News tagged with brain systems

Brainput system takes some brain strain off multi-taskers

(Phys.org) -- A research team made up of members from Indiana University, Tufts and MIT and led by Erin Treacy Solovey, a has built a brain monitoring system that offloads some of the computer related activities ...

Technology / Hi Tech & Innovation

created May 16, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast report

'Green' nanoparticles, that may enhance medication delivery and improve MRI performance

Researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital have shown a new category of "green" nanoparticles comprised of a non-toxic, protein-based nanotechnology that can non-invasively cross the blood brain barrier and is capable ...

Nanotechnology / Bio & Medicine

created May 02, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Study dusts sugar coating off little-known regulation in cells

In Alzheimer's disease, brain neurons become clogged with tangled proteins. Scientists suspect these tangles arise partly due to malfunctions in a little-known regulatory system within cells. Now, researchers have dramatically ...

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Apr 16, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Computer scientists form mathematical formulation of the brain's neural networks

As computer scientists this year celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the mathematical genius Alan Turing, who set out the basis for digital computing in the 1930s to anticipate the electronic age, they still quest ...

Technology / Computer Sciences

created Apr 02, 2012 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (19) | comments 9 | with audio podcast

Baboons, infants show similar gesturing behavior, suggesting shared communication systems

Both human infants and baboons have a stronger preference for using their right hand to gesture than for a simple grasping task, supporting the hypothesis that language development, which is lateralized in the left part of ...

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Mar 21, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Researchers replicate slime mold with brainless amoeboid robot that can move toward an attractant

(PhysOrg.com) -- Takuya Umedachi has been working for several years to build a robot that can replicate the simple actions of the common slime mold, an organism that can move towards something it desires without ...

Electronics / Robotics

created Mar 14, 2012 | popularity 3.7 / 5 (3) | comments 4 | with audio podcast weblog

Protein complex affects cells' ability to move, respond to external cues

In a paper published today in the journal, Cell, a team from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has explained for the first time how a long-studied protein complex affects cell migration and how external cues a ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Mar 01, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Toxins from diseased brain cells make diseases of the brain even worse

Sometimes our immune defence attacks our own cells. When this happens in the brain we see neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. But if the the immune defence is inhibited, the results ...

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Feb 22, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Making the worms turn

To biophysicist Aravinthan Samuel, the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans provides a pathway to understanding the brain and nervous system, first of the worm, then of higher animals, and even, perhaps, of humans.

Biology / Biotechnology

created Feb 03, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Researchers find gene critical to sense of smell in fruit fly

(Medical Xpress) -- Fruit flies don't have noses, but a huge part of their brains is dedicated to processing smells. Flies probably rely on the sense of smell more than any other sense for essential activities ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created Jan 19, 2012 | popularity 3 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Tinkering with evolution: Ecological implications of modular software networks

(PhysOrg.com) -- In the 1960s, Dr. Lawrence J. Fogel introduced what would come to be known as evolutionary programming to the nascent field of Artificial Intelligence in an attempt to produce intelligent softwa ...

Technology / Computer Sciences

created Dec 19, 2011 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (5) | comments 2 | with audio podcast feature

Scientists uncover new role for gene in maintaining steady weight

Against the backdrop of the growing epidemic of obesity in the United States, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have made an important new discovery regarding a specific gene that plays ...

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Nov 23, 2011 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (6) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Nanoparticles cause brain injury in fish

Scientists at the University of Plymouth have shown, for the first time in an animal, that nanoparticles have a detrimental effect on the brain and other parts of the central nervous system.

Nanotechnology / Bio & Medicine

created Sep 19, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 1

Sea smarts: Scientists studying mollusks discover there is more than one way to make a brain

(PhysOrg.com) -- Seemingly simple animals such as the snail and squid have ransacked the genetic toolkit over the last half billion years to find different ways to build complex brains, nervous systems and shells, according ...

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Sep 15, 2011 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (9) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

Bursting neurons follow the same beat, sometimes

A simplified mathematical model of the brain's neural circuitry shows that repetitious, overlapped firing of neurons can lead to the waves of overly synchronized brain activity that may cause the halting movements that are ...

Other Sciences / Mathematics

created Sep 12, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0