The idea of cybernetic organisms, known as cyborgs, is becoming less science fiction and more reality. Cyborg research has helped “the paralyzed walk, the mute speak, and the near-dead return to life.”
But cyborgs don’t always have to be human. University of California, Berkley’s Kirotaka Sato decided to create a cyborg insect, so he could control how they fly. And it worked: When he attached electrodes to a living insect’s brain and muscles and sent an electrical signal through them, he was able to motivate the bug to fly, and to manipulate its flight direction.
The lucky insects—green June beetles and a close relative called Mecynorrhina torquata—had their brains outfitted with a radio antenna. Sato and his team then conducted an experiment to see how the insects performed in the air. After the researchers sent electrical pulses to the insects’ brains, the bugs did indeed take flight. While the longest flight time was 30 minutes, most beetles didn’t hit the one-minute mark. By stimulating the insect’s wing muscles—the wing that is opposite to the direction the insect is heading— the beetle will adjust its other wing so it can resume flying parallel to the ground. By knowing their flight behavior, Sato found he could change their direction about 75 percent of the time.
Ultimately, the researchers want the cyborg insects to be remote-controlled, so they can be used to spy and perform other important tasks. But first we’ll need to figure out how these bugs can fly for more time and more efficiently than they do now.
Related Content:
Discoblog: Superhuman Cyborg Vision
DISCOVER: Beetle Borgs
Image courtesy of Hirotaka Sato and Michel M. Maharbiz, U. C. Berkeley
Neurosurgeons might soon be able to say goodbye to the scalpel: A new technique uses ultrasound waves to remove parts of the brain. High-intensity ultrasound—a different type than what’s used in prenatal screening—heats up parts of the brain, thereby killing sections of tissue that are damaged.
Similar technology is already used to obliterate uterine fibroids, but until now, it’s been difficult to harness the technique for brain surgery, because the skull interferes with the waves. According to Technology Review:
The…device consists of an array of more than 1,000 ultrasound transducers, each of which can be individually focused. “You take a CT scan of the patient’s head and tailor the acoustic beam to focus through the skull,” says Eyal Zadicario, head of InSightec’s neurology program. The device also has a built-in cooling system to prevent the skull from overheating.
The ultrasound beams are focused on a specific point in the brain—the exact location depends on the condition being treated—that absorbs the energy and converts it to heat. This raises the temperature to about 130 degrees Fahrenheit and kills the cells in a region approximately 10 cubic millimeters in volume. The entire system is integrated with a magnetic resonance scanner, which allows neurosurgeons to make sure they target the correct piece of brain tissue.
(more…)
What if there was a surgical procedure that would make it possible for you to run 100-mile races? What if that surgery also erased part of your memory and a portion of your organizational skills?
This is reality for Diane Van Deren, a former professional tennis player who had part of her brain removed in 1997 as a treatment for epilepsy. The lobectomy was a double-edged sword: Her inability to gauge how much time and distance has passed has helped her become one of the greatest ultramarathoners on the globe, but she has no memories of family vacations and little sense of direction.
The New York Times brings us the full story:
She used to run away from epileptic seizures. Since brain surgery, she just runs, uninhibited by the drudgery of time and distance, undeterred by an inability to remember exactly where she is going or how to get back. “It used to be, call for help if Mom’s not back in five hours,” Van Deren said. She laughed. “That rule has been stretched. I’ve got a 24-hour window now. Isn’t that sad?”
Van Deren, 49,… has become one of the world’s great ultra-runners, competing in races of attrition measuring 100 miles or more. She won last year’s Yukon Arctic Ultra 300, a trek against frigid cold, deep snow and loneliness, and was the first woman to complete the 430-mile version this year….
(more…)
Between the plastic surgeries and Neverland, some may conclude that Michael Jackson had lost his mind prior to his death. Well, now it’s being taken to literal levels: He’ll likely be buried without his brain.
Apparently, scientists need to remove the pop star’s brain to finish his autopsy. And because it takes about two weeks for a brain to “harden” before it can be examined, if he’s laid to rest before then, his body will have to be buried without it.
Letting a brain “harden” is standard autopsy protocol when the brain is suspected of playing an important part in the death, as it would with a drug overdose. According to Mind Hacks, a neuroscience and psychology blog:
[Hardening] involves removing the brain from the skull and leaving it to soak in a diluted mixture of formaldehyde and water called formalin. This soaking process usually takes four weeks and the brain genuinely does harden. A “fresh” brain is a pinkish colour and has the consistency of jelly, gello or soft tofu meaning it is difficult to examine and the various internal structures are often hard to make out.
(more…)
Right now one of the most common ways quadriplegics move wheelchairs is through a sip and puff device, in which the person sucks or blows through a straw. But Georgia Tech University scientists are testing a headset that will allow wheelchair users to drive their chairs using only their tongues. New Scientist reports:
The device works by using two sensors to track a 5-millimetre-wide magnet attached to the tip of the user’s tongue. The sensors—embedded in a wireless headset—read the fluctuations in the strength of the magnetic field as the tongue moves and transmit the signals on to a computer, where they are interpreted and acted upon.
Of course, who needs a tongue when you can just think the wheelchair into action. Japanese researchers claim they’ve created a device that allows brain waves to control a wheelchair.
(more…)
Short people may be disadvantaged on the basketball court, in the workplace, and when trying to see over large crowds, but they just might be quicker in sensing the world around them—because, well, their signals don’t have to travel as far to get to their brains.
In effect, this means that tall people are living in the past, if only by a tenth of a second. This is all according to neuroscientist David Eagleman, whose essay entitled “Brain Time” suggests that “if the brain wants to get events correct timewise, it may have only one choice: wait for the slowest information to arrive.”
(more…)
Everyone can make “marijuana” in their heads. We don’t mean this literally.
Recently, researchers found that our brains produce proteins that mimic the effects of marijuana. The active ingredient in hash—tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC for short—is the reason why people feel high when they smoke pot. While the exact mechanism of how the brain takes in cannabis isn’t completely understood, THC is thought to play a significant role. After marijuana is inhaled, THC enters the lungs and the bloodstream, and then attaches to a certain type of cannabinoid receptor in the brain. That’s when the known effects of pot start to kick in: A person’s appetite increases (a.k.a the munchies), pain dissipates, and a heightened mental state sets in.
The psychoactive effect of pot is widely used in the medical community to treat symptoms of pain and inflammation in a slew of chronic illnesses. Now, Mount Sinai researchers have figured out which proteins made naturally in the brain can act like THC, so that someday they can produce marijuana-type drugs that don’t come with the side effects of smoking actual pot.
(more…)
A group of Japanese researchers are claiming that their “mind-reading” machine can read people’s dreams. While it sounds like a novel idea, this is certainly not the first claim from scientists that they can depict what a person sees based on their brain activity—nor the last.
Brain imaging has been around for ages. Typically, when fMRI machines are used to read people’s brain activity, the different states are classified into categories and then used to predict a person’s “perceptual state.” So what these ATR Computational Neuroscience researchers are saying they can do is actually reconstruct what a person is seeing. But can they really?
In the study, published in Neuron, the researchers flashed 400 images in front of subjects for 12 seconds each. An fMRI machine was used to collect brain activity data, which was then analyzed on a computer to determine patterns linked to how the brain reacted when it saw the images.
(more…)
