The USS Zumwalt will be the first ship with a brain of its own. Among the high-tech features included on the USS Zumwaltannons that fire rocket-propelled,
in a key emotional hub in the brain involved in regulating anxiety and the flight-or-fight response.
This is the first time cannabinoid receptors have been identified in the central nucleus of the amygdala in a mouse model,
a graduate student in Patel lab, the researchers also showed for the first time how nerve cells in this part of the brain make
whose brains are still developing are being exposed to the drug. Previous studies at Vanderbilt and elsewhere, Patel said,
and the response to stress by dampening excitatory signals that involve the neurotransmitter glutamate. hronic stress or acute,
which allowed very detailed visualization at individual synapses, or gaps between nerve cells. e know where the receptors are,
we know their function, we know how these neurons make their own cannabinoids, Patel said. ow can we see how that system is affected by stress and chronic (marijuana) use?
It might fundamentally change our understanding of cellular communication in the amygdala. i
#Millennials see financial institutions as irrelevant Scratch polled 10,000 millennials to find out which industry was most prime for disruption.
The results from the poll found that banks make up four of their top 10 most hated brands,
In other more preliminary examples, scientists have shown that specific culture conditions can push stem cells to grow into self-organized structures resembling a developing brain, a bit of a liver,
or part of an eye (see esearchers Grow 3-D Human brain Tissues, Rudimentary Liver Is grown from Stem Cells,
That's the way the brain works. It's not that you have one brain that does the recognition
and one that does movement; it's a network that feeds on itself. Building that facial muscle memory also helps players recognize their own emotions
but may be implanted into the brains of living mice for imaging at the cellular level. The study appears in the Aug 18 issue of the journal Applied Physics Letters.
whose team will use it to observe the brains of living mice to gain insight into how certain proteins in the brain react to various stimuli.
#IBM's new computer chip can think like a human brain IBM's latest brain-like computer chip may not be"smarter than a fifth-grader,
"but it can simulate millions of the brain's neurons and perform complex tasks using very little energy.
that is capable of simulating 1 million neurons and 256 million neural connections, or synapses. In addition to mimicking the brain's processing by themselves,
individual chips can be connected together like tiles, similar to how circuits are linked in the human brain.
The team used its"Truenorth"chip, described on Aug 7 in the journal Science, to perform a task that is very challenging for conventional computers:
7 Robotic Futures"We have not built a brain. What we have done is learn from the brain's anatomy
and physiology,"said study leader Dharmendra Modha, manager and lead researcher of the cognitive computing groupat IBM Research-Almaden in San jose, California.
Modha gave an analogy to explain how the brain-like chip differs from a classical computer chip.
In contrast, IBM's new chip architecture resembles that of a living brain. The chip is composed of computing cores that each contain 256 input lines
or"axons"(the cablelike part of a nerve cell that transmits electrical signals) and 256 output lines, or"neurons."
"Much like in a real brain, the artificial neurons only send signals, or spikes, when electrical charges reach a certain threshold.
The researchers connected more than 4, 000 of these cores on a single chip, and tested its performance with a complex image-recognition task.
But if these devices can function more like a human brain, they may eventually understand their environments better,
Building a brain IBM researchers aren't the only ones building computer chips that mimic the brain.
A group at Stanford university developed a system called"Neurogrid"that can simulate a million neurons and billions of synapses.
the IBM chip can simulate the same number of neurons with only a single chip,
IBM created the chip as part of DARPA's Synapse program (short for Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics.
The goal of this initiative is to build a computer that resembles the form and function of the mammalian brain, with intelligence similar to acat or mouse."
The team mapped out the wiring diagram of a monkey brain in 2010, and produced a small-scale neural core in 2011.
Still, the IBM chip is a far cry from a human brain, which contains about 86 trillion neurons and 100 trillion synapses."
"We've come a long way, but there's a long way to go, "Modha said o
#First map of human fetus brain created A new map of the human brain during its development in the womb provides a detailed blueprint of where different genes are active at this critical stage of in a fetus'life.
This brain atlas yields clues about what makes humans distinct from other animals and when disorders like autism first take root researchers say.
This is another installment in our suite of brain atlases to try to map how all genes are used across the brain
and across development said study leader Ed Lein a neuroscientist at the Allen Institute for Brain science in Seattle.
Mapping the Brain The institute has developed previously maps of the developing and adult mouse brain the developing monkey brain and the adult human brain.
The new map is the first to look at the developing human brain specifically the developing neocortex the seat of higher cognitive functions Lein told Live Science.
Researchers created the map using healthy prenatal brains from a brain bank a collection of donated human brains.
The team used brain tissue with no known abnormalities or viruses such as HIV. Researchers took snapshots of brains at two different stages of prenatal development.
To measure gene activity the researchers used a powerful tool known as a DNA MICROARRAY which yields a quantitative measurement of the activity of every gene in the human genome simultaneously about 20000 genes in total.
The team compared these gene activity results with data from other species in particular the mouse brain.
and these maps could give scientists insight into how mice brains are similar or different from human brains Lein said.
Researchers found some genes that were turned on in the developing human brain but not in the mouse's brain or vice versa.
For example the developing human brain contains genes that are more active in the frontal cortex than in the corresponding part of the mouse brain.
The frontal cortex is linked to personality and decision-making. Examples from the prenatal gene expression (left) and reference (right) atlases.
Image: Allen Institute for Brain science) The map of a healthy developing brain also provides clues to the origin of developmental disorders such as autism the researchers said.
Other studies have revealed certain genes that are active in autism. Lein's team saw these genes were turned on in newly generated excitatory neurons
(which activate other neurons) in the prenatal cortex suggesting autism may start in the womb as opposed to later in life.
Taken together these brain maps paint a picture of where and when different genes become active in the brain.
The genes encode proteins that perform all the vital tasks inside neurons giving rise to the complex cognition of the human brain.
The Allen Institute is one of the private organizations involved in the BRAIN INITIATIVE (Brain research through advancing innovative neurotechnologies) launched by President Obama a year ago on April 2 2013.
All of the Allen Institute brain atlases are freely available online. The new findings are detailed on April 2 in the journal Nature.
Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+.+Follow us@livescience Facebook & Google+.+Original article on Livescience v
#Honda Smart Home produces more energy than it uses Wouldn it be great if your house produced more energy than it consumed?
phase I safety study of a stem cellerived therapy for spinal cord injury. The publicly traded company has an extensive patent portfolio relating to embryonic stem cell research,
In the trial, eight to ten paralyzed individuals within 7 to 14 days of their injury will be injected at the point of injury with stem cellerived precursors to oligodendrocytes,
which are key supportive cells in the central nervous system. It is hoped that the cells will lay down sheaths of myelin an insulator essential for conducting nerve impulses around injured neurons,
as well as stimulating nerve cells to regenerate. The cells have demonstrated both capabilities in animals. 1 The company said it expects to begin enrolment early this summer at up to seven US medical centres.
Politics and approval In a conference call with analysts and reporters, Geron's president and CEO Thomas Okarma said that the trial"marks the dawn of a new era in medical therapeutics.
and couldn't,"says Wiggins. He can now see areas of the brain that were previously dark to MRI."
The virus could be lurking in cells that doctors have not been able to test such as cells in the brain or heart.
Nature News Findings from a'brain training'study challenge theory. Researchers in Sweden have revealed a surprising change in brain biochemistry that occurs during the training of working memory,
a buffer that stores information for the few second required to solve problems or even to understand what we are reading.
Working memory depends on the transmission of signals in certain parts of the brain by the chemical dopamine and one of its receptors, the D1 receptor, particularly in the parietal and frontal regions of the cortex.
and his colleagues studied what happened to D1 receptors in the brains of healthy young men during such training1.
because when dopamine is plentiful, dopamine receptors'downregulate'that is, move from the nerve-cell membrane to the inside of the cell,
where they cannot be activated. This is a normal'tune-down'mechanism to avoid overstimulation. Brain training Klingberg's team organized a five-week training programme for 13 volunteers aged between 20 and 28.
Every day, they spent around half an hour in total on five computer-based tests designed to stretch their working memories.
Using brain imaging techniques, the scientists measured levels and locations of dopamine receptors in brain areas of interest in each participant before and after training.
"The density of neurotransmitter receptors is known to change in psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, and this has been considered a cause of the diseases,
whether changes in receptor density in certain brain regions are simply the result of changes in behaviour
"This is an important consideration that applies to many findings of purported brain changes in mental disease,"comments Sol Snyder, a neuroscientist at Johns hopkins university in Baltimore, Maryland."
"Many findings of altered brain biochemistry may simply reflect the patients'inattentiveness, he says. Klingberg says that his team's results may also have practical implications for training working memory.
Children diagnosed with ADHD are treated frequently with drugs such as Ritalin that affect the dopamine system.
He is one of the lead researchers in a multicenter clinical study using new exosomal diagnostic tests developed by New york city-based Exosome Diagnostics to identify a genetic mutation found exclusively in glioma, the most common form of brain cancer.
For brain cancers like glioma, however, multiple biopsies can be life threatening. Bob Carter head of neurosurgery at the University of California, San diego, says well-preserved RNA in blood
sponsored by the Accelerated Brain Cancer Cure Foundation. Hochberg says study researchers have recruited 41 of 120 patients so far.
brain parts and other tissues from stem cells (see Nature 488,444-446; 2012), has long been negotiating with the government for facilities to link basic research at the Center for Developmental biology in Kobe, where he works, with clinics and industry.
which are part of the peripheral nervous system. Like rubber around an electric wire, the cells wrap around nerves to insulate the electric signals passing through.
in turn, generate perfectly matched specialized tissues#replacement neurons, say#for cell therapy. Although the number of published papers from ips-cell research has not yet caught up with that of ES-cell work (see Inducing a juggernaut),
The Supreme court s move has reassured investigators such as Candace Kerr, who studies early development of the brain at the University of Maryland School of medicine in Baltimore.
which she finds much easier to prompt into neurons than ips cells.""I am excited and relieved by this decision,
He did so by injecting their brains with ZIP, a small peptide that is meant to block the enzyme1.
erasing different types of memory by injecting ZIP into various brain regions in rodents, flies and sea slugs.
he strengthened rats'memory of unpleasant tastes by injecting their brains with viruses carrying extra copies of PKM?
And Huganir s mice showed normal levels of long-term potentiation#the strengthening of synapses between two neurons that is thought to underlie learning and memory."
"The mechanisms underlying the maintenance of long-term memory will be one of the more exciting areas of neuroscience research for many years to come,
#Intercontinental mind-meld unites two rats The brains of two rats on different continents have been made to act in tandem.
an implant records its brain activity and signals to a similar device in the brain of a rat in the United states. The US rat then usually makes the same choice on the same task.
Miguel Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke university in Durham, North carolina, says that this system allows one rat to use the senses of another,
incorporating information from its faraway partner into its own representation of the world.""It s not telepathy.
"But we created a new central nervous system made of two brains. Nicolelis says that the work,
is the first step towards constructing an organic computer that uses networks of linked animal brains to solve tasks.
and receive signals from the brain, allowing monkeys to control robotic or virtual arms and get a sense of touch in return.
whether he could use these implants to couple the brains of two separate animals. His colleague Miguel Pais-Vieira started by training one rat#the encoder#to press one of two levers,
An implant recorded neural activity in the rat's motor cortex (the area that controls its movements), compared it to earlier recordings,
These pulses were delivered to the motor cortex of a second rat in the same lab#the decoder
and the other in the Duke lab.#But Andrew Schwartz, a neurobiologist at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, notes that the decoders performed poorly,
That increased the signal-to-noise ratio in its brain activity and inadvertently provided the decoder with signals that were easier to decipher.
from creating organic computers to uniting different parts of the same brain that have been cut off by damage or disease.
a neuroscientist from the University of Chicago in Illinois, says that if the goal is to make better neural prosthetics,
his team is already working to link the brains of four mice. The researchers are also set to start similar experiments with monkeys, in
and combine their brain activity to play a game together.""Rats don t have a sense of self
Two rats exchange signals through a brain-to-brain interface. The yellow circle indicates the correct choice in each chamber
that is expressed in the brains of mice and humans. They found that it contains about 70 binding sites for a microrna called mir-7. Micrornas are short fragments of RNA that can block gene expression by binding to
or deleting mir-7 in zebrafish altered their brain development. Circular RNAS could also be sponges for microrna from outside the cell, notes Rajewsky.
#Babies'brains may be tuned to language before birth Despite having brains that are still largely under construction,
babies born up to three months before full term can already distinguish between spoken syllables in much the same way that adults do,
asks neuroscientist Fabrice Wallois of the University of Picardy Jules Verne in Amiens, France.##To answer that, Wallois
At that point, neurons are still migrating to their final destinations; the first connections between upper brain areas are snapping into place;
and links have just been forged between the inner ear and cortex. To test these neural pathways, the researchers played soft voices to premature babies while they were asleep in their incubators a few days after birth,
then monitored their brain activity using a noninvasive optical imaging technique called functional near-infrared spectroscopy.
They were looking for the telltale signals of surprise that brains display#for example, when they suddenly hear male and female voices intermingled after hearing a long run of simply female voices.
The young brains were able to distinguish between male and female voices as well as between the trickier sounds ga and ba,
which demands even faster processing. What is more, the parts of the cortex used were the same as those used by adults for sophisticated understanding of speech and language.#
The work could also lead to better techniques caring for the most vulnerable brains, Wallois adds,
the first evidence that brains can distinguish between difficult consonants even before a full-term birth,
hinting at greater brain sensitivities than previously imagined5.##Yet this does not fully answer the innate-versus-learned question,
"It is possible that the experience of birth triggers a set of processes that prime the brain of a premature infant to respond to language in ways that a same-aged fetus will not
the rod and cone cells that convert light into electrical signals transmitted via the optic nerve to the brain s visual cortex for processing.
The chip helps generate at least partial vision by stimulating intact nerve cells in the retina. The nerve impulses from these cells are led then via the optic nerve to the visual cortex where they create impressions of sight.
The chip s power source is positioned under the skin behind the ear and connected via a thin cable#no glasses or camera required.
and monkey retinas use to turn light patterns into patterns of electrical pulses that their brains translate into meaningful images.
and the mini-projector then converts the electrical impulses into light impulses that are sent to the brain.
and send signals to the brain, this work focuses on the quality of the artificial signals themselves so as to improve their ability to carry impulses to the brain t
#How to turn living cells into computers Synthetic biologists have developed DNA modules that perform logic operations in living cells.
It was especially effective at triggering cell suicide in glioblastoma, a kind of brain tumour that is notoriously difficult to treat2.
Mice with glioblastomas that were treated with TIC10 in combination with bevacizumab#a drug used against diseases including brain tumours
which separates the main circulatory system from the brain. This barrier normally acts to prevent hazardous agents such as microbes from infecting the brain,
but can also thwart anticancer drugs by keeping them out.""We didn t actually anticipate that this molecule would be able to treat brain tumours#that was a pleasant surprise,
says El-Deiry. Furthermore, it seems that TIC10 activates the TRAIL gene not only in cancerous cells,
#Serotonin receptors offer clues to new antidepressants Researchers have deciphered the molecular structures of two of the brain's crucial lock-and-key mechanisms.
The two molecules are receptors for the natural neurotransmitter serotonin #which regulates activities such as sleep,
2."Before this there was no crystal structure for any serotonin receptor. A lot of what was theoretical is known now with a great degree of certainty,
Scientists have been trying to decipher serotonin receptors for years. Armed with information on the atomic level,
they might now be able to make breakthroughs in drug discovery and in understanding how the physical structures of the brain produce consciousness,
There are 14 different known serotonin receptors. The molecules lie on the outer membranes of nerve cells;
when drugs or neurotransmitters lock into the receptors from outside the cell, they trigger the release of other chemicals inside the cell.
Those chemicals#which can be different depending on what drug or neurotransmitter has triggered them#activate further hormones
and metabolites, producing signalling cascades that are ultimately responsible for many aspects of the way we feel,
They found that the molecules had very similar structures in the areas where serotonin docks.
However, Anacker points out that serotonin receptors can have different effects depending on where in the brain they are located and other factors."
so that a person's left and right eyes see slightly different images#a requirement for the brain to process an image as 3d.
#Flashing fish brains filmed in action"It s phenomenal, says Rafael Yuste, a neuroscientist at Columbia University in New york."
"It is a bright star now in the literature, suggesting that it is not crazy to map every neuron in the brain of an animal.
Yuste has been leading the call for a big biology project2 that would do just that in the human brain,
which contains about 85,000 times more neurons than the zebrafish brain. The resolution offered by the zebrafish study will enable researchers to understand how different regions of the brain work together,
says Ahrens. With conventional techniques, imaging even 2, 000 neurons at once is difficult, so researchers must pick
and choose which to look at, and extrapolate. Now, he says, "you don't need to guess what is happening#you can see it.
The increased imaging power could, for example, help to explain how the brain coordinates movement, consolidates learning or processes sights and smells."
"It allows a much better view of the dynamics throughout the brain during different behaviours
and during learning paradigms, says Joseph Fetcho, a neurobiologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New york. The imaging system relies on a genetically engineered zebrafish (Danio rerio).
The fish's neurons make a protein that fluoresces in response to fluctuations in the concentration of calcium ions,
which occur when nerve cells fire. A microscope sends sheets of light rather than a conventional beam through the fish's brain,
and a detector captures the signals like a viewer watching a cinema screen. The system records activity from the full brain every 1. 3 seconds.
Ahrens, Keller and others have used previously light-sheet microscopy to image developing embryos over days3;
for the latest study, they modified light detectors and other aspects of the system to increase the rate of imaging tenfold.
the researchers were able to see populations of neurons in distinct regions that correlated to their activity (see video above).
Ahrens and Keller think that it could work in intact mammal brains, but it would require surgery
and would cover only a small fraction of the brain. Another limitation is that neither the protein sensor nor the imaging system yet works fast enough to distinguish
whether a neuron has fired once or several times in quick succession. But Fetcho says that it is fast enough to start to understand how activity flows through the brain.#"
#"No one is anywhere in the ball park of this for any other animal model m
#Wireless brain-computer interface streams thought commands with the speed of an Internet connection Following more than a decade of engineering work,
a wireless brain-computer interface could finally give paralyzed people the ability to control everyday devices like TVS, computers,
and transmit thought commands collected from a brain implant. The researchers say that the wireless BCI is able to stream thought commands via its radio at a rate of 48 megabits per second, about the speed of a home Internet connection.
and wired to electrodes inside the brain. The processor inside the device amplifies the electrical signals emitted by neurons,
then translates the information into digital codes, and the built-in radio beams this info to the receiver placed within a few meters.
Braingate was among the first to place implants in the brains of paralyzed people and show that electrical signals emitted by neurons inside the cortex could be recorded,
then used to steer a wheelchair or direct a robotic arm. The Braingate team also won the $1-million B. R. A i. N. Prize at Braintech Israel 2013.
#MIT's multifunctional fiber implant could revolutionize neural prosthetics Today cutting edge neural implants can passively read brain activity,
The brain itself is composed of some of the softest tissue in the body, so harder implants that don bend with their surrounding biological environment can easily shift
but anything implanted with the body has to be entirely non-reactive, especially in the brain.
#Network Dynamics with Brainx3 A large scale simulation of the human brain network with real time interaction. In order to address the big data challenge of the human brain,
researchers at the SPECS lab of Paul Verschure have developed recently Brainx3, which is a platform for visualization, simulation, analysis and interaction of large data,
On this platform, the researchers reconstructed a large-scale simulation of human brain activity in a 3d virtual reality environment.
Using the brain known connectivity along with detailed biophysics, the researchers reconstruct neuronal activity of the entire cortex in the resting-state.
Users can interact with Brainx3 in real-time by perturbing brain regions with transient stimulations to observe reverberating network activity,
Within the immersive mixed/virtual reality space of Brainx3 users can explore and analysis dynamical activity patterns of brain networks
or for discovering of signaling pathways associated to brain function and/or dysfunction or as a tool for virtual neurosurgery.
the researchers have simulated also neural activity from lesioned brains and that resulting from TMS perturbation. These simulations shed insight on the spatial distribution of activity in the attractor state, how the brain maintains a level of resilience to damage, effects of noise and physiological perturbations.
Knowledge of brain activity in these various states is clinically relevant for assessing levels of consciousness in patients with severe brain injury y
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