Spaceweaver

PROBLEM: Unlike Neo in The Matrix or the titular superspy in the comedy series Chuck, we can't master kung fu just by beaming information to our brain. We have to put in time and effort to learn new skills. METHODOLOGY: Researchers from Boston University and Japan's ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories designed a decoded functional MRI neurofeedback method that induces a pre-recorded activation pattern in targeted early visual brain areas that could also produce the pattern through regular learning. They then tested whether repetitions of the fMRI pattern caused an improvement in the performance of that visual feature. - Spaceweaver from Bookmarklet

"The eye is going bionic, and companies are competing to develop the best technologies to restore vision to the blind, IEEE Spectrum Tech Talk reports. The company Second Sight has just brought its retina implant to market in Europe, and is hoping for FDA approval in the U.S. this year. Second Sight uses an external camera (mounted on a pair of sunglasses) to capture visual information, routes the info to a visual processing unit worn on a belt, and then sends the processed image to two antennae implanted around the eyes, where it’s forwarded on to a 60-electrode array that stimulates the remaining retinal cells. German company Retina Implant AG, which has an implant currently undergoing clinical trials in Europe and the U.S., has taken a different approach. Instead of an external camera, they built a camera into the eye itself, using an implant that contains an array of 1500 photodiodes with amplifiers and electrodes. The photodiodes convert light signals into electric signals, which attached electrodes send via the optic nerve to the brain." - Spaceweaver from Bookmarklet

"Mischel refers to this skill as the “strategic allocation of attention,” and he argues that it’s the skill underlying self-control. Too often, we assume that willpower is about having strong moral fiber or gritting our teeth and staring down the treat. But that’s wrong — willpower is really about properly directing the spotlight of attention, learning how to control that short list of thoughts in working memory. It’s about realizing that if we’re thinking about the marshmallow we’re going to eat it, which is why we need to look away." - Spaceweaver from Bookmarklet

"The 100 Year Starship (100YSS) study is an effort seeded by DARPA to develop a viable and sustainable model for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad of disciplines needed to make long-distance space travel practicable and feasible. The genesis of this study is to foster a rebirth of a sense of wonder among students, academia, industry, researchers and the general population to consider “why not” and to encourage them to tackle whole new classes of research and development related to all the issues surrounding long duration, long distance spaceflight." - Spaceweaver from Bookmarklet

"In a study published in late 2011 in Nature, Stanford University geneticist Anne Brunet and colleagues described a series of experiments that caused nematodes raised under the same environmental conditions to experience dramatically different lifespans. Some individuals were exceptionally long-lived, and their descendants, through three generations, also enjoyed long lives. Clearly, the longevity advantage was inherited. And yet, the worms, both short- and long-lived, were genetically identical. This type of finding—an inherited difference that cannot be explained by variations in genes themselves—has become increasingly common, in part because scientists now know that genes are not the only authors of inheritance. There are ghostwriters, too. At first glance, these scribes seem quite ordinary—methyl, acetyl, and phosphoryl groups, clinging to proteins associated with DNA, or sometimes even to DNA itself, looking like freeloaders at best. Their form is far from the elegant tendrils... more... - Spaceweaver from Bookmarklet