Drug Free journey to a spotless mind

A new drug-free therapy could be the key to modifying or eliminating fearful memories. Shaun Sanders send in an interesting article from New Scientist. The hope is that a new and simple treatment might help patients with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Present therapy relies on drugs that block brain cells from making new proteins and this can erase fearful memories. The drugs have to be utilized during a critical phase in memory retention. Recent discoveries have found a quirky property of memories called reconsolidation. The process of jogging a memory – with an emotional or sensory jolt, for instance – seems to make it malleable for a few hours. The drugs used up to this point are highly toxic and it is felt that random wholesale erasure of memory may do more harm than good.

A far less invasive procedure is a therapy sometimes used to treat PTSD, called extinction which involves repeatedly delivering threatening cues – gun shots, for instance – in safe environments in hopes of drowning out fearful memory associations. Unfortunately this therapy only works up to a point.

Read more on this controvercial therapy here

Pentagon researching "fear" bombs

American military researchers are working to uncover and harness chemicals that would illicit fear. Pheromones are chemicals released by animals as signals for sex, for territorial marking etc. . But there's more to pheromones than attraction. Many animals have an alarm pheromone which is used to signal danger. Now, the US Army is trying to track down and harness people's smell of fear. The military has backed a study on the "Identification and Isolation of Human Alarm Pheromones," which "focused on the Preliminary Identification of Steroids of Interest in Human Fear Sweat. Researchers have suggested that the human alarm pheromone could lead to chemical fear-sensors. Pheromones are effective in minute quantities, so a wide area can be blanketed with just a few liters. Given sufficient concentration, it is possible that people could be effected. The added effect however is the contagious aspect, meaning that those affected might start churning out fear pheromone as well. On its own, the alarm pheromone probably would not do much. But given an external trigger, such as a loud noise, it could influence people. Previous implementation has not been successful though. Remember the so-called "Gay Bomb," that would make enemy combatants irresistibly attracted to one another? The mechanics are still unclear however research is likely to uncover some novel and powerful ways of manipulating human behavior.

submitted from Wired by Shaun A. Saunders

Microsoft Seeks Patent On Monitoring Employees' Brains

Hey Shaun, check this out!!!!!! I just found it on TechDirt, looks like FabCola is just another way of saying Microsoft!

A just-published Microsoft patent application for Monitoring Group Activities describes how a company or the government can determine if employees are not meeting their project deadlines through the use of detection components comprised of 'one or more physiological or environmental sensors to detect at least one of heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement, facial movements, facial expressions, and blood pressure.

Key Found to Making Robots Human-Friendly

On average, robots today can hold human interest for only about 10 hours, but in a new study, a humanoid robot dubbed QRIO (pronounced "curio") was accepted by human toddlers as "one of them" for 5 months before it was taken away. Why? Well it is no mystery that humans revel in the sense of touch. The premise that if a robot responded when touched - would improve the chances that the robot would be much more acceptable was proven out when QRIO was programmed to have a crude sense of touch. In the study, QRIO was introduced into a classroom of toddlers aged 18 months to 24 months. Children of this age group were chosen because they have no preconceived notions of robots and they communicate using touch as much as speech. In phase I of the experiment, which lasted 27 sessions, QRIO was instructed to interact with the children using its full behavioral repertoire, which included head-turning, dancing and giggling. At first, the children would touch the robot on its face, but as they warmed to him, the majority of their touches were to its hands and arms—a pattern the children also displayed toward each other. During phase II, which lasted 15 sessions, QRIO ignored the children's touches and danced throughout the session. At that point, the [children] quickly lost interest. When QRIO's ability to respond to touch and giggle were returned for three sessions in phase III, the children became friendly with the robot again. What proved even more interesting is that the response to touch is more important than being humaniform. QRIO only basically mimics the human form, this however seemed no impediment to it being accepted as long as it responded when touched.

Thanks to Shaun A. Saunders for the post

pic credit Credit: J. Movellan et al., UCSD