brain
Brain surgery training from an avatar | MIT News
Benjamin Warf, a renowned neurosurgeon at Boston Children’s Hospital, stands in the MIT.nano Immersion Lab. More than 3,000 miles away, his virtual avatar stands next to Matheus Vasconcelos in Brazil as the resident practices delicate surgery on a doll-like model of a baby’s brain. With a pair of virtual-reality goggles, Vasconcelos is able to watch…
Ozempic and Wegovy may reduce inflammation by targeting the brain
Ozempic is a diabetes treatment, but it is often also used to help with weight loss fcm82/Shutterstock Weight-loss and diabetes injections such as Wegovy and Ozempic (both semaglutide) may have wider medical benefits than we first thought, after work in mice suggests they act on the brain to lessen body-wide inflammation. The finding could explain…
Everything you need to know about the way cannabis affects your brain
Cannabis derails train of thought, but may not affect long-term memory Cannabis interferes with the working memory we use to keep track of what we are doing, but whether the drug causes long-lasting memory impairments is less clear Source link
Brain cells activated by stress may also give you a bad night’s sleep
Stress can influence the number of times we wake during the night Tero Vesalainen/Alamy Stress can cause people to frequently wake up at night, and a newly identified brain pathway in mice may explain why. If a similar pathway exists in humans, it could lead to new ways of improving sleep quality. While short arousals…
Electrical brain implants may help patients with severe brain injuries
For people with traumatic brain injuries, cognitive functions like memory, attention and mood regulation can become exceedingly difficult. But “there is no therapy for this kind of problem, even though it’s so prevalent,” says Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. Now, in a small study of individuals who have…
DeepSouth: Supercomputer that simulates entire human brain will switch on in 2024
An artist’s impression of the DeepSouth supercomputer A supercomputer capable of simulating, at full scale, the synapses of a human brain is set to boot up in Australia next year, in the hopes of understanding how our brains process massive amounts of information while consuming relatively little power. The machine, known as DeepSouth, is being…
What cannabis does to your body and brain
Despite humans having used cannabis for thousands of years, it is only recently that we have started to work out why it affects us the way that it does. Chemicals in cannabis called cannabinoids activate receptors throughout our bodies that form the endocannabinoid system. This system is involved in regulating everything from mood to memory,…
AI made from living human brain cells performs speech recognition
Brain organoids growing in a Petri dish Science Photo Library / Alamy Balls of human brain cells linked to a computer have been used to perform a very basic form of speech recognition. The hope is that such systems will use far less energy for AI tasks than silicon chips. “This is just proof-of-concept to…
Marmosets swap brain cells with their siblings
Marmoset siblings share many things – including brain cells Werner Layer/ Alamy A large number of cells within the brains of marmosets actually come from their siblings, potentially influencing their behaviour – and the same may be true of human fraternal twins. We already know that marmosets, small monkeys native to South America, carry their…
Brain implant could ease the effects of a traumatic injury years later
The device was implanted into the thalamus (highlighted), a region deep in the brain that is linked to alertness, learning and memory SEBASTIAN KAULITZKI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images An implant that stimulates a region deep in the brain may boost cognitive function in people with traumatic brain injuries long after the incident occurred. This is based…