Brain, brain, brain.

I am back after long break being busy with Florida conference, smuggling iPad from US (I love it!) and gaining some skin burns.

Three brain studies caught my attention recently.

First - guys from University of Pennsylvania managed to create a first silk-based, ultra-thin brain implants. The electrodes are printed onto silk films, just 2.5 microns thick (which is about 1/40 thickness of paper sheet). When placed on the brain surface and washed with saline the silk dissolves. As a result the electrodes neatly wraps around the brain curves. Pennsylvania team tested those implants on visual cortex of a cats, showing that they were able to record very good signal from electrical brain activity for over a month without causing inflammation. So far BCI's (brain-computer interfaces) based on dissolvable silk are a very promising technology in contrast with currently used BCI's made of silicon, which not only damage the brain tissue but also make it impossible to record larger areas of the brain. 

Second, the MindWalker system. It's a 3 year, EU-funded, 2,5 million euro project aimed at developing exoskeleton that would enable paralysed people to walk again. The MindWalker consist of three elements - BCI, a virtual reality training environment and a robotic exoskeleton attached to the legs. The technology is already out there, but need to be properly integrated. The coolest feature will be a design of BCI. Instead of concentrating on specific commands like 'stand' or 'walk forward', the user of MindWalk will be simply performing the act of walking as they would do it normally. To achieve this, the Belgian robotics team use a dynamic neural networks with learning capabilities, that learn user brain activity and makes feedback possible on the basis of overall brain signal instead of a specific one.

Finally, Nintendo DS Brain Training DOESN'T make you smarter, and doesn't improve overall brain power, the study shows. Published in the most recent Nature, Owen et al. randomly assigned participants to three brain training groups (reasoning training group, short-term skills training group and web-browsing group) with brain training "workouts" for at least 10 minutes a day, three times a week, for a minimum of six weeks. Trainings were designed by folks from Medical Research Council, based on famous Nintendo DS game. They tested over 11,000 volunteers, so the sample was quite hight. Results showed that there was no significant difference for all three groups in tests performed before and after brain training. So really it didn't matter if you were playing brain training or browsing the web in terms of cognitive improvements. It's important to point out tho, that Nintendo never claimed there was any evidenced for Dr Kawashima's Brain Training effects. Still, it would be nice to look at the older population, and more long-term effects (which authors are planning to do).

[photo credit: John Rogers/Nature Materials, Mindwalker, Nintendo]