Darpa Wants Remote Controls to Master Troop Minds 
The Pentagon’s blue-sky research arm wants to trick out troops’ brains, from the areas that regulate alertness and cognition to pain treatment and psychiatric well-being. And the scientists want to do it all from the outside in — with a gadget installed inside the troops’ helmets. “Remote Control of Brain Activity Using Ultrasound,” the Defense Department’s Armed with Science blog promises.
It’s the latest out-there project in the military’s growing arsenal of brain-based research. In recent months alone, the Pentagon’s funded projects to optimize troop’s minds, prevent injuries and even preemptively assess cognitive ability and vulnerability to traumatic stress. Now, Darpa’s funding one lab that’s trying to do it all — from boosting troop smarts to preventing traumatic brain injuries...
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Labels: DARPA, Defense Department, Department of Defense, DOD, neuroscience, Pentagon
Brain Patterns May Be Signs of Mental Illness Risk LONDON (Reuters) - British scientists believe they have found specific patterns of brain activity in children and young people which could be signs or "markers" of those who will later go on to develop mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.
Researchers from Nottingham University, who presented their study at the Forum for European Neuroscience in Amsterdam, said the patterns suggest it may be possible in future to identify those at risk of becoming ill before they develop symptoms.
"If we can identify people who are at particularly high risk of developing schizophrenia, perhaps using neurocognitive brain markers, then we might be able to reduce that risk and also help them to function better," said Dr Maddie Groom, who worked on the study and gave a briefing to reporters in London...
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Labels: brain scan, nerocognitive, neuroscience
Study Narrows Gap Between Mind And BrainScientists have found a surprising link between magnets and morality. A person's moral judgments can be changed almost instantly by delivering a magnetic pulse to an area of the brain near the right ear, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences...
Labels: electromagnetics, magnetics, neuroscience
Moral Judgements Can Be Altered
MIT neuroscientists influence people’s moral judgments by disrupting specific brain region CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — MIT neuroscientists have shown they can influence people's moral judgments by disrupting a specific brain region — a finding that helps reveal how the brain constructs morality.
To make moral judgments about other people, we often need to infer their intentions — an ability known as "theory of mind." For example, if a hunter shoots his friend while on a hunting trip, we need to know what the hunter was thinking: Was he secretly jealous, or did he mistake his friend for a duck?
Previous studies have shown that a brain region known as the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) is highly active when we think about other people's intentions, thoughts and beliefs. In the new study, the researchers disrupted activity in the right TPJ by inducing a current in the brain using a magnetic field applied to the scalp. They found that the subjects' ability to make moral judgments that require an understanding of other people's intentions — for example, a failed murder attempt — was impaired.
The researchers, led by Rebecca Saxe, MIT assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences, report their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of March 29.
The study offers "striking evidence" that the right TPJ, located at the brain's surface above and behind the right ear, is critical for making moral judgments, says Liane Young, lead author of the paper. It's also startling, since under normal circumstances people are very confident and consistent in these kinds of moral judgments, says Young, a postdoctoral associate in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences...
Labels: neuroscience
