Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers are testing a prosthesis that translates short-term memories into longer-term ones, with the potential to bypass damaged portions of the brain.

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Because language is only part of human communication, IBM is using machine learning to teach robots social skills like gestures, eye movements, and voice intonations.

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University of Washington graduate student Jose Ceballos wears an electroencephalography (EEG) cap that records brain activity and sends a response to a second participant over the Internet (credit: University of Washington)

The first brain-to-brain telepathy-like communication between two participants via the Internet has been performed by University of Washington researchers.

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A paraplegic man who was paralysed for five years has walked again on his own two feet, thanks to a new kind of brain-computer interface that can reroute his thoughts to his legs, bypassing his spinal cord entirely.

The anonymous man, who experiences complete paralysis in both legs due to a severe spinal cord injury (SCI), is the first such patient to demonstrate that brain-controlled overground walking after paraplegia due to SCI is feasible.

Continue reading “Watch: Paralysed man walks again via brain waves rerouted to his legs” »

Interface lets a person read another’s thoughts.

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By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) — A brain-to-computer technology that can translate thoughts into leg movements has enabled a man paralyzed from the waist down by a spinal cord injury to become the first such patient to walk without the use of robotics, doctors in Southern California reported on Wednesday. The slow, halting first steps of the 28-year-old paraplegic were documented in a preliminary study published in the British-based Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, along with a YouTube video. The feat was accomplished using a system allowing the brain to bypass the injured spinal cord and instead send messages through a computer algorithm to electrodes placed around the patient’s knees to trigger controlled leg muscle movements.

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Aristotle is frequently regarded as one of the greatest thinkers of antiquity. So why didn’t he think much of his brain?

In this brief history of the brain, the GPA explores what the great minds of the past thought about thought. And we discover that questions that seem to have obvious answers today were anything but self-evident for the individuals that first tackled them. And that conversely, sometimes the facts which we simply accept to be true can be blinding, preventing us from making deeper discoveries about our our world and ourselves.

“For the experiment, pairs of people played the well-known question-and-answer game “20 Questions”, but were located in two rooms a mile apart and hooked up to a brain-reading system. The person answering “yes” or “no” was connected to an ECG machine, which records electrical brain activity. The person guessing had a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil behind their head — a non-invasive tool that stimulates small areas of the brain”

Two human brains have successfully played “20 Questions”, showing for the first time that it is possible for two brains to share thoughts.

Continue reading “Hooked-up human brains play telepathic ‘20 Questions’” »

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