AbleBrains

Having Truly AbleBrains

I haven't posted something "original" in quite a while... I don't know what it is... feels like my brain is in stasis... any way, read a post on the BBC this morning about Ray Kurzweil, one of my heros. Ray has been selected as one of 18 influential world thinkers chosen to identify the greatest challenges mankind will face in the 21st century.

A couple of years ago he wrote a book with Terry Grossman called Fantastic Voyage - which lays out the argument and plan to live a multi-hundred year life. Basically, Ray believes that there is bio-tech convergence under way --- in the same way that we have harnessed chemistry for health, well being and longer life, we will go even farther with nanotechnology and genetic engineering to drastically extend our lives. For instance, Kurzweil predicts that  humans and machines will merge, installing small nanites in to our brains to increase our intelligence and health.

I've made the case that we will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence by 2029. We're already a human machine civilization; we use our technology to expand our physical and mental horizons and this will be a further extension of that. Humans and machines would eventually merge, by means of devices embedded in people's bodies to keep them healthy and improve their intelligence.

From Fantastic Voyage:

Do we have the knowledge and the tools today to live forever? If all science and technology development suddenly stopped, the answer would have to be no. We do have the means to dramatically slow disease and the aging process far more than most people realize, but we do not yet have all the techniques we need to indefinitely extend human life. However, it is clear that far from halting, the pace of scientific and technological discovery is accelerating.

According to models that Ray has created, our paradigm-shift rate—the rate of technical progress—is doubling every decade, and the capability (price performance, capacity, and speed) of specific information technologies is doubling every year. So the answer to our question is actually a definitive yes—the knowledge exists, if aggressively applied, for you to slow aging and disease processes to such a degree that you can be in good health and good spirits when the more radical life-extending and life-enhancing technologies become available over the next couple of decades.

Longevity expert and gerontologist Aubrey de Grey uses the metaphor of maintaining a house to explain this key concept.  How long does a house last? The answer obviously depends on how well you take care of it. If you do nothing, the roof will spring a leak     before long, water and the elements will invade, and eventually the house will disintegrate. But if you proactively take care of the structure, repair all damage, confront all dangers, and rebuild or renovate parts from time to time using new materials and technologies, the life of the house can essentially be extended without limit.

The same holds true for our bodies and brains. The only difference is that while we fully understand the methods underlying the maintenance of a house, we do not yet fully understand all of the biological principles of life. But with our rapidly increasing comprehension of the human genome, the proteins expressed by the genome (proteome), and the biochemical processes and pathways of our metabolism, we are quickly gaining that knowledge. We are beginning to understand aging, not as a single inexorable progression but as a group of related biological processes.

I found the book fascinating and motivating.  Just to lead a healthier more productive life.  Also, with having children later in life, motivation to stay strong and healthy is a good thing. If you are interested in the science of life extension, there is a tremendous amount of  both applied and basic research on the subject. Also, Fantastic-voyage.net provides excerpts from Ray and Terry's book, but if you are interested in the topic at all, buy the book, its a fascinating read.

ADHD and Cortical Development

An imaging study was just completed with 1000's of kids diagnosed with ADHD, and lo and behold:

Researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health and McGill University, using imaging techniques, found that the brains of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder developed normally but more slowly in some areas than the brains of children without the disorder.

The disorder, also known as A.D.H.D., is by far the most common psychiatric diagnosis given to disruptive young children; 3 percent to 5 percent of school-age children are thought to be affected. Researchers have long debated whether it was due to a brain deficit or to a delay in development.

Doctors said that the report, being published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, helps to explain why so many children grow out of the diagnosis in middle school or later, often after taking stimulant medications to improve concentration in earlier grades.

So the findings suggest that ADHD is largely a developmental issue, specifically around timing of certain cognitive processes.  The Cerebral Cortex eventually matures - it grows up and so does our cognitive abilities. Hopefully, this will result in less parents dragging their kids to the Neurologist and insisting that they pump their kids full of Ritalin or some other stimulant. I'm not saying the med doesn't work but I've seen too much in the way of excessive application of this particular drug.

Ambien as a Treatment for Persistent Vegetative States

This is fascinating... it seems my travelling companion, Ambien, is being used to successfully treat people in Persistent Vegetative States.

The sleeping pill zolpidem (sold in the US as Ambien) awakens people in persistent vegetative states as often as 60% of the time.

 

I see Louis before his daily medication, yet he is conscious where once he would have been comatose. Almost blind because of a separate and deteriorating condition, there is a droop to one side of his mouth and brow because of brain damage. His right arm is twisted awkwardly into his side.

Louis is given a pill, and I watch. It is 8.30am. After nine minutes the grey pallor disappears and his face flushes. He starts smiling and laughing. After 10 minutes he begins asking questions. [...] A couple of minutes later, his right arm becomes less contorted and the facial drooping lessens. After 15 minutes he reaches out to hug Sienie.

Coffee and Smoking Prevents Parkinsons?

An article in NewScientist reports

Parkinson's patients were about 40% less likely to have ever smoked than their healthy relatives, and 50% less likely to be long-term smokers, with roughly 10% smoking for more than 30 years, compared with 15% of their healthy counterparts.

Of the healthy relatives, about 40% consumed an average of three or more cups of coffee a day over their lifetime. By contrast, those with Parkinson's were about 40% less likely to report drinking this much coffee.

Exactly why smoking and consuming coffee had an inverse association with Parkinson's disease remains largely unclear.

Now while I wouldnt start smoking and consuming vast amounts of coffee to ward off Parkinson's the data suggests that there is some substance in Tobacco that insulates the brain from the insufficient formation and action of dopamine, which is produced in the dopaminergic neurons of the brain - most importantly in the substantia nigra.  There is some evidence that a substance in tobacco smoke may boost dopamine levels by blocking the production of toxins that destroy dopamine producing cells.

NewScientist article

Journal Reference: Archives of Neurology (vol 64, p 576-580) 

Now why didnt I think of this?

Well,  I kinda did :)  This is a great blog at the intersection of neuroscience (my love number one) and marketing (love number tw0).  Check out Neuromarketing!  My biggest issue is how to categorize it in my reader... neuroscience, marketing, design, customer experience? 

Modelling Human Learning

Can we build better enterprise software with Hierarchical Temporal Memory (From neurodudes)?

Entrepreneur-turned-cognitive neuroscientist Jeff Hawkins is distributing a “research release” of their experimental code base implementing his idea of hierarchical temporal memory described in his book, “On Intelligence”. Hawkins drew inspiration for the model from his own reading about the structure and function of the human neocortex and believes that it represents the foundation for developing intelligent machines.

Here’s why Hawkins thinks that HTMs are new and importantly, why they can make a difference.

Brains is Online...

Now for those of you in webworld, enterprise software world, or design and customer experience land, you may not care about this (who knows maybe you will)... but the neurodudes over at UC Davis center for neuroscience has put a brain online:

BrainMaps.org is an interactive zoomable high-resolution digital brain atlas and virtual microscope that is based on over 15 million megapixels of scanned images of serial sections of both primate and non-primate brains and that is integrated with a high-speed database for querying and retrieving data about brain structure and function over the internet.

Cool huh?

 

Neuroscience & Psychology Blogs

Great compilation of neuroscience and psychology blogs over at neurophilosophy.