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The Nano-Neuro Intersection
How does the brain compute? Will we one day have tools small enough to manipulate individual neurons? Recently, neuroscientist and KIBM Co-Director Nicholas Spitzer led a conversation with two nanoscience pioneers – Stanford University's Kwabena Boahen and Harvard University's Hongkun Parkthree renowned researchers on how their once diverging disciplines have merged. Read Article
Smart Moves
Whether engaged in a chess game or something less obvious, the brain is constantly thinking. Daniel Wolpert, a professor of engineering at the University of Cambridge and a leading researcher on human motor control, admits that an intricate game of chess is an excellent demonstration of the brain at work; however, if you focus less on the game and more on the movement of the pieces, you’ll see something else extraordinary. Read Article
Understanding Our Sence of Place
Among the vast store of memories we carry around in our heads, there is a large and crucial collection of maps. Most of these have little to do with geography in the usual sense; they’re more like road maps to our everyday surroundings, enabling us to recognize the places we know and navigate between them. Typically, it’s a sense of place we take for granted, until we become disoriented and confused. Then the result isn’t just unsettling; it’s similar to what occurs when someone experiences the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Read Article
Babies, Birds and Words
Human infants learn to talk and starlings learn to sing, but just how different are the two? The answer on one level is obvious. Songbirds never learn to talk, at least not in the way even poorly educated humans can. Nor do other animals, such as monkeys and dolphins, that appear bright and expressive but never seem able to make up more than the simplest of sentences, if even that. In its complexity and power to convey ideas and emotions, the human gift of language does seem unique in all nature. Read Article
Mapping the Brain
Neurobiologists have studied the brain for over a hundred years, yet they are still far from understanding its basic operations and the overall logic of its neural circuitry. Part of the problem is technical: Traditionally, scientists have studied the responses of neurons (brain cells) with electrodes, one neuron at a time. But the brain is composed of billions of neurons, anatomically arranged in precise circuits. The rules that govern how these neural circuits work is difficult to untangle unless one could actually record the activity of many neurons simultaneously – if possible in the living animal. Read Article
The Human Factor
Man, monkey, mouse. They are very different animals, of course, but they have plenty of basic biology in common. Humans and rhesus macaque monkeys are estimated to share about 93% of their DNA. Mice, not to mention monkeys, are similar enough to humans in physiology to make them test subjects for drugs aimed at human diseases. And the brains of all three, though hardly the same size, are all made from the same type of cells. Read Article
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