The News Lens
Fabrizio MusacchioIn #mouse #cortex and #striatum, the probes support localized circuit manipulation and parallel identification of multiple cell types.
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Section five tackles the regulatory frontier as consumer brain scanners outpace the law. Cryptographer Christine Lauter notes current hardware encryption only lasts 50 years, leaving long-term thoughts vulnerable. Human rights lawyer Jared Gensler warns that scanners could allow authorities to read a defendant's unexpressed fear.
Based on Werner Herzog's Theatre of Thought (2021) documentary.
Your Brain Is a Pizza
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Section four uses Philippe Petit’s 1974 tightrope walk between the Twin Towers as a metaphor for neurotechnology. On one side are medical miracles, like John Donoghue's robotic arms for the paralyzed. On the other side, philosophers like Sara Goering warn of a chilling loss of cognitive autonomy and rogue manipulation by advertisers.
#brain
#cortex
#mind
#neuroscience
#video
#WernerHerzog
#PhilippePetit
Your Brain Is a Pizza
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The hardware making this possible is shrinking rapidly. Ken Sheppard is developing "chip as system" technology with implantable devices just 350 microns size—the size of a dust mite. Delivered via a hypodermic needle, they sit on the brain to restore sight. They must be passivated to survive the corrosive saltwater inside the skull.
#brain
#cortex
#mind
#neuroscience
#video
#WernerHerzog
#chips
#implants
Your Brain Is a Pizza
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Section three, "The synthesized voice," shows that science can also pull instructions out of the brain. For locked-in patients, Dr. Edward Chang records neural activity from the cortical area controlling the vocal tract. By capturing speech signals, his system synthesizes thoughts into audible words, erasing the gap between intent and sound.
#brain
#cortex
#mind
#neuroscience
#video
#WernerHerzog
#speech
Your Brain Is a Pizza
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Using light, animal behaviors cease to be internal choices and become external toggles. Scientists can flick a switch to turn fundamental drives up or down, including aggression, nurturing, hunger, thirst, and sleep. This mechanical ease implies our own complex actions might be far more programmable than we care to acknowledge.
#brain
#cortex
#mind
#neuroscience
#video
#WernerHerzog
#optogenetics
Your Brain Is a Pizza
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Section two, "Flipping the behavioral switch," explores how internal choices can become biological toggles. At Stanford, Karl Deisseroth industrialized mind control via optogenetics. Light-activated genes from algae are inserted into animal neurons, allowing researchers to control brains using fiber-optic pulses of light.
#brain
#cortex
#mind
#neuroscience
#video
#WernerHerzog
#optogenetics
Your Brain Is a Pizza
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Packed into this folded tissue is a dense arrangement of 86 billion neurons, the seat of every memory, drive, and aspiration. Researcher Rafael Yuste contrasts this with a tiny hydra, which has only 300 neurons but can somersault. If a hydra is reduced to a cellular soup, it rebuilds itself in three days, proving intelligence is distributed.
#brain
#cortex
#mind
#neuroscience
#video
#WernerHerzog
#hydra
Your Brain Is a Pizza
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Section one, "Your brain is a pizza," confronts the physical mundanity of the mind. Dr. Koch uses a tactile metaphor, describing the human cortex as a two-dimensional sheet about 12 to 14 inches across. It has the exact dimensions and thickness of a standard pizza with extra cheese, acting as the counterintuitive medium for thought.