Tag: Neuroscience

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Technomancy by Debbie Lee

Fitbit in your skull,
neuroscience leap
Musk technomancy

by Debbie Lee

Neuralink is a brain implant with 1,024 5-micron-wide (very, very thin!) electrodes and includes sensors for motion, temperature and pressure. Ultimately, according to Elon Musk, the medical goal is for such implants to be able to control prosthetic limbs, alleviate memory loss, help with addiction and fix mental illnesses and vision and hearing impairments.

Musk has described it as “a Fitbit in your skull” and some of his more enthusiastic claims are that this technology could one-day record and replay memories and (due to the device’s wireless capabilities) enable telepathy – sending and receiving words, concepts and images.

All this sounds incredible and Neuralink is certainly a step up from what has currently been available to neuroscientists – the current Utah Array has 64 electrodes and installation can cause significant tissue damage on installation and removal.

Whilst Neuralink represents a huge step forward for neuroscientists, however, there are still plenty of unknowns to do with how neurons function and how this type of technology can remain in the brain for long periods of time without causing tissue damage or being damaged by the environment within the cranium and the human immune response. For all of Musk’s technomancy hype, Neuralink currently asks more questions than it provides answers to and there are still plenty of difficult barriers to overcome before any of the promised advantages are possible.

Further reading: https://www.wired.com/story/neuralink-is-impressive-tech-wrapped-in-musk-hype/

Debbie Lee (@lee_debbie):
Writing from places light and dark,
awkward data nerd,
elegant word nerd,
dreaming in colour,
clumsily balancing love, hope,
kindness with pragmatic realism.

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Only our minds by Nishant Mehrotra

lab reunion –
we play Chinese whispers with
only our minds

by Nishant Mehrotra

The idea of communicating with our thoughts alone is the stuff of science fiction that, thanks to a team at the University of Washington (Seattle) and Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh), may soon become a reality. In their work (Jiang et. al., 2019), the researchers demonstrate the feasibility of multi-person brain-to-brain communication for the first time. Their system, BrainNet, is an exciting first step towards the future where the Internet might have human brains directly linked to it.

Original research: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-41895-7

Nishant Mehrotra (@NMehrotratweets) is an  electrical engineer by profession, but a poet by (his) admission. He  blogs at nm30.blogs.rice.edu about RF and wireless research.

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Gamma sabres by Hannah Hall

Gamma sabres slay

Alzheimer’s amyloid plaques

with disco lighting.

 

Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative condition that worsens over time leading to problems with short-term memory, mood swings, behavioural issues and ultimately loss of bodily functions and death. But could flashing LED lights be a method of helping to treat the disease?

Exposing laboratory mice to LED strips flickering at 40Hz for an hour reduced beta amyloid plaque levels in the visual cortex by half, reduced Tau protein abnormalities and enhanced gamma oscillations (brain waves) – all of which are characteristics of Alzheimer’s disease. Iaccarino et al, 2016.

Hannah Hall is a Senior Consultant at Pragma Consulting Ltd in London. Though she studied Russian and French at university, she has broad interests and enjoys listening to the RadioLab podcast where she heard about this research.