Fresh Takes on Innovation

A recent MIT study suggests that the brain may need noise to learn. “Our theory holds that the learning brain has the equivalent of a ‘teacher’ and a ‘tinkerer’–a learning signal and noise in the learning process, respectively” Uri Rokni, the lead author of the study explains. Noise and error-correction work hand in hand to reproduce varieties of the absorbed inputs.

“In producing a specific piece of text, the tinkerer just randomly changes the words, while the teacher continually corrects the text to make it have the right meaning. The teacher only cares about the meaning and not the precise wording. When the teacher and tinkerer work together, the text keeps changing but the meaning remains the same.”

The learning experiments with monkeys at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute might lead to a new theory of how the brain learns.

I think BrainStorming processes rely on the tinkerer in the brain. We try to silence the teacher, so that bizarre thoughts can be expressed unfiltered. Some of them might be valuable sources for new ideas. Maybe some brain scientist out there can explain, if the MIT findings really tell us something about creativity.

Source: MIT News

The do-it-yourself magazine Make: features an interesting weekend project. Mind machines used to be hip in the early nineties. They used to cost tons of money and promised to make you reach a ruminant state of mind. Back then I tried it once. Didn’t work on me. Anyway: Now you can make your own mind machine. It flashes light into you eyes and sends beeps and white noise into your ear tubes. Your beta, alpha, theta and delta brainwaves start to sync and off you go..! If it works.

A new device by Hitachi enables brainscans outside the laboratories. The portable brain scanner consists of a headset and a controller, that stores the data or sends it to a computer via wifi. A single computer can monitor several brain scanners. So it will be possible to monitor brain activity of subjects interacting with each other. Hitachi is also working on brain-machine interfaces.

In the future we are probably going to see smaller headsets, that might give you the power to control all the gadgets around you by your will. Meanwhile neuromarketing researchers will probably use the scanners to learn more about our shopping habits.

Source: Pink Tentacle

Over 50 terabyte of brain image data is yours to discover at Brainmaps.org. It’s an interactive zoomable brain atlas not just for the human brain, but other species brains as well.

Look at Slates special issue, april 2007. You will find a lot of interesting articles about Neuroscience and Neuroculture from a bunch of renowned scientists.