Miscellaneous

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/7MEy7n6vWGw

Biodiversity: A boon for brain research

Published on Apr 17, 2014


How two unlikely microbes (that don't even have brains) led to the development of one of today's most promising brain research techniques--which is being used to study many diseases including schizophrenia and Parkinson's.

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/A9a2P30sDl4

Optogenetics and Enhancing Brain Functions-A World Economic Forum Discussion-Ideas @Davos-WIRED

Published on Apr 23, 2014


With optogenetics, the ability to restore and enhance brain function is becoming a reality. In this World Economic Forum discussion, Nature magazine neuroscience editor I-han Chou explains how the radical method works and the ethical issues it could cause.

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/x-WC-HZw0mo

NSF's 2014 Alan T. Waterman Awardee Feng Zhang discusses his research on the brain

Published on May 12, 2014


NSF's 2014 Alan T. Waterman Awardee Feng Zhang discusses the work of his research team on the brain. Zhang is an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and a core member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He spoke with NSF's Lisa-Joy Zgorski during his visit to NSF in May of 2014 to receive the Alan T. Waterman Award.

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/IF54xqYhIGA

Consciousness and the limits of Science - Boundaries of the Knowable (1/10)

Uploaded on Feb 8, 2010

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/Lpb_eTZIpkY

Can Brain Implants Make Us Smarter?

Published on Aug 20, 2014


Is it possible for us to significantly boost our intelligence within a lifetime? Studies show that changes in our lifestyle like exercise and nutrition can help increase brain power - but these improvements are modest at best. Perhaps the future of intelligence will come in the form of a brain implant? We’ve already seen some amazing research to get computers and brains to communicate more easily - and the future implications are limitless!

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/vfdBWXyTqug

Can we build a better brain? - THE BIG FUTURE

Published on Oct 23, 2014


Neural implants are already common in medicine. But can they be used to make physical changes to the brain itself?

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/_X0mgOOSpLU

Carol Dweck: The power of believing that you can improve

Published on Dec 17, 2014


Carol Dweck researches “growth mindset” — the idea that we can grow our brain's capacity to learn and to solve problems. In this talk, she describes two ways to think about a problem that’s slightly too hard for you to solve. Are you not smart enough to solve it … or have you just not solved it yet? A great introduction to this influential field.

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/NjVMCMa7Akc

Harvard computer system fuels our understanding of the brain

Published on Jan 28, 2015


Faculty and researchers are using big data to answer society’s most challenging questions, and doing it with the help of FAS Research Computing (FASRC). Founded in 2007, FASRC had one goal: to provide Harvard faculty, students, and staff with leading-edge computational resources.

By building a centralized, high-performance computing environment called Odyssey, FASRC gave researchers the keys to unlock the information inside big data. Users have access to more than 60,000 CPUs and 15 petabytes of storage. At peak usage during a day, Odyssey churns through data so fast that it would take a traditional desktop more than 140 years to process the same information.
For more information, visit
"Harvard’s Odyssey unlocks big data (https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/01/harvards-odyssey-unlocks-big-data)"
Faculty, researchers find high-performance computer system fuels our understanding of the brain

January 26, 2015

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/aHp2hkue8RQ

The Neurochemistry of Flow States, with Steven Kotler

Published on Feb 27, 2015


Steven Kotler explains the neurochemical changes during flow states that strengthen motivation, creativity and learning. "The brain produces a giant cascade of neurochemistry. You get norepinephrine, dopamine, anandamide, serotonin and endorphins. All five of these are performance enhancing neurochemicals." Kotler discusses how each amplifies intellectual and cognitive performance.

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/c-NMfp13Uug

See-through brains

Published on Apr 10, 2013


Scientists have come up with a way to make whole brains transparent, so they can be labelled with molecular markers and imaged using a light microscope. The technique, called CLARITY, enabled its creators to produce the detailed 3D visualisations you see in this video. It works in mouse brains and human brains; here the team use it to look into the brain of a 7-year-old boy who had autism.

Original research paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12107
Nature News story:
"See-through brains clarify connections (https://www.nature.com/news/see-through-brains-clarify-connections-1.12768)"
Technique to make tissue transparent offers three-dimensional view of neural networks.

by Helen Shen
April 10, 2013

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/bwxiyJwPo2Q

This Machine Can Detect Your MEMORY!

Published on Jul 8, 2015


It sounds like science fiction – a machine that can search your memories? But using real-time brain scans and machine learning algorithms, it’s possible for a computer to look for the presence of memories about specific subjects. In case you’re worried about your memories’ privacy, there’s some good news – our brains can fool the machines. With a little practice and concentration, it’s possible to hide our memories or even construct false ones.

[Airicist]

Article "First almost fully-formed human brain grown in lab, researchers claim (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/18/first-almost-fully-formed-human-brain-grown-in-lab-researchers-claim)"
Research team say tiny brain could be used to test drugs and study diseases, but scientific peers urge caution as data on breakthrough kept under wraps

by Helen Thomson
August 18, 2015

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/7_drJyNMXbw

Published on Apr 8, 2014


Trailblazers in neuroscience Dr. Christof Koch and Dr. John Donoghue reveal mind-blowing insights on how the brain turns thought into voluntary behaviors and how that knowledge is empowering victims of neurological trauma with regained physical abilities.

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/NvLBg0Blhgg

Future Day - James Fodor - Whole Brain Emulation

Published on Mar 5, 2014


Whole Brain Emulation & Computational Neuroscience Synopsis Within a few decades, I believe it will be possible to construct working simulations of an entire human brain. In this talk I will explain why I believe this, with reference to recent work in Computational Neuroscience, extrapolations of Moore's Law, and other such matters. I will also address some common criticisms leveled against whole brain emulation, and briefly discuss some of the many ways I believe this technology will drastically change the face of society in the near future.

I'll basically be presenting selected material from this publication, with some updates and additions of my own.
"Whole Brain Emulation A Roadmap (http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdf)"

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/vNDhu2uqfdo

Published on Mar 3, 2014


As an expert on cutting-edge digital displays, Mary Lou Jepsen studies how to show our most creative ideas on screens. And as a brain surgery patient herself, she is driven to know more about the neural activity that underlies invention, creativity, thought. She meshes these two passions in a rather mind-blowing talk on two cutting-edge brain studies that might point to a new frontier in understanding how (and what) we think.

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/pusWU0SH4oQ

Published on Dec 12, 2013


Public lecture by Professor Vincent Walsh as part of the Manchester Science Festival. Walsh explains some of these methods used to stimulate the brain and their potential.

Filmed 7:00 pm -- 8:00 pm on Sunday 03 November 2013 at Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI).

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/kgInT8hbDuQ

Published on Nov 26, 2013


Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), scientists are starting to decode brain waves and decipher human thoughts.

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/_7_XH1CBzGw

Published on Nov 26, 2013


The human brain is puzzling -- it is curiously large given the size of our bodies, uses a tremendous amount of energy for its weight and has a bizarrely dense cerebral cortex. But: why? Neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel puts on her detective's cap and leads us through this mystery. By making "brain soup," she arrives at a startling conclusion.

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/UWKvpFZJwcE

Published on Nov 22, 2013


"Life comes at us very quickly, and what we need to do is take that amorphous flow of experience and somehow extract meaning from it." In this funny, enlightening talk, educational psychologist Peter Doolittle details the importance -- and limitations -- of your "working memory," that part of the brain that allows us to make sense of what's happening right now.

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/G6CVj5IQkzk

Jeff Hawkins: How brain science will change computing

Uploaded on May 23, 2007


Treo creator Jeff Hawkins urges us to take a new look at the brain -- to see it not as a fast processor, but as a memory system that stores and plays back experiences to help us predict, intelligently, what will happen next.

[Airicist]

Article "Identifying emotions based on brain activity and machine-learning techniques (https://www.kurzweilai.net/identifying-emotions-based-on-brain-activity-and-machine-learning-techniques)"
Could this be used for "precrime" detection, as in Minority Report?

June 21, 2013

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/oj7FNCahWD8

David Eagleman: Can a Computer Simulate Consciousness?

Published on Nov 11, 2015


Yes, conceivably. And if/when we achieve the levels of technology necessary for simulation, the universe will become our playground. Eagleman's latest book is "The Brain: The Story of You (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1101870532)"

Transcript - The big picture in modern neuroscience is that you are the sum total of all the pieces and parts of your brain. It’s a vastly complicated network of neurons, almost 100 billion neurons, each of which has 10,000 connections to its neighbors. So we’re talking a thousand trillion neurons. It’s a system of such complexity that it bankrupts our language. But, fundamentally it’s only three pounds and we’ve got it cornered and it’s right there and it’s a physical system.

The computational hypothesis of brain function suggests that the physical wetware isn’t the stuff that matters. It’s what are the algorithms that are running on top of the wetware. In other words: What is the brain actually doing? What’s it implementing software-wise that matters? Hypothetically we should be able to take the physical stuff of the brain and reproduce what it’s doing. In other words, reproduce its software on other substrates. So we could take your brain and reproduce it out of beer cans and tennis balls and it would still run just fine. And if we said hey, "How are you feeling in there?" This beer can/tennis ball machine would say "Oh, I’m feeling fine. It’s a little cold, whatever."

It’s also hypothetically a possibility that we could copy your brain and reproduce it in silica, which means on a computer at zeroes and ones, actually run the simulation of your brain. The challenges of reproducing a brain can’t be underestimated. It would take something like a zettabyte of computational capacity to run a simulation of a human brain. And that is the entire computational capacity of our planet right now.

There’s a lot of debate about whether we’ll get to a simulation of the human brain in 50 years or 500 years, but those would probably be the bounds. It’s going to happen somewhere in there. It opens up the whole universe for us because, you know, these meat puppets that we come to the table with aren’t any good for interstellar travel. But if we could, you know, put you on a flash drive or whatever the equivalent of that is a century from now and launch you into outer space and your consciousness could be there, that could get us to other solar systems and other galaxies. We will really be entering an era of post-humanism or trans-humanism at that point.

Now because it seems like a possibility that we could download and simulate — not in our lifetimes, but soon — that has opened up a question from many people, which is how would we know if we’re already living in a simulation? Maybe we are the products of a civilization that came a billion years before us and we’re already living in The Matrix. And this is a position that philosophers are taking seriously.

In fact, Rene Descartes, the French philosopher, had a version of this when he asked how would I know if I’m just a brain in a vat and I’m being stimulated by scientists to make me think that I’m hearing, and seeing, and feeling and so on. And his conclusion, like others that have followed him, is that you actually can’t know. Really it would be almost impossible to know because all of this feels real to you. And so Descartes’ solution to this was to say you know, I might not ever be able to really know, but there’s somebody who’s asking the question and therefore I exist. There’s some "I" at the center of all this that’s thinking about this. And so that was a solution for him but it doesn’t solve the bigger question of how would we know if we’re already in the simulation and we may well be.

[Airicist]

Article "Digitized worm brain learns a new trick (https://newatlas.com/c-elegans-worm-neural-network/53296)"

by Michael Irving
February 8, 2017

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/nQKMNI5X148

What is consciousness? What is its purpose?

Published on Jun 9, 2017

[Airicist2]

Article "Cyborg computer with living brain organoid aces machine learning tests (https://newatlas.com/computers/hybrid-brain-organoid-computing)"

by Loz Blain (https://www.linkedin.com/in/loz-blain-4827b8139)
December 12, 2023