How to Hack Your Brain. Mind Sports Olympiad | Annual Board Games Festival. Since 1997. Scientists use light to control brain with flick of a switch. How will we build an artificial human brain? Brain imaging can predict how intelligent you are, study finds. (Medical Xpress) -- When it comes to intelligence, what factors distinguish the brains of exceptionally smart humans from those of average humans? As science has long suspected, overall brain size matters somewhat, accounting for about 6.7 percent of individual variation in intelligence. More recent research has pinpointed the brain’s prefrontal cortex, a region just behind the forehead, as a critical hub for high-level mental processing, with activity levels there predicting another 5 percent of variation in individual intelligence. Now, new research from Washington University in St. Louis suggests that another 10 percent of individual differences in intelligence can be explained by the strength of neural pathways connecting the left prefrontal cortex to the rest of the brain.
Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the findings establish “global brain connectivity” as a new approach for understanding human intelligence. Who’s conscious? A recent meeting of neuroscientists tried to define a set of criteria for that murky phenomenon called “consciousness”. I don’t know how successful they were; they’ve come out with a declaration on consciousness that isn’t exactly crystal clear. It seems to involve the existence of neural circuitry that exhibits specific states that modulate behavior. The neural substrates of emotions do not appear to be confined to cortical structures. In fact, subcortical neural networks aroused during affective states in humans are also critically important for generating emotional behaviors in animals. Artificial arousal of the same brain regions generates corresponding behavior and feeling states in both humans and non-human animals. Wherever in the brain one evokes instinctual emotional behaviors in non-human animals, many of the ensuing behaviors are consistent with experienced feeling states, including those internal states that are rewarding and punishing.
This is where they’re losing me. Scientists Successfully ‘Hack’ Brain To Obtain Private Data. By Peter V. Milo August 25, 2012 1:56 AM News Get Breaking News First Receive News, Politics, and Entertainment Headlines Each Morning. Sign Up BERKELEY, Calif. Researchers from the University of California and University of Oxford in Geneva figured out a way to pluck sensitive information from a person’s head, such as PIN numbers and bank information. The scientists took an off-the-shelf Emotiv brain-computer interface, a device that costs around $299, which allows users to interact with their computers by thought.
The scientists then sat their subjects in front of a computer screen and showed them images of banks, people, and PIN numbers. The P300 signal is typically given off when a person recognizes something meaningful, such as someone or something they interact with on a regular basis. Scientists that conducted the experiment found they could reduce the randomness of the images by 15 to 40 percent, giving them a better chance of guessing the correct answer. To Your Brain, the World Is 2D.