Cerebral Language

A Whale with a Human Voice Certain whales can imitate the voices...

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 13:52:43 -0400

Certain whales can imitate the voices of humans

The marine mammal, a white whale named NOC, copied the sound of people so well that at first, researchers thought they were hearing humans conversing in the distance. A diver who worked with NOC once even left the water, wondering, “Who told me to get out?” The voice turned out to be that of NOC.

“They are highly vocal animals,” lead author Sam Ridgway of the National Marine Mammal Foundation told Discovery News, adding that NOC was not the first to copy human speech.

“A major instance occurred at Vancouver Aquarium in 1979,” he said. “In that case, people thought the whale uttered his name (“Lagosi”) and other sounds that were like garbled German or Russian. Our whale was the second example, however, ours was the first solid demonstration using acoustic analysis including ‘voice print’ simultaneously with human speech.”

A quick audio lesson on Southern Linguistics

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 23:22:03 -0400

A quick audio lesson on Southern Linguistics

Indian Languages: Linguistics in India and Pakistan

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 18:05:15 -0400

A wealth of languages make their home on the Indian Subcontinent. Estimates for the number of...

Macarons, Macaroons... and Macaroni?

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:04:50 -0400

Macarons, Macaroons... and Macaroni? : superlinguo: Some people will say that when life gives you...

I saw this and knew it was too cool not to share… a lab from...

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 10:57:41 -0400

I saw this and knew it was too cool not to share… a lab from North Carolina State University has figured out a way to basically control the movements of a cockroach. As you can see in the video above, they can effectually get it to walk along a curved line pretty accurately. There is a microcontroller that is connected the roach’s antennae and cerci (both of which are their sensors for the rest of the world). The microcontroller basically just sends an electrical impulse onto the antennae or cerci, which makes the roach think it’s hitting a barrier, so it will move away from it. You can then get it to move along a pathway by sending the appropriate signal to the appropriate body part. A suggested use for this kind of technology is to search collapsed buildings for survivors (such as after an earthquake). It’s a fairly impressive result from a logical idea. For more information, see this article.

1959 the Russian scientist Dmitri Belyaev began one of the most...

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 21:13:29 -0400

1959 the Russian scientist Dmitri Belyaev began one of the most intensive experiments into domestication, in spite of intense political problems in the past. Starting with a group of wild foxes he tested categorised them into groups based on how they reacted to humans and allowed the most approaching, and consequentially the tamest, to mate. By continuing this practice with the resulting offspring for many generations Belyaev eventually had a group of foxes that would not only approach humans but actively seek their attention through nuzzling and wagging their tails.

Sound familiar? Well it is not the change in the fox’s behaviour that is the most startling aspect of this experiment, but their change in appearance. The foxes seem to not only have taken on behaviour similar to a dog’s but also a similar appearance. The colouration of the fox’s fur and the shape of their skulls had changed to be more dog like and their ears even became floppy. This change of appearance is so surprising as Belyaev did not breed based on appearance merely behaviour. The effects shown in this change in appearance are evidence of a phenomenon known as pleiotropy. Pleiotropy is the presence of genes that affect more than one trait. In this example the allele of the gene that caused tameness also caused this striking change in appearance.

Link: Butterflies Remember What They Learned as Caterpillars | Wired Science

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 20:54:47 -0400

Link: Butterflies Remember What They Learned as Caterpillars | Wired Science:...

neurolove: This is an image taken by the McNeil lab of a...

Thu, 31 May 2012 10:24:43 -0400

neurolove:

This is an image taken by the McNeil lab of a hippocampal growth cone exploring. Growth cones are the part of the neuron (from the axon which has to make connections) that grow outward to seek out other neurons and make connections/synapses. For more information, see this post.

This image is property of the McNeil lab at Baylor.

somersault1824: Cell membrane more scientific...

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 18:37:07 -0400

somersault1824:

Cell membrane

more scientific illustrations

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The human brain

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 10:08:04 -0400

The human brain

Link: Knoword

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 11:39:00 -0400

Link: Knoword: Knoword is a game of quick thinking, smart decisions and great words. When you begin,...

TED: Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke of Insight

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 19:11:27 -0400

TED: Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke of Insight

Link: Etymologic, The Toughest Word Game on the Web

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:32:54 -0400

Link: Etymologic, The Toughest Word Game on the Web: puncteq: Test your knowledge of the etymology...

Linguistic Geography of the Mainland United States

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 21:52:04 -0400

Linguistic Geography of the Mainland United States

renken: Giving signs in Boston their proper accent.

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 22:18:22 -0500

renken:

Giving signs in Boston their proper accent.

Local Sleep in Awake Rats

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:32:05 -0500

Local Sleep in Awake Rats: When rats are sleep-deprived, small populations of their brain neurons...

Scientists use brain imaging to reveal the movies in our...

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 13:11:00 -0500

Scientists use brain imaging to reveal the movies in our mind

By Yasmin Anwar, Media Relations | September 22, 2011

[Video: Psychology and neuroscience professor Jack Gallant displays videos and brain images used in his research. Video produced by Roxanne Makasdjian, Media Relations.]

BERKELEY — Imagine tapping into the mind of a coma patient, or watching one’s own dream on YouTube. With a cutting-edge blend of brain imaging and computer simulation, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, are bringing these futuristic scenarios within reach.

Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational models, UC Berkeley researchers have succeeded in decoding and reconstructing people’s dynamic visual experiences – in this case, watching Hollywood movie trailers.

As yet, the technology can only reconstruct movie clips people have already viewed. However, the breakthrough paves the way for reproducing the movies inside our heads that no one else sees, such as dreams and memories, according to researchers.

[Video: The approximate reconstruction (right) of a movie clip (left) is achieved through brain imaging and computer simulation]

“This is a major leap toward reconstructing internal imagery,” said Professor Jack Gallant, a UC Berkeley neuroscientist and coauthor of the study published online today (Sept. 22) in the journal Current Biology. “We are opening a window into the movies in our minds.”

Eventually, practical applications of the technology could include a better understanding of what goes on in the minds of people who cannot communicate verbally, such as stroke victims, coma patients and people with neurodegenerative diseases.

It may also lay the groundwork for brain-machine interface so that people with cerebral palsy or paralysis, for example, can guide computers with their minds.

However, researchers point out that the technology is decades from allowing users to read others’ thoughts and intentions, as portrayed in such sci-fi classics as “Brainstorm,” in which scientists recorded a person’s sensations so that others could experience them.

Previously, Gallant and fellow researchers recorded brain activity in the visual cortex while a subject viewed black-and-white photographs. They then built a computational model that enabled them to predict with overwhelming accuracy which picture the subject was looking at.

In their latest experiment, researchers say they have solved a much more difficult problem by actually decoding brain signals generated by moving pictures.

“Our natural visual experience is like watching a movie,” said Shinji Nishimoto, lead author of the study and a post-doctoral researcher in Gallant’s lab. “In order for this technology to have wide applicability, we must understand how the brain processes these dynamic visual experiences.”

[Image: Mind-reading through brain imaging technology is a common sci-fi theme]

Nishimoto and two other research team members served as subjects for the experiment, because the procedure requires volunteers to remain still inside the MRI scanner for hours at a time.

They watched two separate sets of Hollywood movie trailers, while fMRI was used to measure blood flow through the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes visual information. On the computer, the brain was divided into small, three-dimensional cubes known as volumetric pixels, or “voxels.”

“We built a model for each voxel that describes how shape and motion information in the movie is mapped into brain activity,” Nishimoto said.

The brain activity recorded while subjects viewed the first set of clips was fed into a computer program that learned, second by second, to associate visual patterns in the movie with the corresponding brain activity.

Brain activity evoked by the second set of clips was used to test the movie reconstruction algorithm. This was done by feeding 18 million seconds of random YouTube videos into the computer program so that it could predict the brain activity that each film clip would most likely evoke in each subject.

Finally, the 100 clips that the computer program decided were most similar to the clip that the subject had probably seen were merged to produce a blurry yet continuous reconstruction of the original movie.

Reconstructing movies using brain scans has been challenging because the blood flow signals measured using fMRI change much more slowly than the neural signals that encode dynamic information in movies, researchers said. For this reason, most previous attempts to decode brain activity have focused on static images.

“We addressed this problem by developing a two-stage model that separately describes the underlying neural population and blood flow signals,” Nishimoto said.

Ultimately, Nishimoto said, scientists need to understand how the brain processes dynamic visual events that we experience in everyday life.

“We need to know how the brain works in naturalistic conditions,” he said. “For that, we need to first understand how the brain works while we are watching movies.”

New neuroimaging technique: Mapping Myelination Neuroscientists...

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 20:50:54 -0500

New neuroimaging technique: Mapping Myelination

Neuroscientists have known for more than a century that myelination levels differ throughout the cerebral cortex, the gray outer layer of the brain where most higher mental functions take place. via

Researcher, Van Essen’s journal article here also explains how in MRI data already collected, or in less than 10 minutes, myelination images can be collected and used in conjunction with other imaging techniques to provide a more well rounded picture and understanding that we could once only see posthumously…after removing the brain, slicing it and staining it for myelin. This is important because:

Better brain maps will result, speeding efforts to understand how the healthy brain works and potentially aiding in future diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders…

The technique makes it possible for scientists to map myelination, or the degree to which branches of brain cells are covered by a white sheath known as myelin in order to speed up long-distance signaling. via

Image: “Red and yellow indicate regions with high myelin levels; blue, purple and black areas have low myelin levels.” via

Western blots (protein immunoblots) of mouse, rat, and human...

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 20:19:00 -0500

Western blots (protein immunoblots) of mouse, rat, and human proteins against a protein standard after gel electrophoresis

puncteq: I’m meeting V.S. Ramachandran THIS WEEK, and I’m...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:43:21 -0500

puncteq:

I’m meeting V.S. Ramachandran THIS WEEK, and I’m getting my book signed! Wooh!