Self-Driving Vehicles

According to John Markoff  in an article in The New York Times,  Mobileye Vision Technologies has created a self-driving system for an Audi A7 car. Reportedly this self-driving system is capable of driving in a single lane at freeway speeds, as well as identifying traffic lights and automatically slowing, stopping and then returning to highway speeds. But by blending advanced computer-vision techniques with low-cost video cameras, the company is hoping to demonstrate how quickly autonomous driving can be commercialized without the expense of laser range-finders called lidars and other advanced systems. I'm thinking about how that would actually work. Would you, as the driver, be using your brain to just read a book or watch a movie on your iPad or would you still need your brain to monitor what the self-driving system was doing? Whatever, this technology may be available sooner than expected . . .

Stroke and Stem Cell Therapy

According to Kurzweil News, stroke is the third largest cause of death and the single largest cause of adult disability in the developed world. A trial is being conducted at the Institute of Neurological Sciences, Southern General Hospital, Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS Board, using neural stem cell treatment in ischemic stroke patients. Phase one results are encouraging in that no cell-related or immuinological adverse affects have been identified. The PISCES study, as has come to be known, is the world’s first fully-regulated clinical trial of a neural stem cell therapy for disabled stroke patients. Meanwhile, plans are proceeding for a Phase II trial which will examine the efficacy of stem cell treatment in stroke patients and an application is expected to be submitted to the UK regulatory authorities in early July. If approved, the Phase II trial is scheduled to commence later this year. It will be a controlled multi-center trial involving around 20 patients initially, all of whom will have suffered a stroke within a few weeks. This will be interesting to follow.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/stroke-patients-show-signs-of-recovery-in-stem-cell-treatment-trial?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Weekly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=78c9fc862b-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_147a5a48c1-78c9fc862b-281999441

Sleep Deprivation #5

Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center recently released study results that were published in Science Translational Medicine. Scientists have puzzled over what sleep really does for the brain and for brain-body health. Turns out that sleep clears the brain of toxins, the same type of damaging molecules that have been associated with loss of brain function and that have been found to contribute to Alzheimer's disease. (Wouldn't it be amazing if adequate sleep turned out to be linked with prevention of Alzheimer's or at least the slowing of development of symptoms?) By-products of neural activity accumulate when you are awake; sleep cleans up the brain and gets rid of these by-products. Studies with mice showed that during sleep the brain's "plumbing system" appears to "open,"allowing fluid to flow rapidly through the brain. (This doesn't occur at the same rate during waking hours.)  The dulling of memory skills often associated with aging may actually be related to a lack of sleep.

Cheating, Part 2

Research has concluded that members of a species were more or less likely to cheat based on the relative size of the brain’s neocortex. (See Why We Cheat by Fang and Casadevall.)  No surprise—based on a relatively large neocortex—studies have shown that humans are surprising quick to cheat if the environmental circumstances are conducive to cheating. Moreover, cheating can spread through copycat behavior. This type of infectiousness, sometimes referred to a social contagion, may help explain the high prevalence of cheating in relatively small groups of people. For example, 125 Harvard students were recently under investigation for cheating on a final examination. (More than half these students were told to withdraw from school for up to a year as punishment.) Seeing someone else cheat without apparent consequences strongly encourages others to do the same. In another study, subjects were three times as likely to cheat when an assistant posing as a cheating student was also present. Unchecked dishonesty can even promote the perception that one must cheat to remain competitive.  Fortunately, not everyone is equally likely to cheat, however.

Cheating, Part 1

In a recently released book entitled Why We Cheat authors Fang and Casadevall assert that “cheating” is not limited to human beings. Cheating has been documented around the world “wherever there is competition for limited resources.” In the animal kingdom the bigger the brain, the more likely that members of the species will cheat; cheating being a way of gaining advantage over others without incurring the cost of the effort. For example, deception has been observed among primates (e.g., female juvenile baboons in Ethiopia were seen to mate with juvenile males while hiding behind rocks in order to conceal their actions from the alpha male baboon. Studies in 2004 showed that the relative size of the brain’s neocortex predicted the degree to which primates practiced deception: the larger the neocortex size in a species, the more likely the members of that species were to use dishonest tactics for social manipulation.

General Anesthetic and Dementia Risk

Medical News Today recently reported on study findings presented at the 2013 annual congress of the European Society of Anesthesiology or ESA. Researchers followed a group of participants aged 65 and older for ten years. They found that participants who had been exposed to one general anesthetic during that time had a 35 percent increased risk of developing a dementia when compared to those who had not exposed to general anesthesia. POCD (postoperative cognitive dysfunction) could be associated with dementia several years after the exposure to general anesthetic. According to lead researcher Dr. Francois Sztark, recognition of POCD recognition is essential in the perioperative management of elderly patients. Sztark has suggested that long-term follow-up of these patients is important. My bias is that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, which played into my decision to have a spinal anesthetic (rather than a general anesthetic) with both of my hip-replacement surgeries. I am fortunate not only that this type of surgery could be done with spinal anesthetic but also that my surgeon (Dr. William Bowen) was amenable to a spinal. A win-win for my brain! 

Creativity and Disorderly Environment

A recent study by researchers at the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management, has released results showing that different environments are linked to different outcomes. The title of the abstract was:  “Generosity, and Conventionality, Whereas Disorder Produces Creativity.” I’m sure you already can guess that the word disorder gave me pause because so often in brain-function research one word can describe either an author’s preference or dis-ease. Left-brainers often describe my frontal-right organizing style of “stacking” in my office as “messy.” Anyway, researchers did three experiments:

1.    Participants in an orderly room (as compared to those in a disorderly room) chose healthier snacks and donated more money.

2.    Participants in a disorderly room were more creative than participants in an orderly room.

3.    Participants in an orderly room preferred an option labeled as classic while those in a disorderly room preferred an option labeled as new.

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/24/9/1860