Cultured brain cells draw pictures
MEART’s creators link the basic components of the brain (isolated neurons) to a mechanical body (robotic arms) through the mediation of a digital processing engine across the Internet. The goal...
Oct, 01, 2010
Finding the Master Regulators
A cell may change states several times in its lifetime—from a stem cell to a specialized cell, for example, or from a normal cell to a cancerous one. Each time this happens, a veritable army of...
Apr, 01, 2010
An elegant new model of balance control suggests the brain only cares about one thing: the body’s center of mass.
Bumped from behind, a person may step forward to avoid falling. Perhaps her arms fly out as well. To the untrained eye, these movements seem like the result of the brain controlling individual nerve...
Jan, 01, 2008
RunBot, already the world’s fastest bipedal robot, has now also learned to keep its balance when walking up ramps. “We have achieved a synthesis of different functionalities, between...
Oct, 01, 2007
For patients suffering from nerve damage, neural regeneration is a faint hope. It rarely happens naturally, and attempts to coax new growth often fail. Researchers are trying to develop scaffolds to...
Apr, 01, 2009
Computer models find that various ion channel arrangements can produce the same firing pattern
Each cell in our nervous system is an instrument in a complex symphony of electrophysiologic communication. A neuron’s signaling abilities arise from its array of ion channels—tunnels...
Jan, 01, 2007
Putting neural and behavioral information together to model addiction
To non-smokers, the nasty-smelling habit is inexplicable. But now neurocomputational researchers have developed a hypothetical model to explain how nicotine produces addictive behavior. The first...
Apr, 01, 2006
Moving from intuition to evidence-based intervention
To understand how muscles contract and joints flex, researchers have dissected cadavers and experimented with animals. They can describe how bones, muscles, and tendons connect in a complicated...
Jan, 01, 2007
The Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) would encompass all the knowledge we’ve gathered, from genetic interactions to systems biology, into one integrated digital package
Science and medicine have fractured the human body into pieces: the cardiovascular system, the immune system, the endocrine system. Now a European initiative seeks to put the jigsaw puzzle back...
Jan, 01, 2008
It’s impossible to predict what the hottest new tools will be, but here are a few gems that caught our attention
Many experimental researchers rely on computational tools to push the pace and productivity of laboratory research. It’s impossible to predict what the hottest new tools will be, but this...
Apr, 01, 2011