plugging it into robots, or “animats” as they are known. Rise of the rat-brained robots. This is no ordinary robot control system – a plain old microchip connected to a circuit board. Instead, the controller nestles inside a small pot containing a pink broth of nutrients and antibiotics. Inside that pot, some 300,000 rat neurons have made – and continue to make – connections with each other. To create the “brain”, the neural cortex from a rat fetus is surgically removed and disassociating enzymes applied to it to disconnect the neurons from each other. The researchers then deposit a slim layer of these isolated neurons into a nutrient-rich medium on a bank of electrodes, where they start reconnecting. They do this by growing projections that reach out to touch the neighbouring neurons. “It’s just fascinating that they do this,” says Steve Potter of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, who pioneered the field of neurally controlled animats. “Clearly brain cells have evo

November 19, 2009 in Web Tech
Tags: brain, cyborgs, robots

http://kl.am/4Yd2

IBM’s Blue Gene Supercomputer Models Cat’s Entire Brain. 144 terabytes, 1 billion neurons, 10 trillion synapses. Simulated brain still runs about 100 times slower than the real thing. Research group hopes to simulate a human brain within 10 years.

November 18, 2009 in Uncategorized
Tags: brain

http://kl.am/4XrG

Genetically Modifying Songbirds to Study Human Brain Growth http://bit.ly/623xV

September 29, 2009 in Web Tech
Tags: brain, genetic engineering

http://ping.fm/1gHWK