Are we on the brink of creating a computer with a human brain?

There are only a handful of scientific revolutions that would really change the world. An immortality pill would be one. A time machine would be another.

Faster-than-light travel, allowing the stars to be explored in a human lifetime, would be on the shortlist, too.

To my mind, however, the creation of an artificial mind would probably trump all of these – a development that would throw up an array of bewildering and complex moral and philosophical quandaries. Amazingly, it might also be within reach.

By Michael Hanlon (Mail Online)

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Spatial neglect not all in the mind

An international research team has used lotto to show that the condition ‘spatial neglect’, which affects how we see the world, isn’t connected to how is it is imagined.

The findings to be published in the journal Cortex, suggest that the way we represent the world in our heads can operate independently of how it is actually perceived.

By Annabel McGilvray (ABC Science)

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Making a computer that works like the brain

Near-death myth alive and kicking

Most of us have a reasonable idea of what the near-death experience (NDE) is. It’s said to happen when you are in the actual process of dying, and you hear strange noises, then feelings of blissful peace and joy sweep over you.

You then float out of your body, seeing it from above, and head towards a tunnel and you enter the tunnel. At the far end of the tunnel is a bright light, but as you get close to the light, you are met by someone, already dead, who tells you that this is not yet your time, and regretfully, you are plunged back to our prosaic planet with other Earthlings.

In a nutshell, the common beliefs are that the NDE happens only to those who are dying, and that it is also proof of an afterlife. But neither belief is correct.

By Karl S. Kruszelnicki (ABC Science)

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Mind over matter as scientists use brainpower to make wishes come true

From the Hollywood film Firefox to the television show Heroes, science fiction writers have always dreamt of the day when humans could control machines with the power of thought alone.

Now British scientists are turning the vision into reality with a device that allows objects to be manipulated with brain waves.

The prototype, developed at Essex University, can already be used to play simple computer games. By imagining a movement, the wearer of the hat-shaped device can tell the computer to move an object around a screen or a robot around a room.

The researchers hope their technology will eventually allow people to move wheelchairs and drive cars with their thoughts.

By Richard Gray (Telegraph.co.uk)

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Mind Over Matter: Effective Chronic Pain Control Techniques

Chronic pain is not a simple sensation, but rather chronic pain is strongly influenced by the ways in which the brain processes the pain signals. Importantly, chronic pain can provoke strong emotional reactions, such as fear, anxiety or even terror, depending on what the individual believes about the pain signals.

If there is any good news with chronic pain, it is that to a certain extent the brain can learn how to manage the sensation of pain. Ideally, use of chronic pain management techniques outlined here can help people dealing with chronic pain feel more in control of their situation and less dependent on pain medications.

By Andrew Block (Spine Health)

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Mind’s Clock Reacts as Two-Stage Rocket to Time Differences

The mind’s clock is a genetically inherent molecular pacemaker, which provides our entire body with a 24 hour rhythm. Natural fluctuations, such as the ones caused by season changes, can be handled easily by the mind’s clock, but our modern lifestyle stretches this natural balance to its very limits. An imbalanced mind clock can sometimes lead to serious dysfunction

, and cause illnesses such as depression. In most cases, however, the mind’s clock adjusts to the new circumstances; we know from experience that a jet lag disappears within a few days. How does the mind’s clock achieve this?  The mind’s clock makes use of a two-stage mechanism in adapting to artificial time differences caused by, for instance, a transatlantic flight or working irregular shifts. In adapting to the time difference, the two halves of the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the brain, where the mind’s clock is located, play very different parts.

By (Universiteit Leiden)

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Assessing the effects of television on young children

Christakis realized that the jumpy images on the screen were engaging the child’s ‘orienting response’, a basic attentional reflex that directs the senses towards a sudden change in the environment. He wondered about the long-term effect of this on a brain that was at such a sensitive developmental stage. Could it alter the brain to ‘expect’ overstimulation, so that ordinary reality would thereafter seem dull by comparison? And could such a mechanism help to explain the ongoing tsunami of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses, whose rise had roughly coincided with the dramatic increase in media consumption in Western societies?

By Jim Schnabel (Nature News)

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The Third Man Theory of Otherworldly Encounters

Some believe it’s a guardian angel. Others say it’s the brain’s way of coping under great duress. Whichever, the experiences are eerily similar: the sense of a presence that encourages, advises and even leads a person out of peril.

“Opinion is divided,” says Geiger. “There’s not a definitive explanation.”

By Nancy J. White (Mind Power News)

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Can a machine change your mind?

There are in fact even more extreme examples than those in the Times article of how neuro-science and social science increasingly overlap. Alan Sanfey, of the Neural Decision Science Laboratory at the University of Arizona, for example, describes a neuro-economic analysis of an Ultimatum Game in which one person is given the power over another to make an offer to split £100. If the other rejects the offer, no one gets anything. So far so familiar — to other behavioural economics experiments that study the norms of fairness. One neuro-twist to the story, though, is that experimenters can make subjects more or less willing to accept unfair offers by subjecting their brains to Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), non-invasive and painless stimulation of the brain.

By Jane O’Grady (Open Democracy)

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Can a machine read your mind?

It sounds like science fiction, but politicians, lawyers and advertisers are falling over themselves to buy into the latest scientific discovery: brainjacking. Soon our secret desires and not so innocent thoughts could become public knowledge.

Across the world, scientists are using this kind of technology to prise open our minds, to fathom our voting preferences, our guilty thoughts, our shopping desires, even the words we are thinking. Already their activities are stealthily changing our world.

By John Naish (Times Online)

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Placebo’s power goes beyond the mind

Even though medical researchers told Chuck Park that he might be getting a sugar pill, the 30-year-old software producer was pretty sure he was getting the real thing. Just a few weeks into the clinical trial, Park’s depression started to lift. He began to feel less anxious and sad.

By Linda Carroll (msnbc)

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Mind, Nature, and Evolution: Is it Matter or Spirit?‎

What drives the evolution of life?‎

Most people associate mind and intelligence mainly with humans and only marginally with other highly evolved animals. We tend to regard humankind as separate from the rest of nature, a different order of being. In pre-modern times this was not so.

By Willie Maartens

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Our Conscious Mind Could Be An Electromagnetic Field

Are our thoughts made of the distributed kind of electromagnetic field that permeates space and carries the broadcast signal to the TV or radio.

Professor Johnjoe McFadden from the School of Biomedical and Life Sciences at the University of Surrey in the UK believes our conscious mind could be an electromagnetic field.

By UniSci

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Skip the Robotics: Paralyzed Limbs Come to Life with New Connection to Brain

Rerouting signal from neuron to muscle allows the brain to move deadened limbs.

Scientists have forged a promising avenue in the quest to restore mobility to patients paralyzed by disease or injury. Researchers at the University of Washington devised a way to reroute signals from the brain’s motor cortex to trigger hand movement directly.

Scientific America

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