Category: Brain Activity
- Electrical Zaps Woke Up Dormant Neurons to Help Paralyzed People Walk Again ()
What was science fiction is now scientific reality: with a series of targeted electrical zaps to the spinal cord, nine paralyzed people immediately walked again with help from a robot. Five months later, half of the participants no longer needed those zaps to walk. Does the sentence sound a bit familiar? By themselves, the results—while […]
- The brain undergoes a great “rewiring” after age 40 ()
In the fifth decade of life, our brains start to undergo a radical “rewiring” that results in diverse networks becoming more integrated and connected over the ensuing decades, with accompanying effects on cognition. The networking changes likely result from the brain reorganizing itself to function as well as it can with dwindling resources and aging […]
- New Brain Maps Can Predict Behaviors ()
Rapid advances in large-scale connectomics are beginning to spotlight the importance of individual variations in the neural circuitry. They also highlight the limitations of “wiring diagrams” alone. A 3D model of closely bundled pyramidal neurons running through cortical layer 5 of a mammalian brain; the neurons have been colored differently to distinguish them. Researchers have […]
- Subminiature multifunctional brain chip analyzes brain activity from multiple aspects ()
Neurotransmitters play a key role in the signal transmission process between neurons in the brain. If the concentration of neurotransmitters is higher or lower than normal, it triggers brain diseases for which neurotransmitters are injected as treatments. Therefore, the accurate measurement of neurotransmitter concentration is crucial for investigating the cause or during the treatment of […]
- An expanding molecular toolbox untangles neural circuits ()
Life is full of nervous reactions — a head snaps towards a voice, leg muscles tense at the sound of a starting gun and thirsty mice scamper towards a squirt of water when trained to respond to a certain tone. The mechanisms behind such reward-related behaviours are notoriously difficult to unpick. Nerve cells often snake […]
- Learning from imaging data to model brain activity ()
In this article, we introduce VanDEEPol, a hybrid AI/mechanistic model to predict brain activity and structure from imaging data. The model significantly boosts predictive accuracy compared to previous methods. By predicting brain activity from relatively sparse imaging data, VanDEEPol may eventually help to detect medical disorders or design brain-computer interfaces. Intricate interactions among billions of […]