Tag: brain

Neural implants

Neural implants could accomplish things no external interface could: Virtual and augmented reality with all 5 senses (or more); augmentation of human memory, attention, and learning speed; even multi-sense telepathy — sharing what we see, hear, touch, and even perhaps what we think and feel with others. Sound crazy? It is… and it’s not

DNA rewriting for memory

We used to think that once a cell reaches full maturation, its DNA is totally stable, including the molecular tags attached to it to control its genes and maintain the cell’s identity. Some cells actually alter their DNA all the time, just to perform everyday functions

2021-08-30: DNA breaks for memory consolidation

When the team mapped genes undergoing double-strand breaks in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus of mice that had been shocked, they found breaks occurring near 100s of genes, many of which were involved in synaptic processes related to memory. DNA breakage might be a regulatory mechanism in many other cell types. But even if breaking DNA is a particularly fast way to induce crucial gene expression, whether for memory consolidation or for other cellular functions, it’s also risky. If the double-strand breaks occur at the same locations over and over again and aren’t properly repaired, genetic information could be lost. Moreover, “this type of gene regulation could render neurons vulnerable to genomic lesions, especially during aging and under neurotoxic conditions. It is interesting that it’s used so intensively in the brain, and that the cells can get away with it without incurring damage that’s devastating.”

The Brain Hates Slowpokes

In the 2000s, psychologist Richard Wiseman found worldwide walking speeds had gone up by 10%.

The pace of our lives is linked to culture. Researchers have shown society’s accelerating pace is shredding our patience. In tests, psychologists and economists have asked subjects if they would prefer a little bit of something now or a lot of it later; say, $10 today versus $100 in a year, or 2 pieces of food now versus 6 pieces in 10 seconds.

Subjects—both human and other animals—often go for the now, even when it’s not optimal. 1 study showed that exposing people to “the ultimate symbols of impatience culture”—fast-food symbols like McDonald’s golden arches—increases their reading speed and preference for time-saving products, and makes them more likely to opt for small rewards now over larger ones later.

Our rejection of slowness is especially apparent when it comes to technology. “Everything is so efficient nowadays,. We’re less and less able to wait patiently.” We now practically insist that Web pages load in a 0.25 seconds, when we had no problem with 2 seconds in 2009 and 4 seconds in 2006. As of 2012, videos that didn’t load in 2 seconds had little hope of going viral.

Facial neurons

Neurons programmed to fire at specific faces may have more effect on conscious recognition of faces than the images themselves. Subjects presented with a blended face, such as an amalgamation of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, had significantly more firing of such face-specific neurons when they recognized the blended or morphed face as 1 person or the other.

Some neurons in the region of the brain known as the medial temporal lobe are observed to be extremely selective in the stimuli they respond to. A cell may only fire in response to different pictures of a particular person who is very familiar to the subject (such as loved one or a celebrity, as in the famous “Jennifer Aniston neuron“), the person’s written or spoken name, or recalling the person from memory.

The god effect

To intensify the ‘god effect’ in people already attracted to religious ideas, all we had to do was boost the activity of the neurotransmitter, dopamine. But should dopamine spike too high, murderous impulses like terrorism and jihad could rear up instead. The neurological line between the saint and the savage turns out to be razor-thin.