South Korean scientists from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology appear to have cleared the largest obstacle to the feasibility of building brain-like computers: power consumption. In their paper “Organic core-sheath nanowire artificial synapses with femtojoule energy consumption,” published in the June 17th edition of Science Advances, …
Tag: synapses
Mar 14 2006
Researchers Restore Sight in Blind Rodents
A team of neuroscientists and bioengineers from MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Center for Biomedical Engineering have been able to partially restore the vision of rodents whose visual neural pathways had been severed by injecting them with a tiny, biodegradable substrate on which brain cells were able to regrow and reconnect. The …
Dec 20 2005
Retrograde Signal Strengthens Synapses
Researchers from MIT studying brain plasticity, the reorganization of brain cells and their connections over time, have recently discovered a “backtalk” or retrograde signal from post-synaptic to pre-synaptic neurons that plays a crucial role in synapse development. It has long been known that synaptic strength, the strength of the connections between neurons, plays a central …
Oct 21 2005
Why Habits are Hard to Break
A forthcoming article in Nature explains how recent experiments by researchers at MIT have shed some light on why sometimes habits seem to be broken but never truly die. Scientists have discovered that with the proper stimulus a dormant habit can be retrieved from memory and once again influence a subject’s behavior.