The Navy Times is looking at what the future holds for the wettest branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, and the sailor of 2030 could be far more enhanced than those of today, boasting surgeries and bionic implants that enable them to see in the dark or control devices through thought: Surgical enhancements may be [...]
Posts under ‘Brain’
Developments in brain-computer interfaces
Two of the hot new toys for the 2009 Christmas season used simple electrodes to read brainwaves and translate them to movement of a plastic ball – depending on your level of concentration, the ball would move up or down. Of course this is a quick and dirty implementation of the technology, which can be [...]
Did IBM overstate “simulated cat brain” claims?
Last week I wrote about IBM’s announcement that a research team had created the “largest artificial brain ever,” which they compared to the size of a cat’s brain. It turns out that some of these claims may have been hyperbole. Henry Markram, the lead at the Blue Brain Project (which describes itself as the “first [...]
Your next surgeon may be a robot
Employing nanobots to patrol the blood vessels of the human body and repair damage along the way is still a couple decades away, at least, but doctors are already employing small robots that patients can swallow to perform remote surgeries. Some of these robots are even capable of being swallowed as separate components and then [...]
Intel Inside: In a decade, humans will control computers with their minds
Modern smartphones possess more than enough computing power to perform most tasks users need – browsing the Web, checking e-mail, instant messaging, watching video, writing, and more. Only a couple of issues would hold me back from ditching my laptop and using my phone as my primary computing device – the small screen size and [...]
IBM researchers to create virtual world for supercomputer to explore
Today researchers at IBM’s Almaden research center unveiled the “biggest artificial brain ever,” which is described as being as large as a cat’s brain. The hardware is impressive, consisting of 147,456 CPUs, but what is even more compelling is how the team plans to “teach” the computer – by creating a virtual world in which [...]
New supercomputer more energy efficient through “brain-like” design
If conventional processors were used to create an artificial intelligence, the resulting supercomputer would consume massive amounts of electricity – up to 20 megawatts, which would require a small hydroelectric plant to power it. The human brain, on the other hand, only consumes about 20 watts of electricity to operate. Creating more energy efficient computers [...]
Engineering neurons to respond to light
Many therapeutic technologies, including Cochlear implants that enable the deaf to hear, or deep brain stimulators that treat some symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, use electricity to stimulate neurons in the brain. This method isn’t exactly precise, however, as the electrical fields stimulate neurons around the targeted area, which leads to side effects. Researchers at Stanford [...]