Category: Uncategorized

"FUTURE THERAPIES could decode the brain activity patterns of an athlete or a musician, and use them as a benchmark for teaching another person a new activity." http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-12/scientists-achieve-matrix-style-subliminal-teaching View in LinkedIn

HACKING LEARNING. "For the first time, researchers have been able to hack into the process of learning in the brain, using induced brain patterns to create a learned behavior." http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-12/scientists-achieve-matrix-style-subliminal-teaching View in LinkedIn

RED HERRING. “Although not observed in the comparatively small rodent species analyzed, the enlargement of the cerebral cortex is not, in principle, an exclusive feature of the human brain: a similar expansion of the mass of the cerebral cortex, relative to the whole brain, is predicted by both the rodent and primate cellular scaling rules, irrespective of the number of neurons contained in the cortex.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776484/ View in LinkedIn

AMPLIFIED SCALING FAILS. “A generic rodent brain of human-sized proportions, weighing 1.5 kg: such a brain would have only 12 billion neurons, and a much larger number of 46 billion non-neuronal cells. This number of neurons is smaller than the number of neurons estimated to exist in the human cerebral cortex alone, and about seven times smaller than the number of neurons predicted for a 1.5-kg brain built with the scaling rules that apply to primates.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776484/ View in LinkedIn

AMPLIFYING THE LINE. “The significance of the difference in scaling rules for building brains with large numbers of neurons becomes even more obvious if one considers the expected number of neurons for a generic rodent brain of human-sized proportions.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776484/ View in LinkedIn

MORE NUMBERS. “Likewise, the capuchin monkey brain has more than twice the number of neurons of the larger-brained capybara (3.7 billion against 1.6 billion), and also about four times more neurons in the cerebral cortex (1.1 billion against 0.3).” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776484/ View in LinkedIn

THE NUMBERS. “With 1468 million neurons, owl monkeys have almost twice as many neurons in the brain as agoutis (which hold 857 million), and about four times more neurons in the cerebral cortex than the agouti (442 million versus 113 million).” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776484/ View in LinkedIn

SEEKING CORRELATION. “Now that absolute numbers of neurons can be compared across the similar-sized brains of agoutis and owl monkeys, and of capybaras and capuchin monkeys the expected correlation between cognitive ability and numbers of neurons is actually found to hold.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776484/ View in LinkedIn

ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES. “The cognitive consequences of this difference, which allows primate brains to enjoy the benefits of a large increase in numbers of neurons without the otherwise associated cost of a much larger increase in overall brain volume, can be glimpsed by returning to the comparison between rodents and primates of similar brain size.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776484/ View in LinkedIn

CONSIDERING ECONOMY. “By maintaining the average neuronal size (including all arborizations) invariant as brain size changes, primate brains scale in size in a much more space-saving, economical manner compared to the inflationary growth that occurs in rodents, in which larger numbers of neurons are accompanied by larger neurons.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776484/ View in LinkedIn