Researchers find neural switch that turns dreams on and off. At the flip of a switch, University of California, Berkeley, neuroscientists can send a sleeping mouse into dreamland.
The researchers inserted an optogenetic switch into a group of nerve cells located in the ancient part of the brain called the medulla, allowing them to activate or inactivate the neurons with laser light. When the neurons were activated, sleeping mice entered REM sleep within seconds. Sleep: Why We Need It and What Happens Without It. The Science of Dreaming. Some People Can't Conjure Mental Images. Are You One of Them? Brain connections last as long as the memories they store. A team of scientists applied microscopy know-how to a long-standing theory in neuroscience: if brain connections called synapses store memories, those synapses should last as long as the memories.
New Injectable Brain Implants Take Us One Step Closer To A Cyborg Future.
Psychology. Scientists create artificial link between unrelated memories. The ability to learn associations between events is critical for survival, but it has not been clear how different pieces of information stored in memory may be linked together by populations of neurons.
In a study published April 2nd in Cell Reports, synchronous activation of distinct neuronal ensembles caused mice to artificially associate the memory of a foot shock with the unrelated memory of exploring a safe environment, triggering an increase in fear-related behavior when the mice were re-exposed to the non-threatening environment. The findings suggest that co-activated cell ensembles become wired together to link two distinct memories that were previously stored independently in the brain. Scientists Created False Happy Memories In Mice. Interesting.
I have to be a little bit of a behavior pedant, though, and point out that they did not actually create any "false memories. " That would imply that the mice had some sort of conscious remembrance of experiencing rewards in that place, which this study gives us no reason to assume. Seems more like straightforward classical conditioning, which is just a subconscious involuntary emotional response. No actual "memories" are required for classical conditioning, or even operant conditioning - it is really fun (if you're a nerd, anyway *pushes up glasses*) and very instructive to play the game where people take turns "clicker training" (ie, shaping via successive approximation) eachother to perform simple behaviors. (I am more than happy to discuss the ways in which the cult of Karen Pryor is potentially problematic, but for now suffice to say the woman definitely understands training, and this is a good explanation of the game.)
First Videos Created of Whole Brain Neural Activity in an Unrestrained Animal. The fundamental challenge of neuroscience is to understand how the nervous system controls an animal’s behavior.
Electrodes trigger out-of-body experience. The smart mouse with the half-human brain: When human brain cells called astrocytes are let loose in mouse brains, they rapidly overwhelm the mouse cells and make the rodents smarter : science. Woman of 24 found to have no cerebellum in her brain - health - 10 September 2014. Here's how Obama's brain mapping project will actually work. Believe it or not, the tech to do this will be a confluence actually.
In order to map the brain you need a high resolution net you can put inside the brain. The only way to achieve that is to build technology that can sit on the neurons themselves and monitor/inject activity by using the brain's existing processes. Individually these nano-devices (because that's what you need) are fragile and won't last long - and if left in place after they fail, would cause damage. So you need another technology capable of running around, harvesting unused, unnecessary, or undesired material from the body to maintain, repair, and replace the tech sitting on the neurons. So why is this important? That Time When Scientists Zapped Braille Directly Into People's Brains. Oh, how I miss the late 60s and 70s, when scientists were beaming all sorts of things into people!
Braille, LSD, sublimenal messages, syphillis (just wrapping up the tests, thanks to those pesky journalists), cold and flu viruses.....damn fine time to be an unknowing guinea pig (except for the Braille, though)! Scientists Accidentally Discover The Brain's Consciousness "Off Switch" Brain circuit problem likely sets stage for the 'voices' that are symptom of schizophrenia. 5-Jun-2014 [ Print | E-mail ] Share [ Close Window ]
Toward a Theory of Self-Organized Criticality in the Brain. In 1999, the Danish physicist Per Bak proclaimed to a group of neuroscientists that it had taken him only 10 minutes to determine where the field had gone wrong.
Edge of the abyss. Daddy’s little girl … Michael Schofield with his daughter, Janni, in 2006.
The first weeks of Janni's life, my wife, Susan, and I are taking lots of home video, imagining her watching these tapes alongside us and her friends as a teenager, pretending to be mortified, but happy on the inside knowing how important she's been to us from the beginning. About a week into her life, she stops sleeping, aside from 20 to 30 naps within a 24-hour day. Pandemonium Explains Why Computers Will Share Human Biases. Laser creates 'false memories' in fly brains - life - 15 October 2009. Video: Tracking fruit flies.
Q&A: Daniel Pasini, Policy and Programme Officer at the European Commission. Dr. Daniel Pasini, Policy and Programme Officer at the European Commission + Enlarge Daniel Pasini, PhD, is a Policy and Programme Officer at the European Commission, working in the Horizon 2020 Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Programme. For more than 20 years he has been closely involved in the development of policy and legal instruments for the construction and operation of European and international research infrastructure, in all fields of science. More recently he joined the FET Programme to follow the FET Flagship Initiatives, in particular the Human Brain Project. This famous brain was cut into 2,400 slices and uploaded to the cloud. Good thing this guy wasn't on staff. SExpand This is one of the movies I know by heart, and I promise people every time that if we watch it, I won't quote along. Sight, Sound Out of Sync in Kids With Autism Says Study. The new diagnostic term “autism spectrum disorder” doesn’t reflect how devastating it can be for parents to have children limited in their ability to communicate and show affection, but it does reflect how little is still known about the condition that affects roughly 2 percent of children in the United States.
Doctors have made great strides in accurately describing and diagnosing autism, but its causes remain opaque. A recent Vanderbilt University offers neurological findings that help explain for the disorder’s seemingly disparate symptoms. You Can Only Multitask In One Way. Supercomputer models one second of human brain activity. Cell transplantation therapy in reanimating severely head-injured patients. Crows could be the key to understanding alien intelligence. But seriously, Annalee.... Scientific evidence that you probably don’t have free will. I might note that you're citing experiments, which while not entirely debunked are in many circles considered to be highly flawed. For example, the "when did you decide to move your finger," experiment. This experiment is considered flawed because moving your finger is purely a motor response, and an incredibly simplistic one at that.
The motion of our hands is one of the things we have the least control over, we're constantly twitching, scratching itches, or simply stretching our fingers out without realizing it. Simply put, moving your fingers is such a small and inconsequential decision that it largely falls under the unconscious decision category. Inside Paul Allen's Plan to Reverse-Engineer the Human Brain - Wired Science. In 2003, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen spent $100 million to build the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. With laser-equipped microscopes and custom brain-slicers, the institute has mapped the brains of mice, monkeys, and humans, showing which genes are turned on—and where—to better understand vision, memory, autism, and other neural phenomena. Brains flush toxic waste in sleep, including Alzheimer’s-linked protein, study of mice finds. Facebook. Dopamine regulates the motivation to act. Printer friendly version Share.
Alzheimer's breakthrough hailed as 'turning point' Apparently, This Is Your Brain On Football. Memories aren't made of this: amnesia at the movies. Putting Bad Memories to Bed. Researchers selectively erase methamphetamine-related memories in mice and rats. The scientists taught mice and rats to associate methamphetamine with various stimuli. Scientists reverse memory loss in animal brain cells - UTHealth Newsroom. Alanna Shaikh: How I'm preparing to get Alzheimer's. Memory implantation is now officially real. Scientists can implant false memories into mice. 25 July 2013Last updated at 15:28 ET By Melissa Hogenboom Science reporter, BBC News Optical fibres implanted in a mouse's brain activated memory forming cells False memories have been implanted into mice, scientists say.
10 theories that explain why we dream. The Chemistry of Addiction. How close are we to a 'forgetting pill'? Physicians in China treat addictions by destroying the brain's pleasure center. The Orgasmic Brain. Digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&context=usuhs. Endogenous opioids. The world that only formerly-blind people can see. Red-Green & Blue-Yellow: The Stunning Colors You Can't See. How the human brain sees a 100-mph fastball. STOPPED CLOCK ILLUSION. Scanner Reads Letters From Brains. How and where imagination occurs in human brains. Project Seeks to Build Map of Human Brain. THE NORMAL WELL-TEMPERED MIND. Why The Left-Brain Right-Brain Myth Will Probably Never Die. More Left Brain / Right Brain Nonsense. Humans, Version 3.0.
Www.unicog.org/publications/DehaeneFyssenChapterPreemption2004b.pdf. Scale: a chemical approach for fluorescence imaging and reconstruction of transparent mouse brain : Nature Neuroscience. Neural Dust is a Step Towards Nexus. Brain Preservation Foundation. Lab-Grown Model Brains. Researchers grow cyborg tissue that can sense its environment. The Problem with the Neuroscience Backlash. Free will? Inside Jokes - Matthew Hurley, Daniel Dennett, and Reginald Adams, Jr. Composing Your Thoughts - Issue 2: Uncertainty. Img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf. The 5 Smartest Non-Primates on the Planet. Will we ever learn to speak dolphin? Whoa, scientists just reversed autism symptoms in mice. This little girl explains autism creatively.
Are Prodigies Autistic?