Talk about drinking to forget!

Popular Science - 11.25.13 by Virginia Hughes

The idea of scientists manipulating memory does, naturally, sound a bit creepy. But it also points to some possible good: treatment for millions of people tormented by real memories. And that’s something worth remembering. 

Credit: Sam Kaplan

Roadside bombs, childhood abuse, car accidents—they form memories that can shape (and damage) us for a lifetime. Now, a handful of studies have shown that we’re on the verge of erasing and even rewriting memories. The hope is that this research will lead to medical treatments, especially for addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Researchers have known for decades that memories are unreliable. They’re particularly adjustable when actively recalled because at that point they’re pulled out of a stable molecular state. Last spring, scientists published a study performed at the University of Washington in which adult volunteers completed a survey about their eating and drinking habits before age 16. A week later, they were given personalized analyses of their answers that stated—falsely—that they had gotten sick from rum or vodka as a teen. One in five not only didn’t notice the lie, but also recalled false memories about it and rated that beverage as less desirable than they had before. Studies like these point to possible treatments for mental health problems. Both PTSD and addiction disorders hinge on memories that can trigger problematic behaviors, such as crippling fear caused by loud noises or cravings brought about by the sight of drug paraphernalia.

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By 2020 You'll Connect to the Internet via an Implant

Infowars - 10.30.13 by Michael Snyder

Would you like to have your brain “rebooted” by a chip inside your head?

Wikimedia Commons

Would you like to surf the Internet, make a phone call or send a text message using only your brain?  Would you like to “download” the content of a 500 page book into your memory in less than a second?  Would you like to have extremely advanced nanobots constantly crawling around in your body monitoring it for disease?  Would you like to be able to instantly access the collective knowledge base of humanity wherever you are?

All of that may sound like science fiction, but these are technologies that some of the most powerful high tech firms in the world actually believe are achievable by the year 2020.  However, with all of the potential “benefits” that such technology could bring, there is also the potential for great tyranny.  Just think about it.  What do you think that the governments of the world could do if almost everyone had a mind reading brain implant that was connected to the Internet?  Could those implants be used to control and manipulate us?  Those are frightening things to consider.

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Inattentive? It's Not You, It's Your Brain

Blogger's Note: I know, I know, your brain is you, but I liked the catchy title...

Scientific American - 6.11.13 by Keith Payne

Scientists probe the biases of “unconscious selective attention”

Image: iStock/ Hamza Türkkol

It was a summer evening when Tony Cornell tried to make the residents of Cambridge, England see a ghost. He got dressed up in a sheet and walked through a public park waving his arms about. Meanwhile his assistants observed the bystanders for any hint that they noticed something strange. No, this wasn’t Candid Camera. Cornell was a researcher interested in the paranormal. The idea was first to get people to notice the spectacle, and then see how they understood what their eyes were telling them. Would they see the apparition as a genuine ghost or as something more mundane, like a bloke in a bed sheet?

The plan was foiled when not a single bystander so much as raised an eye brow. Several cows did notice, however, and they followed Cornell on his ghostly rambles. Was it just a fluke, or did people “not want to see” the besheeted man, as Cornell concluded in his 1959 report?

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Brain-Computer Interface Coming Closer

New York Times - 4/28/13 by Nick Bilton

“The current brain technologies are like trying to listen to a conversation in a football stadium from a blimp,” said John Donoghue, a neuroscientist and director of the Brown Institute for Brain Science. “To really be able to understand what is going on with the brain today you need to surgically implant an array of sensors into the brain.” 

Last week, engineers sniffing around the programming code for Google Glass found hidden examples of ways that people might interact with the wearable computers without having to say a word. Among them, a user could nod to turn the glasses on or off. A single wink might tell the glasses to take a picture.

But don’t expect these gestures to be necessary for long. Soon, we might interact with our smartphones and computers simply by using our minds. In a couple of years, we could be turning on the lights at home just by thinking about it, or sending an e-mail from our smartphone without even pulling the device from our pocket. Farther into the future, your robot assistant will appear by your side with a glass of lemonade simply because it knows you are thirsty.

Researchers in Samsung’s Emerging Technology Lab are testing tablets that can be controlled by your brain, using a cap that resembles a ski hat studded with monitoring electrodes, the MIT Technology Review, the science and technology journal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reported this month.

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Connecting Computers to your Brain, Wirelessly

Kurzweil News - 3.3.13

“This new wireless system addresses a major need for the next step in providing a practical brain-computer interface."

David A Borton et al./J. Neural Eng.

A team of neuroengineers at Brown University has developed a fully implantable and rechargeable wireless brain sensor capable of relaying real-time broadband signals from up to 100 neurons in freely moving subjects.

Several copies of the novel low-power device, described in the open-access Journal of Neural Engineering, have been performing well in animal models for more than year, a first in the brain-computer interface field.

Brain-computer interfaces could help people with severe paralysis control devices with their thoughts.

Neuroscientists can use such a device to observe, record, and analyze the signals emitted by scores of neurons in particular parts of the animal model’s brain.

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Would You Take Advantage of Brain Implant Enhancements?

IEET - 2.19.13 by Dick Pelletier

More than 80,000 Parkinson's sufferers have found relief using a deep brain stimulator, and brain electronics were implanted into Alzheimer's patients this year in hopes to slow down this insidious killer.

Our brain is the source of everything that makes us human: language, creativity, rationality, emotion, communication, culture, and politics. Now, researchers are set to repair brain functions, to create mind-machine interfaces, and enhance human mental capacities in radical ways.

Today we enjoy basic conversations with our smartphone, desktop PC, games console, TV and, soon, our car; but voice recognition, many believe, should not be viewed as an endgame technology. Although directing electronics with voice and gestures may be considered state-of-the-art today, we will soon be controlling entertainment and communications equipment not by talking or waving; but just by thinking!

Forget Siri, if future-thinking researchers have their way, your brain could soon be chatting away on the phone. A new implant developed by UC-Berkeley neuroscientist, Robert Knight, could create a game-changing relationship between you and your machines. You may soon be able to transmit thoughts via the Internet using a translator chip implanted in the brain that converts thoughts into synthesized words.

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Your Brain, the Ultimate Weapon

Cosmos - 1.21.13 by Emma Young

Right now, research groups around the world either run or funded by military organisations are conducting research and field trials on everything from drugs that boost reaction times to binoculars that tap into their wearer’s unconscious mind.

AS THE SUN sets over a desert riddled with enemy fighters, a solitary Special Forces officer slips on his helmet. He chooses his next move, and his thoughts are transmitted silently to the rest of his unit. As he picks up his weapon, his helmet reads his thoughts, directing an autonomous combat robot positioned nearby to cover his advance. A continuous data stream from his brainwave-monitoring helmet transmits feedback on his stress levels and the information load on his brain to his commanding officer. Thanks to a skin patch delivering drugs into the bloodstream, his stress levels are in check, and, despite sleeping for just two of the past 72 hours, he’s still thinking clearly. Besides, when he enrolled for duty he was screened for his ability to manage highly stressful situations, and his brain scans showed him to be a calm, fast-thinking risk-taker – the perfect soldier.

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This is Your Brain on Smartphones

New York Times - September 30, 2012 by Nick Bilton

(Photo: Michael Appleton for The New York Times)

Last week, my brain played a cruel trick on me. While waiting for my flight to take off, I was reading The New Yorker, the paper version, of course — I know the rules. I became engrossed in an article and swiped my finger down the glossy page to read more.

To my surprise, nothing happened. I swiped it again. Nothing.

My brain was trying to turn the page the same way I do on my iPad, with the swipe of a finger. (I quickly realized that I had to physically turn the page.)

A few days later, my brain played another technology-related trick. In New York City, I hopped in a cab and told the driver, “59th and 6th, please.” I didn’t think anything of it when we arrived at my destination and I said thanks and hopped out of the cab, without paying.


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Immortality Through a Plastic Brain?

io9 - September 14, 2012 by George Dvorsky

We may never be able to freeze you at the moment of death and then reanimate you. But the good news is, there may be another way to keep your brain viable. A group of scientists have come up with a process called "chemical fixation and plastic embedding" — which essentially turns your brain into a hunk of exquisitely preserved plastic.

Here's how you can become immortal, by sealing your brain in amber.

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Controlling Rat Dreams - Are You Next?

io9 - September 3, 2012 - by George Dvorsky

Researchers working at MIT have successfully manipulated the content of a rat's dream by replaying an audio cue that was associated with the previous day's events, namely running through a maze (what else). The breakthrough furthers our understanding of how memory gets consolidated during sleep — but it also holds potential for the prospect of "dream engineering."

Working at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, neuroscientist Matt Wilson was able to accomplish this feat by exploiting the way the brain's hippocampus encodes self-experienced events into memory. Scientists know that our hippocampus is busy at work replaying a number of the day's events while we sleep — a process that's crucial for memory consolidation. But what they did not know was whether or not these "replays" could be influenced by environmental cues.


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Sam Harris on the illusion of free will

I love this guy. Says profound things with ease and clarity, backed by solid science. A rare gift.



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Don't look now, but the Internet is changing your brain!

OnlineCollege.org - January 8, 2012

Noted science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov predicted that one day, we'd "have computer outlets in every home, each of them hooked up to enormous libraries where anyone can ask any question and be given answers, be given reference materials, be something you're interested in knowing, from an early age, however silly it might seem to someone else," and with this appliance, be able to truly enjoy learning instead of being forced to learn mundane facts and figures. His insight has proven to be amazingly accurate, as we now live in a world with the Internet, where nearly the entire wealth of human knowledge can live at our fingertips or even in our pockets. Such an amazing feat, of course, doesn't happen without impacting our lives, and scientists have begun to note that the Internet has not only served to fulfill our brains' curiosities, but also rewired them. So what exactly is the Internet doing to our brains? Read on to find out.

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New Brain-Like Chips from IBM!

computing.co.uk - 8/18/11 by Stuart Sumner

IBM has unveiled a new experimental computer chip that it says mimics the human brain in that it perceives, acts and even thinks.

It terms the machines built with these chips "cognitive computers", claiming that they are able to learn through experience, find patterns, generate ideas and understand the outcomes.

In building this new generation of chip, IBM combined principles of nanoscience, neuroscience and supercomputing.

It has been awarded $21m (£12.7m) of new funding by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the next phase of the project, which it terms "Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics" (SyNAPSE).

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The strange effects of injury to the brain - BBC

The mother of a friend can no longer recognize that she's looking into a mirror. In her mind, she's seeing into a room in her own home she didn't know was there, and is looking at people in that room she doesn't know.

This is one of many sad and strange effects of injury to the human brain. Many people believe that the brain and the mind are two distinct things. I believe the evidence show that the brain produces the mind, the personality, our experiences, our consciousness, and the so-called soul.

When bits of the brain die, bits of who we are die with them. There's no reason then to believe that when the entire brain dies, any part of who we were lives on.

Here's a fascinating BBC documentary on the strange effects of traumatic brain injury.



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Are you a candidate for mind control? Take the test!

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Military explores how to attack enemy minds

Wired.com - 11.2.10 by Noah Shachtman

It sounds like something a wild-eyed basement-dweller would come up with, after he complained about the fit of his tinfoil hat. But military bureaucrats really are asking scientists to help them “degrade enemy performance” by attacking the brain’s “chemical pathway[s].” Let the conspiracy theories begin.

Late last month, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s 711th Human Performance Wing revamped a call for research proposals examining “Advances in Bioscience for Airmen Performance.” It’s a six-year, $49 million effort to deploy extreme neuroscience and biotechnology in the service of warfare.

One suggested research thrust is to use “external stimulant technology to enable the airman to maintain focus on aerospace tasks and to receive and process greater amounts of operationally relevant information.” (Something other than modafinil, I guess.) Another asks scientists to look into “fus[ing] multiple human sensing modalities” to develop the “capability for Special Operations Forces to rapidly identify human-borne threats.” No, this is not a page from The Men Who Stare at Goats.

But perhaps the oddest, and most disturbing, of the program’s many suggested directions is the one that notes: “Conversely, the chemical pathway area could include methods to degrade enemy performance and artificially overwhelm enemy cognitive capabilities.” That’s right: the Air Force wants a way to fry foes’ minds — or at least make ‘em a little dumber.

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How your brain makes decisions - by voting!

Exploration - 10.11.10 by Melanie Moran

We know that casting a ballot in the voting booth involves politics, values and personalities. But before you ever push the button for your candidate, your brain has already carried out an election of its own to make that action possible. New research from Vanderbilt University reveals that our brain accumulates evidence when faced with a choice and triggers an action once that evidence reaches a tipping point.

The research was published in the October issue of Psychological Review.

"Psychological models of decision-making explain that humans gradually accumulate evidence for a particular choice over time, and execute that choice when evidence reaches a critical level. However, until recently there was little understanding of how this might actually be implemented in the brain,” a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology and lead author of the new study, says. "We found that certain seem to represent the accumulation of evidence to a threshold and others represent the evidence itself, and that these two types of neurons interact to drive decision-making.”

The researchers presented monkeys with a simple visual task of finding a target on a screen that also included distracting items. The researchers found that neurons processing visual information from the screen fed that information to the neurons responsible for movement. These movement neurons served as gatekeepers, suppressing action until the information they received from the visual neurons was sufficiently clear. When that occurred, the movement neurons then proceeded to trigger the chosen movement.

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The illusion of a unified mind

Seed Magazine - 9.21.10 by David Weisman

Credit: Flickr user jeffreymongrain

The experience of a unified mind and the possibility of an everlasting soul are connected. And there is scant evidence to support the existence of either.

There is a common idea: because the mind seems unified, it really is. Many go only a bit further and call that unified mind a “soul.” This step, from self to soul, is an ancient assumption which now forms a bedrock in many religions: a basis for life after death, for religious morality, and a little god within us, a support for a bigger God outside us.

For the believers in the soul, let’s call them soulists, the soul assumption appears to be only the smallest of steps from the existence of a unified mind. Yet the soul is a claim for which there isn’t any evidence. Today, there isn’t even evidence for that place soulists step off from, the unified mind. Neurology and neuroscience, working unseen over the past century, have eroded these ideas, the soul and the unified mind, down to nothing. Experiences certainly do feel unified, but to accept these feelings as reality is a mistake. Often, the way things feel has nothing to do with how they are.

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Blue Brain - The quest to build a brain in silicon (Video)

I am fascinated by my brain. Not mine in particular, but the human brain. Human brains seem to be the most complex things we know of, and are thus devilishly difficult to understand, but it is possible that a complete copy of a human brain may be built in a silicon substrate in the next ten years. What follows is a brief description of the Blue Brain project, reported for the WSJ by Gautam Naik.




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Inside Your Head - Who's really in charge?

Time - 7.27.10 by Eben Harrell

Laughing Stock / Corbis

Studies have found that upon entering an office, people behave more competitively when they see a sharp leather briefcase on the desk, they talk more softly when there is a picture of a library on the wall, and they keep their desk tidier when there is a vague scent of cleaning agent in the air. But none of them are consciously aware of the influence of their environment.

There may be few things more fundamental to human identity than the belief that people are rational individuals whose behavior is determined by conscious choices. But recently psychologists have compiled an impressive body of research that shows how deeply our decisions and behavior are influenced by unconscious thought, and how greatly those thoughts are swayed by stimuli beyond our immediate comprehension.

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