New Software Can Predict What You Are Going to Do Before You Do It!

Researchers at the Center for Brain and Mind at The University of Western Ontario, using brain imaging software, can now determine what a person was planning, before that action is actually executed.

Possible uses for this software might be controlling prosthetic or helping paralyzed patients regain movement.

Of course if you can predict what a person is going to do could lead to a world very much like the one Philip K. Dick envisioned in his novel The Minority Report.

Androids: One step closer

I think for the sake of argument or maybe to start some I should define what I think an android is...because I might be totally offbase...maybe. Anyway - First Robot: Mechanical /electrical, autonomous or not, humaiform or not, for all intents a machine. Robot of course will evolve and may at some point be indistinguishable from human, but if they are still mechanical and electrical - they are a robot. Cyborg: a melding of the human and mechanical /electrical. Usually this is thought of as an "improvement" but there will come a time when you will be able to swap out most if not all your biological structures for artificial - Cyborg. Android: an artificial construct that mimics human (or other) life forms by electro-chemical and possibly mechanical means. It goes without saying that a true android would be autonomous and very likely a thinking self aware unit unto it self. I know I have oversimplified this greatly but I really did have an article in mind.

This one was in Science Daily discussing research on working artificial never networks.
From the article:

• Research that was recently featured on the cover of Nature Physics, (researchers) have taken the first step in this direction by creating circuits and logic gates made of live nerves grown in the lab.

It would seem that neurons grown in culture, they don’t form complex ‘thinking’ networks. What scientists are working on is a way to make them more "brain" like. What has been accomplished so far, with strict controls on how the cells grow and interconnect, is to build simple logic circuits. Yes, another name for that is computer circuits. One of the researchers, Prof. Elisha Moses of the Physics of Complex Systems Department said, As we find answers, we get closer to understanding the conditions needed for creating a synthetic, many-neuron ‘thinking’ apparatus.’

Yes that sounds like what it would take to be a step closer to creating an android, or any other device that required bio vs electrical impulses.

Check out the complete article here

Scientists working on a drug to selectively erase memories

One of the more popular themes in science fiction are those that deal with human memory. Whether it's copying memory from one place to another, building completely new memory sets, modifying existing memory such as adding new memories or taking away the bad, this has been a theme that has been revisited many times in many stories. Now Shaun Saunders sends in a article from NewScientist that has scientists moving a step closer to wiping away a month-old memory in genetically engineered laboratory mice, while leaving other memories unchanged. The research involved boosts levels of a protein involved in memory storage and retrieval, which has the effect of dispelling memory. Now this is short term memory. Other researchers have shown that it is possible to block the retrieval of long term memories by raising the levels of yet another protein. And yet another protein that erases long term memories completely, even without recalling them. Many neuroscientists do not think it's possible to use these methods in humans, now or in the future, but many agree that with research, future applications are a very real possibility.

<- newscientist article ->

You are living 10 seconds in the past!

According to discussion amongst Neuroscientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany which was reported in Nature Neuroscience : There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively 'free' decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. Scientist found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 seconds before it enters awareness. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.

This quite literally means that the time it takes for sensory input to travel along nerves and get processed by the brain means we're always "living in the past". The folks at IO9 quip that to make brain / computer interfaces more efficient that we might one day opt to disgard the plodding "consciousness" part of our brains.

{Nature Neurosciewnce via IO9}

Remote control brains: a neuroscience revolution

In a laboratory in Germany, a tiny worm dances to flashes of colored light. The worm is not a toy or a robot but a living creature. It has been engineered so that its nerves and muscles can be controlled with light. With each flash of blue its neurons fire electric pulses, causing the muscles they control to clench. A flash of yellow stops the nerves firing, relaxing the worm's muscles and lengthening its body once again. The worm is in the vanguard of a revolution in brain science - the most spectacular application yet of a technology that allows scientists to turn individual brain cells on and off at will. One possibility is that the technology, coupled with a method of getting light into the human skull, could create a Brave New World of neuro-modification in which conditions such as depression or Parkinson's disease are treated not with sledgehammer drugs or electrodes, but with delicate pinpricks of light.

Thanks to Shaun A. Saunders for the submission

Brain scans predict buying behavior

Here's one for ya Shaun!

Neuroscientists report that they can use brain scans to predict whether someone looking at a product will actually buy it or not. Dr. Brian Knuston and his colleagues at Stanford University put images of 40 objects in front of 26 subjects undergoing brain fMRIs. By analyzing which parts of the brain light up, the scientists were able to forecast what the subject's decision would be before he or she vocalized it.

According to the scientific paper they published in the current issue of the scientific journal Neuron product preference activated the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), while excessive prices activated the insula and deactivated the mesial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) prior to the purchase decision."