UK System could add to Mars Rover Brain Power

British scientists have announced a project they say could allow Mars rovers to roam autonomously around the planet.

The Seeker system was designed by engineers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot as part of the European Space Agency's exploration efforts, the BBC reported.

It would allow a vehicle "to travel under its own steam with its own intelligence around a 6 kilometer (4-mile) route," engineer Kim Ward said.

Conventional rovers must follow commands sent from mission control on Earth that take 30 minutes to arrive at the Red Planet.

Seeker is designed to guide a rover Mars' hostile terrain autonomously to gather data.

Aron Kisbi, 24, a systems engineer at Appleton, called the system a leap forward after recent tests.

"We put the robot in the target area, leave it out there and it does the whole journey by itself, and that is what is really novel about the project," he said.

Brain Computer Interfaces: Melding Man and Machine

Controlling computers and other electronic gadgets with just a thought seems like technology that would decades before it becomes a reality but scientists are already developing computer chips that can connect to a computer system.

Brain computer interface technology is a way for a human brain to connect to an external computer system to control electronic devices like computer cursors or robotic arms.

An electrode chip can be implanted into the brain to capture the electric signals from the brain.

The computer will then translate these electric signals to the appropriate actions by applying signal processing algorithms.

The first ever human to be implanted with BCI chip was Matthew Nagle back in June 22, 2004.

Nagle was a tetraplegic who was paralyzed from the waist down after being stabbed. John Donaghue, a Brown University professor and his team implanted an electrode in Nagle's brain that has allowed him to open his e-mail, control a computer mouse and draw on the screen.

He could also send commands to an external prosthetic hand. The device was removed from him after a year.

The brain implant system or BrainGate uses a neural interface with a wired connection running out of the metal nub embedded in the skull. A new team, called BrainGate 2 is working on a wireless interface that would use the same sensors imbedded in the brain as the original BrainGate but would use a laser to transmit the data from the brain.

BrainGate 2 is collaboration among engineers and doctors from Brown, Harvard, and Sanford.

While the BrainGate system uses implanted electrodes, another team from the University of Maryland is looking at a brain cap that will perform the same functions as the implanted electrode but without the invasive procedure.

"We are on track to develop, test and make available to the public- within the next few years -- a safe, reliable, noninvasive brain computer interface that can bring life-changing technology to millions of people whose ability to move has been diminished due to paralysis, stroke or other injury or illness," said Associate Professor of Kinesiology Jose Contreras-Vidal of the university's School of Public Health.

EEG finds consciousness in people in vegetative state

Signs of consciousness have been detected in three people previously thought to be in a vegetative state, with the help of a cheap, portable device that can be used at the bedside.

"There's a man here who technically meets all the internationally agreed criteria for being in a vegetative state, yet he can generate 200 responses [to direct commands] with his brain," says Adrian Owen of the University of Western Ontario.

"Clearly this guy is not in a true vegetative state. He's probably as conscious as you or I are."

In 2005, Owen's team, used functional MRI to show consciousness in a person who was in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), for the first time.

PVS is also known as 'wakeful unconsciousness', whereby the body still functions but the mind is unresponsive.

However, fMRI is costly and time-consuming, so his team set about searching for simple and cost-effective solutions for making bedside diagnoses of PVS.

Now, they have devised a test that uses the relatively inexpensive and widely available electroencephalogram (EEG).

An EEG uses electrodes attached to the scalp to record electrical activity in the brain.

Imagine wiggling your toes
Owen and his team used an EEG on 16 people thought to be in a PVS and compared the results with 12 healthy controls while they were asked to imagine performing a series of tasks.

Each person was asked to imagine at least four separate actions – either clenching their right fist or wiggling their toes.

In three of the people with PVS, brain regions known to be associated with those tasks lit up with activity, despite physical unresponsiveness.

This suggested to the researchers that the subjects were carrying out a complex set of cognitive functions including hearing the command, understanding language, sustaining attention and tapping into working memory.

"It isn't the case that just because somebody doesn't respond they're not conscious," Owen says. "There's a growing body of data now demonstrating that many of these patients aren't what they appear."

Criteria of Vegetative State (PVS)
"The diagnostic criteria for vegetative state have to change," he adds. The official diagnosis for PVS was formulated in the 1970s, before neuro-imaging was widely used, says Owen.

The last update was made in 1995, but the criteria for declaring someone conscious is still based on whether an outside observer believes the patient is trying to communicate.

Morten Overgaard, a cognitive neuroscientist at Aalborg and Aarhus University in Denmark, says that determining whether Owen's patients are actually responding consciously or whether they are unconsciously reacting to suggestions from the command is difficult to know without further study.

"If this is suggested as a standalone test to decide whether a person is conscious or not, then we need [signs] that are very strong and not just an indication of consciousness," he says.


Absence of Awareness
The test cannot prove the absence of awareness, but it can identify people who weren't thought to be conscious, says Damian Cruse, a collaborator on the study.

This was particularly apparent when 25 per cent of the healthy controls returned EEG readings that were below expected levels of conscious thought.

Communicating with carers
However, for those people previously considered to be unaware of their surroundings, communicating with their caretakers through EEG tests could change their life. "We're trying to work out how to use this technique to find out more about somebody's internal mental state," says Owen. "It opens up the possibilities for potentially facilitating recovery. If you have a channel of communication with a patient, you can have that patient play a role in therapeutic intervention."

Gene switch rejuvenates failing mouse brains

Gene switch rejuvenates failing mouse brains

Step aside, Sudoku. A genetic switch that causes memory impairment in ageing mice when it goes into "off" mode has been flicked on, restoring failing brains to a more youthful state.

If a similar switch can be found in people, it might provide a new way to keep ageing human brains young.
Cognitive decline, particularly memory impairment, is a normal part of ageing in humans and animals. Yet why this happens, and how we can prevent it, is largely unknown, says David Sweatt at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, who was not involved in the new work.

André Fischer of the European Neuroscience Institute in Göttingen, Germany, and colleagues forced 3-month-old mice to find their way around a new environment and assessed them on their ability to associate an electric shock with a particular environment.

New neurons
The result was increased activity of a cluster of over 1500 genes which are known make proteins that are needed for the creation of new neurons – a process that is necessary for learning in humans and mice.

This boost in gene expression did not occur in 16-month-old mice given the same tasks: the activity of their genes changed only slightly. The mice also did worse than the young ones at spatial learning and memory tasks.

To uncover what prevents elderly mice getting this genetic boost, Fischer analysed the DNA found in neurons in the hippocampus of both old and young mice.

They found that when young mice are learning, a molecular fragment known as an acetyl group binds to a particular point on the histone protein that DNA wraps itself around – with the result that the cluster of learning and memory genes on the surrounding DNA ends up close to the acetyl group.

DNA 'on' switch
This acetyl "cap" was missing in the older mice that had been set the same tasks. From this, the team concludes that the cap acts as an "on" switch for the cluster of learning and memory genes: removing the cap switches off the genes.

Next, by injecting an enzyme known to encourage caps to bind to any kind of histone molecule, Fischer's team artificially flipped the switch to the on position in old mice. The acetyl group returned to the histone molecule and the mice's learning and memory performance became similar to that of 3-month-old mice.