Aging clocks estimate how fast specific organs are deteriorating—but it’s hard to know what to do with the results.
What if we could just skip the workout part and take the results in supplement form? Researchers did it… On mice and flies.
EXPERTS:
It’s a step that could one day lead to advances for humans that boost quality of life for many by: giving amputees and those with spinal injuries control of advanced prosthetics, stimulating the sacral nerve to restore bladder control, stimulating the cervical vagus nerve to treat epilepsy and providing deep brain stimulation as a possible treatment for Parkinson’s.
How far would you go to keep your mind from failing? Would you go so far as to let a doctor drill a hole in your skull and stick a microchip in your brain?
It’s not an idle question. In recent years neuroscientists have made major advances in cracking the code of memory, figuring out exactly how the human brain stores information and learning to reverse-engineer the process. Now they’ve reached the stage where they’re starting to put all of that theory into practice.
Last month two research teams reported success at using electrical signals, carried into the brain via implanted wires, to boost memory in small groups of test patients. “It’s a major milestone in demonstrating the ability to restore memory function in humans,” says Dr. Robert Hampson, a neuroscientist at Wake Forest School of Medicine and the leader of one of the teams.
Researchers show how Stable Diffusion can read minds. The method reconstructs images from fMRI scans with amazing accuracy.
Researchers have been using AI models to decode information from the human brain for years. At their core, most methods involve using pre-recorded fMRI images as input to a generative AI model for text or images.
In early 2018, for example, a group of researchers from Japan demonstrated how a neural network reconstructed images from fMRI recordings. In 2019, a group reconstructed images from monkey neurons, and Meta’s research group, led by Jean-Remi King, has published new work that derives text from fMRI data, for example.
Neuralace™ is a glimpse of what’s possible in the future of BCI.
This patent pending concept technology is the start of Blackrock’s journey toward whole-brain data capture–with transformative potential for the way neurological disorders are treated. With over 10,000 channels and a flexible lace structure that seamlessly conforms to the brain, Neuralace has potential applications in vision and memory restoration, performance prediction, and the treatment of mental health disorders like depression.
Continue reading “Neuralace™ | The next-generation of BCI and whole-brain data capture” »
Blackrock’s long-tested NeuroPort® Array, widely considered the gold standard of high-channel neural interfacing, has been used in human BCIs since 2004 and powered many of the field’s most significant milestones. In clinical trials, patients using Blackrock’s BCI have regained tactile function, movement of their own limbs and prosthetics, and the ability to control digital devices, despite diagnoses of paralysis and other neurological disorders.
While Blackrock’s BCI enables patients to execute sophisticated functions without reliance on assistive technologies, next-generation BCIs for areas such as vision and memory restoration, performance prediction, and treatment of mental health disorders like depression will need to interface with more neurons.
Neuralace is designed to capitalize on this need; with 10,000+ channels and the entire scalable system integrated on an extremely flexible lace-structured chip, it could capture data that is orders of magnitude greater than existing electrodes, allowing for an exponential increase in capability and intuitiveness.
Peptidomics employs techniques of genomics, modern proteomics, state-of-the-art analytical chemistry and computational biology. In this Primer, Hellinger et al. describe the techniques and workflows required for peptide discovery and characterization and give an overview of biological and clinical applications of peptidomics.
A book talk by:
Robert Stickgold, PhD
Continue reading “When Brains Dream: Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep” »
AI is spreading beyond the tech giants into all aspects of life and work. One of its most impactful roles will be to help nuclear medicine save the lives of many thousands of cancer patients.
