Category: Brain
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Moving… Thinking of moving… Standing still!
Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) work on the principle that measurable changes in electrical brain activity occur just by thinking about performing a task. Signals can be read, evaluated, and then converted into control signals via a machine learning system, which can then be used to operate a computer or a prosthesis. In a recently published study, […]
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Abstract thoughts…
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have leveraged machine learning to interpret human brain scans, allowing the team to uncover the regions of the brain behind how abstract concepts, like justice, ethics and consciousness, form. In this study, Just and his team scanned the brains of nine participants using a functional MRI. The team sifted through […]
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Picking up voices…
Our brains have a remarkable ability to pick out one voice from among many. Now, a team of Columbia University neuroengineers has uncovered the steps that take place in the brain to make this feat possible. The auditory cortex is the brain’s listening hub. The inner ear sends this brain region electrical signals that represent […]
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Organoids. Brain waves. Death…
Some years ago, two hundred and fifty miles over Alysson Muotri’s head, a thousand tiny spheres of brain cells were sailing through space. The clusters, called brain organoids, had been grown a few weeks earlier in the biologist’s lab here at the University of California, San Diego. He and his colleagues altered human skin cells […]
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Listening to music. Humans. Apes.
In the eternal search for understanding what makes us human, scientists found that our brains are more sensitive to pitch, the harmonic sounds we hear when listening to music, than our evolutionary relative the macaque monkey. The study, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, highlights the promise of Sound Health, a joint […]
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