Neuroscientist Henry Markram says he can build a supercomputer replica of the human brain. Now he has $1.3 billion to prove it.
list skills that you don't forget after long periods of disuse
There's a theory that human intelligence stems from a single algorithm. The idea arises from experiments suggesting that the portion of your brain dedicated to processing sound from your ears could also handle sight for your eyes. This is possible only while your brain is in the earliest stages of development, but it implies that the brain is -- at its core -- a general purpose machine that can be tuned to specific tasks.
“He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.”
New research shows that we have grossly underestimated both the scope and the scale of animal intelligence. Primatologist Frans de Waal on memory-champ chimps, tool-using elephants and rats capable of empathy.
The highly contentious proposal to map the entire output of a human brain just got a huge boost yesterday. Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Virginia published the first brain activity map (BAM) of any creature ever recorded. With this initial achievement, the brush has been cleared so that scaling this capability up to larger animals — and to humans — is no longer unimaginable.
A study of Neanderthal skulls suggests that they became extinct because they had larger eyes than our species.
A new study describing human brain cells transplanted from fetal tissue into mice claims to have made them smarter. While any such claims are often questionable, this particular study also affords us a unique insight into how brains work, and how we might eventually build — superbrains.
You have a brain with billions of neurons. You have thoughts, and you do things because of those thoughts. But how do tiny cells translate into thoughts and actions?
With much fanfare, eminent brain scientist Miguel Nicolelis recently declared that the brain is not computable. What does it really mean to ask if the brain is computable, and why do we care?
Feb. 28, 2013 — Researchers have electronically linked the brains of pairs of rats for the first time, enabling them to communicate directly to solve simple behavioral puzzles. A further test of this work successfully linked the brains of two animals thousands of miles apart -- one in Durham, N.C., and one in Natal, Brazil.
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Here's a new question for all you TAN geniuses out there.
Dr Daniel Amen believes brain scans, not hours talking on the couch, can help cure depression, anxiety, and a host of mental problems. No wonder his peers think he's out of his mind
Two European science projects — one to map the intricacies of the human brain, the other to explore the extraordinary carbon-based material graphene — won an EU technology contest Monday, getting up to €1 billion ($1.34 billion) each over the next decade
Lets play! Can you my intelligent friends (Ed can play too) figure out this riddle?
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After recent studies show that implants could repair lost brain function, Martin W. Angler asks whether we can use this technology for creating enhanced humans.
Scientists have discovered for the first time how humans -- and other mammals -- have evolved to have intelligence.
Researchers have identified the moment in history when the genes that enabled us to think and reason evolved.
Human intelligence and behavior require optimal functioning of a large number of genes, which requires enormous evolutionary pressures to maintain. A provocative hypothesis published in a recent set of Science and Society pieces published in the Cell Press journal Trends in Genetics suggests that we are losing our intellectual and emotional capabilities because the intricate web of genes endowing us with our brain power is particularly susceptible to mutations and that these mutations are not being selected against in our modern society.
An early childhood surrounded by books and educational toys will leave positive fingerprints on a person's brain well into their late teens, a two-decade-long research study has shown.
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