brain scanning

Brain scan might determine your age within a year

If you're prone to lying about your age, steer clear of structural magnetic resonance imaging. When used to scan your brain, no matter how good (or bad) you may look, a new imaging technique that uses MRI won't lie. In fact, it probably knows your age to the exact year.

"We have uncovered a 'developmental clock' of sorts within the brain -- a biological signature of maturation that captures age differences quite well, regardless of other kinds of differences that exist across individuals," Timothy Brown of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine says in a news release.… Read more

Here's digital video of what we see inside our brains

I don't know what kinds of things you see inside your head, but I do worry about it.

As for the things I see inside my head, well, if only I could show you. Actually, there are scientists at UC Berkeley who believe that they can show you.

I haven't let them into the house yet. But I can show you video of their work. I am grateful to the inner brains at Gizmodo, who first revealed this footage to me.

You will, naturally, be wondering whether the scientists created this footage, well, naturally.

In a way. They … Read more

High-tech hair brush improves optical brain scans

When it comes to measuring oxygen levels in the brain to chart neurological activity--a technique called functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)--things can get a little hairy. Literally. As in, the patient's hair gets in the way.

So researchers at the University of Texas have engineered a novel device, which they call a "brush optrode" (variant of word optode), whose fiber tips thread past hair to increase scalp contact, thereby improving signal levels as well as overall cost and efficiency of the optical scanning technique. They will present their findings at the Optical Society's 94th annual … Read more

Scientists say they know you better than you do

Do you intend to be nice to your co-workers today? Do you intend to spend a little longer in the shower so that your personal crevices are spotless? Do you intend to write that friend request to Mark Zuckerberg and keep your list of friends private?

Well, a group of scientists at UCLA would like to thank you for words, but prefers to scan your brains to prove to you what you really intend to do.

If this all sounds a little macabre, then you clearly don't intend to follow science's inexorable path. According to Reuters, a team … Read more

Brain network scanning may predict injury's effects

A brain scanning technique known as resting-state functional connectivity (FC) could help clinicians identify and even predict the effects of brain injuries such as strokes, according to neurologists at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Originally developed to study how brain networks let various parts of the brain collaborate, FC also appears to enable scientists to link differences in harm done to brain networks to changes in patient impairment, according to results of a study in the Annals of Neurology March issue.

"Clinicians who treat brain injury need new markers of brain function that can predict … Read more

Vegetative man not communicating after all

It was horrible to imagine. A Belgian man, uncommunicative since a car accident left him paralyzed in 1983, suddenly seemed to have a message to convey last November with the help of a speech therapist. He was not unconscious, he indicated. He was trapped.

Now, neurologist Steven Laureys, one of Rom Houben's doctors who diagnosed the patient as conscious based on bedside tests performed four years ago, is telling reporters the speech therapist got it wrong. While recent brain scans of Houben do show brain activity and even consciousness, Houben is not communicating, Laureys says.

"We did not … Read more

Brain scan finds man was not in a coma--23 years later

Rom Houben has been trapped in a series of worst nightmares, including trying for 23 years to alert those around him that he was not in a coma. A new report suggests he's not alone in his experience.

In 1983, Belgian engineering student and martial arts enthusiast Houben, then 20, was in a car accident that was thought to have left him in a vegetative state. Doctors relied on the widely-used Glasgow Coma Scale, assessing his eyes, verbal, and motor responses. What they failed to notice was that Houben was actually conscious--but completely paralyzed.

"I screamed, but there … Read more

Record companies to charge for "earworms"

The recording industry has tried a lot of tricks to shore up their revenues as CD sales have fallen: installing CD anti-coyping software that is almost impossible to remove, suing customers for allegedly downloading songs without paying, and floating the idea of adding a few bucks to monthly ISP bills to compensate rights holders for illegal downloads.

Now, several labels are dreaming up a scheme to charge music fans any time they get a song stuck in their head. The technology is a few years away, but according to several well-placed sources in Hollywood, the labels are funding an organization … Read more