brains – Page 2 – Impact Lab

Analysis, brains, Health & Fitness, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

The surprising upsides of worrying

September 3, 2020

Anxiety can be exhausting, but there is often a reason for it – and there are some surprising benefits to certain kinds of worrying.

“I’m a near-professional worrier,” admits Kate Sweeny ruefully. She’s struggled for much of her life with anxiety over things she can’t entirely control – including, these days, whether her parents are following social-distancing guidance during the Covid-19 pandemic.

A constant hum of low-grade worry affects many people, but what’s distinct about Sweeny is that it partly motivated her career choices. As a health psychologist at the University of California, Riverside, she specialises in understanding worry and stress.

“Not everybody uses their own life as fodder for research,” she laughs, but she’s found inspiration in her own experiences. One of her surprising findings has been that worrying can be beneficial in a variety of situations, from waiting for exam results to safeguarding health.

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Artificial Intelligence, brains, Breakthrough Thinking, Machine Learning, Medicine, Science & Technology News

A.I. can tell if you’re a good surgeon just by scanning your brain

August 17, 2020

Could a brain scan be the best way to tell a top-notch surgeon? Well, kind of. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University at Buffalo have developed Brain-NET, a deep learning A.I. tool that can accurately predict a surgeon’s certification scores based on their neuroimaging data.

This certification score, known as the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery program (FLS), is currently calculated manually using a formula that is extremely time and labor-consuming. The idea behind it is to give an objective assessment of surgical skills, thereby demonstrating effective training.

“The Fundamental of Laparoscopic Surgery program has been adopted nationally for surgical residents, fellows and practicing physicians to learn and practice laparoscopic skills to have the opportunity to definitely measure and document those skills,” Xavier Intes, a professor of biomedical engineering at Rensselaer, told Digital Trends. “One key aspect of such [a] program is a scoring metric that is computed based on the time of the surgical task execution, as well as error estimation.”

Continue reading… “A.I. can tell if you’re a good surgeon just by scanning your brain”

brains, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Science & Technology News

High-speed microscope captures fleeting brain signals

March 26, 2020

When a neuron fires, calcium flows into the cell in a wave that sweeps along the cell body. Images of this infragranular neuron were obtained three times per second by two-dimensional scanning with a Bessel focus. Redder structures are deeper in the mouse cortex. (UC Berkeley images by Na Ji)

Electrical and chemical signals flash through our brains constantly as we move through the world, but it would take a high-speed camera and a window into the brain to capture their fleeting paths.

University of California, Berkeley, investigators have now built such a camera: a microscope that can image the brain of an alert mouse 1,000 times a second, recording for the first time the passage of millisecond electrical pulses through neurons.

“This is really exciting, because we are now able to do something that people really weren’t able to do before,” said lead researcher Na Ji, a UC Berkeley associate professor of physics and of molecular and cell biology.

The new imaging technique combines two-photon fluorescence microscopy and all-optical laser scanning in a state-of-the-art microscope that can image a two-dimensional slice through the neocortex of the mouse brain up to 3,000 times per second. That’s fast enough to trace electrical signals flowing through brain circuits.

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2020 Predictions, Biotech, brains, Energy, Healthcare, Science & Technology News

The major discoveries that could transform the world in the next decade

January 2, 2020

Here’s what scientists are really excited about.

The last decade ushered in some truly revolutionary advances in science, from the discovery of the Higgs boson to the use of CRISPR for Sci-Fi esque gene editing. But what are some of the biggest breakthroughs still to come? Live Science asked several experts in their field what discoveries, techniques and developments they’re most excited to see emerge in the 2020s.

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Biotech, brains, Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

Mini brains grown in the laboratory produce brainwaves. Now what?

October 20, 2019

It’s hard to study the human brain. It is the most complex in the animal kingdom with its massive collection of neurons, 80-100 billion to be exact, three times more than chimpanzees. Research relating our brains to the brains of mice and monkeys can only go so far. And because of this complexity, scientists often came up short when studying diseases such as schizophrenia, autism, and Alzheimer’s in the brains of monkeys and mice.

Enter minibrains.

Minibrains are small clusters of human brain cells that can be grown in a Petri dish. Floating through the agar, these small gray lumps don’t look particularly impressive, but they are allowing scientists to study actual living human brain tissue in ways they couldn’t before.

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brains, Breakthrough Thinking, Human Behavior, Life Skills, Science & Technology News

Why you should try micro mastery

August 23, 2019

The wellness case for learning new skills

In the summer of 2016 I was very unhappy. I was coming up on my year anniversary of living in London, where we had moved from Brooklyn for my husband’s job, but I still felt pitifully lonely and poorly adjusted to the culture. I reentered therapy, tried to socialize often, started volunteering, and focused on doing things for pleasure rather than out of obligation.

But there was one thing that alleviated my sadness more than others: I learned to drive a stick shift.

In Europe, automatics were more expensive to rent, so it was in my best interest to try to overcome any manual driving anxiety head-on. My husband and I decided to spend two weeks in France, and I spent much of that vacation stalling out on country roads, navigating dreaded traffic circles, and ultimately speeding down the highways. When I returned to London I told people about the beaches and baguettes in France, but I mostly wanted to talk about how I could now officially drive stick.

I had discovered the beauty of “micromastery”: working to develop competence in a single, concrete skill. The term was coined by the writers Tahir Shah and Robert Twigger; Twigger later published his 2017 book, Micromastery: Learn Small, Learn Fast, and Unlock Your Potential to Achieve Anything, which contains instructions for laying a brick wall, making sushi, and brewing beer. In the introduction, Twigger writes that he was stymied by the idea that he had to work for years to acquire any truly valuable skill, but that he still wanted to learn and create, so he decided to focus on making the perfect omelet: his first micromastery.

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Analysis, brains, Employment, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

Why the 8-hour workday doesn’t work

June 12, 2019

The eight-hour workday is an outdated and ineffective approach to work. If you want to be as productive as possible, you need to let go of this relic and find a new approach.

The eight-hour workday was created during the industrial revolution as an effort to cut down on the number of hours of manual labor that workers were forced to endure on the factory floor. This breakthrough was a more humane approach to work 200 years ago, yet it possesses little relevance for us today.

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Analysis, brains, Health & Fitness, Science & Technology News

Striking study reveals how dietary fats enter the brain and cause depression

May 21, 2019

A new study demonstrates how fatty acids can enter the brain and disrupt signaling pathways that lead to depression

An intriguing new study, led by scientists from the University of Glasgow, suggests there is a direct causative link between eating a high-fat diet and the development of depression. The new research demonstrates how certain dietary fats can enter the brain, disrupt specific signaling pathways in the hypothalamus, and subsequently induce signs of depression.

Scientists have long observed a strong correlation between obesity and depression and, while it may seem like the two are simply interlinked through obvious psychological associations, some studies are starting to suggest the connection may actually be underpinned by biological mechanisms.

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brains, Business, Employment, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

The importance of foresight : Why intuition and imagination will be critical in the future of work

April 17, 2019

In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman refers to the parts of our brain, where he suggests there are two competing intelligence at play.

He specifies one area affiliated to “system 1” which is known to be an area relying on speed in decision making and on emotion in information perceiving. System 1 is based largely on our instinct and intuition unconsciously stored by past experiences that are often rapidly available to memory. The second area is affiliated to “system 2” which is known to be an area for slow and deliberate decision making and more rational in information perceiving. This area takes in information based on our conscious appraisal of current events, and our stored episodic long-term memories, which are slowly available to memory. Why do we care?

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Big Problems, brains, Science & Technology News

Can we stop AI outsmarting humanity?

April 11, 2019

The spectre of superintelligent machines doing us harm is not just science fiction, technologists say – so how can we ensure AI remains ‘friendly’ to its makers?

It began three and a half billion years ago in a pool of muck, when a molecule made a copy of itself and so became the ultimate ancestor of all earthly life. It began four million years ago, when brain volumes began climbing rapidly in the hominid line.

Fifty thousand years ago with the rise of Homo sapiens sapiens.

Ten thousand years ago with the invention of civilization.

Five hundred years ago with the invention of the printing press.

Fifty years ago with the invention of the computer.

In less than thirty years, it will end.

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Analysis, brains, Human Behavior, Music, Science & Technology News

Study finds listening to music has negative impact on creativity

March 4, 2019

A new study has found that listening to music may have a negative impact on creativity. This is contrary to the popular idea that music and creativity often go hand in hand. According to the researchers, the negative impact was found even in cases where the music had a positive impact on mood and was liked by the person listening to it. However, background noise didn’t have the same effect.

Music is often used for background noise while studying and as a way to help increase someone’s creativity while working on a project. The psychologists behind a new study have found this routine may have the opposite effect, actively impairing — rather than boosting — the individual’s creativity. The findings were based on three experiments.

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brains, DNA, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine

Building a better brain-in-a-dish, faster and cheaper

October 5, 2018

UC San Diego researchers develop new protocol for creating human cortical organoids, mini-brains derived directly from primary cells that can be used to better explore and understand the real thing.

Writing in the current online issue of the journal Stem Cells and Development , researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine describe development of a rapid, cost-effective method to create human cortical organoids directly from primary cells.

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