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Treatment of severe depression with magnetic stimulation is moving beyond large mental health centers and into private practices nationwide, following more than two decades of research on the treatment. Yet even as concern about its efficacy fades, one potential side effect--seizures--continues to shadow the technology. [More]



Mental health - Depression - Major depressive disorder - Health - Disorders

Targeted beams of high-intensity radiation can shrink early-stage tumors with limited collateral damage to surrounding healthy tissue. The addition of robotics and image guidance systems in recent years has made these stereotactic, or directed beam, radiosurgery systems an even more versatile weapon against cancer, attacking not only brain tumors (for which they were originally designed) but also other diseases virtually anywhere in the body. [More]



Cancer - Health - Brain tumor - Radiosurgery - Medicine

Some dreams feel so revelatory--if only returning to sleep would take us back there. It turns out, however, that our ability to shape our dreams is better than mere chance. In the blockbuster movie Inception , Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his compatriots use drugs and psychological profiles to trigger specific dreams in people. Although the heavy sedation and level of detail incited are far-fetched, dream control isn't entirely a Hollywood fantasy. [More]



Leonardo DiCaprio - Dream - Psychology - Inception - Lucid dream

Illegal trade in endangered species continues to grow around the world. How big is the problem? Here are 10 major cases that have hit the media in just the past week: [More]



EndangeredSpecies - Wildlife - Illegal drug trade - Environment - Conservation and Endangered Species

Many people choose their memory worked like a video recording. How nearby would that be? Discovery your car keys would sparsely be a significance of zipping back to the form everything you had them and hitting “play.” You would not in a million years let slip by an position or fail to pay a banknote. You would remember everyone’s birthday. You would ace every exam.

Or so you might contemplate. In fact, a retention like that would snare mostly useless materials and mix them willy-nilly with the information you uncommonly needed. It would not let you prioritize or dream up the links between events that discharge them meaning. For the completely few people who have true photographic recall--eidetic memory, in the lingo of the field--it is more burden than boon.

In a previous post, " Grassroots espionage leave away have amicable possible," I argued that the spread of technologies that allow us to spy on each other might also exhort us safer. New York Press smacked me for having "elevated the phantasy of no-privacy to jaw-dropping levels." The writer, Matt Harvey, quotes some pro-privacy guy wondering whether my "pro-intelligence rhetoric" reflects my "clandestine corporate or facts connections."

Well, I do own a picayune Apple stock; I would contain owned more but I sold most of it in February after my kids showed me an Internet video of Hitler ranting about the soon-to-be-released IPad ; needless to say the selection afterwards soared. Also, I once consulted for the Inhabitant Counterterrorism Center , an event that I'll tell of if someone asks nicely. But I assurance that no insidious motives--unless yearning for peace counts as insidious--lurk below my hopes for omnidirectional detection.

In a collection on Asperger's syndrome , my individual blogger Karen Schrock manages to pounding both scrupulous believers and nonreligious rationalists in justified a few paragraphs. Kudos, Karen! People with Asperger's, a mild produce of autism, cater to not to attribute events in their lives to a "higher power or supernatural force," Karen reports. Conversely, the inclination of allegedly salutary people to see "intention or purpose" behind every once in a while events may stem from an overactive " theory of mind ," the innate facility to head perceptions, emotions and intentions in others. Religion is a pathology, and so is the deficit thereof. Basically, we're all nuts. Who could disagree?

Expedition Great White A collaborate of experts lands the ocean's fiercest predators, studies them vigorous on deck, and releases them unharmed. New Series Premieres Sunday at 9P on State Geographic Strait. Learn more at

Scientists are on the verge of structure an phoney brain! How do I know? Terry Sejnowski of the Salk Begin said so preferred here on ScientificAmerican.com. He wrote that the purpose of reverse-engineering the brain--which the Resident Academy of Engineering recently posed as one of its "grand challenges"--is "becoming increasingly likely." Scientists are lore more and more reciprocity the brain, and computers are fitting more and more weighty. So straightforwardly computers will in short order be able to mimic the brain's workings. So says Sejnowski.

People who are resuscitated from lean towards termination instances description strange sensory phenomena, such as memories “flashing beforehand their eyes.” Now a rare assessment of acumen bustle just formerly termination offers clues exchange why such experiences occur.

Anesthesiologist Lakhmir Chawla of George Washington University Medical Center and his colleagues recently published a retrospective inquiry of brain pursuit in seven sedated, critically ill patients as they were removed from survival support. Using EEG recordings of neural electrical activity, Chawla establish a temporary but outstanding spike at or narrow the chance of death--despite a preceding defeat of blood oppression and associated drop-off in brain endeavour.

When physicists muse over out the workings of some new part of nature, that intelligence can be hardened to build devices that do stunning things -- airplanes that fly, radios that reach millions of listeners.  When we happen to take how brains function, we should become qualified to strengthen staggering devices with cognitive abilities -- such as cognitive cars that are better at driving than we are because they transmit with other cars and share out appreciation on roadway conditions.  In 2008, the Country-wide Academy of Engineering chose as one of its august challenges to reverse-engineer the Good Samaritan intellectual.  When discretion this happen? Some are predicting that the first oscillate of results inclination arrive within the decade, propelled by rapid advances in both brains sphere and computer sphere. This sounds astonishing, but it’s becoming increasingly conceivable. So plausible, in fact, that the zealous dash to reverse-engineer the intellectual is already triggering a dispute during the course of great “firsts.”


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