Brain – Page 11 – Infinite Unknown

Dose of Own Stem Cells Reverses Patients’ Multiple Sclerosis

January 30, 2009 by Infinite

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) — A dose of their own stem cells “reset” the malfunctioning immune system of patients with early-stage multiple sclerosis and, for the first time, reversed their disability, according to researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago.

All 21 patients in the study had the “relapsing-remitting” form of the disease that makes their symptoms alternately flare up and recede. Three years after being treated, on average, 17 of the patients had improved on tests of their symptoms, 16 had experienced no relapse and none had deteriorated, the study found.

“This is the first study to actually show reversal of disability,” said Richard Burt, an associate professor in the division of immunotherapy at Northwestern, and the lead author of the study published yesterday in the British journal, the Lancet Neurology. “Some people had complete disappearance of all symptoms.”

Researchers are using stem cells taken from people’s own bodies to try to fight conditions such as heart disease, orthopedic ailments and to reconstruct women’s breasts after cancer surgery. These adult stem cells differ from those derived from embryos, which have the potential to form any of the roughly 210 cell types in the human body. Geron Corp. last week was given U.S. regulatory approval to conduct the first human studies with embryonic stem cells.

Blind man navigates obstacle course using ‘blindsight’

December 23, 2008December 23, 2008 by Infinite

A man who was left completely blind by multiple strokes has been able to navigate an obstacle course using only his “sense” of where hazards lie.

The feat is an example of “blindsight”, the ability of some blind people to sense things that they cannot see.

Scientists already knew that the man, known only as TN, reacted to facial expressions that he could not see.

Brain scans showed that he could recognise expressions including fear, anger and joy in other people.

However, he is totally blind and normally walks using a stick to alert himself to objects in his path.

To test the extend of his blindsight, scientists constructed an obstacle course made up of boxes and chairs arranged in a random pattern.

Not only was TN able to safely manoeuvre the course he did not bump into a single box or chair.

Professor Beatrice de Gelder, from the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands, who led the study, said: “This is absolutely the first study of this ability in humans.

Brain scans show hints of MS years before symptoms

December 11, 2008 by Infinite

An MRI shows white plaques in the center of the brain that could indicate MS. UCSF Multiple Sclerosis Center

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Brain scans using magnetic resonance imaging may be able to detect signs of multiple sclerosis long before symptoms of the disease appear, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

They said nearly a third of people who showed signs of the disease on brain MRIs developed the disease within five years.

High Doses of Vitamins Fight Alzheimer’s Disease

December 11, 2008December 11, 2008 by Infinite

Why Don’t Doctors Recommend Them Now?

1. Vitamin B3 cannot be patented.

2. Vitamin B3 is incredibly cheap.

3. If taken correctly there are no side effects.

3. Vitamin B3 might cure the disease.

That is the ultimate worst case scenario for ‘Big Pharma’ and it’s salesman (= doctors).
(There are still great doctors out there but for many reasons their numbers are decreasing dramatically.)

There are a lot of junk science studies circulating out there that now want to tell us that vitamins have no effect.
Look who conducted the study and on whose payroll they are. There are only around 5% independent scientists out there. The other 95% are ‘bought’ by corporations. Any disease ‘can’ be cured with Alternative Medicine.
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(OMNS, December 9, 2008) The news media recently reported that “huge doses of an ordinary vitamin appeared to eliminate memory problems in mice with the rodent equivalent of Alzheimer’s disease.” They then quickly added that “scientists aren’t ready to recommend that people try the vitamin on their own outside of normal doses.” (1)

In other words, extra-large amounts of a vitamin are helpful, so don’t you take them!

That does not even pass the straight-faced test. So what’s the story?

Researchers at the University of California at Irvine gave the human dose equivalent of 2,000 to 3,000 mg of vitamin B3 to mice with Alzheimer’s. (2) It worked. Kim Green, one of the researchers, is quoted as saying, “Cognitively, they were cured. They performed as if they’d never developed the disease.”

Specifically, the study employed large amounts of nicotinamide, the vitamin B3 widely found in foods such as meat, poultry, fish, nuts and seeds. Nicotinamide is also the form of niacin found, in far greater quantity, in dietary supplements. It is more commonly known as niacinamide. It is inexpensive and its safety is long established. The most common side effect of niacinamide in very high doses is nausea. This can be eliminated by taking less, by using regular niacin instead, which may cause a warm flush, or choosing inositol hexaniacinate, which does not. They are all vitamin B3.

HealthDay Reporter mentioned how cheap the vitamin is; the study authors “bought a year’s supply for $30” and noted that it “appears to be safe.” Even so, one author said that “I wouldn’t advocate people rush out and eat grams of this stuff each day.” (1)

Miracle teabag – containing stem cells – helps stroke victim to speak again

December 3, 2008 by Infinite

A stroke victim has regained the power of speech after doctors placed a device resembling a teabag filled with stem cells in his brain.

Genetically modified stem cells fitted into a kind of ‘tea bag’ are implanted to the patient’s brain where they are supposed to have an anti-inflammatory effect Photo: EPA

Walter Bast, 49, also regained the use of his right arm after the revolutionary treatment, which prevents brain cells from dying.

If further trials of the treatment are successful, it could be on the market in as little as five years, providing fresh hope for the 45,000 Britons each year who suffer a haemorrhagic stroke, where a blood vessel in the brain bursts.

Currently, the only option is surgery, which has a variable success rate. Half of surgery patients will die within a month and just one in 20 patients will recover to the extent of Mr Bast.

The pioneering treatment, called CellBeads, involves cutting away part of the skull to tie off leaking blood vessels and remove blood from the brain.

Surgeons then insert the 2cm by 2cm ‘teabag’ filled with capsules stuffed with around a million stem cells.

The stem cells, taken from bone marrow, have been genetically engineered to make a drug known as CM1 that protects brain cells from dying. This lets the cells rejuvenate and repair the damage done by the stroke.

After around two weeks, doctors at the International Neuroscience-Institute in Hanover, Germany, removed the ‘teabag’, resulting in Mr Bast regaining his speech and the use of his right arm.

Speaking a week after the operation, the first of its kind in the world, Mr Bast, a mechanic, said: “I feel a lucky guy.”

Meditation May Protect Your Brain

December 2, 2008 by Infinite

Research is confirming the medicinal effects that advocates have long claimed for meditation.

For thousands of years, Buddhist meditators have claimed that the simple act of sitting down and following their breath while letting go of intrusive thoughts can free one from the entanglements of neurotic suffering.

Now, scientists are using cutting-edge scanning technology to watch the meditating mind at work. They are finding that regular meditation has a measurable effect on a variety of brain structures related to attention — an example of what is known as neuroplasticity, where the brain physically changes in response to an intentional exercise.

A team of Emory University scientists reported in early September that experienced Zen meditators were much better than control subjects at dropping extraneous thoughts and returning to the breath. The study, “‘Thinking about Not-Thinking:’ Neural Correlates of Conceptual Processing During Zen Meditation,” published by the online research journal PLoS ONE, found that “meditative training may foster the ability to control the automatic cascade of semantic associations triggered by a stimulus and, by extension, to voluntarily regulate the flow of spontaneous mentation.”

The same researchers reported last year that longtime meditators don’t lose gray matter in their brains with age the way most people do, suggesting that meditation may have a neuro-protective effect. A rash of other studies in recent years meanwhile have found, for example, that practitioners of insight meditation have noticeably thicker tissue in the prefrontal cortex (the region responsible for attention and control) and that experienced Tibetan monks practicing compassion meditation generate unusually strong and coherent gamma waves in their brains.

The Cancer Industry’s Big Lie

October 19, 2008 by Infinite

Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

(NaturalNews) With Breast Cancer Awareness month fully upon us once again, retail stores have been invaded with everything pink, including “pink ribbon” candies and personal care products made with blatantly cancer-causing ingredients. Retail grocery stores like Safeway even hit up customers for donations at the cash register, promising to raise funds to find “the cure for cancer.”

Consumers of course, have virtually no idea where the funds they donate actually go, nor do they know the truths about breast cancer they’ll never be told by conventional cancer non-profit organizations.

In this article, I’ll reveal ten important myths about breast cancer, and the truths that can save your life.

Myth #1: Breast Cancer is not preventable

The Truth: Up to 98% of breast cancer cases can be prevented through diet, nutritional supplements, sunshine and exercise

It’s true: Breast cancer can be almost entirely prevented through commonsense changes in diet, the addition of anti-cancer nutritional supplements, boosting vitamin D creation from sunlight, avoiding exposure to toxic chemicals in consumer products, pursuing regular exercise and eating a live foods diet.

The breast cancer industry — which depends on the continuation of cancer for its profits and employment — has so far refused to teach women even basic cancer prevention strategies (such as increasing the intake of vitamin D, which prevents 77% of all cancers). See: http://www.naturalnews.com/021892.html

Read moreThe Cancer Industry’s Big Lie

The International Interphone Study Confirms: The Use Of Mobile Phone Is Carcinogenic

October 19, 2008 by Infinite

The official publication of the first intermediate results of the International Interphone Study from the International Research Centre on Cancer (CIRC) dependent on WHO confirms the increased tumors and cancer cases due to the use of mobile phone.

The Use Of Mobile Phone Is Carcinogenic: Here (PDF)

INTERPHONE Results latest update Oct. 08, 2008: Interphone Results Update (PDF)

Music Shown to Facilitate the Development of Neurons in the Brain

September 27, 2008 by Infinite

Mozart Requiem (KV 626)

(NaturalNews) Music, the universal language of mood, emotion and desire, connects with us through a wide variety of neural systems. Researchers have discovered evidence that music stimulates specific regions of the brain responsible for memory, language and motor control. They have located specific areas of mental activity linked to the emotional responses elicited by music. Now new research conclusions have identified how the affect of music could replicate the effects of hormone replacement therapy in the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

The August 7 issue of Medical Hypotheses reports these conclusions resulting from experience that has shown music to be useful in therapy for neuropsychiatric disorders resulting from both functional and organic origins. However, the mechanisms of the action of music on the brain have remained largely unknown despite an increase in scientific studies on the topic.

The results of past studies have clarified that music influences and affects cranial nerves in humans from fetus to adult. To explain how it works at the cellular level, researchers proposed that the neurogenesis, regeneration and repair of the cerebral nerves are the result of adjustments through the secretion of steroid hormones ultimately leading to cerebral plasticity.

Govt. Report Says Fluoride Added to Water Supply May Harm Population

September 15, 2008 by Infinite

(NaturalNews) A government-sponsored report has concluded that levels of fluoride that people are regularly exposed to in drinking water can cause serious malfunctioning of the thyroid gland, leading to even more serious health problems.

“A low level of thyroid hormone can increase the risk of cardiac disease, high cholesterol, depression, and, in pregnant woman, decreased intelligence of offspring,” said study co-author Kathleen Thiessen.

The comprehensive review of the scientific literature on fluoride exposure and thyroid toxicity was conducted by a panel appointed by the National Research Council of the National Academies (NRC). It found that fluoride exposure was associated with low levels of thyroid and parathyroid hormones, and an abnormally enlarged thyroid gland (goiter). They also found that fluoride tended to concentrate in the thyroid more than in any organ but the kidneys.

“Fluoride has detrimental effects on the thyroid gland of healthy males at 3.5 mg a day. With iodine deficiency, the effect level drops to 0.7 milligrams a day for an average male,” said Robert Carton, an environmental scientist with 30 years of experience working for the government.

The Army’s Totally Serious Mind-Control Project

September 15, 2008 by Infinite

Army scientists want to cram this array of brain-wave reading sensors into a helmet.

Soldiers barking orders at each other is so 20th Century. That’s why the U.S. Army has just awarded a $4 million contract to begin developing “thought helmets” that would harness silent brain waves for secure communication among troops. Ultimately, the Army hopes the project will “lead to direct mental control of military systems by thought alone.”

If this sounds insane, it would have been as recently as a few years ago. But improvements in computing power and a better understanding of how the brain works have scientists busy hunting for the distinctive neural fingerprints that flash through a brain when a person is talking to himself. The Army’s initial goal is to capture those brain waves with incredibly sophisticated software that then translates the waves into audible radio messages for other troops in the field. “It’d be radio without a microphone, ” says Dr. Elmar Schmeisser, the Army neuroscientist overseeing the program. “Because soldiers are already trained to talk in clean, clear and formulaic ways, it would be a very small step to have them think that way.”

Pravda: Shocking Menace of Satellite Surveillance (Part II)

September 18, 2008September 9, 2008 by Infinite

There are various other satellite powers, such as manipulating electronic instruments and appliances like alarms, electronic watches and clocks, a television, radio, smoke detector and the electrical system of an automobile. For example, the digital alarm on a watch, tiny though it is, can be set off by a satellite from hundreds of miles up in space. And the light bulb of a lamp can be burned out with the burst of a laser from a satellite. In addition, street lights and porch lights can be turned on and off at will by someone at the controls of a satellite, the means being an electromagnetic beam which reverses the light’s polarity. Or a lamp can be made to burn out in a burst of blue light when the switch is flicked. As with other satellite powers, it makes no difference if the light is under a roof or a ton of concrete–it can still be manipulated by a satellite laser. Types of satellite lasers include the free-electron laser, the x-ray laser, the neutral-particle-beam laser, the chemical-oxygen-iodine laser and the mid-infra-red advanced chemical laser.

Pravda: Shocking Menace of Satellite Surveillance (Part I)

September 18, 2008September 9, 2008 by Infinite

Unknown to most of the world, satellites can perform astonishing and often menacing feats. This should come as no surprise when one reflects on the massive effort poured into satellite technology since the Soviet satellite Sputnik, launched in 1957, caused panic in the U.S. A spy satellite can monitor a person’s every movement, even when the “target” is indoors or deep in the interior of a building or traveling rapidly down the highway in a car, in any kind of weather (cloudy, rainy, stormy). There is no place to hide on the face of the earth. It takes just three satellites to blanket the world with detection capacity. Besides tracking a person’s every action and relaying the data to a computer screen on earth, amazing powers of satellites include reading a person’s mind, monitoring conversations, manipulating electronic instruments and physically assaulting someone with a laser beam. Remote reading of someone’s mind through satellite technology is quite bizarre, yet it is being done; it is a reality at present, not a chimera from a futuristic dystopia! To those who might disbelieve my description of satellite surveillance, I’d simply cite a tried-and-true Roman proverb: Time reveals all things (tempus omnia revelat).

Mobile Phone Radiation to Unleash Epidemic of Brain Tumors

September 2, 2008 by Infinite

(NaturalNews) A new review of more than 100 studies on the safety of mobile phones has concluded that cellular devices are poised to cause an epidemic of brain tumors that will kill more people than smoking or asbestos.

The review was conducted by neurosurgeon Vini Khurana, who has received more than 14 awards in the past 16 years, who made headlines worldwide with his warnings. He called upon the industry to immediately work to reduce people’s exposure to the radiation from mobile phones.

Tiny Cellular Antennae Trigger Neural Stem Cells

September 1, 2008August 27, 2008 by Infinite

Tiny thread like cilia on brain cells act as sort of an antennae that directs signals telling stem cells to create new neurons. (Credit: Image courtesy of Yale University)

ScienceDaily (Aug. 25, 2008) – Yale University scientists today reported evidence suggesting that the tiny cilia found on brain cells of mammals, thought to be vestiges of a primeval past, actually play a critical role in relaying molecular signals that spur creation of neurons in an area of the brain involved in mood, learning and memory.

The cilia found on brain cells of mammals until recently had been viewed as a mysterious remnant of a distant evolutionary past, when the tiny hair-like structures were used by single-celled organisms to navigate a primordial world.

“Many neuroscientists are shocked to learn that cells in the brain have cilia. Thus it was even more exciting to show that cilia have a key function in regulating the birth of new neurons in the brain,” said Matthew Sarkisian, post doctoral fellow in the department of neurobiology and co-first author on the study.

Vaccine Nation – Director’s Cut

August 19, 2008August 19, 2008 by Infinite

Source: Google Video

For most people, vaccinating themselves and their children seems like a good idea. Vaccines are safe, effective and are supposed to protect us against dangerous infectious diseases – Right? Wrong!

What you don’t know can harm you or kill you! In this groundbreaking film, you will:

* See the truth about the dangers of vaccines and their direct relationship to autoimmune diseases, infections, allergies and a massive increase of developmental learning and behavioral disorders in children, such as Autism.

Teen finds MSG slows brain cell growth

August 18, 2008 by Infinite

Test by high school student working with researchers reveals food additive’s direct effect on neuronal ability

CALGARY – A Calgary researcher is getting ready to publish a groundbreaking study that links a popular food additive to reduced growth in the brain cells of snails — work that could have major implications for children’s health.

Not bad for a teenager.

Michelle Ah-Seng is a 17-year-old high school student from Cochrane, just west of Calgary. She’s also the lead researcher on a University of Calgary study that offers the first solid proof that high concentrations of MSG, an additive used to boost flavour in everything from fast food to canned soups, can stunt the growth of brain cells.

“It has been shown that (in a pregnant woman), MSG will cross through the placenta and can affect the fetus,” said Ah-Seng.

“Fetuses are still developing, and their brain cells are starting to grow and starting to reach out to each other. If MSG has been inhibiting or stunting the growth, then the cells basically won’t reach out to one another.”

Ah-Seng is one of 22 Grade 11 students spending six weeks of their summer vacation in labs and clinics at the University of Calgary as part of the 2008 Heritage Youth Researcher Summer Program, funded by the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research.

Her project involved directly dosing brain cells culled from snails with a concentration of monosodium glutamate equal to what might commonly be found in human blood or cerebral spinal fluid after eating a meal containing the additive, such as a bag of chips. Not only did the MSG inhibit growth of the snail’s brain cells, it also limited communication between them. The implications for human health aren’t hard to infer.

“There’s no difference between a snail brain cell and a rat or a human brain cell, only that there are fewer of them and (they’re) larger,” said Naweed Syed, Ah-Seng’s supervisor and a neuroscientist with the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the University of Calgary’s faculty of medicine.

Uncle Sam Wants Your Brain

August 14, 2008 by Infinite

Drugs that make soldiers want to fight. Robots linked directly to their controllers’ brains. Lie-detecting scans administered to terrorist suspects as they cross U.S. borders.

These are just a few of the military uses imagined for cognitive science — and if it’s not yet certain whether the technologies will work, the military is certainly taking them very seriously.

“It’s way too early to know which — if any — of these technologies is going to be practical,” said Jonathan Moreno, a Center for American Progress bioethicist and author of Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense. “But it’s important for us to get ahead of the curve. Soldiers are always on the cutting edge of new technologies.”

Moreno is part of a National Research Council committee convened by the Department of Defense to evaluate the military potential of brain science. Their report, “Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies,” was released today. It charts a range of cognitive technologies that are potentially powerful — and, perhaps, powerfully troubling.

Here are the report’s main areas of focus:

A ‘Frankenrobot’ with a biological brain

December 10, 2008August 14, 2008 by Infinite

PARIS (AFP) – Meet Gordon, probably the world’s first robot controlled exclusively by living brain tissue.

Stitched together from cultured rat neurons, Gordon’s primitive grey matter was designed at the University of Reading by scientists who unveiled the neuron-powered machine on Wednesday.

Related article: ‘Brain’ in a dish flies flight simulator

Their groundbreaking experiments explore the vanishing boundary between natural and artificial intelligence, and could shed light on the fundamental building blocks of memory and learning, one of the lead researchers told AFP.

PTSD leaves physical footprints on the brain

July 27, 2008 by Infinite

At a recent conference for some of the area’s leading neurologists, San Francisco physicist Norbert Schuff captured his colleagues’ attention when he presented colorful brain images of U.S. soldiers who had returned from Iraq and Afghanistan and were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The yellow areas, Schuff explained during his presentation at the city’s Veterans Affairs Medical Center, showed where the hippocampus, which plays major roles in short-term memory and emotions, had atrophied. The red swatches marked hyperfusion – increased blood flow – in the prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for conflict resolution and decision-making. Compared with a soldier without the affliction, the PTSD brain had lost 5 to 10 percent of its gray matter volume, indicating yet more neuron damage.

MSG: Causes obesity, is toxic and destroys your brain

February 6, 2010July 3, 2008 by Infinite

I wondered if there could be an actual chemical causing the massive obesity epidemic, so did a friend of mine, John Erb. He was a research assistant at the University of Waterloo, and spent years working for the government.

He made an amazing discovery while going through scientific journals for a book he was writing called The Slow Poisoning of America. In hundreds of studies around the world, scientists were creating obese mice and rats to use in diet or diabetes test studies.

No strain of rat or mice is naturally obese, so the scientists have to create them. They make these morbidly obese creatures by injecting them with a chemical when they are first born. The MSG triples the amount of insulin the pancreas creates, causing rats (and humans?) to become obese They even have a title for the race of fat rodents they create: “MSG-Treated Rats” .

MSG?

I was shocked too. I went to my kitchen, checking the cupboards and the fridge.

Your Food is Toxic and Makes You Sick, Dr. Russell Blaylock, MD

July 3, 2008July 3, 2008 by Infinite

Hidden Sources Of MSG In Foods

From the book ‘Excitotoxins – The Taste That Kills By Dr. Russell Blaylock, MD

What if someone were to tell you that a chemical (MSG) added to food could cause brain damage in your children, and that this chemical could effect how your children’s nervous systems formed during development so that in later years they may have learning or emotional difficulties?

What if there was scientific evidence that these chemicals could permanently damage a critical part of the brain known to control hormones so that later in life your child might have endocrine problems? How would you feel?

Suppose evidence was presented to you strongly suggesting that the artificial sweetener in your diet soft drink may cause brain tumors to develop, and that the number of brain tumors reported since the introduction of this widespread introduction of this artificial sweetener has risen dramatically? Would that affect your decision to drink these products and especially to allow your children to drink them? What if you could be shown overwhelming evidence that one of the main ingredients in this sweetener (aspartate) could cause the same brain lesions as MSG? Would that affect your buying decisions?

And finally, what if it could be demonstrated that all of these types of chemicals, called excitotoxins, could possibly aggravate or even precipitate many of today’s epidemic neurodegenerative brain diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, ALS, and Alzheimer’s disease? Would you be concerned if you knew that these excitotoxin food additives are a particular risk if you have diabetes, or have ever had a stroke, brain injury, brain tumor, seizure, or have suffered from hypertension, meningitis, or viral encephalitis?

Would you also be upset to learn that many of the brain lesions caused by these products in your children are irreversible and can result from a SINGLE exposure of these products in sufficient concentration?

How would you feel when you learn the food industry hides and disguises these excitotoxin additives (MSG and Aspartate) so they can’t be recognized? Incredulous? Enraged? The fact is many foods are labeled as having ‘No MSG’ but in fact not only contain MSG but also are laced with other excitotoxins of equal potency and danger.

All of the above are true. And all of these well known brain toxins are poured into our food and drink by the thousands of tons to boost sales. These additives have NO OTHER purpose other than to enhance to TASTE of food and the SWEETNESS of various diet products.

Hidden Sources Of MSG

Pentagon OKs ‘brainwave binoculars’

June 10, 2008 by Infinite

THE Pentagon has approved $US6.7 million ($7m) to develop binoculars that would tap a user’s brainwaves to home in on threats.

Northrop Grumman Corporation said today it was leading an academic and industry consortium for the project, known as the Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System program, or CT2WS.

The plan featured a custom helmet equipped with electrodes placed on the scalp to record neural responses to the presence or absence of potential threats, Northrop said.

The brain’s input would “train the system’s algorithms, which will continue to be refined over time so that the warfighter is always presented with items of relevance to his mission”, the company said.

The contract was awarded by the Defence Advanced Projects Agency, or DARPA, a Pentagon arm that acts as a cradle of new technology for use by the US military.

The goal is to detect enemy forces and vehicles over 1-10km while surveying a 120deg or greater field of view, according to documents on DARPA’s website.

“At the same time we must look at the projected size, weight and power of the notional system to determine if the capabilities we are aiming for can be constrained into something fieldable by our military,” said DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker.

Neither Northrop nor the military provided precise details on how the project might work if put into operation.

After the project’s initial 12-month, $US6.7m stage, DARPA has the option to extend the contract for two more phases to develop the subsystems and a final prototype of portable assemblies.

“A prototype is not a product, so if we are three years away from a prototype we might be five years or more away from a device that might be considered a product,” Ms Walker said.

Northrop Grumman said it was striving for “persistent surveillance” in the system to give early notice of any enemy “move-stop-move tactics”.

If and when deployed, such a system could play a role in such things as force protection, defeating roadside bombs, border surveillance and other advanced military and homeland defense applications, the company said.

Computer trained to “read” mind images of words

May 30, 2008 by Infinite

The predicted fMRI images for celery and airplane show significant similarities with the observed images for each word. Red indicates areas of high activity, blue indicates low activity. A computer has been trained to “read” people’s minds by looking at scans of their brains as they thought about specific words, researchers said on Thursday.
REUTERS/Carnegie Mellon University/Handout
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A computer has been trained to “read” people’s minds by looking at scans of their brains as they thought about specific words, researchers said on Thursday.

They hope their study, published in the journal Science, might lead to better understanding of how and where the brain stores information.

This might lead to better treatments for language disorders and learning disabilities, said Tom Mitchell of the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, who helped lead the study.

“The question we are trying to get at is one people have been thinking about for centuries, which is: How does the brain organize knowledge?” Mitchell said in a telephone interview.

“It is only in the last 10 or 15 years that we have this way that we can study this question.”

Mitchell’s team used functional magnetic resonance imaging, a type of brain scan that can see real-time brain activity.

They calibrated the computer by having nine student volunteers think of 58 different words, while imaging their brain activity.

The REAL brain drain: Modern technology – including violent video games – is changing the way our brains work, says neuroscientist

May 10, 2008 by Infinite

Human identity, the idea that defines each and every one of us, could be facing an unprecedented crisis.

It is a crisis that would threaten long-held notions of who we are, what we do and how we behave. It goes right to the heart – or the head – of us all.

This crisis could reshape how we interact with each other, alter what makes us happy, and modify our capacity for reaching our full potential as individuals.

And it’s caused by one simple fact: the human brain, that most sensitive of organs, is under threat from the modern world.

Video games are weakening the ability to think for ourselves

Unless we wake up to the damage that the gadget-filled, pharmaceutically-enhanced 21st century is doing to our brains, we could be sleepwalking towards a future in which neuro-chip technology blurs the line between living and non-living machines, and between our bodies and the outside world.

It would be a world where such devices could enhance our muscle power, or our senses, beyond the norm, and where we all take a daily cocktail of drugs to control our moods and performance.

Already, an electronic chip is being developed that could allow a paralysed patient to move a robotic limb just by thinking about it.

As for drug manipulated moods, they’re already with us – although so far only to a medically prescribed extent.

Increasing numbers of people already take Prozac for depression, Paxil as an antidote for shyness, and give Ritalin to children to improve their concentration.

But what if there were still more pills to enhance or “correct” a range of other specific mental functions?

What would such aspirations to be “perfect” or “better” do to our notions of identity, and what would it do to those who could not get their hands on the pills? Would some finally have become more equal than others, as George Orwell always feared?