Synthetic brain with the help of nanotechnology

There are many ongoing researchers all over the world with the purpose of creating a synthetic (artificial) brain, and one of the most promising scientific researches comes from the University of Southern California where scientists managed to create a carbon nanotube synapse circuit whose behavior in tests was able to reproduce the function of a neuron, the building block of the brain that transmits information via synapses.

Carbon nanotubes, the extremely small molecular structures of carbon have so far showed big potential in several different scientific fields, and now the scientists have showed that they can be also used to create a synapse, which is an important step towards the creation of synthetic brain.

Of course we are talking here about the very early stage of development, and science will certainly need lot more researches before being able to successfully create synthetic brain simply because our brain has more than 100 billion neurons.

Professor Alice Parker said that "the actual development of a synthetic brain, even a functional brain area is decades away, and she believes that the first hurdle that science needs to overcome is to create solution for reproducing the brain plasticity in the circuits.

The scientific challenge in creating the synthetic brain almost looks impossible from the current point of view because the human brain continually produces new neurons, makes new connections and adapts throughout life. In other words, complexity at its very best.

Nanotechnology might be an answer to this complexity but such major discovery is at least couple of decades away. The creation of synthetic brain could have an extremely large span of usefulness from healing the traumatic brain injuries to developing intelligent cars that would maximally protect drivers.

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Is brain training really so useful?

Brain training by different brain training games has recently become very popular, and there are many people theta believe this sort of training will increase the overall power of your brain. Yet, the latest BBC study doesn't quite agree with this thesis and it claims that brain training games in fact do not improve overall brain power.

This sort of brain training helps you to master these brain training games but it will not give any significant boost to your brain power as the study found out that players gained nothing in terms of general reasoning, memory, planning or visuospatial abilities.

The conclusion based on researching 11,430 participants over six weeks was that there were no significant differences between the improvements seen in participants who played our brain training games, and those who just went on the internet for the same length of time.

Some scientists therefore suggest that it will do more good to your brain if you take a walk instead spending countless hours in front of your PC solving these games.

Brain training therefore does not improve people's cognitive ability like some think it does. It may be funny to some, or it may seem like a time well spent but this want boost your brain power.

At the end I will also point out that brain training games do not claim to be scientifically proven to improve cognitive function but what they can actually do is give you a pretty good indication about your intelligence.

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What makes our brain efficient?

Human brain is most evolved on our planet but have you ever wondered what exactly makes our brain so efficient and so reliable? Well, the scientists at the Yale believe that thing that is making our brain efficient is some sort of "neuronal thermostat" that regulates activity in the visual cortex, which enables processing of the sensory information.

Brain can save energy by the help of inhibitory neurons that suppress non-essential visual stimuli, and concentrate only on key information therefore making brain as effective as possible. This phenomenon is known in science as the "iceberg phenomenon", you only see the tip of iceberg flowing in the water but yet we know that there is much larger portion of iceberg underwater in area where we cannot see.

Our body needs significant amount of energy, and brain needs the most of our body's energy so until this research scientists wondered how it can operate both efficiently and reliably when processing a huge variety of sensory information. The answer is "neuronal thermostat", and separating the most important from less important.

Our brain saves energy by concentrating only on key information.

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Advantages of having bigger brain - Bigger brain the smarter you are?

The brain is the center of our nervous system, and a highly complex organ that generates our behavior. Brain still remains a great mystery to scientists despite different studies, and nobody knows the limits of human brain. We only know that we use very small part of our brains, and who knows perhaps the only real difference between humans and gods is in how much of their brain do they use. But since we are getting into the philosophical sphere I will get back to the main topic of this article, namely the size of the brain. What does it mean to have big brain? Does having bigger brain means that you are smarter than the ones with smaller brains or what?

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Interesting science facts - Brain

Brain is center of the nervous system, located in head.

Brain is only 3 per cent of the body's weight, but uses almost 1/5 of total body energy (close to 20 %), mostly for maintenance function.

Human brain consists of approximately 100 billion neurons (responsive cells in the nervous system that process and transmit information by electrochemical signaling)

Average weight of brain by newly born is about 350-400g. Brain grows in size until the age of 18.

Unconsciousness is the result of brain not getting enough blood supply. It happens after 8-10 seconds without blood supply.

About 750ml of blood pumps through human brain every minute.

Brain is in average 140mm wide, 167mm long and 93mm high.

Weight of human brain is very small compared to elephants brain (6000g compared to 1400 g) but is lot bigger than a monkey's brain (95g).

Human brain is capable of having more ideas than the number of atoms in the known universe.

Brain has delicate nature which makes it vulnerable to numerous diseases and several types of damage.

Brain is basically divided into two sides. The left side of your brain controls the right side of your body while the right side of your brain controls the left side of your body.

Brains control human behavior either by activating muscles, or by causing secretion of chemicals such as hormones.

There are still lot of unanswered things about how the brain works despite significant progress in science.

Some animals like jellyfish and starfish have a decentralized nervous system without a brain.

Brain size does not proportionally increase with body size.

Brain stroke happens when disturbance in the blood supply causes developing loss of brain functions.

Brain tumor is an abnormal growth of cells, usually within the brain, that can be either malign or benign.

The left side of our brain is often considered as the rational side of the brain because it deals with such things as language, mathematical processes, and logical analysis.

The right side of our brain is often considered as the creative side of the brain, associated with abstract, non-verbal functions such as music, visual images, emotions.

Men have 4% more brain cells than women, and about 100 grams more of brain tissue.

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