Neuron News – Page 17 – Dynamic Patterns Research

Blind man sees stars

Bionics / Matthew T. Dearing / Leave a Comment

Two completely blind patients received a neuroprosthetic implant in April from the The Dobelle Institute. After some reorientation, they can now walk around a room without running into desks and chairs, and even drive a car (on a private course)!

OK, so they can’t quite yet enjoy the subtle strokes of Monet, but they can see flashes of white light from their surroundings of which they must learn to interpret. This is still a fabulous development and a critical start to initiate more technological improvements towards restoring shape recognition and color sensitivity to the blind.

The current device takes images from a small camera mounted on special sunglasses. A computer processes the images and sends some electrical signals directly to the visual cortex (a chunk of brain in the back of your head). These visual system brain cells are stimulated in some unknown way, and the patient sees stars.

This is quite an interesting technique because it bypasses the eyes’ input neurons, and sends information directly to the brain. Recent alternative techniques collect light focused on the retina at the back of the eye. Then the brain may interpret the information through estalished image processing neural patheways, just as if the eye were functioning normally.

A direct shot of visual information to the brain’s visual cortex requires special training of the patients so that they may adopt an understanding of exactly how the pattern of white spots relate to the real world. So, this might not be an ubiquitous approach, but best for patients who have completely damaged or removed retinas from an injury.

[Read the original press release from St. Louis University]

[Read the article from CNN]

Blind man sees stars Read More »

Ratbots to the Rescue

Neuron-computer Interface / Matthew T. Dearing / Leave a Comment

This article came out about a month before Neuron News began, so hopefully you will be able to forgive it’s delay. Although news about the “Ratbot” has already spanned the journalism phase space, only at Neuron News will you also receive reasonable commentary!

Dr. Sanjiv Talwar and colleagues at the State University of New York, successfully implanted a neuro-remote control to guide a rat through an obstacle course. With a radio-receiver backpack mounted on the little rodent, commands from a researcher’s nearby laptop stimulated areas in the brain associated with the whisker sensation.

Zap one of the whiskers and the rat feels like it bumped into something. Subsequently changing its course to avoid the “virtual wall”, the rat receives a second zap directed to some “feel good” part of its brain.

“Ooo yeah, that was nice. Maybe there’s another one of those over… here!”

This neural control and feedback mechanism allowed scientists to guide the rat to do things it normally would not like to do. For example, the robot rat didn’t hesitate to walk across well-lighted, open spaces.

The anticipation is that these rodents would be used as real-life guinea pigs to maneuver through earthquake-damaged areas, or wind though a mind field, until it… well… stumbles across one.

Although this report is everywhere, check out these UK versions, along with the original report in Nature:

[Read the article from BBC News]

[Read the article from The Guardian]

[A general report from Nature]

Reference
Talwar, S. K. et al. Rat navigation guided by remote control.. Nature, 417, 37 – 38, (2002). [Read (Subscription required)]

Ratbots to the Rescue Read More »

I died and went to …

Consciousness & Mind / Matthew T. Dearing / 1 Comment

Very few humans are comfortable with the notion of dying, even those who strongly believe in the here-after (although they might not admit it). Science is still learning a great deal about how the body dies, but there are few forays into what happens after the body eternally falls asleep.

Pim van Lommel and colleagues from the Netherlands published an article in The Lancet, a British medical journal, where they describe a study on near-death experiences. They interviewed 344 revived cardiac arrest patients regarding their recent brush with death, and 18% reported some memory of an experience. Their research approach attempts to obtain more accurate accounts without relying on long-term memories.

Of course, any scientific claim regarding after-death experiences are susceptible to many potential problems and critiques, like the occurrence of false memories or the unconscious brain misinterpreting activity from its environment. The Washington Post article below does a nice job of putting the research in perspective, so you should definitely read it carefully.

Wouldn’t it be nice, though, to know what will really happen to us after we close our eyes for the final time? What do you think?

[Read the article from the Washington Post]

[Read commentary from a reasonable skeptic in The Lancet]

If you really want to read about this to form your own opinions, read the published article: Pim van Lommel, et al., “Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands” The Lancet 358, 9298 (2001)

NOTE: I have not read this article completely, but will report back when I do for more commentary and perspective right here on Neuron News.

I died and went to … Read More »

Discover your creativity

Consciousness & Mind / Matthew T. Dearing / Leave a Comment

Scientists from the Centre for the Mind in Sydney claim to have enhanced the brain’s creative abilities with a few properly-placed magnets.

(NOTE: This research has not yet been published in a refereed, scientific journal. We will keep our eye out for it, and report back here when it does appear. However, BBC News andDiscover Magazine have recently reported on their work.)

The motivation for this approach comes from savants, who are individuals with some developmental disorder, like autism, but also portray extraordinary artistic or mathematical skills. Somehow the brains of these special people are over-compensating for other developmental problems, allowing three-year-old autistic children to sketch stunningly realistic scenes.

Professor Snyder has apparently demonstrated that their magnetic device can improve a person’s drawing skills within minutes. This is a very tantalizing and interesting idea. We should wait for the journal article to appear…

In the meantime, if you want to tap into your unconscious and creative self, why not try developing your lucid dreaming skills? This technique is still a little less scientific than we prefer to be here at DPRI, but lucidity can at least be a great experience!

[Read the article from BBC News]

[Read the article from Discover Magazine]

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Monkey Games

Neuron-computer Interface / Matthew T. Dearing / Leave a Comment

One of the ultimate goals in neurotechnology is to develop devices that will allow people tothink their computer to do things. “Hm. Let’s see… I’d like to search for cyber gear suppliers on Google”. Then, off you go.

A potentially more useful application could significantly aid individuals who are retrofitted with a prosthetic limb due to an injury. For example, you could just think about picking up that mouth-watering can of soda, instead of contracting shoulder muscles in complicated way to position the arm into place.

Brown University researchers implanted a small device into a Rhesus monkey’s brain to record the electrical activity from an amazingly small number of cortical neurons (they claim only six!). The monkey moved a cursor around on a computer screen with his hands on a joystick, then the device output the electrical activity from the set of connected neurons. The scientists next determined a mathematical model that will relate the neuron firing to moving the cursor.

Finally, they disconnected the control of the joystick, but allowed the monkey to continue to use it, and instead connect up the neuron device. The monkey continued to think about playing the cursor-moving game, and the cursor moved!

[Read the article from NewsFactor Sci-Tech]

[Read the complementary article from BBC News]

[Read another complementary article from ABC News]

Monkey Games Read More »

Baby neurons help their elders

Brain Development / Matthew T. Dearing / Leave a Comment

Your mother always told you that you if you loose your brain cells to too much booze, then they won’t ever grow back.

Contrary to this popular belief, scientists have found that baby neurons in rat brains can develop and form new, functional connections within established neuron networks. To see this “neurogensis” in action, a stain was introduced into the brain that would only make dividing cells glow. Younger neurons undergoing cell division appeared a distinctive fluorescent color, while the older, non-dividing neurons remained in the dark.

Of course, it is still an assumption that this phenomena occurs in humans as well. However, it is anticipated that by gaining an understanding of how neurogenesis works, scientists can develop therapeutic methods to help reverse degenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.

[Read the article from Wired News]

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