Just when you thought your privacy couldn't be invaded anymore, a team of researchers are working on a device for NASA that would be able to detect brain injury, stress, fatigue and depression. The brain cap sends weak pulses of near-infrared light into the brain, then analyzes the reflected wavelengths. The results reveals how much oxygen is ...

For more than eight years, Erik Ramsey has been trapped in his own body. At 16, Ramsey suffered a brain-stem injury after a car crash, leaving him with a condition known as "locked-in" syndrome. Unlike other forms of paralysis, locked-in patients can still feel sensation, but they cannot move on their own, and they are unable to control ...

  A little brain boost is something we could all use now and then. A new option may be on the horizon. Researchers at the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, in Bethesda, MD, are studying how applying gentle electrical current to the scalp can improve learning. Previous small-scale studies have suggested that a ...

Devices known as brain-machine interfaces could someday be used routinely to help paralyzed patients and amputees control prosthetic limbs with just their thoughts. Now, University of Florida researchers have taken the concept a step further, devising a way for computerized devices not only to translate brain signals into movement but also to ...

With the Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System, DARPA hopes to integrate technologies from flat-field, wide-angle optics to the use of advanced EEGs to rapidly recognize brainwave signatures. ...

Harvard Medical School researchers have shown that phosphenes can be produced by deep brain stimulation of the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), an area deep in the center of the brain that relays visual signals from the retina to the cortex....

USC's Center for Neural Engineering researchers have developed a chip that can communicate with brain cells, a first step toward an implantable machine that could restore memories in people with brain damage or help them make new ones. ...

Scientists have developed a light-triggered switch to control brain cells, which could aid in the development of therapies for epilepsy and other diseases--and shed light on the neural code....

If we are going to replace the brain for the long term, it will be slowly, neuron by neuron, with something more durable. The first, early steps on the path to the necessary technology are already underway, as reported in Popular Science: ''The chip's ability to converse with live cells is a dramatic first step, he believes, toward an implantable ...

Karl Deisseroth's genetically engineered ''light switch,'' which lets scientists turn selected parts of the brain on and off, may help improve treatments for depression and other disorders....