NEWRON Vol V, Issue XX

[Natan Davidovics]

NeuroEngineering Weekly Review of News

Did you ever wonder why your fingers get pruny and wrinkly when they're in water for extended periods of time?  Now when a kid asks you why its happening, you don't have to seem like a fool in front of a five year old...it turns out that the answer is likely related to nerves and the brain more than it is to osmosis (article #2).

 

Interesting NeuroEngineering links:

Hopkins Neuroengineering web site: http://neuroengineering.bme.jhu.edu
New job blog: http://neuroengjobs.blogspot.com/
Blog for administrative questions: http://neuroengineering.blogspot.com
NEWRON on the web!: http://groups.google.com/group/newron?lnk=srg&pli=1

Enjoy,
Natan Davidovics
NEWRON Publishing Corporation

Brain scanner app lets you show off your smarts on-the-go

http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/16/brain-scanner-app-lets-you-show-off-your-smarts-on-the-go/

Forget learning how to open a champagne bottle with a saber, because this smartphone brain scannerprobably has it beat for coolest party trick ever. After you pull out that 14-channel EEG headset you have lying around, all you need to do is attach the probes to your date's dome piece to measure his or her neural activity on your Nokia N900. The app then goes to work, taking binary data and reconstructing it on screen in 3D. The result? A new way to elimi-date Match.com candidates based on the real-time image of his or her melon. We can't promise it'll get you a second date, but we can give you a glimpse of the app in action after the break.

The Mystery of Wrinkly-When-Wet Fingers, Solved

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-09/mystery-wrinkly-when-wet-fingers-solved

Mystery of the century, you guys. No, the millenium. All times. A new paper in the journal Brain, Behavior and Evolution has a new answer to the eternal question: why do our fingers and toes get all wrinkly after bathtime? The answer: traction. The paper, which you can read here, suggests that wrinkled fingers actually provide drainage for water so as to ensure greater traction, just like tires on a car. 

Caltech Researchers Create the First Artificial Neural Network Out of DNA

http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13434

Artificial intelligence has been the inspiration for countless books and movies, as well as the aspiration of countless scientists and engineers. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have now taken a major step toward creating artificial intelligence—not in a robot or a silicon chip, but in a test tube. The researchers are the first to have made an artificial neural network out of DNA, creating a circuit of interacting molecules that can recall memories based on incomplete patterns, just as a brain can.