Tag Archives: Brain

Lab-grown mini brains: we can’t dismiss the possibility that they could one day outsmart us

Guillaume Thierry is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Bangor University. “I am passionate about the human mind and how it makes sense of the world around us. My research is devoted to understanding how we form concepts, consciously or unconsciously, how we manipulate them, through language or nonverbally, how we learn, remember, forget, and imagine. In my applied work, I strive to inspire individuals to attain higher state of awareness of the world and of themselves. Specifically, I use experimental psychology and electroencephalography to study language comprehension in the auditory and visual modalities, and mainly the processing of meaning by the human brain.”

Brain organoids help neuroscientists understand brain development, but aren’t perfect matches for real brains

Madeline Andrews is a Postdoctoral Scholar of Regeneration Medicine, University of California, San Francisco. Her scientific interests are focused on processes of neural development like signaling and cell fate mechanisms.

Aparna Bhaduri is aPostdoctoral Scholar in Regeneration Medicine, University of California, San Francisco. Her long term interests are in understanding how stem cells during cortical development give rise to the human brain, and how aspects of these developmental programs can be hijacked in cancers such as glioblastoma.

Arnold Kriegstein is Professor of Neurology and Director of the Developmental and Stem Cell Biology Program, University of California, San Francisco. His research focuses on the way in which neural stem and progenitor cells in the embryonic brain produce neurons, and ways in which this information can be used for cell based therapies to treat diseases of the nervous system.

Linking brains to computers: how new implants are helping us achieve this goal

Dr Yunlong Zhao joined the Advanced Technology Institute, University of Surrey as Lecturer (Assistant Professor) and with a joint appointment at the National Physical Laboratory (UK) as the Senior Research Scientist since October 2018. Prior to this appointment, he carried out his postdoctoral research and joint doctoral research at Harvard University, where he conducted research in nano-semiconductor devices and flexible electronics for electrophysiology and nano-bio interface.

Our obsession with taking photos is changing how we remember the past

“Human memory represents my main research interest, and more specifically I study how personal memories are remembered in normal people and in those whose ability to remember is exceptional. I believe in disseminating the results of research to the larger public. My work on memory has been featured in newspapers and magazines in the UK (among many, The Sunday Times) and around the world (among many,The Washington Post). I enjoy collaborations with artists (see the False Memory Archive; The Not Knowns theatre project, both funded by the Wellcome Trust).”

Giuliana Mazzoni is Professor of Psychology, University of Hull.

How we identified brain patterns of consciousness

Davinia Fernández-Espejo is Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology and Centre for Human Brain Health, University of Birmingham. Her main goal is to understand how the brain supports consciousness and what goes wrong for patients to become entirely unaware after severe brain injury. She uses techniques such as MRI (structural and functional), tDCS, and behavioural approaches in both healthy volunteers and patients with a disorder of consciousness to test hypotheses about the role of different brain structures in the clinical deficits they present. This research is directly translated into the development of diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers to be used in clinical settings, as well as the development of novel treatment approaches.

Demystifying the psychedelic experience

Marta Kaczmarczyk is an expert in persuasive science and technology. She is interested in demystifying the psychedelic experience and creating a scientific framework that would be more accessible to the Western mind and more relevant than the shamanic or new age framework which is popular in the psychedelic community. She is a co-founder and a coordinator of Psychedelic Society of the Netherlands; a non-profit organization focused on advocating a safe use of psychedelic substances.

How the power of art can help scientists like me understand the experience of schizophrenia

Associate professor and Royal Society Research Fellow, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford.

“My research aims to understand how individual genes impact on the complex brain functions that are altered in psychiatric disorders. I believe that understanding these links will help to explain why some people respond well to treatments, whilst others do not, and will ultimately lead to new and improved therapies.”

The Purkinje Pattern

Dana Simmons is a neuroscientist, science-artist, and medical writer in Chicago. While at the university, Dana transformed Purkinje neurons into art by testing the limits of confocal microscopy and adding an artistic touch. She is endlessly fascinated by the beauty in the brain and the patterns that are ever-present throughout microscopic and macroscopic nature. In 2016 she received the Passion in Science: Arts & Creativity award from the New England Biolabs.

The ‘real you’ is a myth – we constantly create false memories to achieve the identity we want

Giuliana Mazzoni is Professor of Psychology, University of Hull. Human memory represents her main research interest, and more specifically the study on how personal memories are remembered in normal people and in those whose ability to remember is exceptional. Her work on memory has been featured in newspapers and magazines in the UK (among many, The Sunday Times) and around the world (among many,The Washington Post).