Memory storage in the human brain has long fascinated me.  First contemplating the idea in the mid-80s is what compelled me to a career in neuroscience. When we remember something, what is exactly happening in the brain?  It is likely that a set of nerve cells connected to each other in a complex way across wide region in the brain becomes activated.  As this set of cells fires synchronously or [...]

The connectome refers to the comprehensive 3D structural and synaptic map of the brain. The brain is astoundingly complex in structure, composed of 100 billion nerve cells each connected to about 10,000 other nerve cells in 1000 quadrillion synapses.  It is this exact physical structure along with each synapse’s strength that determines exactly who we are and defines our conscious state. Some [...]

Designing and constructing an artificial brain is a daunting task, considering that the human brain with its 100 billion neurons and over 100 trillion connections is the most complicated structure in the known universe. One line of thought when it comes to expanding human lifespan indefinitely is the concept of recreating a person’s mind and consciousness in a digital form.  Colloquially [...]

When I first became interested in neuroscience, I  believed it would one day become possible to detect the brains signal’s and use that information to reconstruct what the person was visually imagining.  This would in a sense be akin to reading the mind. In a new report a group of researcher claims to have taken the first steps towards achieving that end. The scientists at UC Berkeley have [...]

IBM’s supercomputer Watson recently made history when it served as a contestant on Jeopardy handily beating its human competitors. Watson is a computer system that was designed by IBM specifically to understand and interpret natural human language questions .  It can then use brute computing force to scour billions of pages of information it is fed  advance to determine the correct answer [...]

An international team of scientists have developed a new material called epidermal electronics than can be placed on a patient’s skin similar to a temporary tattoo. The material is formed into an array of electronic sensors and transmitters capable of reading information from within the body and its organs. The material is unique in that the sensors and electronic components such as diodes and [...]

An important aim of medical technology is the ability to interface biological and electronic devices.  Connecting brain cells to computers will be a critical avenue to allow for prolonged survival of conscious experience. In a relevant step towards that end, Penn researchers were successfully able to couple olfactory receptors from mice to carbon nanotubes.  Olfactory receptors are proteins, encoded [...]