Volume Conduction ? Ask Guido Nolte

Exploiting temporal delays in interpreting EEG/MEG data in terms of brain connectivity Guido Nolte

A Coherent talk

EEG Coupling, Granger Causality and Multivariate Autoregressive Models
Alois Schlögl

Cognition and the Law

Neuropsychanalysis en rTMS

Check it out.

Applied Neuroscience

A very interesting repository of neuroscientific EEG/ERP articles. By "Bob" dr. Robert Thatcher. Visit the Neuroguide site !

SPM for EEG/ERP

A repository of articles (and software) about the use ofSPM in EEG/ERP Software is here

Social psychology anybody ?

Science doi:10.1126/science.1161405 (2008) The controversial ‘broken windows’ thesis holds that small signs of crime, such as smashed glass and graffiti, can lead to more of the same, or worse. This is the idea behind ‘zero tolerance’ policing. But strong, supportive evidence for the theory has been lacking. Kees Keizer and his colleagues at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands covertly observed fellow Groningers who were given the opportunity to steal an envelope that obviously contained a €5 note from a postbox. When the postbox was clean and tidy 13% took the bait; by contrast, 27% stole from a graffitied postbox and 25% from one with litter around it. Other tests showed that people are more likely to litter in the presence of graffiti or abandoned shopping trollies, and after hearing the crackle of illegal fireworks.

Insomnia

A knowledge base about Sleep

Stitching sounds

Weird designs.... frontal lobe stuff. Sewing sound machine. Sound butter website as source

Fuzzy brain arithmetic

A small sarcastic benevolent smile.......................just once in a while

Do you know this type of student (nurse/patient/child/secretary/wife ??)...who is chasing You with questions that they could have easily looked up themselves ?. But You do not want to be rude so just tell them : "let me Google that for You" and send them this link back Suppose they ask You "where to find out about ehealth on the internet ? Or You are feeling good : send them to Dr Shock: NOW Or You are feeling "grimiimrrr" then stay calm and just reply in a soft oily voice "Just a minute, let me "Google that for You" NOW

DSM-V is here..

Read at Dr Shock

EPIC XV

EPIC XV Call for Proposals

The Program Committee invites submissions of paper and symposia for EPIC XV on a wide range of topics. Themes include cognition and memory, sensory and motor processes, emotion and personality, motor control, neuropsychiatric disorders, functional genomics, cellular mechanisms, intracranial recording, multimodal imaging, and signal and source analysis. Presentations will include single papers and symposium. All abstracts will be submitted through the website link below. The deadline for receipt of symposium submissions is Monday, November 17, 2008, and notification of decisions can be expected by January 15, 2009. The deadline for receipt of abstracts for single papers is Monday, January 12, 2009, and notification of decisions can be expected by February 28, 2009. If a paper or symposium is accepted, presenters will need to preregister for the conference.

Presentation Formats.

Single paper presentations. Submissions consist of a 250 word abstract which describes aims, methods, results, and conclusions for a study. Single papers will be scheduled as either an oral presentation as part of a symposium, or as a poster. Please indicate your preference for an oral or poster presentation when submitting the abstract. However, the Program Commmittee will make a final decision regarding the presentation format. Symposia. Symposia will be 90 minutes in length and include several speakers on a related topic. The formats are flexible, and include the following options. Four fifteen minute or three 20 minute presentations can be followed by a moderated discussion of the topic. The discussant may be the chair, or additional participant. Symposia consisting of four 20 minute presentations may be submitted, but this will allow very limited time for discussion. Each Symposium submission will begin with an abstract which describes the symposium as a whole followed by individual abstracts for each presentation. No abstract is required for the discussant.

Agilent to Bruno

Everything that is to difficult for me i just dispatch to Bruno. Also this challenge..... Dr. Peter C. Johnson has created a cipher painting that contains a hidden message and an accompanying $1500 prize to the first person to decode it. The organizers say that the "image requires not only skill and scientific experience to decode so as to determine its cryptic message, but also a strong appreciation for biological studies."

From the contest website:

MicroArray depicts the highly colorful readout of a gene-expression microarray that measures the presence and quantity of gene-specific mRNA in tissue fluids. To this extent, a microarray is an instrument that decodes the applied design of physical development at any point in time. By knowing which genes are turned on and off as a function of physical state, knowledge can be teased from the unknown regarding the causes of diseases, aging, and the like, thus solving the 'cryptogram of life.'

The science of cryptography and the jealousy with which Nature guards information have much in common. In cryptography, messages are hidden within sources of information using encoding of multiple types. Though a developed microarray has beauty, it is also a cryptic form of information that requires skill in interpretation. MicroArray was created to convey both the beauty of the microarray and the power of its retained information by encoding within it a powerful message using cryptographic techniques. Unlocking the code in MicroArray will reveal a powerful message that bears on the mystery of life itself.

This isn't just any picture of a microarray --- it's a cryptogram with a $1,500 message.

GEN along with partner, Scintellix, and sponsor, Agilent, bring you the Microarray Challenge. Crack the code, and you can win big.

Peter C. Johnson, M.D., president and CEO of Scintellix, created this painting called 'MicroArray.' He has embedded a cipher based on the dots in the pastel. Pit your skills against this cryptogram and decipher what's turning on these 'genes.'

The first to unravel the hidden message will win $1,500. The first 50 registrants will receive a MicroArray copy poster and a poster tube.

Every Monday, starting from November 17, a clue will be provided to put you on the right track. You can check this website for clues as they come in.

You have until December 31 to prove that you are a master code breaker. Feel free to give the Microarray Challenge a shot as many times as you like up to once a day. All entries will be considered.

Really smart pills ?

Now this might not be Your top notch brainsurgery device but as a memory aid it could show to be very usefull in enforcing a better patient compliance.Seen on Medgadget. Glowcaps are a simple solution to an old problem of daily medication compliance by patients of any age or size. Designed to remind people to take their daily meds, the standard pharmacy bottle sized caps keep track of when they're opened and remind patients with a blinking light to take the pills inside. If the patient doesn't comply, the cap plays a regularly repeating ring tone until it gets its deserved attention. The caps are finally available for purchase through Amazon at $30 a pop.

Workstation anyone ?

I defenitely need a new neuroscientific workstation. Enter the Emperor. Now where did I put that COD IV CD ?? CRYSIS !!!!

new ANN book

Chapter 1. Artificial Neural Networks in Biology and Chemistry - the Evolution of a new Analytical Tool

Hugh M. Cartwright

Chapter 2. Overview of Artificial Neural Networks

Jinming Zou, Yi Han, and Sung-Sau So

Chapter 3. Bayesian Regularization of Neural Networks

Frank Burden and Dave Winkler

Chapter 4. Kohonen and Counter-propagation Neural Networks Applied for Mapping and Interpretation of IR Spectra

Marjana Novic

Chapter 5. Artificial Neural Network Modeling in Environmental Toxicology

James Devillers

Chapter 6. Neural Networks in Analytical Chemistry

Mehdi Jalali-Heravi

Chapter 7. Application of Artificial Neural Networks for Decision Support in Medicine

Brendan Larder, Dechao Wang and Andy Revell

Chapter 8. Neural Networks in Building QSAR Models

Igor I. Baskin, Vladimir A. Palyulin, and Nikolai S. Zefirov

Chapter 9. Peptide Bioinformatics- Peptide Classification Using Peptide Machines

Zheng Rong Yang

Chapter 10. Associative Neural Network

Igor V. Tetko

Chapter 11. Neural Networks Predict Protein Structure and Function

Marco Punta and Burkhard Rost

Chapter 12. The Extraction of Information and Knowledge from Trained Neural Networks

David J. Livingstone, Antony Browne, Raymond Crichton, Brian D. Hudson, David Whitley and Martyn G. Ford

Presentation ...presentations

If you are like me constantly running around with bulky laptops and video projectors the time is ripe to miniaturize. Look at this bright little gadget. Looks "pico" bella to me.

When reality beats Science Fiction

You know that reality beats science fiction and thus that the future is now when you are using this g-speak interface. Sounds simple and unimpressive but watch the video. Sorry, take a firm seat first to prevent you from falling over because you will be impressed. I was. Thanks very much to Greg for "pointing" this one out.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaw...

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

See the ripples of your thoughts..

See the brain tsunami of gamma waves emerge. People at Riken did just that.

I think Esther will enjoy...

Read here

A seemingly simple action, such as picking up a pencil, actually involves complex communication between many parts of the central nervous system. Information about the pencil and its location enters the body through the eye, and eventually reaches a part of the brain called the somatosensory cortex. There, this information seems to be encoded as two types of brain waves: gamma waves, which oscillate 30–80 times per second, and very fast oscillations (VFOs), which oscillate 80–160 times per second. These brain rhythms may then be conveyed to other parts of the brain to initiate and control the action of reaching out an arm to pick up the pencil.If other parts of the brain also produce gamma waves and VFOs, it is possible that these brain regions could receive these signals from the somatosensory cortex, and communicate with this or other portions of the cerebral cortex to control movements. In fact, recent work measuring brain waves from the cerebellum, the part of the brain responsible for motor learning, indicates that the cerebellum may communicate with the cerebral cortex to regulate movement. A team of researchers, including Steven Middleton and Thomas Knöpfel from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute (BSI), Wako, Miles Whittington from Newcastle University, United Kingdom, and Roger Traub, now at IBM in New York, report these findings in the journal Neuron1. Figure 1: Optical imaging of brain waves using a voltage sensitive dye. Localization of the brain waves around cerebellar neuron cell bodies (thick white line) and their axons (the area enclosed by this line).

Tapping into brain waves In slices from the mouse cerebellum that they had treated with nicotine, the researchers measured the frequency of oscillations using two methods: electrode recordings, and visualization of a voltage-sensitive dye (Fig. 1). By both methods, they found that the cerebellar oscillations were a mixture of gamma waves and VFOs. These waves were almost identical in frequency to oscillations others had measured in the cerebral cortex during the same experimental conditions. This frequency match suggests that the cerebellum and cerebral cortex may exchange signals to control movement.The cerebral cortex contains many types of neurons that are both excitatory and inhibitory. The excitatory neurons, which use glutamate as their chemical neurotransmitter, play an important role in regulating the oscillations of the cerebral cortical neuronal network. The cerebellum also contains some excitatory (granule) cells, while the rest consists of inhibitory neurons, which use GABA (γ-aminobutyric acid) as their neurotransmitter. The researchers demonstrated that the granule cells were not involved in generating the brain waves, so it was surprising that they observed these oscillations at all, since they had to have been generated by inhibitory neuronal populations only. The findings therefore indicate that brain areas with vastly different neuronal compositions can still produce similar rhythms.Middleton, Knöpfel and colleagues also found another important difference between the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex. Oscillations in both brain regions can be triggered by activation of receptors for the neurotransmitter acetylcholine; however, the receptors in the cortex are so-called muscarinic receptors, which are not activated by nicotine, whereas the receptors in the cerebellum are triggered by nicotine. Furthermore, the cerebellar nicotine receptor that is acting to induce the brain waves seemed to be a ‘nonclassical’ nicotine receptor.

Continue....

Shttt do not wake up..... people learning

When you listen to someone speaking, it may seem like the words are segmented by pauses, much like the words on this page are separated by spaces. But in reality, you hear a continuous stream of sounds that your brain must organize into meaningful chunks. One process that mediates this ability is called statistical learning, by which the brain automatically keeps track of how often events, such as sounds, occur together. Now a team of RIKEN scientists has found a signature pattern of brain activity that can predict a person’s degree of achievement in this type of task1.The team led by Kazuo Okanoya presented volunteers with a 20-minute recording of an artificial language, which they heard passively in three 6.6-minute sessions. While the recording played, participants’ brain activity was measured using an imaging technique called electroencephalograms or EEGs. The researchers then analyzed how the EEG patterns related to events in the recorded language.This language, instead of being composed of pronounceable syllables, contained only tones, similar to keyboard notes. “We used nonsense tone words to detect basic perceptual processes that are independent of linguistic faculty,” explains team-member Dilshat Abla. This way, the researchers were able to focus on the brain-activity signature of general statistical learning, rather than the specific example of language. The recording heard by the participants consisted of six ‘words’ containing three tones each, but since they were played together without gaps, the word composition would not have been immediately obvious. The participants were told to relax and listen to the streaming sound, and at the end of the experiment, they were tested on which tone triplets came from their recording and which were randomly generated. The participants succeeded in this discrimination, which revealed to the researchers that they had performed statistical learning without exerting conscious effort. Those who earned average scores in this test showed a distinctive pattern of brain activity in the third recording session. These electric signatures, known as event-related potentials or ERPs, tended to occur 400 milliseconds after the start of a new tone word. Those who scored the lowest did not exhibit these ERPs in any session, suggesting they were not segmenting the start of each word as effectively (Fig. 1).The highest-scoring volunteers did show these ERPs, but only in their first session. Abla explains that the effect is “largest during the discovery phase of the statistical structure,” and represents the process rather than the result of statistical learning.

ERP

Small brocure in dutch. Put here as a quick archive link. Is available free in english at ANT.

Moving around at Cyberdyne

Is going up more easy then moving down those stairs ? A bit expensive and bulky still but the clinical applications are very real !! From Tsukuba where forefront technology is the talk of the town.

I Robot .. I kill You

That robots are swiftly growing into something more then some hopping around shiny metal alloy assemblies, is becoming progressively clear. This model is a nice first step. Add more zygomatics and facial small muscle physionomics and the thing will be hard to distinguish from a real flesh and blood politician (we still avoid the word humanoid).

Enjoy.. (PS the guy who programmed and filmed this, Peter Jeackel, ( or dreaming of Mr "Hide" ?) has a great sense of humor). Meet "Jules and Julia" preparing their next step: a quick Turing test ? Thanks to Dr Schock for discovering this one. Visit his blog ! great stuff !!

Join the movement

Dear TEDizens, We urge you to take a moment to watch a short video that went live on the web today. Beautifully filmed and edited by TEDster Jesse Dylan and his team at Form TV, it might just be the most inspiring thing you see this week. That video, and this website mark the launch of an inspiring global endeavor to celebrate compassion and to promote a new collaboration between the world's religions. What we're doing, starting today, is to begin writing the Charter for Compassion that Karen Armstrong called for earlier this year when she made her TED Prize wish. And the exhilarating twist here is that the writing won't be done behind closed doors. It will be done by you... and perhaps millions of others around the world. Because we're using special collaborative web tools created by the geniuses at Kluster to enable this be truly a charter "created by the world for the world". Later this week millions of Muslims, Christians, and Jews will be sent an email inviting them to come to the site and offer their choice of words, in their own language, to help create a charter capable of inspiring the world to focus on what the great religions share, as opposed to what divides them. Already people are responding to this amazing idea with passion and excitement. The goal is to obtain all input from global participants within the next four weeks, select the best contributions with the help of a council of religious "sages", and conduct a major launch of the finished document in 2009. We'd love you, the TED community, who saw the birth of this idea in March, to be among the first to contribute. The two things you can do to help now: 1. Help us write the Charter! The first writing phase begins now with the Preamble, a concise explanation of why the Charter is necessary and urgent. 2. Send out the ask to everyone in your network. We want this to be a truly global and diverse document that represents all of our voices. A very exciting day for the TED Prize. We are honored to have you on this journey with us. Thank you to all of you who have helped get us this far! And a special thank you to Kluster who have put so much into building this site. Very best wishes, Chris Anderson TED Curator Amy Novogratz TED Prize Director Background: At TED2008 in March of this year, TED Prize winner Karen Armstrong was granted a wish to change the world. This is what she asked for: "I wish that you would help with the creation, launch and propagation of a Charter for Compassion, crafted by a group of leading inspirational thinkers from the three Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and based on the fundamental principles of universal justice and respect." Since then support for idea has built among numerous religious groups, spiritual leaders such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, and Britain's first female Rabbi Julia Neuberger have joined a special Council to oversee the Charter, and Kluster, a collaborative decision making platform, has built a groundbreaking site that will allow anyone to contribute to the Charter.

So You need a strong PC ?

Not all PC 's are sissies. Look at this Milspec Rambo type . Backpacks fit on it and its architecture is rather special and most flexible. Maybe allowing us EEG in full desert ?

VNS

Just posted on Dr. SCHOCK's Blog. VNS for depression: Pro's and Con's.. Read here

Think again

Do we really need al those neuroleptics to control behavior disturbances in the intellectuallydisabled ??. Maybe not. This is a thought provoking study that could well change our views on this topic. cientists have discovered that taking a sugar pill is more effective than routine medications in treating aggression in people with intellectual disabilities.

Until now, patients with intellectual disabilities have been prescribed antipsychotic drugs — normally given to people with a psychiatric disease like schizophrenia — to treat aggressive behaviour such as head banging. But evidence for the drugs' effectiveness has been thin.

“Antipsychotic drugs are widely used because they are cheap and at high doses they sedate people,” says Eric Emerson at Lancaster University, an expert in the behaviour of intellectually disabled people.

Peter Tyrer, based at Imperial College London, led an international research project looking at 86 people with intellectual disability at clinics across England, Wales and at one centre in Australia. Patients being treated for aggressive behaviour randomly received one of two antipsychotic drugs — respiridone or haloperidol — or a placebo.

These antipsychotics have been used for more than 40 years to treat aggression in people with intellectual disabilities. They block dopamine D2 receptors, which means that people who take them have less dopamine in the limbic pathway, depriving the part of the brain linked to addiction, reward and fear. Dopamine is a key neurotransmitter of arousal.

“The drugs dampen down all behaviours, not just aggression,” says John Taylor, president elect of the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies, “with no evidence that they specifically target aggression.” They have many other effects too. “Respiridone and haloperidol are dirty drugs,” says Tyrer, “with lots of side effects like drooling, shaking, seizures, dry mouth, weight gain, skin rashes and so on.”

If I could turn back time,....

But that is physically impossible, no ? Ever wondered about time? What is between the time clicks ? seconds, nanoseconds, femtoseceonds... continuously smaller tickmarks but eventually continuity breaks down as Planck constant kicks in. Can we "see" these ultimate time slices ? Stuff for a serious Nobel Price here... Read on... Yet if Hogan's ideas are right, noise associated with this fundamental fuzziness should be prominent at GEO600, a joint British and German machine operating near Hannover, Germany, that is searching for gravitational waves. These waves are thought to arise during events such as the massive cosmic collisions of black holes and neutron stars. Confirmation of the idea — which could come as experimental upgrades to GEO600 are put in place over the coming year — would be a big step towards a verifiable quantum theory of gravity, a long-sought unification of quantum mechanics (the physics of the very small) with general relativity (the physics of the very big). Hogan outlines his predictions in a paper published on 30 October in Physical Review D¹.

SAS: Sense about Science

Worth to check out !!!

Sound Stimulation

Abstract

Possessing the ability to noninvasively elicit brain circuit activity yields immense experimental and therapeutic power. Most currently employed neurostimulation methods rely on the somewhat invasive use of stimulating electrodes or photon-emitting devices. Due to its ability to noninvasively propagate through bone and other tissues in a focused manner, the implementation of ultrasound (US) represents a compelling alternative approach to current neuromodulation strategies. Here, we investigated the influence of low-intensity, low-frequency ultrasound (LILFU) on neuronal activity. By transmitting US waveforms through hippocampal slice cultures and ex vivo mouse brains, we determined LILFU is capable of remotely and noninvasively exciting neurons and network activity. Our results illustrate that LILFU can stimulate electrical activity in neurons by activating voltage-gated sodium channels, as well as voltage-gated calcium channels. The LILFU-induced changes in neuronal activity were sufficient to trigger SNARE-mediated exocytosis and synaptic transmission in hippocampal circuits. Because LILFU can stimulate electrical activity and calcium signaling in neurons as well as central synaptic transmission we conclude US provides a powerful tool for remotely modulating brain circuit activity.

NIN: nano in neuro

Shanghai Brain ?

No !! this is not the Brain of a famous Politician (athough I admit that it needs a lot of training to spot the differences...just joking). This is a famous Shanghia reciepe. Maybe good for Your brain ? read on....(it's Math Jim, but not as we chew it)

FRIS Online

Welcome to Flanders research portal !!!

Now on line !!

27 June 2008 : the new Flemish research portal takes off!

From the end of June 2008 a few clicks at the website www.reasearchportal.be will lead you to a mine of information about current research projects at the six Flemish universities. All information can be found at one location and is ordered in a user-friendly way, so that you do not have to browse all individual websites to trace your information and combine it to have a general overview for the whole Flanders region.

Antropomorphic Flutist

Never again should you call Your opponent SAF "stupid antropomorphic flutist". Unfortunately he days that we could use this phrase as the ultimate insult are now definitively gone as this is now been turned into a compliment (although perhaps musicians could feel a bit "uncanny" at this label). Well see (sorry hear) for yourself en read the story here...

Shrink Tools

A DSM-IV codetool. Can come in handy for filling in those very useful registration forms... Hmmmmm......slightly cynical here ? Will need more BC&RW I guess... (Black Chocolate and Red Wine see previous post) But this nice database tool is working allright (just type letter by letter)

Black wine vs red chocolate

It has been said (again and again) that red wine and black chocolate are protecting from ischemic coronary hart disease by means of its polyfenols that are antioxydants. As this effect is well documented while homeopathy is absolutely and definitively notand probably will never be yet is reimbursed by the mutual insurance funds in belgium I propose to launch an original idea by prof Wim Betz to claim a reimbursement for our daily Godiva and glass Chateau Cheval blanc (pure belgian products n'est pas Mr Frere ?). Thanks to Prof Wim Betz.

References... references

Scientific writing has a lot to do with having easy acces to references and notes. Many tools are available (both free and paying services) but a tool such as zotero (only firefox) is really cool (and free). Check it out here but do take a tour first. Thanks to Tim VH from Lessius.

Death: The Final Frontier

Death and Taxes: both seem unavoidable, according to mr "Jo Black". But as the first has already proven a shaky statement the second is still a bit more difficult and requires quite some religious input. Yet the folks at the "Future for Humanity institute" see this differently and seem to think that Arthur C. Clarcke's proposal is maybe not completely SF. Acme: If Your body dies , just before that moment, download its "mind" to a computer, grow a new fresh and healthy body, upload the stored mind in the new body and up you go. Reincarnation is yours to be. Simple, Mr Watson.. They have even written the blue print how to do this. Download the pdf Enjoy and keep dreaming....(at the end of the day what characterises good SF is the moment when it turns into reality).