“Matrix” Style Studying Via the Visual Cortex

Inventors: Researchers at Boston University  

Imagining becoming able to immediately discover to do a job, like playing piano or Kung Fu, merely by watching a PC screen? It might sound like something out of a sci-fi film like Matrix, but study coming out of Boston University suggests that this effortless technique of studying may exist within the near future.
The method is known as “Decoded Neurofeedback”, or “DecNef”, and it entails utilizing decoded fMRI to induce brain activity patterns that match a recognized state. For instance, in the event you wanted to have the athletic talents of basketball player, you’d acquire a brain activity pattern in superstar Shaquille O’Neal’s visual cortex and use DecNef to modify the patterns inside your own visual cortex utilizing fMRI. Whilst DecNef is not fairly feasible at present technological level but, the BU researchers have succeeded in utilizing it in subjects to induce brain activity patterns related having an easy shape.

Why it’s life-changing: Researchers discovered that the DecNef method worked even when test subjects weren’t conscious of what they had been studying!
Based on among the researchers:
“…mere inductions of neural activation patterns corresponding to a particular visual function led to visual efficiency improvement on the visual function, without presenting the function or subjects’ awareness of what was to be learned…we discovered that subjects had been not conscious of what was to be learned whilst behavioral information obtained prior to and following the Neurofeedback coaching showed that subjects’ visual efficiency improved.”
Whilst Decoded Neurofeedback overall sounds like a mind-blowing method to unconsciously and effortlessly discover something, much more practically the BU researchers are searching into the technique as a rehabilitative method. A stroke victim, for instance, could have his or her motor brain activity patterns matched having a wholesome topic, which could theoretically quicken their recovery in methods that conventional rehabilitation can’t do.

New Hydrogel for Much better, Scar-Free Wound Healing

Inventors: Researchers at Johns Hopkins University

A Hydrogel created by researchers at Johns Hopkins University has been discovered helping to grow wholesome, scar-free tissue. The Hydrogel is really a water-based, three-dimensional framework of polymers produced by researchers from JHU’s Whiting School of Engineering and Bayview Medical Center Burn Center. The outcomes of early experiments with mouse tissue, reported within the Proceedings with the National Academy of Sciences, are searching fairly promising.
The experiment showed that the Hydrogel therapy promotes the development of new blood vessels and also the regeneration of complicated layers of skin, which includes hair follicles and also the glands that create skin oil. The Hydrogel is simple to manufacture and could result in much better, affordable burn wound remedies. The Hydrogel doesn’t include any drugs or biological components to create it function, generating it simpler to obtain approved for use on human patients.

Why it’s life-changing: The Hydrogel permits tissue regeneration and blood vessel formation to happen extremely rapidly, which lowers the opportunity for scarring.
The researchers do not totally comprehend but how the Hydrogel works. The original intention was to add growth elements, but surprisingly the Hydrogel itself worked nicely, even within the absence with the growth elements. The strategy would be to additional create and fine-tune the material for use in other skin circumstances, like skin ulcers.