The technique operates on the idea lipids in the bilayer of a cell’s plasma membrane block visible light. This is why the brain is normally not transparent. Removing these lipids but still keeping the other parts of the cell and its environment intact would render the brain “see-through” and allow for much easier imaging of large pieces of brain tissue, if not the whole brain at once. This idea is carried out by taking the brain and infusing it with acrylamide, which binds proteins, nucleic acids and other molecules, then heating the tissue to form a mesh that holds the tissue together. The brain is then treated with SDS detergent to remove the light-blocking lipids resulting in a stable brain-hydrogel hybrid. From here the transparent tissue can be fluorescently labeled for certain cells and analyzed. Through the whole process there is less than 10% protein loss in the brain tissue compared to around 41% for other current methods. This is an amazing improvement!

Example of brain image produced by CLARITY from neurons in an intact mouse hippocampus. (http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2013/downloads/CLARITY/CLARITY_stained.jpg)

Until now it has been common practice to use histology to analyze brain tissue in a study. This method involves slicing a section of brain up into extremely small pieces and dying certain slices for various cells and molecules of interest. If a researcher wants any idea of the bigger picture he/she must reconstruct the brain from these small slices. With the CLARITY technique slicing the brain up is no longer necessary. Never before has it been so easy to view full brains, or sections of brain, down to the cellular and molecular level. It is now easy to follow the trajectory of a single neuron through the whole brain.

The development of this brain imaging method comes at a time when much money is being put into uncovering the complete biological workings of the human brain. President Obama has announced his BRAIN initiative and the US National Institute of Health is working on its Human Connectome Project. CLARITY has big potential use for these initiatives and as the technique is refined it seems that it will have a large role in uncovering more about the elusive question of how our brains really work.

For more information on CLARITY view this video on Nature’s website:

http://www.nature.com/news/see-through-brains-clarify-connections-1.12768

- J. Daniel Bireley

Sources:

Structural and molecular interrogation of intact biological systems – Nature

See Through Brains Clarify Connections – Nature

“Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons….In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research laboratories running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures’ plans.” – Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

As tempting as it may be to believe the science fiction version of the intelligence rankings, real-life science has spoken and suggests (much to my displeasure) that humans may actually be the highest on the intelligence scale.

Glia are non-neuronal cells found in the brain mainly described as performing “housekeeping” functions, for example, providing structural support to neurons, and providing them with nutrients. Astrocytes are a specific type of glia, and as one might hypothesize, they are bigger in humans than in mice. Was this just a consequence of humans having more complex brains, or do these astrocytes have different functions in humans beyond the basic housekeeping functions? To test this, scientists grafted human astrocyte progenitor cells into developing mouse brains to create chimeric mice.

Human astrocyte (green) and mouse astrocyte (red)

The human astrocytes that matured successfully matured as human cells; characteristics such as their size were unaffected by being in a mouse environment. But they did not remain completely foreign – they successfully formed electrical connections with the mouse cells. Their differing cellular properties were thus propagated into the mouse neural networks. Of particular interest is the hippocampus, the brain region important for learning and memory. Chimeric hippocampal slices had a higher level of baseline excitatory activity, and long-term potentiation (LTP), or synapse strengthening, was much greater. At the molecular level, this can be explained because the human cells express higher levels of a protein that promotes an increased number of glutamate receptors at the synapse.

There were also clear differences in the behavior of chimeric mice. Experiments were performed to test learning and memory abilities to corroborate the cellular results observed in the hippocampus. A classic fear conditioning experiment involves pairing a tone with a foot shock; mice learn to associate the two and exhibit freezing behavior after hearing a tone. Chimeras learned the association after only one tone/shock pairing. The learning persisted for several days, during which time control animals did not learn the initial association. The experiment was repeated as context fear conditioning, meaning that the mice were placed in different chambers that had varying floors and odors. Chimeric mice were able to differentiate between chambers significantly better than their control counterparts. In other learning and memory tasks, these mice learned their way through mazes faster and were better at familiar object recognition in novel contexts.

The results of this study show that glial cells have much more function beyond their basic housekeeping properties. A single cell graft manipulation was enough to significantly improve mouse performance on learning and memory tasks. Complexity of these cells has evolved with the brain, and this provides important new insight on how exactly this complexity has come to be. Future experiments could involve grafting chimpanzee or macaque glia, any differences observed could be key in outlining how our processing abilities evolved from our monkey fathers (I additionally support research with dolphin glia grafts, keeping on the theme of the three most intelligent species). Unfortunately, without the higher processing abilities made possible by human cells, mice likely cannot achieve the tasks and level of status they exhibit in the science fiction. It seems as though man has indeed correctly interpreted his relationship with the mouse.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

-Reena Clements

References:

Human Brain Cells Boost Mouse Memory – ScienceNOW

Forebrain Engraftment by Human Glial Progenitor Cells Enhances Synaptic Plasticity and Learning in Adult Mice – Cell Stem Cell

Behold – our recent ancestor, the gorilla, and ourselves, the human:

There are many characteristics that separate us from our monkey fathers. Most notably, factors that mark the evolution are the use of fire, use of tools, and a bigger brain. A recent study suggests that it is actually the onset of the use of fire that explains the ability to begin to grow a larger brain. According to a timeline of human history, the earliest Homo Sapiens appeared shortly after beginning to use fire to cook food:

What is it about cooking that allowed us to grow bigger brains? As the brain grows bigger, more energy is required to sustain the increased number of neurons. Gorillas could spend up to ten hours a day obtaining the food necessary to sustain both their brain and large body mass. Why is it that humans can spend significantly less than 10 hours per day to consume our required energy intake, but gorillas must be constantly eating? The tradeoff is in how we prepare our food. Gorillas live off of a raw food diet, whereas humans cook food. Cooking can be thought of as “pre-digesting.” Because we’ve already broken down much of the food by cooking, the calorie absorption process becomes more efficient than if the food had been raw, and requires that we put in a significant amount of energy to just digest. On just a raw-food diet of the gorilla, evolution could not have been possible, because the gorilla could never consume enough energy via raw food in a day to support a larger brain. The use of fire to prepare food paved the way for the evolution of organisms that could support significantly larger brains.

I’m no expert on nutrition, but as a general public service announcement after seeing this study, I would caution going on a raw food diet for a long period of time. Sure, as a vegetarian my canine teeth aren’t being put to use like they’re supposed to be. But I can still consume enough energy to be healthy by cooking my veggies. For those of you who want to try a raw food diet… well, I’m seeing some pretty solid evidence that the whole reason we’re here is because of cooking. And you can’t really argue with evolution.

For more information on the topic, see the transcript of a recent Live Chat hosted by Science.

Sources:

Raw Food Not Enough to Feed Big Brains – Science

Metabolic constraint imposes tradeoff between body size and number of brain neurons in human evolution – PNAS

Food for Thought – Science

We live in an era where the rapid advances in technology are constantly changing how we perceive and interact with the world around us. The question on everyone’s mind is always “what’s next?” The answer: brain-machine interfaces. For the average consumer, brain-computer interfaces are becoming increasingly available on the mass market and their current uses offer a wide range of fascinating opportunities.

A company that’s been in the news a lot lately is NeuroVigil. Their product known as the iBrain has been used to help world-renowned astrophysicist Steven Hawking communicate with a computer simply by thinking. Hawking, who suffers from Lou Gehrig’s disease, developed his own solution to allow him to speak by twitching his cheek to select words from a computer. In its current state, the iBrain is still slower than Hawking’s solution, but NeuroVigil’s founder MD Philip Low hopes that it will eventually be possible to read thoughts aloud. NeuroVigil also made the news by signing a contract with Roche, a major Swiss pharmaceutical company, to use the iBrain in clinical studies for evaluating drugs for neurological diseases.

Philip Low with the iBrain

So how does the iBrain actually work? The iBrain uses one sensor to measure brain signals by means of specialized algorithms. Surprisingly easy to use, NeuroVigil claims that its software makes up for using only one channel. A competing device, the EPOC, made by Emotiv uses a multitude of sensors. The EPOC is a neuro-headset that looks like headphones with sensors extending in all directions. These sensors pick up electrical signals that our brains produce while we are awake or asleep; essentially an EEG recorder. These measurements are not accurate enough to pick up what individual neurons in our brain are doing, but they can provide a rough idea of overall brain activity. Users of the headset learn to think specific thoughts for which the EPOC learns the related brain signals corresponding to a certain command, such as moving the mouse to the left. Emotive has an online store with dozens of applications for the headset and there is also a Mind Workstation for research purposes.

Emotiv's headset

The key strategy of another company, Zeo, is sleep research. Zeo offers a wireless headband to monitor sleep patterns that connect to smartphones using a Bluetooth link. Looking to enter the research scene with their innovative technology at a bargain price, Zeo hopes that it can satisfy the huge demand for a sleep aid product. In a similar manner, NeuroVigil wants to use a smartphone processor to map people’s mind while they sleep using the unique brain ‘signatures’ to diagnose neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s, depression and autism, which again increases the number of potential users. An increasing number of people want to do their own health monitoring and new, inexpensive, wireless sensors and data processing by smartphone apps can help in this goal. Cheap brain-computer interfaces are the next step in this health-monitoring trend and will hopefully lead to newer and much cooler extensions of our mind.

Zeo headset and its app

Sources:

Emotiv

NeuroVigil

Zeo Sleep Manager

There are numerous brain imaging techniques that allow us to gain insight into what damage the brain may have incurred after a patient has a traumatic injury. The ever popular fMRI measures blood flow to infer neural activity. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) uses the magnetic properties of water to look at white matter in the brain, while positron emission tomography (PET) uses radiolabeling to look for a specific chemical in the brain. All of these are important for possible disease diagnosis, however, there is skepticism around how dependent we should be on this technology, as the results should never be taken as the absolute truth.

Comparison of X-Ray to HDFT

Now, a new type of brain imaging developed by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh allows researchers to look for connections that have been broken as a result of traumatic brain injury, much like an X-Ray allows doctors to look for broken bones. It is called High Definition Fiber Tracking (HDFT). Although the technology is not specific at the cellular level, it is accurate in observing specific connections that have been lost as a result of injury. These lost connections act as a reliable predictor for  cellular information, such as the percentage of axons that have been lost.

The accompanying publication in the Journal of Neurosurgery focuses on a case study of a man who sustained severe brain damage after crashing an all-terrain vehicle (public service announcement: this is why we wear helments!!!). Initial MRI scans showed hemorrhaging in the right basal ganglia, which was confirmed by a later DTI. The patient  had extreme difficulty moving the left side of his body, and it was assumed to be a result of damage to the basal ganglia. It was not until the patient had a HDFT test that doctors could pinpoint the true problem: fiber tracts innervating the motor cortex had been lost.

Above is a comparison of the techniques that the researchers saw. The first column consists of scans from a normal patient, while the second two columns are the brain injury patient 4 and 10 months post injury. The imaging techniques used are MRI, DTI, and HDFT. The HDFT gives a clearer picture of what specific connections in the brain have been lost.

The following image comparing DTI with HDFT also shows the inaccuracies of the older technologies.

In healthy subjects, the DTI shows connections and fiber tracks which do not correspond with what we know about brain anatomy, including false turns (deviations from the pathway), false continuations (midline crossing), and looping (travel in random directions). The HDFT scan is consistent with brain anatomy. Thus, the use of HDFT was essential in pinpointing exactly what connections had been lost as a result of the patient’s traumatic brain injury (see Figs 5 and 6 in accompanying paper, linked below).

HDFT has the potential to become the future of diagnoses in patients who have sustained traumatic brain injury, thus revolutionizing how we can treat these patients.

The following video shows a summary of the new technology in addition to the patient in the research paper’s case study:

New Brain Imaging Technique Reveals Damage Caused by TBI … -YouTube

Further videos and news releases are available on the HDFT lab website, linked below.

References:

Concept | HDFT – High Definition Fiber Tracking – HDFT

High-definition fiber tracking for assessment of neurological deficit in a case of traumatic brain injury: finding, visualizing, and interpreting small sites of damage. – Journal of Neurosurgery

New High Definition Fiber Tracking Reveals Damage Caused by Traumatic Brain Injury -University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

What kind of day would you rather have?

A decision is a fact of life. Both the good and the bad, the wrong and the right, one seemingly unjust turn waiting to happen amid the uncertain crossroads of life. Lets be honest, making a decision will always provide the answer, that is the ideal outcome, nothing goes wrong, everything is perfect, happily ever after. On the contrary, there is the undesirable result, which you would rather keep trapped in a cage and have thrown into a river in order to prevent ‘it’ from ruining your party. Now with making a decision comes the possibility for his arch-nemesis “regret” to appear in the equation. Lets look at it this way, if your friend ‘decision’ calls and asks if you want to see this movie which you assume is going to be terrible, you’d probably say “No,” thereby rejecting ‘decision.’ A week later ‘regret’ sends you a letter saying ‘decision’ went to the movie that day, saw your partner, they both hit it off, ‘decision’ slept with them, and now your partner never wants to see you again. See why you should have gone to the movie! That my friends is exactly, to a tee, the comic strip you will see when you look up decision in the dictionary.

Long ramble short, the art of making a decision occurs too many times to count each and every day. Should I hit the snooze button once or twice? How will this effect the amount of time it takes me to get swagged out? If I don’t proceed with the normal swag process, will my 8 a.m. classmates think any less of me than they already do? Who knows, but that is why we are here, right? Yes. For I am the storyteller, the sandman who makes you sleep so soundly at night, and the keeper of the secrets as to why you may or may not be indecisive. So without further adieu, hop on the magic school bus children as we begin our journey to the…(suspense)….build up…bum bum buh…the LAND BEFORE TIME!!! Well maybe, but in the meantime, lets take a look at how Neuroscientists have caught a glimpse of how the brain decides what to believe.

Everyday struggles can be life-threatening

A sense of what we know and don’t know is a universal human experience often associated with how confident we are with the decisions we make. Ultimately, the more confident we are with a decision, the more difficulty we may have breaking away from that choice. However, new research being completed by Neuroscientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory suggests that the estimation of confidence that underlies these daily decisions may be a product of information processing within the brain. To solve this ongoing debate, researchers began trials using rats and their heightened olfactory senses to test their levels of uncertainty. Translated to English, scientists knew that rats sense of smell is extremely sensitive. With this knowledge, they produced mixtures containing varying strengths of smells and gave rewards to the rats who were able to distinguish which component of the mixture was stronger within that specific mixture. In essence, if a rat is able to relay back to a scientist that there was more snozberry than b-a-n-a-n-a-s in the mixture, he or she was given an incredibly delicious reward.

While undergoing these trials, scientists recorded signals from individual neurons in the rodents’ brains. They found that neurons in a part of the brain known as the orbitofrontal cortex (an area of the brain found in both rats and humans) signal the uncertainty of the decisions, “firing” much more vigorously in difficult tests compared with easier tests. Coupled with a follow-up study that was designed specifically to test the confidence of the rats, scientists were able to learn further information pertaining to the neuronal sequences that correlated with confidence. Unlike the first study, in which the rats were given a reward immediately should their decision be correct, this study created a significant delay period between the end of the trial and reward. During this period of time, the rats were given the option to abort the trial and begin again, prior to learning the fate of their decisions. Ultimately, rats often chose to abort the current trial, depicting how they could not only calculate their levels of confidence with their decisions, but translate that response into behavior. Pretty cool huh?

So what have we learned today. Rats may be able to distinguish between various smells, but can they spell b-a-n-a-n-a? Confidence in relation to decision making is not a complex process only associated with humans, but rather a core component of decision making that is found throughout the animal kingdom. And finally, there is always a right way to make the wrong decision and vice versa (Yeah, try and play that one out in your head) lol.

Confidence plays a role in Decision-making – Science Daily
Single Neurons – Science Daily

Artist Yaron Steinburg’s installation piece for any brain-lover is a masterpiece. This piece is not only stunningly beautiful but also thought provoking. At first glance, it may look merely like brain model made out of cardboard boxes. After taking a deeper look inside, however, a myriad of complex ideas can be observed. The complexity of the piece is deceptively hidden within the brain itself, wherein a booming city lies. The city looks like a seemingly unorganized mess, much like the many interacting regions of the human brain itself. The true brilliance of the piece though lies in looking past this cluttered city, and viewing the piece (and its message about the nature of the brain) for what it really is: an organized mess of infinite complexity and beauty.

Yaron Steinburg’s Portfolio

We’ve all seen it happen, marveled at the constancy, and even blamed the friends around us for our own personal breathing. Does this sound strange? I am talking of course about contagious yawning; this is the phenomenon that seeing someone yawn will cause you to immediately do the same. But why, and for that matter, why even yawn in the first place?

More and more researchers seem to agree that we yawn (actually all vertebrates yawn) as a means of brain thermoregulation. This seems somewhat fantastical at first, but let’s look at the evidence. We have associated yawning for years with being tired. Many of us wake up each morning, yawn and stretch as we get out of bed; we are still tired, right? Or better yet, you’re sitting in the back of your 90 minute lecture, and although you’ve been trying to be more attentive this semester, you can’t help but sit, idly yawning and wishing you were back in your bed for a nap. This theory of thermoregulation actually fits perfectly with us yawning when we are tired.

Thermoregulation has long been attributed to sleep. Sleep is believed to allow our body to properly regulate its temperature, so it should come as no surprise that we yawn—or cool our brains—when we are tired. Without sleep, our bodies have difficulties regulating their temperatures; meaning as we get more tired, our brains could be getting hotter. This simple mechanism of yawning would then allow our bodies to compensate for thermoregulatory failure caused by a lack of sleep.

Further evidence would even allow us to predict the frequency of contagious yawning based upon the ambient temperature. Researchers have found that individuals were more likely to yawn in cooler temperatures (below body temperature) than warmer (above body) temperatures. The longer they were exposed to this ambient temperature, the more they followed this tendency of yawning at the lower temperatures. If you don’t believe this, test it yourself. The next time you are outside in the summer (or in a hot room for a prolonged period of time) think about how many times you yawn and then do the same in colder temperatures. The frequency should be significantly lower in the warm, summer weather, especially the longer you are exposed to it, than in the cold winter.

So if we agree that yawning is the brain’s way of cooling down, why then do we need to yawn contagiously? Is our brain just allowing us to remind others to stay cool? This is doubtful, and researchers cannot actually completely answer this question yet. However, some evidence suggests that contagious yawning serves a function of self-processing and is a part of a neural network that is also involved in empathy.

So the next time you yawn (and I’m sure you did a few times while reading this) simply remember that your brain just needs a quick flux of air to cool off, so it can continue to perform the millions of incredible tasks you make it do every minute of every day.

Really? The Claim: Yawning Cools the Brain – NY Times

Contagious Yawning and Seasonal Climate Variation – Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience

Yawning and Stretching Predict Brain Temperature Changes in Rats: Support for the Thermoregulatory Hypothesis – Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience

Thermoregulation and Sleep – Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cphy.cp040259/full

Sleep, Thermoregulation, and Circadian Rhythms – Comprehensive Physiology

What comes to mind when you think of Friday? Friends. A night off from work. Movies. Fun. Rebecca Black? Yikes. I don’t mean to remind you of such a low point in the history of American pop-culture but there is, in fact, a small amount of useful information to be extracted from the phenomenon that is Rebecca Black. Why did her music spread like an epidemic through the minds of millions of teens and adults worldwide? This event can be loosely related to what the Germans like to call an öhrwurm.

The term öhrwurm literally translates in English to “earworm”, and can be described as that inescapable occurrence of getting a song stuck in your head for an hour, a day, or even months at a time. The term is misleading in that the repetition of music does not occur in the ear but within the brain. For an experience that is so familiar to most people there is still much unknown as to how and why one contracts this stuck song syndrome.

One man that has put some time into the issue is Professor James Kellaris of the University of Cincinnati. He coined the term “cognitive itch” to describe his theory of the instance of getting a song stuck in one’s head because the only way to satisfy the feeling is to repeat the song over and over inside the mind (kind of like scratching an itch). He has found that there are certain kinds of music and songs that tend to induce an unusual reaction in the auditory cortex. This extra attention that is paid to a small part of a song produces the “itch”, which then starts the vicious cycle of repetition. Simple songs that are catchy and repetitive are found to be the one’s most often plaguing the mind, as well as songs with unpredicted rhythm changes. This is why “Don’t Stop Believin’” or “Hey Jude” will continue to live on decades after their original heyday in American culture.

Research so far has been unable to uncover the exact biological mechanisms of this phenomenon. A recent study done at Dartmouth University, however, has shed some light on not only how the auditory cortex (the area where the brain processes most of the external auditory stimuli it receives) may be involved in producing this odd effect, but also on some other areas of the brain and how they are involved in producing the “earworm” as well. Using magnetic resonance imaging techniques it was found that when a patient is exposed to a catchy tune with some parts of the song missing here and there, the auditory cortex does not just shut down or anything during these silent gaps. In fact, if the song is recognizable the brain will fill in the missing pieces and effectively continue the song even when it is not playing! The brain’s ability to retain auditory signatures makes it possible for us to preserve “many structural and temporal properties of auditory stimuli” such as songs. This discovery indicates that the auditory cortices of the brain are most likely involved in the occurrence of earworms. Besides the primary and secondary auditory cortices though, blood flow has been found to increase in such other areas as the primary motor cortex, frontal operculum, insula, posterior cerebellum, and basal ganglia when the brain is exposed to “novel melody” or monotonic vocalization. When a repeated melody is heard, there is also additional stimulation in the planum polare (BA 38). Further study of these brain regions has the potential to reveal more about not just the mystery behind earworms, but also about the complex memory systems of the mind.

It has also been shown that there are people who are more prone to earworms than others based on gender, physical characteristics, and personality. For example, women are more likely to be affected by a stuck song for a longer period of time than men. Supposedly left-handed people and people with anxiety disorders like OCD are more likely to catch an earworm, and so are people who are more musically inclined (most likely because they listen to more music than the average person). So if you are a left-handed, obsessive compulsive female musician and just can’t get rid of that annoying background music that’s been in your head all day, try a few of these tactics: turn on the radio, play a different song for yourself (on one of the many instruments you have at hand), listen to that song, or try to pass the misery along to someone else.

The “earworm” phenomenon, and the ability for a simple melody to last months, or even years inside the mind is just another one of the many fascinating aspects of the brain. Because of this ability, I am stuck here with Britney Spears on replay in my head at the moment. But, hey, at least it’s not “Friday.”

And in case you don’t have an earworm of your own here is a video that will give you a few (and maybe a laugh too…)

Earworms (stuck song syndrome): Towards a Natural History of Intrusive Thoughts – British Journal of Psychology

The Song System of The Human Brain – Cognitive Brain Research

Why Do Songs Get Stuck in Your Head? – Word Detective

Science of Music – Exploratorium

Why Do Songs Get Stuck in Your Head? – The Straight Dope

In almost every major futuristic science-fiction work of the last century, jetpacks and flying cars are seemingly as ubiquitous as today’s oversized SUV’s, lining the closets and garages of every hardworking American.  Understandably, in the year 2011, this has lead many disenchanted Trekkies and purveyors of assorted geek cultures to ask, “Well, scientists, where’s my jetpack?!”  While I commiserate with my fellow fans of Asimov and Adams, several recent innovations have led me to believe that we all might be overlooking just how “futuristic” the time we live in really is.  Accessing Google on the iPhone is certainly as close to the Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy as we may ever come.  We have the ability to beam blueprints of intricate plastic objects and now even organs anywhere in the world and literally print them out.  We have computers that can beat us in Jeopardy!  And last but not least, Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you Brain Driver, the thought-controlled car.  On behalf of scientists everywhere, I accept your apologies, geeks.

The AutoNOMOs Project's semi-autonomous car can be powered by smart phones, tablet computers, and now even your own thoughts.

Brain Driver, a semi-autonomous thought-controlled vehicle, is a research endeavor by the AutoNOMOS project, a division of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Freie Universität Berlin headed by Raul Rojas.  The car itself is fully decked out with 360 degree scanning lasers and cameras.  This allows it to navigate roads, to stay within lines, to avoid pedestrians and other obstructions, and to look super futuristic.  I know, how mundane right?  We’ve all seen that Lexus parallel park itself on TV; this doesn’t impress me.  Except that the team at the AutoNOMOS project isn’t content with stopping here. They have utilized a new consumer EEG technology from Emotiv, called the Epoc, to map distinct thought patterns recorded from the brain onto navigation directions that can be used to control the car.  The Epoc, not the first consumer EEG (Electroencephalography) system of its kind but definitely the most user friendly, uses 16-channels to record electrical patterns in the user’s brain from outside the skull as the user is asked to move a virtual cube on a computer screen to the right, left, forward or backward.  Custom algorithms are then used to map these “thought” patterns, unique to each individual, onto specific navigation commands for the car (forward and backward corresponding to acceleration and deceleration respectively).  As the car approaches an intersection, the system records the thought pattern of the driver and proceeds to turn in the desired direction.

Well, that’s the plan anyway.  While the system does work with good regularity, there is a distinct drawback to the two-second delay between when the electrical patterns are read and when the car actually turns.  It also has the limitation of only being able to discern between four different commands, not exactly enough for normal road navigation.  It also appears that a large swath of the population seems to be what Rojas refers to in an article on Wired.com as “BCI illiterate”, or incapable of using EEG based brain-computer interface technologies.

The Emotiv Epoc EEG headset allows mind reading to become a portable activity.

If vaguely unreliable, thought-controlled cars seem like a bad idea to you, I can certainly see where you are coming from.  It’s undeniable that this isn’t intended to be the ultimate use of this technology.  There are, thankfully, researches looking to apply these very same ideas to more useful and practical means, like motorized wheelchairs.  When applied in this way, this gadget moves beyond the realm of mere novelty item intended to intrigue the masses, into a life changing technology for people who could truly use it.  A thought-controlled wheelchair would allow quadriplegics, and others whose conditions leave them with minimal control of their bodies, to move about their worlds simply with their thoughts.  As far back as 2007, Javier Minguez of the University of Zaragosa gave an interview to Wired.com discussing his group’s work on thought-controlled wheelchairs.  At that time, portable consumer EEG technologies were not available; subjects were literally tethered to oversized desktop computers.  One could see how this might be a problem.  With the advent of the Emotiv Epoc, and the vehicle control technologies developed by the AutoNOMOS project, the hurdles between the current state of this technology and widespread consumer availability now lay exclusively in training people to use the technology, and increasing the number, and complexity of the directions the system can learn.  Australian researchers D.A. Craig and H.T. Nguyen at the University of Technology in Sydney are already hard at work on this problem.  In a clever attempt to map a greater number of more complex commands, these researchers have combined thought pattern mapping for diverse and complex mental exercises with head motion sensors, adding many degrees of freedom to the command interface.  We can only assume that with research on both the EEG and autonomous vehicle fronts moving forward, it won’t be terribly long before thought-controlled wheelchairs are commonplace amongst the American public.  Jetpacks or no jetpacks, the future is here, and I for one am ecstatic about the technological possibilities it promises!

The AutoNOMOs Project

Emotiv- Brain Computer Interface Technology

Tan Le: A headset that reads your brainwaves – Videos on TED.com

A wheelchair that reads your mind-Wired.com

Thinking your way through traffic in a brain-controlled car-Autopia-Wired.com

Craig DA, Nguyen HT. “Adaptive EEG Thought Pattern Classifier for Advanced Wheelchair Control.” 2007 Annal International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Vols 1-16 : 2544-2547 2007-PubMed