This topic emerged through a screening of emerging issues in science, technology and society in the context of the FET CSA OBSERVE.

http://www.horizon-observatory.eu/radar-en/index.php

 

The big picture

The findings from the OBSERVE screening include several topics related to the brain. On the one hand research on understanding the human brain and brain related innovation are fast advancing. At the same time several societal questions such as the co-evolution of the brain and the digital society and the way to deal with mental illness and are emerging.

The following individual aspects were emerging:

Brain networking

For the first time scientists have been linking together animal brains with electrodes. University of Washington researchers recently used a direct brain-to-brain connection to enable pairs of participants to play a question-and-answer game by transmitting signals from one brain to the other over the Internet. Some believe that one day humans will be able to directly share emotions, thoughts, and sensory feedback with each other through synthetic telepathy.

Sources: Aggregation of several;

Brain interfaces and implants

There is a lot of current R&D effort at the intersection of neuroscience, biotechnology, and computer science directed at developing interfaces to the brain. The topic was one of the most prevalent in the webmining. Examples for research activities on interfaces are memory chips to improve the memory performance, brain controlled bionic devices and a brain reading technology that helps violinists to play again after a heavy accident. For implants new developments in 2015 included soft devices to deliver drugs in the brain and syringe-injectable electronics.

Source: Aggregation of several;

Non-invasive brain influencing

Approaches to for influencing brain cells without physical interfaces are emerging one is through sound waves and another through magnetic stimulation (using nanoparticles).

Source: The Guardian, BBC;

Timekeeping mechanism of human brain uncovered

A group of neuroscientists from MIT and Columbia University may have the beginning of an answer on how the human brain keeps time. In a paper published this week in Current Biology, they describe how the lateral intraparietal cortex (LIC) region of the brain helps it to both interpret and reproduce time intervals.

Source:Motherboard/Current Biology;

Artificial brain

The webmining revealed two breakthrough moments in artificial brain development. Japanese researchers have formed a celebrum like structure from embrionic stem cells. Researchers at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) in Vienna created brain organoids from adult skin cells. Both groups hope for insights in brain behaviour and especially mental diseases.

Source: MIT Technology Review;

Brain understanding

The webmining revealed a number of research insights on the way the brain works emerging in 2015. A particular focus was on memory but also on spatial mapping, timing, vision, decision making, emotional experience assignment, social prediction, hear-ing, tinnitus, pattern recognition and aging.

Source: Aggregation of several;

The human brain in the digital society

Researchers reflect on the question how the digitalisation of society affects the human brain. As an example some speculate that autistic behaviour patterns may be becoming more prevalent in the digital society

Source:Discover Society Journal;

Global Challenge: Education and learning

There are a lot of research projects to understand the brain: brain diseases, enhance-ment, computer designs, new brain-computer synergies. These outcomes should be included in education and learning.

Source: State of the Future;

Particle pollution may be the main cause for brain degenerative diseases

Scientists have collected evidence that particle pollution may be the main cause for brain degenerative diseases. A recent study in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health and Technology estimated that we could avoid two million deaths globally by cleaning up the world's air.

Source: Mother Jones/Environmental Health and Technology;

Brain cell transplantation

Lorenz Studer, Director of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center’s Center for Stem Cell Biology and new MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant recipient is exploring trans-plantation of cells generated from embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells to heal e.g. Parkinson’s disease.

Source:Washington Post;

Treating phantom pain with a mirror

Mirror therapy helps to cure phantom pain of amputees. It works by providing visual feedback to the brain about a functional arm rather than a missing limb, and this changes the central maladaptive reorganisation back to normal. In neuroscience the phenomenon is little understood.

Source:BBC Futures;

Understanding and influencing human behaviour

Several researchers across disciplines are investigating ways to understand and influ-ence human thinking and behaviour; The field is highly interdisciplinary ranging from AI, NPL, data analytics, game design and neuroscience to sociology, education and economics. Computational neuroscience in particular aims for a better understanding of the human brain and cognition.

Source: Aggregation of several;

Robots will become more human-like as their vocabulary comes closer to that of real humans-HM Symbiosis-Brain Futures

Currently, computational intelligence is restricted to lexical descriptions found in dic-tionaries. But with current results from brain research from clinical studies and neuro-imaging, a complete inventory of words, their emotional valence and perceptual proper-ties will become available. However, it takes a combined effort of neuroscientists, cog-nitive scientists, lexicographers and computer scientists to harness this new source.

Source:FET Projects;

Measuring Imagination

By attempting to quantify a person’s imagination, neuroscientists and psychologists at the Imagination Institute (a non-profit based at the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center) hope to bring forward an alternative to traditional IQ-oriented stan-dardized testing in a multimillion-dollar research effort funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Source:TED;

Mental illness controversy

Some critics argue that the upsurge in mental disorder is pushed by pharmaceutical industry. Meanwhile the real underlying causes of behavioural problems and human misery are often left untreated. Others argue that human suffering will never be eradi-cated but evidence shows that pharmaceutical drugs have improved the lives of millions around the world.

Source:Intelligencesquared;

Cognitive overburden through perpetual evaluation

Much of today's software casts the user in a role of perpetual evaluation from which it’s relatively easy to escape (with one or two clicks) but impossible to reject all together. This may be a taste of what seems likely to become a potentially overwhelming routine feature of daily life in the near future. Each individual act of evaluation is trivial but the aggregative cognitive burden likely isn’t.

Source: The Sociological Imagination;