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POPSRobot Therapy To 'Recharge' Stroke Victims' Arms
The other half are assigned to the robot group. This is less exciting than it sounds. The robot looks more like a garden-variety brace or splint that is strapped to the wrist, elbow or shoulder, depending on which joint is being used. A flat-screen computer monitor displays colorful dancing dots a la 1980s video games. Using a joystick, the patient is challenged to hit moving targets on the screen, using the stroke-weakened arm. If the patient cannot move the arm, the machine helps. If the machine senses any movement by the patient, it backs off, letting the injured arm do more of the work. Even if the patient at first cannot accomplish the task, the very act of thinking that the arm should move, then having it touch the correct target propelled by the robot, starts to restore or rebuild circuits in the brain, said Hermano Igo Krebs, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained mechanical engineer who developed the device known as MIT-Manus.
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POPSMy stroke of Insight "How many brain scientists have been able to study the brain from the inside out? I've gotten as much out of this experience of losing my left mind as I have in my entire academic career." Jill Bolte Taylor (TED talk video at source)
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POPSMore on The power of thought It also means restoring a capability that most able-bodied people do not realise they have: the use of sensory feedback to fine-tune actions.
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POPS Does Smart Equal Liberal? Instead, it appears to be something about the intelligent brain itself: Smart people may have a different emotional makeup, a personality that is more open to experience. Or it may be that high IQ at age ten eventually leads to more complex moral reasoning: In short, smart people alone may have the cognitive machinery that’s needed for more flexible analysis of political and moral quandaries.
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POPSCocaine Vaccine "It's a very clever idea," says David Eagleman, a Baylor neuroscientist. "Scientists have spent the last few decades figuring out reward pathways in the brain and how drugs like cocaine hijack the system. It turns out those pathways are difficult to rewire once they've seen the drug. But the vaccine just circumvents all that."
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POPSBlood-brain Barrier: A Misunderstood Key The crash of that communication system can impact diseases including Alzheimer's disease, stroke and multiple sclerosis. In the Lancet Neurology article, Banks and his colleagues called for more research to better understand how the blood-brain barrier relates to immune cells.
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POPSHuman Brain Cloud This is a cool little distraction, but mostly this clip is a test of the new browser add-on and Facebook application
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POPSFamily that walks on all four Professor Mundlos has located the gene on chromosome 17 and speculates that a gene important in the transition to bipedalism may have been knocked out in the children. Another link at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/allfours/
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POPSRucker's Postsingular is a free, CC download! Rudy Rucker has posted his kick-ass, weird-ass post-cyberpunk novel Postsingular to the net as a free, Creative Commons-licensed download. I reviewed Postsingular when it came out earlier this month: everyone should read RR
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