Playing action video games can boost learning

In the a new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bavelier and her team first used a pattern discrimination task to compare action video game players’ visual performance with that of individuals who do not play action video games.

The action-gamers outperformed the non-action gamers. The key to the action-gamers success, the researchers found, was that their brains used a better template for the task at hand.

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Artificial Retina

Physicists developed an interface to the optical nerve using graphene for an optical prostheses.

Graphene is viewed as a kind of "miracle solution": It is thin, transparent and has a tensile strength greater than that of steel. In addition, it conducts electricity better than copper. Since it comprises only a single layer of carbon atoms it is considered two-dimensional.

 In 2010 the scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for their ground-breaking work on this material.

In October 2013, the "Graphene" project was selected alongside the "Human Brain Project" as a Flagship Project of the EU FET Initiative (Future and Emerging Technologies).

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Brain controlled car steers, accelerates, brakes

AutoNOMOS and the Freie Universität Berlin  are developing BrainDriver, the first car that steers, accelerates, and brakes based on its driver’s thoughts. In a recent experiment, Henrik Matzke drove a car at speeds up to 31 mph.

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First Tests of Thought-Controlled Aircraft Successful

Pilots of the future could be able to control their aircraft by merely thinking commands. Scientists of the Technische Universität München and the TU Berlin have now demonstrated the feasibility of flying via brain control – with astonishing accuracy.
(Photo : Courtesy A. Heddergott/TU München ) 

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Mapping brain activity with molecular precision

A new technique allows neuroscientists to precisely track neural communication in the brain over time, using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) along with a specialized molecular MRI contrast agent.

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Sugar-powered biobattery has 10 times the energy storage of lithium: Your smartphone might soon run on enzymes

Researchers at Virginia Tech have successfully created a sugar-powered fuel cell that has an energy storage density of 596 amp-hours per kilo — or “one order of magnitude” higher than lithium-ion batteries. This fuel cell is refillable with a solution of maltodextrin, and its only by products are electricity and water. The chief researcher, Dr. Zhang, says the tech could be commercialized in as soon as three years.

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The brain can process images seen for just 13 milliseconds

Neuroscientists have found that the human brain can process entire images that the eye sees for as little as 13 milliseconds — the first evidence of such rapid processing speed.

That speed is far faster than the 100 milliseconds suggested by previous studies. In the new study, which appears in the journal Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, researchers asked subjects to look for a particular type of image, such as “picnic” or “smiling couple,” as they viewed a series of six or 12 images, each presented for between 13 and 80 milliseconds.

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