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#15 Most Bizarre Brain Experiments If the brain is a supercomputer these would be its hacks. The real final frontier isnt in outer-space or inner-particle. Its in the space between mankinds ears. That strange, mysterious and awesome mass of gray matter is more powerful and creative than any supercomputer. But science wants to make it even better and, if these 15 experiments are any indication, it might just succeed 1. Scientists Hope To Record Our Dreams After Successful Experiments Using Brain Implants A group of scientists, known as the Caltech team, can attach electrodes to your brain that lets you move a mouse cursor with your thoughts. Dr. Cerf with the California Institute of technology, figured out how to let users oethink images on and off of a computer screen. As this elk of mind-signal reading technology evolves, the day will come when even your dreams arent safe from spying eyes. http://foreign. peacefmonline. com/tech/201010/98495. php 2. Hyperscanning Brain Experiment: Evaluating Human Trust with Money Game The money game works like this: you start as either an oeinvestor or a oetrustee. If youre the investor, youre given $20 to spend. You can either give the money to the trustee triggering the moderators to award the trustee with an extra $40 on top of the $20or keep the $20 yourself. The next round the roles are reverse and the former trustee can either return the favor or keep all of the money himself. The Human Neuroimaging Laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine uses this money game, along with brain scanning fmri machines, to literally measure and quantify trust levels each player has for the other as the game progresses. http://www. networkworld. com/news/2008/082208-one-man-it-shop-side. html 3. Experiment on brain cells of singing birds Every season, song birds lose some of their brain cells. The cells that allow the birds to learn songs commit suicide only to be replaced by newly grown cells. This is interesting because brain cells arent supposed to be regenerative, and these so-called precursory cells are native to the bird brain. The entire process exists only so the birds can learn new songs. http://www. news. harvard. edu/gazette/1998/04. 16/Experimentsrais. html 4. Using immature cells from the brains of mammals to replace dead or dying human adult cells This is related to the oesong bird secret, except applied to the human brain. We dont need to regenerate brain cells to learn new songs, but we do need a cure for Alzheimers disease and Parkinsons disease. Recent experiments show that dead brain cells in mice (which are mammalian like us) can be regenerated with immature brain cells. The implications are exciting, one day we might even be able to rebuild the entire brain from scratch. http://www. news. harvard. edu/gazette/1998/04. 16/Experimentsrais. html 5. The Suda Experiment: ECG Recording Using Perfused Cat Brains and Glycerol Professor Isamu Suda, of Kobe University in Japan, is renowned for devising a cryonics methodology right out of Tales from the Crypt. Basically, the Suda technique involves deep freezing a live cat brain and then thawing it back out. Whats interesting for cryobiologists is that, using the Suda technique, electrical brain waves can be detected (via EEG). This can either mean that the brain isnt killed by the deep freeze (which is a common criticism of cryonics) or that Suda is a lunatic (which is a common criticism of professors). 6. Brain Experiment: Drinking Like crazy to Activate Hangover Brain Molecule This is a strange study: scientists ran an experiment b y giving the C. elegans worm small doses of alcohol to track the affects of withdrawal. They learned no surprise here hat giving the worms more alcohol eased withdrawal symptoms. They also learned with a much bigger surprise that theres an actual oehangover molecule that can be quantified in the recovering brain http://www. stumbleupon. com/su/2k89pc/www. livescience. com/culture/hangover -brain-molecule-100509. html http://ezinearticles. com/?/Alcohols-Effects-in-the-Brain&id=1319880 7. Scientists create Mice with Human brain Cells Fred Gage and is crew of researcher at the Salk Institute in San diego are trying to create a real-life Splinter. Remember him, from Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles? Gages team has injected successfully mice which are genetic twins to humans, having a 97.5%similarity with human brain cells. The injection was marginal (a mere 0. 1%increase) but in the future, who knows? Gages breed of man/mice lab creations are known as chimeras, not unlike the geep (half-goat, half-sheep) or mule (half-ass, half-horse. Interestingly, the use of chimeras even for scientific research into diseases is an ethical and legal powder keg. Jeremy Rifkin clearly demonstrated this when he applied for a patent for animal-human chimeras in 1997. His patent was refused, citing issue with the resulting creature being oetoo human. http://www. msnbc. msn. com/id/10441350/ns/health-cloning and stem cells 8. Robot powered by rats brain in bizarre British experiment But if you ask me, chimeras are fine as long as the human contribution is minimal. On the other hand, robots controlled by rat brains now thats an abomination if Ive ever heard of one. The Brits are behind studies which consist of attaching a chunk of rat brain to a robot to see if it moves The creepy part is that it does move. The scientists are in the process of oeteaching the robot, as if it was an animal being trained. http://www. dailymail. co. uk/sciencetech/article-1044909/Robot-powered-rats-brain-bizarre-British-experiment. html#ixzz16mpvastz 9. Brain Experiments of CIA to Create the Perfect Soldier The Perfect Soldier (almost) existed, and he wouldve been American. During the Cold war, the CIA was busy hacking away at the human brain, implanting electrodes with the aim of creating robotlike killers. The robo-men would be easy to control, mentally superior and without a smidgen of remorse or emotion the perfect soldier. Research notes on the experiments remain classified. http://ezinearticles. com/?/Americas-Secret-Weapons: -Mind-Control-and-Biowarfare&id=5987 10. Dissecting and Cementing Marmosets Brains Scientists crack open the marmosets scull, vacuum out swaths of brain tissue to cause visual blind spots, and then cement the skull shut. Weeks pass. The marmoset is strapped to an EEG machine to track brain activity, before being brought in the back and unceremoniously killed. If the experiment doesnt seem cruel enough, heres a cherry on top: the research gained is virtually useless, since human brains and marmoset brains are completely different. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Cambridge university primates http://www. humanecharities. org. au/experiments/marmosets. html 11. Brain Experiment Using Salamanders: The Spemann-Mangold Experiments German scientist Hans Spemann and Ph d candidate Hilde Mangold take the proverbial cake for strange brain experiments. In their momentous study, the brain of a live salamander was extracted and divided into sections. The remainder as dropped back into the still-living salamander body and the salamander would jump up and go about its business. Spemann and Mangold would also conduct studies involving splitting salamander embryos in two and injecting parts of one half into the other just to see what would happen. http://ts-si. org/biology/3305-brain-before-body-the-spemann-mangold-experiments 12. Brain Preference Experiment Using Coke and Pepsi If you adamantly prefer Coke, then youve been brainwashed and one test in particular proves it. A group of testers were given unlabeled samples of both Pepsi and Coke and asked to drink; not a single tester could tell the difference between the two. The same test was repeated, this time revealing the labels, and three out of four chose Coke. Whats interesting is the Coke label activated parts of the brain (memory, self-image and cultural knowledge) that the Pepsi label didnt. http://www. hnl. bcm. tmc. edu /cache/coke pepsi independent co uk. htm http://www. networkworld. com/news/2008/082208-one-man-it-shop-side. html 13. Mindreading Experiments: How Brain Records Memories The hippocampus is an obscure section of the brain where memories are recorded, dreams are created and steps are navigated before they are taken actually. Scientists have believed always that the information created in the hippocampus was sporadic until now. New experiments held at University college London reveal a way of deciphering hippocampus activity, resulting in a crude system for oereading thoughts. The system works by scanning the brain as each subject navigates a simulated reality; the resultant data reveals exactly where the subject was simulated in the reality at any given time. http://www. guardian co uk/science/2009/mar 12/mind-reading-brain-scans-memories http://www. world-science. net /othernews/090313 fmri. htm http://www. physorg. com/news156084067. html 14. Thomas Edisons Magnetic brain experiment using a Young Boy Thomas Edison picked a boy off the street and ran electromagnetic fluctuations directly through is brain to research effects. This was completely normal and ethical behavior to Edison. I wont comment on that but I will say that we should be glad Edison didnt use his famous oe10, 000 tries to find 1 solution approach he used on the light bulb. http://xenophilius. wordpress. com/2010/09/29/thomas-edisons-magnetic-brain-experiment/15. The Split Brain Experiments Roger Sperry is the godfather of brain experiments. Back in the 60s Sperry figure out that the right half of the brain does very different things than the left side. In a nutshell, the left hemisphere is analytical/rational and the right hemisphere is conceptual/emotional. Sperry gave us this insight through experimentation, and won a Nobel prize in the process. http://nobelprize. org/educational/medicine/split-brain/background. html LINK Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati b

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