New Beginning with Wearable Tech

It has been a while, but I think it is time for the return of Head of Science in order to document and share with you all the fun projects and products I am developing based on ideas that I started to have in response to research I did at university pertaining to; the brain, how information is integrated through sensory transuctions,synaesthesia, neurofeedback and noninvasive imaging. This chapter of my current adventure started just after the start of my last semester at USF studying Physics, Philosophy and Neuroscience. After years of schooling and working and researching and writing I was burning out.. every paper and project started becoming an emotional labour of my will and resources to no end but to hand it in exchange for grade and the long dangled treat of possible publication. I was crumbling, starting to consider just phoning it in... reading stanford encyclopedia summaries and chapters from my feynmann books to come across as prepared in class and trying to not be too inspired by the topics I would often touch on. This didn't last. Someone dear, who must have understood all too well the pitfalls of academics brought me to what has since become my church, my place of refuge, solace and accomplishment. Noisebridge.
Buried in a dark block of the mission district, this gem of a space granted wishes I hadn't yet thought to have. Within an hour of arriving I was soldering connections putting together a persistence of vision kit of LEDs with a microcontroller and chatting casually with peers working on robots and 3-D printers. What happened to me that I was so unaware of the possibilities of today? I dont need to publish and pump out dry overly analytical and ego massaging reports and papers with the hope that my ideas may one day be tested. With what is available for cents to dollars anyone can sit, plan, and build almost anything imaginable! So between February and May, I got through it all by giving myself time at hackerspaces, for every purely conceptual idea I pumped out in a paper, report or epic problem set, I would retreat to noisebridge soon as I could, and build something fun, interesting or just plain silly. It was good, so fun and I found myself solving physics problems in more 'interesting' ways as well as reflecting on the nature of the electromagnetic landscape we dwell across. So now.. Today. October 2012 I finished university, and I am applying all the fantastic and curious ideas I have come across in my research and reading. Now I am making something of the passion I put into every topic I took on. By making something... quite literally some THINGS in the form of a physical and wearable devices. At this point in the infancy of Neuroscience research, anything goes. A scientist can work from whatever model of the brain/mind/body they choose to use and so long as they take care in listing variables and the paradigm from which they are working, the results can be interpretable or at least interesting. It seems that going the traditional lab scientific route in testing aspects of the sensory and neurological environment is not a very effective or fruitful except in exceptional cases and always the result of lots of funding, participating major agencies and time. To really get at aspects of our physical self that compose into self identity in experience is fringe science grounds and requires an interdisciplinary and integrated approach that is by definition somewhat off course from traditional methods. So long as my focus and interest is in the human experience, my ability to conduct interesting and relevant research will always be limited by the rigid laws governing any kind of human testing or live human research (even when noninvasive). This is probably for the best given how difficult regulation would be.
 To solve this problem of how to build things that emphasize, reconnect and harmonize the human experience without actually testing them on humans seems self defeating until I realised not only am I willing to test any of my non invasive devises and tools on my self but others in my community feel the same. Talking to people about my ideas, it quickly became clear that not only are most people willing to test these things out with me, they were interested in buying them as products to play with themselves. Like a watch, cell phone, or laptop people consider even these simple scientific instruments devices, cool, wearable and integratible into their lives. Its easy for us to integrate devices with new technology into our worlds. Lets use this plasticity to tap into our capabilities and perhaps reveal an underlying architecture of the mind.

Thoughts on Evolution and NI

          How do brain mechanisms that evolved for survival, play a role in decision making and moral judgements? Once identified can we train ourselves to inhibit or excite these mechanisms to use our minds to achieve our goals, better?

        The growing capacities of computing memory and exponentially increasing processing speeds has allowed for the development of cutting edge Neuroimaging techniques that are capable of allowing a person to view their own brain in action independent of language and the limits of conceptualisation. Descartes said that introspection is the only way to access our mind, now hundreds of years later, with real time non-invasive imaging we can silently access our subjective selves. This is signaling a Paradigm Shifting, incredible and definitely life changing for everyone.

       Instead of needing to train from the top down to develop any new skills or break old habits, we can now look into our brains, identify patterns of activity across the neural net and use entrainment or neurofeedback techniques that are accessible with technology to improve ourselves, privately and in line with our own moral compass and intentions for how we want to use our minds.

Intro to Synaesthesia

Musicians painting scenes, hearing unidentifiable colours, chefs feeling flavors and artists experiencing colours. These are not the effects of LSD, but symptoms of a nonthreatening neurological condition called Synaesthesia. Meaning "The combining of the senses", individuals with synaesthesia experience consistent confusion of sensory input. Why and how can this happen? Is this a muddling of sensory input, or the awareness of nonvisual information passing through the eyes? A person with Synasthesia may associate every number they see with a different colour, experience 'seeing' sound or tasting shapes. Cases of synaesthesia have been reported in psychology and medicine for over a hundred years yet little is understood about why the sensation may occur and apart from inheritance, how someone may be physiologically vulnerable to it. Also, to what extent are most of us synaestheic( do you understand what is meant bysharp cheese, a blue day or any popular metaphor??) Until recently scientists were unsure synaesthesics existed as the symptoms are largely subjective and there had been no scientific evidence or means to acquire data for a comprehensive study. The little understanding of synathesia leads to fewer possible means to investigate; most people who have symptoms of graphene synaesthesia,the most interesting to study colour-associated form, have held symptoms from a young age or denveloped them as an adolescent. In both cases they may learn early on that most adults wont believe them or they assume everyone has a similar experience with senses. As a result, many people will keep symptoms and their subsequent effect on perception to themselves. Now, neuroscientists recognize specific stimuli can induce it leading scientists to ideas for experimental methods to investigate this strange mingling of the senses. To describe this strange sensation, particularly the more common visual part of it, we will first have to explore the visual system in more detail.

Senses and your brain

Apart from the somatosensory "feel" map, there are other highly specialised functional areas of the brain for sensory input and output. The Wernicke (language) and Broca (hearing) areas are of particular historical and anatomical significance. In 1874, Carl Wernicke hypothesized a link between the left posterior section of the superior temporal gyrus and reflexive mimicking,

associated with sensory and motor images. Wernicke notices that patients with damage to this area had trouble forming words, called aphasia. Like most structures in the brain, Wernicke's and Broca's area have symmetry and are contained on both sides of the brain, The dominant hemisphere processes dominant word meanings such as "barista given, coffee." The non-dominant side has a role in processing subordinate meanings of ambiguous words when presented in a context, like coffee given the ambiguous word -shop- when "coffee shop" is mentioned.

Motor Somatosensory Maps

As we talked about on Sunday, the parietal lobe of the brain contains a particularly interesting region known as the somatosensory map. These sensory maps are unique for every person and each has body parts placed onto a region of the cortex that represents it, with size proportional to cortical representation and sensitivity through sense input. If you do something that requires quick and complex figer movements touching something, like playing instruments or working with your hands, your homunculus will have larger hand representational areas, leading to the opportunity for more connection between that region and different parts of the brain (even other regions on the same map) This map is one of 8 and counting homunculi contained in the brain. The other important and closely nested map is part of the motor cortex which has a similar map but codes for the movement of different parts of the body.

What would your Motorsensory maps look like? Think about it as you do your normal routine... What parts of your body do you use the most? What parts of the body feel and sense things the most?

Diffusion Tensor Imaging

The brain has more than 100billion neurons communicating via axons creating complex and vast neuro networks. Connectivity patterns between regions of the brain, or connectomes can be shown by Diffusion Tensor Imaging, DTI. DTI works with the environment established by MRI, by measuring the restricted diffusion of water in tissue (while in the established MRI magnetic field), producing neural tract images that trace the pathways connecting areas of the brain that are in communication. Slicing and staining brains for observation post-partum is not very helpful towards understanding how the brain works and interacts with itself on the whole. DTI is the newest and only minimally invasive technique that can show the tracts of the brain.

Following fiber bundles have been shown in images: [1] Corpus Callosum (CC) and its subdivisions, [2] Tapetum (TP), [3] Inferior Longitudinal Fasciculus (ILF), [4] Uncinate Fasciculus (UNC), [5] Inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFO), [6] Optic Pathways (OP), [7] Superior Longitudinal Fasciculus (SLF), [8] Arcuate Fasciculus (AF), [9] Fornix (FX), [10] Cingulum (CG), [11] Anterior Thalamic Radiation (ATR), [(12] Superior Thalamic Radiation (STR), [13] Posterior Thalamic Radiation (PTR), [14] Corticospinal/Corticopontine Tract (CST/CPT), [15] Medial Lemniscus (ML), [16] Superior Cerebellar Peduncle (SCP), [17] Middle Cerebellar Peduncle (MCP), and [18] Inferior Cerebellar Peduncle (ICP). [From Advanced Digital Imaginc Solutions Laboratory] If you are interested or a particular image catches your eye, google scholar or image search for any of the fiber bundles listed.