Miguel Nicolelis: Brain-to-brain communication has arrived. How we did it
“Brain-actuating technology is here.” − Miguel Nicolelis
Miguel Nicolelis is a neuroscientist best known for his work in neuronal population coding, Brain Machine Interfaces (BMI) and neuroprosthetics in human patients and non-human primates. In this TED Talk, Nicolelis explores the possibilities of the brain-machine interface in recounting how his lab’s brain-controlled exoskeleton allowed Juliano Pinto, a paralegic man, to kick the first ball at the 2014 World Cup just by using his thoughts. Nicolelis’ current research focuses on developing ways for two separate minds to communicate brain to brain.
“Despite being paralyzed and not having any sensation from mid-chest to the tip of his toes as the result of a car crash six years ago that killed his brother and produced a complete spinal cord lesion that left Juliano in a wheelchair, Juliano rose to the occasion, and on this day did something that pretty much everybody that saw him in the six years deemed impossible. Juliano Pinto delivered the opening kick of the 2014 Brazilian World Soccer Cup here just by thinking. He could not move his body, but he could imagine the movements needed to kick a ball.”
Check out the TED Talk here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/miguel_nicolelis_brain_to_brain_communication_h…
Nancy Kanwisher: A neural portrait of the human mind
“What could be more thrilling than to understand the fundamental mechanisms that underlie human experience, to understand, in essence, who we are? This is, I think, the greatest scientific quest of all time.” − Nancy Kanwisher
Nancy Kanwisher is a brain researcher at MIT seeking to determine whether the brain uses specialized processors to solve complex problems or if it relies on more general-purpose systems. Kanwisher dedicates her research to further understanding the nature of the human mind. Kanwisher’s team has discovered distinct cortical regions in charge of specific components of cognition like face recognition while examining the human brain using fMRI imaging. In this TED Talk, Kanwisher shares her recent findings and what questions are left to be answered.
“What’s important to me about this work is not the particular locations of these brain regions, but the simple fact that we have selective, specific components of the mind and brain in the first place. I mean, it could have been otherwise. The brain could have been a single, general-purpose processor, more like a kitchen knife than a Swiss Army knife. Instead, what brain imaging has delivered is this rich and interesting picture of the human mind. So we have this picture of very general-purpose machinery in our heads in addition to this surprising array of very specialized components.”
Check out the TED Talk here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_kanwisher_the_brain_is_a_swiss_army_knife…
Suzana Herculano-Houzel: What is so special about the human brain?
“So the human brain may be remarkable, yes, but it is not special in its number of neurons. It is just a large primate brain. I think that’s a very humbling and sobering thought that should remind us of our place in nature.” − Suzana Herculano-Houzel
Suzana Herculano-Houzel is the neuroscientist who debunked the theory that about 100 billion neurons make a human brain. After dissolving four human brains into a homogeneous mixture in her lab at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences in Rio de Janeiro, Herculano-Houzel counted and scaled up the number of neuronal cell nuclei. Her research downsized the brain by 14 billion neurons, finding that the human brain actually contains about 86 billion neurons instead of 100 billion. In this TED Talk, Herculano-Houzel discusses the mystery of human brain size in relation to energy used and the astonishing conclusions of her work to explain this phenomenon.
“Now, you may have heard or read somewhere that we have 100 billion neurons, so 10 years ago, I asked my colleagues if they knew where this number came from. But nobody did. I’ve been digging through the literature for the original reference for that number, and I could never find it. It seems that nobody had actually ever counted the number of neurons in the human brain, or in any other brain for that matter.”
Check out the TED Talk here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/suzana_herculano_houzel_what_is_so_special_abou…