Computer Science - Software/Programming
When a paralyzed person imagines moving a limb, cells in the part of the brain that controls movement still activate as if trying to make the immobile limb work again. Despite neurological injury or disease that has severed the pathway between brain and muscle, the region where the signals originate remains intact and functional.
In recent years, neuroscientists and neuroengineers working in prosthetics have begun to develop brain-implantable sensors that can measure signals from individual neurons, and after passing those signals through a mathematical decode algorithm, can use them to control computer cursors with thoughts. The work is part of a field known as neural prosthetics.
Read more: A leap forward in brain-controlled computer cursors
A new computer simulation of the brain can count, remember and gamble. And the system, called Spaun, performs these tasks in a way that’s eerily similar to how people do.
Image-processing software is a hot commodity: Just look at Instagram, a company built around image processing that Facebook is trying to buy for a billion dollars. Image processing is also going mobile, as more and more people are sending cellphone photos directly to the Web, without transferring them to a computer first.
PITTSBURGH—Computer graphic artists who produce computer-animated movies and games spend much time creating subtle movements such as expressions on faces, gesticulations on bodies and the draping of clothes. A new way of modeling these dynamic objects, developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Disney Research, Pittsburgh, and the LUMS School of Science and Engineering in Pakistan, could greatly simplify this editing process.
MIT research uses information about how frequently objects are seen together to refine the conclusions of object recognition systems.
by Larry Hardesty