Hacker News with Generative AI: Neuroscience

Moments of Awakening (astralcodexten.com)
Consciousness is the great mystery. In search of answers, scientists have plumbed every edge case they can think of - sleep, comas, lucid dreams, LSD trips, meditative ecstasies, seizures, neurosurgeries, that one pastor in 18th century England who claimed a carriage accident turned him into a p-zombie. Still, new stuff occasionally turns up.
Cognitive independence and interactions between cerebral hemispheres (sciencedirect.com)
The two cerebral hemispheres can often operate independently.
What If We Had Bigger Brains? Imagining Minds Beyond Ours (stephenwolfram.com)
What If We Had Bigger Brains? Imagining Minds beyond Ours(VIDEO)
Ultra-low power, miniature electrophysiological electronics (starfishneuroscience.com)
Distributed neural interfaces hold great promise for future therapies.
Infrared contact lenses allow people to see in the dark, eyes closed (phys.org)
Neuroscientists and materials scientists have created contact lenses that enable infrared vision in both humans and mice by converting infrared light into visible light.
Show HN: I made Blueprint for brain health to hit daily peak productivity (brainpower.now)
We perceive faces from other racial groups differently (medicalxpress.com)
University of Toronto Scarborough researchers have harnessed artificial intelligence (AI) and brain activity to shed new light on why we struggle to accurately recognize faces of people from different races.
What Your Brain Looks Like When You Solve a Problem (gizmodo.com)
Researchers have revealed that epiphanies physically reshape brain activity. What’s more, they discovered that people remember epiphanies better than solutions reached through a more methodical approach. These results could have important implications for how instructors approach teaching in classrooms.
“The Mind in the Wheel” lays out a new foundation for the science of mind (experimental-history.com)
I’ve complained a lot about the state of psychology, but eventually it’s time to stop whining and start building. That time is now.
Lena (qntm.org)
MMAcevedo (Mnemonic Map/Acevedo), also known as Miguel, is the earliest executable image of a human brain. It is a snapshot of the living brain of neurology graduate Miguel Acevedo Álvarez (2010–2073), taken by researchers at the Uplift Laboratory at the University of New Mexico on August 1, 2031.
Mice grow bigger brains when given this stretch of human DNA (nature.com)
Researchers have identified a genetic dial in the human brain that, when inserted in mice, boosts their brain size by about 6.5%.
Lawful kinematics link eye movements to the limits of high-speed perception (nature.com)
Perception requires active sampling of the environment.
Low-intensity transcranial focused ultrasound amygdala neuromodulation (nature.com)
PTSD Patients Show Long-Term Benefits with Vagus Nerve Stimulation (news.utdallas.edu)
In a first-of-its-kind clinical study, scientists at The University of Texas at Dallas and Baylor University Medical Center showed that patients with treatment-resistant PTSD were symptom-free up to six months after completing traditional therapy paired with vagus nerve stimulation (VNS).
Why Noisy Rooms Are Harder for Some Brains to Handle (neurosciencenews.com)
As they age, some people find it harder to understand speech in noisy environments.
Vagus Nerve Stimulation Erases PTSD: Study (neurosciencenews.com)
In a first-of-its-kind clinical study, scientists at The University of Texas at Dallas and Baylor University Medical Center showed that patients with treatment-resistant PTSD were symptom-free up to six months after completing traditional therapy paired with vagus nerve stimulation (VNS).
AI focused on brain regions recreates what you're looking at (2024) (newscientist.com)
Artificial intelligence systems can now create remarkably accurate reconstructions of what someone is looking at based on recordings of their brain activity. These reconstructed images are greatly improved when the AI learns which parts of the brain to pay attention to.
A new hairlike electrode for long-term, high-quality EEG monitoring (psu.edu)
The future of electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring may soon look like a strand of hair.
The Nature of Consciousness in Anaesthesia (sciencedirect.com)
Neuroscientists agree on the value of locating the source of consciousness within the brain.
Researchers Create a Brain Implant for Near-Real-Time Speech Synthesis (hackaday.com)
Brain-to-speech interfaces have been promising to help paralyzed individuals communicate for years. Unfortunately, many systems have had significant latency that has left them lacking somewhat in the practicality stakes.
Cognitive Benefits of Open-Skill Sports in Childhood: Evidence from ABCD Study (nlm.nih.gov)
This study analyzed baseline data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, comprising 11,869 children aged 9-10 years. Participants were categorized into open-skill sports group (OSG), closed-skill sports group (CSG), and non-sport group (NSG). Cognitive performance was assessed using seven tasks from the NIH Toolbox, covering executive function, processing speed, and language domains. Group differences were examined using ANCOVA, controlling for sex, race, parental education, income, Area Deprivation Index (ADI), body mass index (BMI), and total time spent in activities.
NAC: The Amino Acid That Turns Psychiatry on Its Head (2018) (psychologytoday.com)
Research on N-acetylcysteine (NAC) illuminates an old question.
Brain interface allows speech decoding in ALS patient (medicalxpress.com)
University of California, Davis researchers have developed a brain-computer interface (BCI) that enables computer cursor control and clicking, using neural signals from the speech motor cortex.
Type 2 diabetes alters brain circuits involved in reward processing (psypost.org)
A new study published in The Journal of Neuroscience has found that type 2 diabetes can alter how the brain processes spatial and reward-related information.
The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020) (massivesci.com)
A recent study published from researchers at the University of Washington showed that language ability and problem solving skills best predict how quickly people learn Python, a popular programming language.
Reconstructing dopamine's link to reward (2024) (thetransmitter.org)
The field is grappling with whether to modify the long-standing theory of reward prediction error—or abandon it entirely.
Dopamine signals when a fear can be forgotten (picower.mit.edu)
A new study in mice by MIT neuroscientists shows that the signal is the release of dopamine along a specific interregional brain circuit.
Methylene Blue Address Vascular-Hypometabolism in Alzheimer's Disease (gethealthspan.com)
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is often associated with amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, yet growing evidence supports a vascular-hypometabolism hypothesis in which cerebral hypoperfusion and mitochondrial dysfunction—particularly at the level of cytochrome c oxidase—drive early disease processes.
Simons Foundation Launches Collaboration on Ecological Neuroscience (simonsfoundation.org)
The newly launched Simons Collaboration on Ecological Neuroscience (SCENE) will unite leading scientists across neuroscience and machine learning to discover how the brain represents ‘sensorimotor’ (that is, sensory and motor) interactions.
General anesthesia reduces uniqueness of brain's functional 'fingerprint' (medicalxpress.com)
General anesthesia suppresses the unique functional connectivity patterns in the brain, making it difficult to distinguish individuals based on their neural activity.