Posted 11/22/09 at 03:25:23 PM by Justin Kerr

Anyone who follows Intel closely knows that they don’t just pump out high end CPU’s, but they actually dedicate entire teams to “pie in the sky” ideas of what future technologies might look like. This could be anything from an x86 cluster of CPU’s to render video, or in this case, using your brain to control a computer. It may sound farfetched, but its something Intel and its researchers have been actively studying for sometime now.

Currently scientists are focusing on how the brain reacts when interacting with a computer, and then learning ways to interpret this data to execute commands on the machine. The idea here is to allow your thoughts to take over for your mouse and keyboard. Intel is of the belief that an implant would make this easier, though I’m not entirely sure how many volunteers they are going to get with that idea. “Eventually people may be willing to be more committed… to brain implants" said Intel’s Vice-President of future Technology, Andrew Chien. "Imagine being able to surf the Web with the power of your thoughts”

You may have your doubts, and so do we, but it might interest you to know that researchers have already made significant strides in the field of reading brain patterns, and have already identified certain words such as “bear” that cause everyones brain to react in a similar manner. “I think human beings are remarkably adaptive,” said Chien, “If you told people 20 years ago that they would be carrying computers all the time, they would have said I don’t want that, I don’t need that. Now you can’t get them to stop. There are a lot of things that have to be done first but I think implanting chips into human brains is well within the scope of possibility”. Chien speculates we will be lining up for implants as early as 2010.

Are you comfortable with this idea?

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Posted 06/12/09 at 05:32:23 PM by Andy Salisbury

According to a recent study, surfing the net makes us much smarter, rather than rotting our brains. For folks like us, this just happens to be some great news.

The study, which was conducted by Gary Small of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California at Los Angeles, took a poll of 24 participants. Half of the participants used the Internet on a daily basis while the other half had little to no experience. Using an MRI, Small compared brain activity as they read a book off of a computer screen, and both groups produced similar results. But, when he looked at the groups as they searched for clues about the benefits of eating chocolate and the best way to visit the Galápagos, the group that surfed the internet regularly registered twice as much activity in the frontal, temporal and cingulated areas of the brain – all of which supply aid to complex reasoning skills.

“The simple headline here is that Google is making us smarter,” stated Small. And for this revelation, we thank you. Perhaps surfing Facebook and I Can Has Cheezeburger all day long won’t seem so silly now!

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