Humans 2.0: Replacing the Mind and Body

When President Barack Obama said in his weekly radio address Saturday that innovation would be a key to the future of the nation, he probably was not thinking specifically of artificial brains or replacement eyeballs.

But other researchers already have such goals in mind and are well on their way to building Humans 2.0, the real-life Steve Austin of the “Six Million Dollar Man.”

Recent breakthroughs in bionics and lab-grown body parts — along with news last month that a Swiss research team aims to recreate the intricacies of the human brain within a decade — show science is rapidly creating many of the parts needed to build a fully functional human almost from scratch.

While the ultimate goal remains years if not decades away, and some aspects may be ethically questionable, the work is already helping people live more bearable and productive lives.

By Heather Whipps and Robert Roy Britt (Live Science)

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Artificial brain ’10 years away’

Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already simulated elements of a rat brain.

He told the TED Global conference in Oxford that a synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses.

Around two billion people are thought to suffer some kind of brain impairment, he said.

“It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years,” he said.

By Jonathan Fildes (BBC News)

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Our Metallic Reflection: Considering Future Human-android Interactions

Everyday human interaction is not what you would call perfect, so what if there was a third party added to the mix – like a metallic version of us? In a new article in Perspectives on Psychological Science, psychologist Neal J. Roese and computer scientist Eyal Amir from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign investigate what human-android interactions may be like 50 years into the future.

By Science Daily

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Controlling video games with your mind

Stay Upbeat, Active to Keep the Mind Young

To stave off the mental decline associated with old age, engage in intellectually challenging activities, maintain a positive outlook and keep up your social life.

Those are the findings of what researchers say is the largest-ever review of studies on aging and the brain.

The review, which spanned three decades and covered more than 400 studies, found that remaining physically, mentally and socially active has a substantial impact on whether older adults experience declines in memory and cognition, which includes the ability to learn and solve problems.

By Jennifer Thomas (U.S.News)

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102-year-old grandma is oldest person on Facebook

At a mere 102, she’s the oldest face on Facebook. Ivy Bean many have been born 46 years before the first computer, but that hasn’t stopped the savvy senior from tapping in to the online world of social networking.

After hearing her care workers discussing the Web site, the British great-grandmother decided to sign up too.

By Nicole Lyn Pesce (Daily News)

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Scientist: Humans Can See Into Future

Humans can see into the future, says a cognitive scientist.

It’s nothing like the alleged predictive powers of Nostradamus, but we do get a glimpse of events one-tenth of a second before they occur.

And the mechanism behind that can also explain why we are tricked by optical illusions.

By Jeanna Bryner (FOX News)

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A whole new reality

It’s The Sims wrapped in the World Wide Web wrapped in an enigma.

It’s called Second Life, and it’s a world just like this one, except it’s computerized – and you can fly.

Second Life is an Internet-based program that allows users to create 3-D versions of themselves that walk around and interact with the 3-D versions of other real people in a digital “world” that is more than three times the geographic size of San Francisco. There are at least 7 million registered users and about 40,000 people logged in at any given moment.

In this virtual world, you can buy land, clothes and anything else your imagination can dream up for real money. More than $200,000 is exchanged daily in Second Life.

But Second Life is far more than a game. It’s a model that could potentially ensconce the Internet and revolutionize education. Instead of going to the University of Oregon’s Web site, you could venture your 3-D self to the virtual campus and get information there. Instead of reading about ancient Rome in a textbook, you could walk through its bustling ancient streets virtually.

By Ryan Knutson (Daily Emerald.com)

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Future mind: are computers radically changing the way we think?

We live in a world mediated by flickering screens. But do ‘people of the screen’ think fundamentally differently to ‘people of the book’? What will the brain look like in generations to come? Eminent neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield paints an apocalyptic picture of an identity lost, and cognition fundamentally compromised, forever stuck in the sensory chaos of early childhood.

Interview with Susan Greenfield (All in the mind: ABC Radio)

Read or listen to the show here

Robots, Robots, Everywhere

The Robobusiness 2009 conference is going on this weekend in Boston, proving that robots are not our future but our present. They already affect our daily lives in more ways than we realize and promise to do more soon.

By Jonathan Blum and Dan Evans (ABC News)

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Mind Travelers

Will we be able to travel the universe with our mind in the future?

In this article I am going to write about a topic that relates to an issue that might not at all seem rational to most people, mind traveling. This is a topic that explores the mind to a much further degree to what most people are accustomed to. My writing as an author and explorer of life relates to the study of the mind and how we come to perceive life and reality. I really have only just touched the surface in explaining how I obtain information and experiences relating to these topics, so far only really isolating topics that fall within the materialistic approach, showing the formation of the dimensions in material space in relation to the mind and the core of creation.

By Stacey T Pollock

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Brain Scans Of The Future

Psychologists have found that thought patterns used to recall the past and imagine the future are strikingly similar. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to show the brain at work, they have observed the same regions activated in a similar pattern whenever a person remembers an event from the past or imagines himself in a future situation.

By Science Daily

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Robots and the Future

Science and technology is starting to delve into the possibility of creating a humanoid robot that can feel, think and act in the same way as any human.  They are experimenting on the human brain, linking robotic hands to our brain synapses, creating full models of humanoid robots that are now in the beginning stages in their design, now taken on as a technological challenge.  What is to become of this technology in the future and to what limits will we take our exploration into the arena of creating humanoid robots?

By Stacey T Pollock (Creation Theory Revised)

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Do Past and Future Really Exist?

As every second ticks away, with every event that we experience, it turns into past, a moment that once was, but no longer exists. It is scientifically proven that memory is stored in the brain and that what we remember only encompasses around the average of eight percent of what we experience.

By Stacey T Pollock (Creation Theory Revised)

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