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Jack Gallant can read your mind. Or at least, he can figure out what you’re seeing if you’re in his machine watching a movie he’s playing for you.

Gallant, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, has a brain decoding machine – a device that uses brain scanning to peer into people’s minds and reconstruct what they’re seeing. If mind-reading technology like this becomes more common, should we be concerned? Ask Gallant this question, and he gives a rather unexpected answer. Read More…

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New technologies for monitoring brain activity are generating unprecedented quantities of information. That data may hold new insights into how the brain works – but only if researchers can interpret it. To help make sense of the data, neuroscientists can now harness the power of distributed computing with Thunder, a library of tools developed at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus. Read More…

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Riddell’s newest helmet, set to debut on college fields this fall, is called SpeedFlex. This past spring about 30 teams across the country have been trying it out. The reaction, according to Riddell, has been positive, which is encouraging as their primary focus has been creating a helmet that minimizes the risk of concussions.

“It’s been an area of focus for Riddell certainly for more than a decade,” said Thad Ide, Riddle’s senior vice president for research and development. “Ever since we introduced the Revolution helmet in 2002, that helmet was designed based on specific biomechanical research into the on-field impacts that led to concussions in players. Since that time, we’ve been conducting research and mining data and looking for ways that we can improve our helmets. Certainly, there’s been an increased focus in the public awareness of concussions in very recent years, too. That sort of focus has only highlighted the improvements that we’ve made.” Read More…

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Researchers in the field of neuroscience have thought long and hard about the mystery of how our brains process emotions, but it took a team of researchers at Cornell University to finally solve the puzzle. It turns out the answer lies in viewing finely grained patterns of brain activity as a neural code that records people’s subjective feelings.

If two people enjoy similar activities, then it is because they have similar patterns of brain activity, explained neuroscientist Adam Anderson, an associate professor of human development at Cornell and the lead author of the recently published study on the subject. He noted that his findings refute scientists’ long-held belief that the brain represents emotions simply by activating specialized regions for either positive or negative responses. Read more

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One of the most important things to monitor in patients who’ve sustained a severe blow to the head or a serious hemorrhage is pressure in the brain. This can reveal an increase in the brain’s volume, thanks to bleeding, swelling, or other factors, which can compress and damage brain tissue and starve the organ of blood. Increases in pressure have also been implicated in other, less critical neurological problems, such as migraines and repeated concussions. But current methods for monitoring intracranial pressure are highly invasive—a neurosurgeon drills a hole in the skull and inserts a catheter, which carries a risk of infection. Read More…

NFL Must Take Concussions Seriously

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A newly released NFL study counted 900 concussions in the league between 1996 and 2001. Concussions were a subject league officials, coaches and trainers long avoided discussing. Players, perhaps because there was no physical evidence of an injury, like a broken bone, often did not take concussions seriously. But officials became concerned with the forced retirement in 1992 of Jets star wide receiver Al Toon, as the NFL faced an epidemic of concussions. That concern was reinforced when marquee players like Troy Aikmen and Steve Young also retired after multiple concussions.  Read More…