Seminar Papers
(figure from Newsweek article)
Researchers from the University of Sussex discovered the mechanism of two neurons, which relates to decision-making in the mollusc Lymnaea (corresponding to the word ‘snails’ which is written in the news). According to the study of the mollusc Lymnaea, it uses only two neuron types for decision-making during searching food. First, the neurons report whether there is food. Second, they control the behavior. For an example, when there is no food, the neurons motivate Lymnaea to searching for it. The researchers mentioned that this discovery could be the core on developing artificial intelligence(AI) systems.
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News: http://www.newsweek.com/how_snails_could_make_robots_smarter
Related paper: http://www.nature.com/Crossley_et_al_NatureCommunications_2016
(Getty Images; Illustration by Marisa Gertz for TIME)
The researchers at Stanford University performed a study regarding children and their ability of recognize their mothers’ voices. The normally developing children (24 children, ages between 7 and 12) were participated to the study. The task was listening some words, and find their own mother’s voice. The kids of 97% got the right answer. The researchers used fMRI to look the kids brain. Not surprisingly, the brain activates more, when they heard their mothers’ voice, than the other women’s voice. However, surprisingly the researchers found that the brain area, which is related to face recognition, was activated. From this, they assumed that the kids could visualize their mother’s face, when they hear their mothers’ voice.
Also the researchers assessed the kids’ social communication scores. They found that the kids, who are most socially adapted, brain activities shows some specific pattern during hearing their mothers’ voice. Thus, Abrams, one of the researchers, assumed that this result could help to examine the kids brain which regarding the social ability, for a future work.
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(Image: Lucélia Ribeiro | Flickr)
Researchers from Dartmouth and Princeton Universities tried to show that intentional forgetting is possible. For a test, they recruited 25 participants (10 males), the age around 21.3 years old. There are many studies regarding the power of context that it helps memorizing easier. From this results, to enhance creating contextual memories, the researchers showed nature scenes (e.g. forests) to the participants during the test. The participants should memorize two sets of words, and some of them was instructed to forget some words. Activity of the brain was scanned by using fMRI. The result from the participant who forgot the word by context-related activity showed that they cannot remember the words a lot.
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Lysergic acid diethylamide is illegal drug, because it occurs hallucinations. However, the researchers got special permissions to use it, for a study. They recruited fifteen healthy people with experienced in taking LSD. In the experiment, participants were injected LSD, and taken fMRI. They were asked to answers about their mood. From the result, researchers looked at the brain areas where regarding introspection and sensory areas that receives external information. They found the higher connectivity of the networks between the areas they checked. Also from the another study, the researchers found some brain area activation where were suppressed by perception during normal state.
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This competition is sponsored by Microsoft and is based on one of the greatest challenges in neuroscience today – how to interpret brain signals due to millions of people suffer brain-related disorders and injuries and as a result, many face a lifetime of impairment with limited treatment options. The Grand Prize winner will get $3,000 cash, followed by a 2nd prize of $1,500 cash, and a 3rd prize of $500 cash.
If you are interested in this competition, please read the following link :).
http://gallery.cortanaintelligence.com/Competition/Decoding-Brain-Signals-2
(CSA Images / Getty Images / Vetta (from Times) / Wired)
A new study, regarding emotion was published in the journal PNAS. The study was to find a neural link, between understanding others and being attracted to them. The author Silke Anders mentioned that the person, who understood a partner, he might be attracted to the partner. Anders and her colleague studied 90 participants. The participants watched a video clip of women, and judged how the women felt. The researchers used fMRI to measure the participant’s brain activity. Finally, they found the participants, who understood the women more, were more attracted to her. Also, the researchers found brain reward system activates, when the participants successfully understood the partner.
If you interested in, please click the following link.
(Illustration: Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT)
The neuroscientists in MIT showed that it is possible to form new memories in early stages of Alzheimer’s of mice. Tonegawa’s lab found cells in hippocampus which store specific memories. From the mice which has impaired memory recall but could forming new memories, researchers tried to find the reason. Therefore, they demonstrated that the engram cells is related to the fearful experience. By using light to stimulate engram cell of mice, they could find that the mice could retrieve the memory.
If you interested in, please click the following link.
http://news.mit.edu/retrieve_missing_memories_early_alzheimers_symptoms
( image captured from CNN Money - ‘Putting a supercomputer into a smartphone’)
Recently, Artificial Intelligence program, which used ‘Deep Learning’ was shown often. Deep learning uses multiple layers called neural networks, and the concepts of deep learning is from the brain. The Google company, trying to develop deep learning. Also they prospect, it could solve many problem as education or climate change.
Regarding Artificial Intelligence, there is a AI program called AlphaGo (developed by Google), which used ‘Deep learning’ for an algorithm. Recently AlphaGo played the board game ‘Go’, with Lee Se-dol who is the world’s top player of it. Surprisingly, the result was 3:1, which 3 wins from AlphaGo, 1 wins from Lee Se-dol. Also, this is not the first game with AlphaGo and human. Apple won many times, on the match against with human. Therefore, from this results, we could see the development of deep learning techniques.
If you interested in, please click the following link.
Google brain engineer: http://money.cnn.com/technology/google_brain_artificial_intelligence
AlphaGo and Lee Se-dol: http://www.nytimes.com/world/asia/human-vs-computer
(Kris Snibbe / Harvard Staff Photographer)
Vivek Venkatachalam, a postdoctoral and processor Mei Zhen were build the microscope captures 3-D images of all neural activity of worm brains. They were tracked the worm over time during it crawls to figure out where the neurons are in specific volume. Derive from this, Samuel said, it might be possible to monitor all the worms’ neural activity.
If you’re interested with this article, click the following link:
http://news.harvard.edu/watching_sensory_information_translate_into_behavior
(Figure: Marcos Chin)
Since many people prefer to listen to music, some researchers were curious about the music-specific domain in our brain. However, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) showed that the speech and music circuits are in different area of auditory cortex, by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) device. The researchers played a set of 165 distinctive sound clips for two seconds each, to 10 participants. From the result of computations from fMRI data, six response patterns were found. Four are related to physical properties. Other one is regarding to tracing the perception of speech, and the other one is related to tracing the data turned operatic.
If you’re interested with this article, click the following link: