The Brain

Will Your Next Password Be a Brainwave?

Secure internet authentication with today's technology is more and more difficult. Even two-factor authentication is not enough. But at UC Berkeley, the next frontier in biometrics-based security is emerging: meet passthoughts—your brainwaves as an identifier,...

From Here to Where? Following the Brain Map

The human brain, a super organ of around 100 billion nerve cells, remains the single most powerful, complex and least understood computer on the planet. Cracking its code will allow us to better utilize our...

Making Art with Brainscans and 3D Printers

Suzanne Anker finds beauty and meaning at the borderlines of science. This visual artist and sculptor talks about “the way in which visual art and the biological sciences in­tersect because of technology.” She is conversant...

You Can Teach an Old Brain Young Tricks

In recent years many educators have endorsed the benefits of video games in learning, both for younger students and at the university level. But now brain scientists have discovered that a multitasking video game can...

Closing the Brain/Computer Divide

It sounds so very Star Trek: Computers that can read your mind, and act accordingly. Brain computer interfaces—computers that are able to assess and respond to your needs, wants, and feelings—have been in the works...

Brain Science Could Be the Next Big Leap

Those who tuned in to President Obama's State of the Union speech in February might have missed a brief mention of a project some say will catalyze an entire new industry devoted to understanding the...

How Shining Light in the Brain Could Control Addiction

Imaging studies of cocaine addicts’ brains typically show low activity patterns in the region that is key to impulse control, the prefrontal cortex. The same goes for rodents that have been turned into cokeheads in...

Online Brain Games Combat Web Fatigue

Diving down Google search rabbit holes and mindlessly scrolling through Web pages may be dulling our brains without our even realizing it. If we’re going to spend so much of our lives online, is there...

Gamers Help Map Brain’s Machinery in Retina Unraveling Challenge

Citizen scientists playing the online game Eyewire are helping neuroscientists map the J cells of the retina—a task that will help understand the machinery of the mind. MIT professor of computational neuroscience, Sebastian Seung, described...