Neurological Basis for Embarrassment

Recording people belting out an old Motown tune and then asking them to listen to their own singing without the accompanying music seems like an unusually cruel form of punishment. But for a team of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco and University of California, Berkeley, this exact Karaoke experiment has revealed what part of the brain is essential for embarrassment.

The twist to the experiment was that most of the subjects had neurodegenerative diseases, which helped scientists identify a thumb-sized bit of tissue in the right hemisphere of the front part of the brain called the “pregenual anterior cingulate cortex” as integral to embarrassment.

Knowing that people lose their ability to be embarrassed and which part of the brain governs that ability may suggest ways to help diagnose people with certain neurodegenerative diseases earlier.


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Control your laptop with your eye gaze

A camera over the screen is a standard feature for laptops. But only Lenovo's new model has a pair of cameras below its display to track the movements of a user's eyes. The prototype laptop can be controlled with eye motions, reducing the need to use the mouse and making it faster to navigate through information such as maps or menus.

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Better Bioimaging with a Liquid Lens

A new handheld probe uses near-infrared light and a liquid lens to create sharp three-dimensional images of lesions beneath the skin, in a few seconds. The device, allows doctors to peer two millimeters below the skin's surface to see, in particular, whether the cells beneath a mole show signs of being cancerous. If proved reliable, the probe could sharply reduce the number of biopsies that are necessary.

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Wearable Scanner Opens New Frontier in Neuroscience

A tiny wearable /mobile PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scanner has been used to track chemical activity in the brains of unrestrained animals for the first time. By revealing neurological circuitry as the subjects perform normal tasks, researchers say, the technology could greatly broaden the understanding of learning, addiction, depression, and other conditions.

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Computers Get in Touch with Your Emotions

Computers could be a lot more useful if they paid attention to how you felt. With the emergence of new tools that can measure a person's biological state, computer interfaces are starting to do exactly that: take users' feelings into account.

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The Healing Power of Light

A new polymer material that can repeatedly heal itself at room temperature when exposed to ultraviolet light presents the tantalizing possibility of products that can repair themselves when damaged. Possibilities include self-healing medical implants, cars, or even airplane parts.

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Kinect Creators Making PC Controller

PrimeSense, the privately held Israeli company that licensed core Kinect technology to Microsoft, announced that it is teaming up with PC and peripheral maker Asus to create a similar device for the PC.

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Thought-controlled iPad app

InteraXon demonstrated two new applications for its headband based BCI technology at CES 2011. It uses headphones equipped with a pair of sensors that sit against the user’s left ear and forehead, a simplified EEG-like system made portable.

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Google Art Project

Google has recently launched Art Project, a collaboration with some of the world's most famous museums, with the goal of enabling people to visit and see art. Google is utilizing the same technology in Google Earth to map the art projects that can be zoomed in investigated in fine detail.

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Growth Hormone Also a Memory Booster

Researchers have found that insulin-like growth factor II (IGF-II), a naturally occurring hormone, can boost memory retention in animals. The discovery offers a rare glimpse into a mysterious stage of the learning process, and it may one day provide scientists with a new way to treat memory impairments, such as those caused by dementia.

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