Scientists take a step closer to ETERNAL LIFE as they PRESERVE and REVIVE brain

UK Express

 

In a step towards eternal life, researchers from 21st Century Medicine (21CM) managed to freeze the brain of a rabbit using a technique known as Aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation (ASC).

The team, led by recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate Robert McIntyre, wrote in a press release: “Using a combination of ultrafast chemical fixation and cryogenic storage, it is the first demonstration that near  perfect, long-term structural preservation of an intact mammalian brain is achievable.”

They achieved this by filling the vascular system of the brain with chemicals that are designed to halt the decaying process, and then froze it to -135 degrees celsius.

When the brain was warmed, the scientists found that the majority of its cell membranes, synapses and structures were still in tact and ready to function.

A statement read: “The key breakthrough was the quick perfusion of a deadly chemical fixative (glutaraldehyde) through the brain’s vascular system, rapidly stopping metabolic decay and fixing proteins in place by covalent crosslinks.”

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Political Campaigns’ New Invasive Tool to Win Elections: Scanning Faces, Brains and Bodies of Voters

All Gov

Neuromarketing, the practice of using facial coding, biofeedback and brain imaging by marketers, is now being used by political campaigns to hone their messages.

In Mexico, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and President Enrique Peña’s campaign used neuropolitical techniques to gauge voters’ brain waves, skin arousal, heart rates and facial expressions during the 2012 presidential campaign. PRI is now experimenting with facial coding to help pick the best candidates. One way the new methods are put to use is by placing cameras in digital billboards and recording and measuring facial reactions to political messages.

Similar techniques have been used in Europe, other parts of Latin America, and even in the United States. Hillary Clinton’s campaign hired a neuromarketing firm to help it improve its targeting and messages.

In Turkey, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his Justice and Development Party hired a Turkish neuromarketing company before the June 2015 election. It reported to the campaign that Davutoglu was not connecting with voters.

In Poland, Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz and her party, Civic Platform, used a neuromarketing firm ahead of parliamentary elections last month, which they lost, according to The New York Times. In Colombia, President Juan Manuel Santos’s 2014 campaign used the same neuropolitical consultancy advising Mexico’s governing party, and he won. Neuromarketing consultants have also conducted research in Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Russia and Spain.

Some neuroscientists criticize the practice, saying even if researchers find a speech or commercial has spurred activity in part of a person’s brain, a campaign can’t know what that person is thinking. “For the most part, I think that companies selling neuroscience-based market research tools are taking advantage of people’s natural tendency to think that measurements of the brain are somehow more ‘real’ than measurements of behavior,” Russell Poldrack, a psychology professor at Stanford University, told the Times.

Still the use of neuropolitics could increase during the coming U.S. presidential campaign. David Plouffe, President Obama’s former campaign manager, told the Times: “The richness of this data compared to what is gathered today in testing ads or evaluating speeches and debates, which is the trusty old dial test and primitive qualitative methods, is hard to comprehend. It gets more to emotion, intensity and a more complex understanding of how people are reacting.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff, Steve Straehley

To Learn More:

Neuropolitics, Where Campaigns Try to Read Your Mind (by Kevin Randall, New York Times)
Has the Age of Neuromarketing Finally Arrived? (by Christian Jarrett, New York Magazine)
Privacy Groups Withdraw from Commerce Dept. Facial Recognition Meetings (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Facial Recognition Software Creeps Closer to Total Accuracy (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov) 

Pilot Lands Plane with his Thoughts

Discovery

Why pilot a plane with your hands and feet when you can do it with your brain? Thought-controlled flight could be arriving soon, according to the EU-funded “BrainFlight” project.

A team of scientists from the Institute for Flight System Dynamics and the Berlin Institute of Technology says it has translated brain impulses into control commands, enabling pilots in a plane simulator to achieve a range of remarkably precise maneuvers without touching the controls or pedals.

Wearing a cap with lots of cables attached, pilots in the simulator were able to land a plane simply by looking at the screen and moving the control stick with their thoughts, correcting the plane’s position repeatedly until it landed.

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