Scientists use brain imaging to reveal the movies in our mind.

Nora D. Volkow, Dardo Tomasi, Gene-Jack Wang, Paul Vaska, Joanna S. Fowler, Frank Telang, Dave Alexoff, Jean Logan, Christopher Wong. Effects of Cell Phone Radiofrequency Signal Exposure on Brain Glucose Metabolism. JAMA. 2011;305(8):808-813.

Summary in NYtimes: Cellphone Use Tied to Brain Changes

In motor cortex, ultrasound-stimulated neuronal activity was sufficient to evoke motor behaviors. Deeper in subcortical circuits, we used targeted transcranial ultrasound to stimulate neuronal activity and synchronous oscillations in the intact hippocampus. We found that ultrasound triggers TTX-sensitive neuronal activity in the absence of a rise in brain temperature (<0.01°C). Here, we also report that transcranial pulsed ultrasound for intact brain circuit stimulation has a lateral spatial resolution of approximately 2 mm and does not require exogenous factors or surgical invasion.

http://tnsre.bme.jhu.edu/

2. 39th Neural Interfaces Conference
Co-sponsored by NIH Deep Brain Stimulation Consortium
June 21-23, 2010, Long Beach, CA
Free registration for students (Faculty Advisor letter due May 21)
Program, registration, and further information:

http://www.neuralinterfaces2010.com/

A workshop on the topic “Beyond Brain Machine Interface: From Senses to Cognition” (http://tnsre.bme.jhu.edu), sponsored by Army Research Office and IEEE EMBS, will take place on June 20, 2010, just preceding the Neural Interfaces Conference (June 21-23, Long Beach, CA). The goal of the workshop is to push the frontiers of BMI, from sensory and motor interfaces to enhancing cognitive and physical performance. To achieve this vision, the Workshop will provide a state of the art review of the field, share experiences with current systems and experimental paradigms and then present ideas and initiatives for future activities in the field.

The workshop will be designed with a pioneering spirit to push the frontiers of BMI in humans. Distinguished leaders in the field will give reviews and keynote presentations. Active researchers and young scientists are invited to present their work and progress. Junior scientists, postdocs, and advanced graduate students are invited to apply for travel fellowships to participate and to display their posters by sending an email with an abstract and a CV to editortnsre at gmail.com with subject “Beyond BMI Workshop”. The registration form and further information is available at “http://tnsre.bme.jhu.edu/”.

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39th Neural Interfaces Conference Highlights:

- June 21-23, 2010, Long Beach Convention Center, Long Beach, CA

- 30 platform presentations from leaders in neuromodulation and neural engineering
- 176 poster presentations
- 23 sponsors, including major Neurotech companies (Medtronic, St. Jude Neuromod), small businesses as well as NIH and the VA
- The broad and generous sponsorship allows for low-cost registration without compromising the quality of the meeting
- FREE registration for students (details below)
- Attended by an multi-disciplinary group of clinicians, engineers, and scientists representing academia and industry

All students are eligible for no cost registration. When registering on-line for the conference, under the payment section, please select “student”. Please note, your conference registration is not complete until you submit a letter from your Faculty Advisor confirming your current student status. The letter must be written or typed on your schools letterhead and submitted no later than Friday, May 21st. Your no-cost student registration for the conference is contingent upon receiving this letter. Letters may be emailed to Lex Davies at LDavies@JBSAssociates.ws or mailed to her attention at 954 La Mirada Street, Laguna Beach CA 92651.

Conference program, registration, and more information at:

http://www.neuralinterfaces2010.com/

Detects subthreshold electrical activity from laryngeal muscles and attempts to recognize words from it, allowing a sort of silent cell phone, as well as command-and-control applications. They have a technical manual on the website, as well as a video demo of a “voiceless phone call”.

I’m a fan of it because it is an open-access journal featuring a “tiered system” and more.  From their website:

The Frontiers Journal Series is not just another journal. It is a new approach to scientific publishing. As service to scientists, it is driven by researchers for researchers but it also serves the interests of the general public. Frontiers disseminates research in a tiered system that begins with original articles submitted to Specialty Journals. It evaluates research truly democratically and objectively based on the reading activity of the scientific communities and the public. And it drives the most outstanding and relevant research up to the next tier journals, the Field Journals.

I’m a big fan of the variety of specialty journals they have:

• Aging Neuroscience
• Behavioral Neuroscience
• Cellular Neuroscience
• Computational Neuroscience
• Enteric Neuroscience
• Evolutionary Neuroscience
• Human Neuroscience
• Integrative Neuroscience
• Molecular Neuroscience
• Neural Circuits
• Neuroanatomy
• Neuroenergetics
• Neuroengineering
• Neurogenesis
• Neurogenomics
• Neuroinformatics
• Neuromethods
• Neuropharamacology
• Neuroprosthetics
• Neurorobotics
• Synaptic Neuroscience
• Systems Neuroscience

As he says in the article, the initial reaction to this kind of product might be, I don’t need something to tell me when I didn’t sleep well. I know when I haven’t slept well! As he says in his nice video review, there are some advantages to all this technology (automation is good!… I certainly don’t keep a daily journal of sleep quality…):

But as my wife said, “If I wake up and feel lousy, I don’t need a $400 gadget to tell me it’s because I didn’t sleep well.”

Ah, but that’s where the coaching comes in.

The Zeo stores your sleep records on a memory card. As often as you can, you’re supposed to pop it out and insert it into a U.S.B. card reader (also included) on your computer. At this point, you can go to MyZeo.com and upload your data to the Web.

Now the real fun begins. This Web site lets you slice, dice and cross-compare your sleep data in a million ways.

Nature sent me a press release about this today and it seemed like it might be of interest to ND readers. There is also a related commentary in the journal this week.

The conference sessions will cover several key areas in the neuroprosthetic development, such as deep brain stimulation for treatment of Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy, devices for restoring hearing and overcoming muscle paralysis, microelectrode biocompatibility, and novel microelectrode technologies. For detailed conference program and registration information, please visit http://www.bsrc.nctu.edu.tw/ICND/.

Download MP3It’s hard to judge the merits of this particular interface but I’m sure this is just the first of many such devices that we’re about to see (demo starts 2:00):

This is an Emotiv headset. More than the gaming application, I like the idea of using it for IM emoticons.

Anyone know if the consumer version will require gel for the scalp electrodes? Hmmm… if gamers are the target audience, I think I have a good idea for a cross-promotional opportunity here.