Tag: BRAIN

The world's first PC virus, known as 'Brain,' was brought to life 25 years ago by two brothers in Pakistan. Mikko Hypponen, a researcher at F-Secure, was among the first to analyze Brain, and, after reverse engineering the virus, eventually discovered a hidden nugget of information. Buried within Brain's code was a short block of text, which revealed the phone number and address of the place ...

A new study from the National Institutes of Health suggests that using cell phones can change the way our brains behave, though it remains unclear whether these changes can be harmful. The study, published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that just 50 minutes of cell phone use can noticeably speed up brain activity in the region closest to the phone's antenna. ...

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered a way to use modified LCD projectors to control the brains and muscles of small creatures such as worms -- provided they've been properly genetically modified. Using red, green and blue lights emitted by a projector, the researchers were able to activate light-sensitive proteins engineered within the subject organisms, triggering ...

Share Got Facebook on the brain? It could be because Facebook is your brain. Sort of. That's what Carnegie Mellon neurology researcher Alison Barth claims in a new study published in the December 22nd issue of a journal called Neuron. As LiveScience explains, Barth and her team of researchers arrived at their conclusion after identifying and observing a small group of highly active neurons in ...

One thing this writer was never particularly good at was math, which is why he turned to blogging and away from a career as an electrical engineer. But researchers at the University of Oxford believe that mild electrical stimulation of the brain can actually improve math skills, for up to six months at time, without any negative side effects. Roi Cohen Kadosh, a researcher on the project, told ...

Scientists continue their quest for the elusive art of mind control. Recently, researchers at UCLA and the California Institute of Technology have helped patients manipulate images on a computer by teaching them to control the firing of specific neurons in their brains. With the aid of their research team, UCLA professor of neurosurgery Itzhak Fried and Caltech neuroscientist Christof Koch ...

Anybody who owns a smartphone or works at the computer all day knows that modern man is at the beck and call of various pings, rings and vibrations. Ian Page has considered this fact, and has created Bondage Happens -- conditioning headgear that, for two weeks, will inject a sip of lemon juice into his mouth every time his phone rings. (We call it drool-dialing.) See a video of the project after ...

According to a new study from Nashville's Vanderbilt University, part of your brain may know when you've made a typo, even if the rest of you doesn't. Researchers Gordon Logan and Matthew Crump gathered a group of "skilled" typists (with their minimum typing speed set at a ludicrously low 40 words per minute), and asked them to copy a paragraph about border collies. As the participants typed, the ...

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have created a strange cyborg rat that they hope will help them develop a brain-machine interface (BMI) for controlling motorized wheelchairs. The so-called RatCar is a motorized vehicle that suspends a rat below it and is hooked up via electrodes inserted in the rodent's motor cortex. The rats were then trained to move the cart simply by thinking about ...

Studies have previously demonstrated that "mental exercise" video games can actually help participants become smarter. An epochal scientific study (for teens and slackers, at least) now indicates that perhaps the most frequently decried and debated gaming genre could provide similar benefits to cognitive functioning and decision making, while also helping players recognize certain patterns. ...

When will it end, DARPA? The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has cursed the earth with unmanned missile systems, all-terrain robots and machines that feast upon -- and then fuel themselves with -- human flesh. The group, which works directly for the U.S. Department of Defense, now hopes to turn actual humans into controllable, mindless and murderous cyborgs. The organization has ...

Last year, Toyota proudly announced the development of a new mind-controlled wheelchair, which was reportedly capable of interpreting a user's brain waves within a few milliseconds. Now, a group of Swiss scientists have taken the prototype one step further, by adding an extra A.I. touch to a new brain-controlled wheelchair. As Engadget reports, researchers at Switzerland's École ...

In a recent study at Northwestern University, researchers used electrodes to examine the brain activity of 29 "fake" terrorists. As FOX reports, each student was given a fake terrorist plan of attack on a given U.S. city, and about 30 minutes to educate themselves. They were also asked to flesh out the attacks in greater detail, based on information concerning weapons and methods. The ...

When you strap on a pair of skis or a snowboard, naturally, you run the risk of sustaining a head injury. But students at Northeastern University have developed a helmet that not only protects your head, but monitors the severity of injuries, too. According to Inhabitat, the Head Impact Detection and Alert System is a helmet lined with sensors that measures acceleration and displays the severity ...

Last month, a Brooklyn lawyer attempted to make legal history by using a lie-detection brain scan as evidence in a courtroom trial. At the time, neuroscientists raised questions about the reliability of fMRI brain scans, while legal experts were more keen on the idea of having sophisticated technology play a greater role in determining trial outcomes. Now, however, the push to allow the scans in a ...