Men of science can anticipate actions using brain activity

-
Fetching the real life into the brain digital scanner, men of science at The University of Western Ontario from The Centre for Brain and Mind can at present ascertain the action an individual was planning, bare moments ahead that action is actually accomplished.




You can find this discovery in the Journal of Neuroscience.

"This is a considerable step forward in our understanding of how the human brain plans actions," alleged Jason Gallivan, a Western Neuroscience PhD student, who was the first author on the paper.

This was a study that lasted over an year. Human subjects let their brainpower activity scanned applying functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) when they executed hand motions: apprehending the top of an object, seizing the bottom of the object, or simply extending and touching the object. The group discovered that by utilising the signals from numerous brain areas, they could anticipate, better than chance, which of the activities the volunteer was just thinking to do moments later.



"Neuroimaging allows us to look at how action planning unfolds within human brain areas without having to insert electrodes directly into the human brain. This is obviously far less intrusive," explains Western Psychology professor Jody Culham, who was the paper's senior author.

This discovery can be used in prosthetic limbs control. "Being able to predict a human's desired movements using brain signals takes us one step closer to using those signals to control prosthetic limbs in movement-impaired patient populations, like those who suffer from spinal cord injuries or locked-in syndrome." said Gallivan

Popular posts from this blog

Horrors of Anorexia

-
Image
Anorexia is an eating disorder where people starve themselves. Anorexia usually begins in young people around the onset of puberty. Individuals suffering from anorexia have extreme weight loss. Weight loss is usually 15% below the person's normal body weight. People suffering from anorexia are very skinny but are convinced that they are overweight. Weight loss is obtained by many ways. Some of the common techniques used are excessive exercise, intake of laxatives and not eating. Anorexics have an intense fear of becoming fat. Their dieting habits develop from this fear. Anorexia mainly affects adolescent girls. People with anorexia continue to think they are overweight even after they become extremely thin, are very ill or near death. Often they will develop strange eating habits such as refusing to eat in front of other people. Sometimes the individuals will prepare big meals for others while refusing to eat any of it. But anorexia can be cured...
Read more

Nokia: The Rise and Fall

-
Image
Tomi Marjuaho assembled handsets in the last 10 years in Salo, a small town in southern Finland where Nokia, the largest mobile phone maker in the world, opened a factory in the '80s. In 2010, when Nokia started to feel the full effects of the recession, Marjuaho was fired and he has not found work ever since. "I was the only support of family and now things are getting harder," says the 39 year old man from union club, where the unemployed tend to gather in the city. "It's the same story for many friends that worked at the Nokia factory," he continued. Salo , along with many cities that have survived and developed because of Nokia investment, faces an uncertain future given that Nokia (a multinational company) moves its mobile assembly operations in Asia. Under the weight of Apple and Samsung's competition, Nokia was forced to cut production costs, which affected primarily European operations. The Finnish company has already closed...
Read more

Connect to the internet in new ways

-
If you are baffled at the slow speeds of wifi internet when more than one device is tapped into your network you should know that radio waves are merely one part of the spectrum that can carry our data. What if we could utilize other waves to surf the internet? Harald Haas (a German physicist), has developed a solution he calls “data through illumination”—getting the fiber out of fiber optics by beaming data through an LED light bulb that alters in intensity more accelerated than the human eye can follow. Haas alleges his conception, which he calls D-Light, could develop data rates more bolted than 10 MBps, which is quicker than your common broadband connection. He foresees a time to come where information for laptops, smartphones, and pads is aired by the light in a room. And security measures would be a breeze—if you can not envision the light, you can not access the data. You are able to guess all sorts of functions for this technology, starting with public cyberspace acces...
Read more