How researchers are predicting specific thoughts from brain activity
Revealing the brain’s hidden stash of pictures, thoughts, and plans has, until recently, been the work of parlor magicians. Yet within the last decade, neuroscientists have gained powerful...
Jan, 02, 2012
Pattern-classifiers interpret fMRI data
Peek inside the skull of a couch potato watching reruns on TV and you’ll see non-stop patterns of blood flow throughout the brain. If you learn to pick out which activity patterns match up with...
Oct, 01, 2010
Capturing meaning in functional MRI
Thinking of a noun—a peach, train, or bird, for example—activates specific parts of the brain. Now, scientists have trained a computer to predict such activation patterns. The...
Oct, 01, 2008
One of the major obstacles to studying the human brain has always been gaining access. Until relatively recently, almost all of what we knew about the brain was obtained through post-mortem ...
Apr, 01, 2008
When people sit peacefully at rest, doing and thinking nothing in particular, their brains still buzz merrily along. In scans called functional MRIs, they light up in characteristic patterns. No one...
Oct, 01, 2007
As barriers to massive imaging collections fall, researchers can look at human systems in their entirety rather than in pieces
In the beginning there was the Visible Human. It broke new ground by gathering some 2,000 serial images from a death row inmate’s cadaver, and was the first time researchers had sectioned a...
Jul, 01, 2007
Several big-dollar initiatives received NIH funding in late 2010
In the current economic climate, every research dollar counts. Fortunately, when it comes to biomedical computing, not everyone has been left counting change. Several big-dollar initiatives received...
Apr, 01, 2011
Biomarker research, genetics, and imaging are all coming into play
In 1906, at a small medical meeting in Tübingen, Germany, physician Alois Alzheimer gave a now-famous presentation about a puzzling patient. At age 51, Auguste D.’s memory was failing...
Oct, 01, 2007