A new, non-invasive technique has been developed by researchers working for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that can boost the brain’s cognitive ability by up to 40 percent.
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As humans, we tend to take the most powerful supercomputer in the world for granted: it has a roughly 38-petaflop processing capacity and 2.5 petabytes of memory (or 2.5 million gigabytes), yet only runs on a mere 12 watts of energy. And luckily, we all have one: the human brain. Only recently have silicon-based supercomputers caught up to the brain in raw computational power, with China’s 93-petaflop Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer coming online in June of last year.read more
Brain implants that allow the direct interface between the human brain and machines have been in development for some time now. However, aside from the daunting task of figuring out how to couple solid-state electronics with what amounts to a biological computer, another problem faced by researchers is the body’s reaction to foreign objects: implanted electrodes work just fine when initially inserted, but over time scar tissue builds up over them, hampering their ability to both read and transmit electrical signals between themselves and their targeted neurons. However, researchers at Harvard Medical School have come up with a new method of implantation that may be able to avoid this problem, allowing for long-term use of such implants.
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Many of us have been there: we’ve taken up meditation, followed the practice to the letter, but just couldn’t get into the proper state, or didn’t achieve any tangible benefits. It is, however, important to remember that each of us are different, with different minds, and thus may need a different practice to follow.
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