A week away

So, I underestimated the amount of work leading up to my prelim defense, and going to start my little break now-ish. It isn't the prelim work as much as the other stuff, like my little Thunderbird on a USB stick took forever to configure perfectly, and was then corrupted by an old version of TrueCrypt hiding on one of my computers. *poof* All that work disappeared. Ugh. Not sure how to handle that now, but might have to think up a little hack to make it work properly.

In the meantime, here are a few stories...

Serious:
60 Minutes covered DEKA on Sunday. Thank you to the 20-ish people that let me know about it, including my parents. They're silly. They still live in a world where missing a TV show means you have to wait for the rerun. Video clip is up on the 60 Minutes site.

This best computer interfaces story is a trip down memory lane.

Pravda has a very vague and almost not worth reading article on a Russian BCI group.

The Boston Globe discusses some of the hurdles of setting up an implantable BCI project, and chronicles the situation over at the now defunct Cyberkinetics. I don't want to say anything about the project that could anger one of the 14,000 government institutions regulating aspects of it (kidding on the number btw), so I will point to here (yes, the page is in a very very early alpha state).

And some sort of licensing setup for ECoG algorithms has been setup with a company called Neurolutions. (Really? Neurolutions? Have we gotten to the point where all the good brain related names are taken? Even DNI, which was a 3am, caffeine-induced hyper-mania induced naming beats the snot out of that.)

Seriously?:
I could bring myself to watch this clip, but here's the title:
"Robotic baby seal has healing powers" - CNN (also known as, "We fired out entire science department, but what could go wrong?" News)
Video clip. Be sure to get the tshirt, too.

Book rec

For all you sciencey types, I thought I would share a little gem. I have what may be the best 'bathroom reader' for geeks. Eurekas and Euphorias by Walter Gratzer (ISBN: 0198-60940-X) is a great collection of short tales covering the antics, personalities, and accidental discoveries in the traditional scientific fields (physics, biology, chemistry). Each 1 to 5 page story is like a peek into the lab of a Nobel Laureate in another time. The ridiculously inflated language serves the book greatly, as most of the tales come from times when formal writing was prevalent, making the reader feel even more 'in' on the joke.

Grab a copy! You'll love it. (Prices)

More on the inevitable robot uprising

Perhaps Houdini's historic struggle against our soon to be metal masters should be put in context. What if the great art works of our time reflected a world where man and machine lived side by side?

The time for wondering those thoughts is GONE! We must not be weak! We have already given them a taste of human blood as machines of battle and industry, even at our own insistence. Imagine death from above, as the our diminutive circuit board superpowers that be watch from the skies.

But, are we willing to give up our newly revitalized BattleBots TV shows (OMGOMGOMG YAY!) and Roombas (and their knock offs) in exchange for this? And what if they combine their consumer level powers to form monstrosities truly terrifying, like videoed below? Keep idolizing them, sharing them with our children, and reporting on science for 1 freaking minute out of 5 hours of news material, and I'm sure this day will sneak up on us, just as we taught them. Now get me another beer, beerBot!



Sources:
BoingBoing
Mind Hacks
DVice
Gizmodo
Switched
Robot Gossip (love it, but needs more updates!)
Etsy

Let the photoshopping begin!

When you have such great source material, like these online anatomical atlases at the NIH site (pointed out by Boing Boing), the sky's the limit!

Shadows of Phineas

Metal chair through the face? No thanks. I said no thanks! No... Ahhhh!

Who does this remind me of....? Hmmm....

(Answer: Phineas Gage)
Was thinking about filing this under "feedback".

Stimulating Delgado video

Today began the undergraduate seminar on Neurotechnology here at Brown, with Donoghue at the helm. Looks like it will be fun to sit in on and help out with. Here's one of the video clips shown. I had found a better one before, but can't seem to dig it up now.



Of course the comments and title are waaaay over the top, but that conspiracy theory aspect makes things more fun. Don't believe me? Read through this bonkers site (it is old, and most of the links are long since dead)!

Literally kicking it old school

Who needs robotic whatchamadoozy whirlygig prosthetics? World's oldest prosthetic toe unearthed in Egypt (complete with world's oldest sock lint).

via BoingBoing

Old News is still Good News

Still purging my old news items worth noting. So here we go...

• Human 2.0, H2.0, H2O, whatever you want to call it, it is undeniably cool at all levels. Human 2.0 is a yearly event at the MIT Media Lab which highlights the latest in Human-Machine Interface in the broadest sense. Unlike other such events, H2.0 is actually based on current research and not far flung exaggerations of where things could lead 50 years out. Somewhat 'looser' than other scientific conferences, the event serves as an opportunity to let the imagination run a little further than usual. Wired has a mini-interview with Frank Moss, as well as its own coverage.

• Doug Smith at U Penn is working on a way to coax neural processes over long distances - up to 1 cm per day. This is only mentioned in New Scientist, and after looking at the lab site and pub med, I can't find any other info on it. If you have more info, please post it in comments.

• SCLin's blog has a nice thread on keeping up with the literature. He does the same thing I do, for the most part, but one of the comments to the article is a nice little gem. This link to an example of how to use Yahoo Pipes to filter out good articles is really sweet. I'll have to work up to something like that when I revise my current method.

• The goddess of neuro blogs at The Retrospectacle pointed out that Joseph LeDoux has a band that sings "nerdtastic" songs about brains. The Amygdaloids. Enjoy! Worth noting from the comments: This and this.

• Gizmodo had a post on a 3D mouse the size of a ring which could be used to control a computer cursor using standard mouse protocols. $155 worth of parts. The device uses an ultrasonic sound transmitter which is detected by five ultrasonic microphones to interpolate the ring's position. Not too shabby for a bunch of students, and I bet the power requirements are reasonable!

• There are plenty of theories for how information is storied in neocortex. Neurobot discusses Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) work being done as part of the Numenta project. Groovy.

• The Neurocritic has a post on DBS in the Nucleus Accumbens for the treatment of depression. I heard a speaker discuss this at the NIH BCI workshop, and the prospects sound amazing.

• And finally, there is a monster-long PsyBlog series on non-verbal communication and gestures. This is one of those 'bookmark it now, read it in pieces later' type pages.

• And one bonus HCI item. Fresh from YouTube, and complete with description, here's a little machine vision type ditty where hand configurations seen by a webcam become cursor control.

Intersections, compilations, trepanations

I thought some might find this useful. Data? Data? We don't need no stinking data!!!! Oh wait. Yes, yes we need data... [taken from Mind Hacks]

Of particular interest is this nice list of available software. What a gold mine!

And Jebus, Medgadget has so many nice posts, maybe I should just auto-mirror their site! Just kidding, but be sure to check out this article on PEDOT, which offers the possibility of highly molded interfacing surfaces for future implants. Keep your eyes on this technology - I would give it an 80% chance that it will work its way into devices within 12 years. (Please note that if you make money on this suggestion, you owe me half, and if you lose money, hey, that's too bad for you!) Conductive polymers rock! Oh lawd, did I really just say that?

And lastly, for a little Friday fun, the Neurophilosopher has an article that is getting lots of attention, and dang nabbit if it isn't really interesting. Remember hearing from random people how The Ancient People of (insert some random place here) performed brain surgery 20 million years ago? Well, he's got the history of trepanation, complete with some wicked pictures, all laid out for you. I promise you will cringe at least one during the read.

Sherrington remembered

I haven't had time to read this in its entirety yet, but thought I would pass it along before I forgot. Good stuff. Out of the journal Brain. PubMed linky.

Sir Charles Sherrington's the integrative action of the nervous system: a centenary appreciation.
Burke RE.
reburke@taosnet.com
In 1906 Sir Charles Sherrington published The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, which was a collection of ten lectures delivered two years before at Yale University in the United States. In this monograph Sherrington summarized two decades of painstaking experimental observations and his incisive interpretation of them. It settled the then-current debate between the "Reticular Theory" versus "Neuron Doctrine" ideas about the fundamental nature of the nervous system in mammals in favor of the latter, and it changed forever the way in which subsequent generations have viewed the organization of the central nervous system. Sherrington's magnum opus contains basic concepts and even terminology that are now second nature to every student of the subject. This brief article reviews the historical context in which the book was written, summarizes its content, and considers its impact on Neurology and Neuroscience.
Personal Name As Subject:
Sherrington C
PMID: 17438014 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]