Teach me a learnin'!

Link dump of learning/education/organization for you! Each is actually very interesting.

Cognitive Enhancement articles at: Mind Hacks, Cognitive Daily, LA Times (via Digg).

Online learning courses and resources from: Dumb Little Man, Neurophilosophy, OpenCulture.

Organization type stuff from: LifeHacker, LifeHacker (2), Ask MetaFilter, LifeHack, iPod Hacker.

Things to buy

Fun brain things! Plush Neuron, Brain Hat, Swarm Theory

Chapin's robo-rats minus the rats

The interwebs have had chatter recently about the use of rat-type biomimetic technology for wiggling through caves and cave ins. Below is a video clip of something similar done at SUNY, where rats were influenced to traverse a terrain under the control of stimulating electrodes in the barrel cortex.

Brief aside: For those of you not in the know on the world wide fever know as rat whisker barrel cortex, the idea is pretty simple: rats, which are nocturnal, navigate be feeling the deflections in their whiskers. When examining the somatosensory cortex, very distinct topography exists, and the individual whiskers can be seen. This is a semi-old finding, but important because it shows a direct relationship between some type of externally sense phenomenon and cortical arrangement (here's the Wikipedia entry for a little more). At SUNY, they placed stimulating electrodes in these 'barrel', and basically fooled the rat into thinking that it was brushing up against an obstacle to steer it.



Well, a secondary thing that has come of this is what has made the news: active sensing. Scientists in Israel have decided to build robots based on this idea. Many tiny little fingers with several integrated sensors on each feel and ID objects as it burrows around. Nifty, and a reason to recap roborats.

Tips to: Medgadget, Physorg, IO9

Super paper Friday x 2

First, one from there nobodies ;)

Primary Motor Cortex Tuning to Intended Movement Kinematics in Humans with Tetraplegia
Wilson Truccolo,1,3 Gerhard M. Friehs,2,6 John P. Donoghue,1,3,7 and Leigh R. Hochberg
Journal of Neuroscience, January 30, 2008, 28(5):1163-1178

Wilder Penfield in the age of YouTube: visualizing the sequential activation of sensorimotor areas across neocortex.
Kleinfeld D, Waters J.
Neuron. 2007 Dec 6;56(5):760-2.

Discharge Synchrony during the Transition of Behavioral Goal Representations Encoded by Discharge Rates of Prefrontal Neurons.
Sakamoto K, Mushiake H, Saito N, Aihara K, Yano M, Tanji J.
Cereb Cortex. 2008 Feb 5

Behavioural report of single neuron stimulation in somatosensory cortex
Arthur R. Houweling, & Michael Brecht
Nature 451, 65-68 (3 January 2008)

Evolved Feature Weighting for Random Subspace Classifier
Nanni, L, Lumini, A
Neural Networks, IEEE Transactions on, Feb. 2008, Volume: 19,Issue: 2: 363-366

Multidigit Movement Synergies of the Human Hand in an Unconstrained Haptic Exploration Task
Pramodsingh H. Thakur, Amy J. Bastian, and Steven S. Hsiao
Journal of Neuroscience, February 6, 2008, 28(6):1271-1281

Perceptual learning depends on perceptual constancy.
Garrigan P, Kellman PJ.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Feb 4

Prediction of upper limb muscle activity from motor cortical discharge during reaching.
Pohlmeyer EA, Solla SA, Perreault EJ, Miller LE.
J Neural Eng. 2007 Dec;4(4):369-79. Epub 2007 Nov 12.

A Sparse Generative Model of V1 Simple Cells with Intrinsic Plasticity
Cornelius Weber, Jochen Triesch
Neural Computation 0:0, 1-24

When pliers become fingers in the monkey motor system.
Umiltà MA, Escola L, Intskirveli I, Grammont F, Rochat M, Caruana F, Jezzini A, Gallese V, Rizzolatti G.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Jan 31 [Epub ahead of print]

New experiences enhance coordinated neural activity in the hippocampus.
Cheng S, Frank LM.
Neuron. 2008 Jan 24;57(2):303-13.

On-line grasp control is mediated by the contralateral hemisphere.
Rice NJ, Tunik E, Cross ES, Grafton ST.
Brain Res. 2007 Oct 17;1175:76-84. Epub 2007 Aug 10.

Two-dimensional movement control using electrocorticographic signals in humans
G Schalk et al 2008 J. Neural Eng. 5 75-84

Cortical plasticity in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: motor imagery and function.
Lulé D, Diekmann V, Kassubek J, Kurt A, Birbaumer N, Ludolph AC, Kraft E.
Neurorehabil Neural Repair. 2007 Nov-Dec;21(6):518-26. Epub 2007 May 2.

Bayesian network modeling for discovering "dependent synergies" among muscles in reaching movements.
Li J, Wang ZJ, Eng JJ, McKeown MJ.
IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2008 Jan;55(1):298-310.

Review of signal distortion through metal microelectrode recording circuits and filters.
Nelson MJ, Pouget P, Nilsen EA, Patten CD, Schall JD.
J Neurosci Methods. 2008 Jan 31 [Epub ahead of print]

An animal model of functional electrical stimulation: evidence that the central nervous system modulates the consequences of training.
Hook MA, Grau JW.
Spinal Cord. 2007 Nov;45(11):702-12. Epub 2007 Aug 14.

Top-down laminar organization of the excitatory network in motor cortex.
Weiler N, Wood L, Yu J, Solla SA, Shepherd GM.
Nat Neurosci. 2008 Feb 3 [Epub ahead of print]

A computational neuroanatomy for motor control.
Shadmehr R, Krakauer JW.
Exp Brain Res. 2008 Feb 5 [Epub ahead of print]

Use of an artificial neuroadaptive robot model to describe adaptive and learning motor mechanisms in the central nervous system.
Khemaissia S, Morris A.
IEEE Trans Syst Man Cybern B Cybern. 1998;28(3):404-16.

Systems neuroplasticity in the aging brain: recruiting additional neural resources for successful motor performance in elderly persons.
Heuninckx S, Wenderoth N, Swinnen SP.
J Neurosci. 2008 Jan 2;28(1):91-9.

Luke, I am your double blind, placebo controlled phase two investigational medical device trial funding officer

You probably already saw this, but I had to post it as well. The Deka Luke Arm is ready for phase II funding. This the rockin Dean Kamen arm. Also, the Hopkins APL Revolutionizing Prosthetics gets a second round of funding.

Also, no need to report these, but check out the related links on BoingBoing (below).

Direct Link. Link to tech diagram.

Here are the reports (note the update on Medgadget).
BoingBoing, Medgadget, Engadget, Slashdot

Productivity software update

I mentioned some sweet, free little programs a few months ago. Well, TrueCrypt was updated today, and now offers whole disc encryption, so you get a password prompt when you are booting up. Nice. Plus, OSX and Linux versions. Get it here.

Next, in the same post I mentioned FolderShare, the super awesome automatically syncing software. Well, if you want to pay for a slightly more polished offering, GottaBeMobile mentions that BeInSync is the way to go. (While I love their site, the videos are so mind-numbingly drab and boring, I will never download another media clip from them.) Use at your own risk, though. The comments seem to indicate some problems.

Brief mention

Due to high work load stuff surrounding my annoyingly late prelim, I will be posting a little less often (as you've probably noticed). Don't worry, I haven't forgotten or left the site to die.