Lifeboat Foundation

Inspired by the large-scale sky surveys with which astronomers explore the cosmos, neuroscientists in Seattle, Washington, have spent four years systematically surveying the neural activity of the mouse visual cortex. The Allen Brain Observatory’s first data release, on 13 July, provides a publicly accessible data set of unprecedented size and scope, designed to help scientists to model and understand the human brain.

The project is part of an ambitious ten-year brain-research plan announced in 2012 by the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Designed to catalogue neurons and their electrical characteristics in minute detail, the initiative aims to enable new insights into how perception and cognition arise.

To compile the brain observatory’s first data set, researchers used a specialized microscope to record calcium waves that occur when neurons fire, sampling activity in 25 mice over 360 experimental sessions, while the animals viewed a battery of visual stimuli such as moving patterns of lines, images of natural scenes and short movies. The data set so far includes 18,000 cells in 4 areas of the visual cortex, making it one of the largest and most comprehensive of its kind. The set also includes information about each neuron’s location and its expression of certain genetic markers. At 30 terabytes, the raw data are too large to share easily, but users can download a more manageable processed data set, or explore it online.

Continue reading “Brain-data gold mine could reveal how neurons compute” »

About 5 years ago a friend of mine at Microsoft (Mitch S.) had a vision of making a new security model around drone swarms and a form of BMI technology. Glad to see the vision come true.

Scientists have discovered how to control multiple robotic drones using the human brain, an advance that can help develop swarms of search and rescue drones that are controlled just by thought.

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Better tactile capabilities, not just vision, will let robots grasp any object.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have combined tissues from a sea slug with flexible 3D printed components to build “biohybrid” robots that crawl like sea turtles on the beach.

A muscle from the slug’s mouth provides the movement, which is currently controlled by an external electrical field. However, future iterations of the device will include ganglia, bundles of neurons and nerves that normally conduct signals to the muscle as the slug feeds, as an organic controller.

The researchers also manipulated collagen from the slug’s skin to build an organic scaffold to be tested in new versions of the robot.

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The man has a wife and kids and works as a civil servant while his brain is mostly filled with fluid.

The potential vaccine would address a protein buildup that occurs when two proteins, amyloid-beta (a-beta) and tau, die and create plaques that block connections between brain nerve cells, says the study from researchers at Flinders University in Adelaide Australia in partnership with a research team at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, and University of California, Irvine. Autopsies have shown that these plaques are always present in the brains of deceased Alzheimer’s patients, although Medical News Today reported that it is not clear if there are other underlying processes also contributing to the disease.

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“Essentially what we have designed is a vaccine that makes the immune system produce antibodies, and those antibodies act like tow trucks so they come to your driveway, they latch on to the breakdown protein or car and they pull it out of the driveway,” said Flinders University medicine professor Nikolai Petrovsky, ABC News reported.

Woo and other entrepreneurs are using fasts and other tricks to “hack” their brain chemistry like they would a computer, hoping to give themselves an edge as they strive to dream up the next billion-dollar idea. Known by insiders as “biohacking,” the push for cognitive self-improvement is gaining momentum in the Silicon Valley tech world, where workers face constant pressure to innovate and produce at the highest levels.

Summary: A new study provides a deeper understanding of the mechanisms behind OCD and suggests the disorder could be treated by a class of drugs that has been investigated in clinical trails.

Source: Duke.

Brain receptor acts as switch for OCD symptoms in mice.

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Scientists invent particles that will provide oxygen to your body without breathing!!!

This may seem like something out of a science fiction movie: researchers have designed microparticles that can be injected directly into the bloodstream to quickly oxygenate your body, even if you can’t breathe anymore. It’s one of the best medical breakthroughs in recent years, and one that could save millions of lives every year.

The invention, developed by a team at Boston Children’s Hospital, will allow medical teams to keep patients alive and well for 15 to 30 minutes despite major respiratory failure. This is enough time for doctors and emergency personnel to act without risking a heart attack or permanent brain injuries in the patient.

Continue reading “Scientists Invent Particles That Will Let You Live Without Breathing” »