Neuroscience  

According to physicist Michio Kaku, we have learned more about the brain in the last fifteen years than in all prior human history, and the this knowledge is propelling science into a future of incredible possibilities.

For the first time in history, the secrets of the living brain are being revealed by a battery of high tech brain scans devised by physicists. Now what was once solely the province of science fiction has become a startling reality. Recording memories, telepathy, videotaping our dreams, mind control, avatars, and telekinesis are not only possible; they already exist.

Through the European Human Brain Project, the new American BRAIN Initiative and more, neuroscience and unraveling of the human connectome are going to have dramatic consequences for the coming decades.

"We have learned more about the brain in the last fifteen years than in all prior human history, and the mind, once considered out of reach, is finally assuming center stage."

In his new book, The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind, Michio Kaku gives us an authoritative and compelling look at the astonishing research being done in top laboratories around the world—all based on the latest advancements in neuroscience and physics.

“We have learned more about the brain in the last fifteen years than in all prior human history, and the mind, once considered out of reach, is finally assuming center stage,” writes Kaku.

Related articles US Set To Enter The Brain Race With The Brain Activity Map Project  Stanford Neuroscientists Develop Technique To Read Mouse Minds  Incredible Whole Brain Cellular Mapping Achieved In Zebrafish

According to Kaku, one day we might have a "smart pill" that can enhance our cognition; be able to upload our brain to a computer, neuron for neuron; send thoughts and emotions around the world on a "brain-net"; control computers and robots with our mind; push the very limits of immortality; and perhaps even send our consciousness across the universe.
       
Kaku takes us on a grand tour of what the future might hold, giving us not only a solid sense of how the brain functions but also how these technologies will change our daily lives. “Already physicists are doing the basic calculations necessary to make an MRI machine fit into a cell phone,” he writes.

He even presents a radically new way to think about "consciousness" and applies it to provide fresh insight into mental illness, artificial intelligence and alien consciousness.

“Although consciousness is a patchwork of competing and often contradictory tendencies, the left brain ignores inconsistencies and papers over obvious gaps in order to give us a smooth sense of a single 'I,'" Kaku writes, "In other words, the left brain is constantly making excuses, some of them harebrained and preposterous, to make sense of the world. It is constantly asking “Why?” and dreaming up excuses even if the question has no answer.”

With Dr. Kaku's deep understanding of modern science and keen eye for future developments, The Future of the Mind is a scientific tour de force--an extraordinary, mind-boggling exploration of the frontiers of neuroscience.

By 33rd Square

Embed

 Neurosciene  

Recently the Science Channel program Futurescape looked at the possibilities of uploading memories directly to the brain, as may be possible with the work of Theodore Berger.

One day in the near future, you'll plug a cable into your brain and upload information.  In a video from the Science Channel, Michio Kaku says that such technology does not yet exist, but is physically possible.

Memory formation in the brain starts in the prefrontal cortex, but then transfers to the hypocampus, where the memories are stored for the long term.

Related articles Mind-Reading Devices May Be On the Horizon According to Stanford Scientists  Theodore Berger On Neuro Engineering  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Technology May Be Possible

Theodore Berger describes in the video how neural-interface technology, like the ones he is developing could dramatically augment human ability.

"We found that we can not only restore long-term memories, we can enhance the animals ability to remember," states Berger.  "You can think about using devices like this to greatly enhance human memory and to shorten the cycle for learning, in terms of downloading huge quantities of memory at a single time."

Image Source: Theodore Berger

Berger and his team have used silicon-based, multi-site electrode arrays and tissue culture methods for implantation of hardware models into the brain to replace damaged or dysfunctional nerve tissue.  A presentation of the research is available here.

The chip's function is to communicate within the brain is a dramatic first step, he believes, toward an implantable machine that fluently speaks the language of the brain-a machine that could restore memories in people with brain damage or help them make new ones.

SOURCE  Science Channel

By 33rd Square

Subscribe to 33rd Square

 Space Exploration  

NASA researchers have actually been testing actual faster-than-light warp drive practicality. By re-imagining of an Alcubierre Drive, it may eventually result in an engine that can transport a spacecraft to the nearest star in a matter of weeks — and all without violating Einstein's law of relativity.

Star Trek's warp drive may not be restricted to the world of science fiction after all.

Due a loophole in Einstein's general theory of relativity, a spaceship could travel galactic distances much faster than the speed of light.
To do this in practice the spaceship would not move; the space around it would warp.

Scientists at NASA are right now working on the first practical field test toward proving the possibility of warp drives and faster-than-light travel.

A few months ago, physicist Harold White shocked the aeronautics world when he announced that he and his team at NASA had begun work on the development of a warp drive. His proposed design, an ingenious re-imagining of an Alcubierre Drive, may eventually result in an engine that can transport a spacecraft to the nearest star in a matter of weeks — and all without violating Einstein's law of relativity.

Miguel Alcubierre

According to Einstein's theory, an object with mass cannot go as fast or faster than the speed of light. The original Star Trek series ignored this "universal speed limit" in favor of a ship that could zip around the galaxy in a matter of days instead of decades. The writers tried to explain the ship's faster-than-light capabilities by powering the warp engine with a "matter-antimatter" engine.

Antimatter was a popular field of study in the 1960s, when creator Gene Roddenberry was first writing the series. When matter and antimatter collide, their mass is converted to kinetic energy in keeping with Einstein's mass-energy equivalence formula, E=mc2.

In other words, matter-antimatter collision is a potentially powerful source of energy and fuel, but even that wouldn't be enough to propel a starship to faster-than-light speeds.

So, thanks to "Star Trek" that the word "warp" is now practically synonymous with faster-than-light travel. Alcubierre himself developed the model for warp drive after watching an episode of Star Trek.

Alcubierre used his knowledge of the Red Shift phenomenon to exploit a loophole in the "universal speed limit." In his theory, the ship never goes faster than the speed of light — instead, space in front of the ship is contracted while space behind it is expanded, allowing the ship to travel distances in less time than light would take. The ship itself remains in what Alcubierre termed a "warp bubble" and, within that bubble, never goes faster than the speed of light.

Since Alcubierre published his paper "The Warp Drive: Hyper-fast travel within general relativity" in 1994, many physicists and science fiction writers have played with his theory.

The Alcubierre warp drive is still theoretical for now. "The truth is that the best ideas sound crazy at first. And then there comes a time when we can't imagine a world without them." That's a statement from the 100 Year Starship organization, a think tank devoted to making Earth what "Star Trek" would call a "warp-capable civilization" within a century.

The first step toward a functional warp drive is to prove that a "warp bubble" is even possible, and that it can be artificially created.

That is what White and a team of researchers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas are doing right now.

Related articles NASA Launches Three Satellites Into Orbit With Smart Phone Guts  Google and NASA Team Up To Explore the Potential of the D-Wave Quantum Computer  NASA and Bigelow Aerospace Look at Private Exploration of the Moon

According to Alcubierre's theory, one could create a warp bubble by applying negative energy, or energy created in a vacuum. This process relies on the Casimir effect, which states that a vacuum is not actually a void; instead, a vacuum is actually full of fluctuating electromagnetic waves. Distorting these waves creates negative energy, which possibly distorts space-time, creating a warp bubble.

To test if space-time distortion can occur by experiment, the researchers shine two highly targeted lasers: one through the site of the vacuum and one through regular space. White and his fellow researchers will then compare the two beams, and if the wavelength of the one going through the vacuum is lengthened, i.e. redshifted, in any way, they'll know that it passed through a warp bubble.

White and his team have been at work for a few months now, but they have yet to get a verifiable result. The problem is that the fields of negative energies are so minute, the laser so precise, that even the smallest seismic motion of the earth can throw off the results.

White, is now in the process of moving the test equipment to a building on the Johnson Space Center campus that was originally built for the Apollo space program. "The lab is seismically isolated, so the whole floor can be floated," White told TechNewsDaily. "But the system hadn't been [activated] for a while so part of the process was, we had the system inspected and tested."

White is now working on re-calibrating the laser for the new location. He wouldn't speculate on when his team could expect conclusive data, nor how long until fully actuated warp travel might be possible, but he remains convinced that it's only a matter of time.

Michio Kaku has dubbed Alcubierre's notion a "passport to the universe." Scientists speculate that such a drive could result in "speeds" that could take a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri in a mere two weeks — even though the system is 4.3 light-years away.  For now, this remains a theoretical idea, but the potential is truly  incredible.



SOURCES  IO9, Popular Science, NASA

By 33rd Square

Subscribe to 33rd Square

The era of Moore's Law of 2D chip lithography is drawing to a close.  Already Intel is working on 3D chipsets that also work in the 3rd dimension, and other non-silicon computation methods are being developed.

In this Big Think video with Michio Kaku, the physisist and author of Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 helps further explore the significance of this development.  

"

Big Think