GoKawiil
Tech News
A team of scientists has compiled a large single-cell gene-expression dataset mapping how brain cells change across aging in mice, published via a Nature-affiliated report. The dataset catalogs expression patterns across numerous cell types and brain regions, intended as a resource for the broader research community.
Researchers recording brain activity directly from six people found two adjacent regions in the orbitofrontal cortex that compete during risky decisions, described in a Nature Neuroscience study published September 15. One region activates when a person leans toward pursuing a reward, while the other activates when they lean toward avoiding risk, with signals rapidly alternating between the two before a final choice is made.
Researchers grafted lab-grown human brain tissue into mice that were bred without a cortex, and the transplanted tissue integrated and took root in the animals' brains. The study demonstrates that human neural tissue can survive and develop within a living rodent brain that lacks its own corresponding structure.
Swedish company Flow Neuroscience has launched a prescription-only wearable device in the US designed to treat depression through daily brain stimulation at home. Worn on the forehead for 30 minutes a day and paired with a companion app, the headset delivers low-intensity electrical current to the brain's left frontal lobe, an area linked to mood regulation. The device received FDA approval in December and joins a growing category of consumer neurotech products that read or stimulate brain activity.
Sakana AI researchers Jeffrey Seely and Julian Gould introduced PC-ALM (Augmented Lagrangian Predictive Coding), a training method that replaces backpropagation's forward and backward passes with local feedback control dynamics running between neighboring layers. The team reports it successfully trains residual MLPs as deep as 1000 layers, reaching performance close to standard backpropagation while relying only on layer-local computation.
Researchers at UC San Francisco tested a surgically implanted 253-electrode array that reads brain activity to simultaneously produce on-screen text and animate a personalized avatar's movements. The system, tested with two participants with severe paralysis, is described as the first brain-computer interface to handle verbal and non-verbal communication together within seconds of intent.
Dr. Josh Turknett, author of 'The Genius and the Impostor: The Neuroscience of Unlocking Human Potential,' outlines five widely believed misconceptions about what it means to be a genius. His central argument is that self-doubt (the 'impostor') and creative brilliance (the 'genius') rely on competing neural processes that cannot operate simultaneously.
Mark Solms, in his new book 'The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing,' outlines five Freudian concepts that he says align with contemporary neuroscience findings. The piece frames these as ideas now taken for granted despite being radical when Freud first proposed them.