Robot Vision: Muscle-Like Action Allows Camera to Mimic Human Eye Movement
Using piezoelectric materials, researchers have replicated the muscle motion of the human eye to control camera systems in a way designed to improve the operation of robots. This new muscle-like action could help make robotic tools safer and more effective for MRI-guided surgery and robotic rehabilitation.
Why Chronic Pain is All in Your Head
Researchers were able to predict, with 85 percent accuracy at the beginning of the study, which participants would go on to develop chronic pain based on the level of interaction between the frontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens.
Study Finds Genes Associated with Hippocampal Atrophy
In a genome-wide association (GWA) study, researchers from Boston University Schools of Medicine (BUSM) and Public Health (BUSPH), have identified several genes which influence degeneration of the hippocampus, the part of the brain most associated with Alzheimer disease (AD). The study, which currently appears online as a Rapid Communication in the Annals of Neurology, demonstrates the [...]
Brain Scans Detect Early Signs of Autism
A new study shows significant differences in brain development in high-risk infants who develop autism starting as early as age 6 months. The findings published in the American Journal of Psychiatry reveal that this abnormal brain development may be detected before the appearance of autism symptoms in an infant’s first year of life. Autism is [...]
Inner Ear May Hold Key to Ancient Primate Behavior
CT scans of fossilized primate skulls or skull fragments from both the Old and New Worlds may shed light on how these extinct animals moved, especially for those species without any known remains, according to an international team of researchers. The researchers looked at the bony labyrinth in fossil remains and compared them to CT [...]
Study Reveals How Brain Performs Motor Chunking Tasks
You pick up your cell phone and dial the new number of a friend. Ten numbers. One. Number. At. A. Time. Because you haven’t actually typed the number before, your brain handles each button press separately, as a sequence of distinct movements. After dialing the number a few more times, you find yourself typing it [...]
Novel Brain Imaging Technique Explains Why Concussions Affect People Differently
Patients vary widely in their response to concussion, but scientists haven’t understood why. Now, using a new technique for analyzing data from brain imaging studies, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Montefiore Medical Center have found that concussion victims have unique spatial patterns of brain abnormalities that change over time. The new [...]
Amyloid Plaques in 3D
Alzheimer Plagues in 3d – Swiss researchers succeeded in generating detailed three-dimensional images of the spatial distribution of amyloid plaques in the brains of mice afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease. These plaques are accumulations of small pieces of protein in the brain and are a typical characteristic of Alzheimer’s. The new technique used in the investigations [...]
Neuroscientists Reach Major Milestone in Whole-Brain Circuit Mapping Project
Neuroscientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) reached an important milestone today, publicly releasing the first installment of data from the 500 terabytes so far collected in their pathbreaking project to construct the first whole-brain wiring diagram of a vertebrate brain, that of the mouse. The data consist of gigapixel images (each close to 1 [...]
Suspicion Resides in Two Regions of the Brain
Our baseline level of distrust is distinct and separable from our inborn lie detector. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on my parahippocampal gyrus. Scientists at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute have found that suspicion resides in two distinct regions of the brain: the amygdala, which plays a central role [...]
