brains

Cats may retain an aura of mystery about their smug selves, but that could change with scientists using a supercomputer to simulate the the feline brain. That translates into 144 terabytes of working memory for the digital kitty mind.

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We've all been there, late at night and early in the morning, forcing any and every last morsel of knowledge into our weak and exhausted brains. But when the test flops down on our desk, we just stare blankly at the forbidding blue book page. All that knowledge, gone. Either it didn't stick, or it has hid in some inaccessible crevasse deep in the brain.

Memory problems related to sleep deprivation have stymied everyone from college students getting ready for a biochemistry test to Army interrogators probing a tired detainee. Now, scientists have discovered that the memory loss associated with lack of sleep comes down to a single neurological pathway, opening up the possibility of a drug that fixes the memory of a tired brain.

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Though we do it without thinking, keeping track of time is integral to the brain's function, keeping our senses and our actions ordered in a chronology that we then recall in the form of memory. But important as it is, researchers have never understood the mechanism by which humans index the happenings of everyday life. Now, two macaque monkeys may have helped MIT researchers solve the time tracking puzzle.

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In a development that gives Acme Labs and NIMH a run for their money, scientists in Georgia and China have collaborated to create the world's smartest rat. The genetically engineered rat, Hobbie-J, over-expresses a gene that regulates neuron communication, greatly enhancing the rat's ability to navigate mazes and remember toys.

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Your grandma might think that the Internet is rotting your brain, but it's possible if she did a little face-time with Google that she could stay sharper in the noggin herself. In a new study, Internet novices who were instructed to search the web showed increased activity in areas of the brain associated with making decisions and memory in just two weeks, according to a poster presented today at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference.

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Last year, a monkey managed to move a robot arm using nothing but its mind. The arm was wired to the monkey's brain, and the simian test subject maneuvered the arm as if it was its own appendage. Where do you go from there? Apparently, you go wireless.

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For those in a wheelchair with limited mobility, Toyota's new brainwave technology is a marvel. The rider of the wheelchair wears a cap that sends signals via a brain-scan electroencephalograph (BSE) to a computer that analyzes the input to steer the chair in real time, as seen here in a video.

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What: Brain-Machine Interface by Honda, which lets you control a humanoid with your mind
Where: Tokyo
Why: Disability affects one in five Americans.
Wow: Requires no surgical implants and boasts a 90 percent accuracy rate

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We bet that SciKu, the delicate science poetry that belongs to everyone, will last and last. As did, apparently, a 300-million-year-old brain found inside a rock in northeast Kansas:

Fish brain turned to stone
Alas! Fossilization:
It's not just for bone

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This iniopterygian fossil, discovered in Kansas, is an extinct relative of modern chimaeras, a distant relative of sharks and rays. Iniopterygians have unusual features, including large skulls and eye sockets, rows of shark-like teeth, clubbed tails, and fins tipped with spikes and hooks. Previously, only flattened fossils of this relatively small fish -- which averages around six inches in length -- were known to exist. The new finding, the first three-dimensional iniopterygian fossil, is remarkable for having the oldest fossilized brain ever found.

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