Long story short: "In many of the patients, one neuron responded every time they saw a particular video," wrote Emma Byrne in yesterday's Financial Times about a new study published online today in the journal Science.

To get you warmed up for the heavy stuff to come, here's Benedict Carey's September 4, 2008 New York Times front page story on the findings.

For the Brain, Remembering Is Like Reliving

Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a spontaneous memory, revealing not only where a remembered experience is registered but also, in part, how the brain is able to recreate it.

The recordings, taken from the brains of epilepsy patients being prepared for surgery, demonstrate that these spontaneous memories reside in some of the same neurons that fired most furiously when the recalled event had been experienced. Researchers had long theorized as much but until now had only indirect evidence.

Experts said the study had all but closed the case: For the brain, remembering is a lot like doing (at least in the short term, as the research says nothing about more distant memories).

The experiment, being reported Friday in the journal Science, is likely to open a new avenue in the investigation of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, some experts said, as well as help explain how some memories seemingly come out of nowhere. The researchers were even able to identify specific memories in subjects a second or two before the people themselves reported having them.

“This is what I would call a foundational finding,” said Michael J. Kahana, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the research. “I cannot think of any recent study that’s comparable.

“It’s a really central piece of the memory puzzle and an important step in helping us fill in the detail of what exactly is happening when the brain performs this mental time travel” of summoning past experiences.

The new study moved beyond most previous memory research in that it focused not on recognition or recollection of specific symbols but on free recall — whatever popped into people’s heads when, in this case, they were asked to remember short film clips they had just seen.

This ability to richly reconstitute past experience often quickly deteriorates in people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, and it is fundamental to so-called episodic memory — the catalog of vignettes that together form our remembered past.

In the study, a team of American and Israeli researchers threaded tiny electrodes into the brains of 13 people with severe epilepsy. The electrode implants are standard procedure in such cases, allowing doctors to pinpoint the location of the mini-storms of brain activity that cause epileptic seizures.

The patients watched a series of 5- to 10-second film clips, some from popular television shows like “Seinfeld” and others depicting animals or landmarks like the Eiffel Tower. The researchers recorded the firing activity of about 100 neurons per person; the recorded neurons were concentrated in and around the hippocampus, a sliver of tissue deep in the brain known to be critical to forming memories.

In each person, the researchers identified single cells that became highly active during some videos and quiet during others. More than half the recorded cells hummed with activity in response to at least one film clip; many of them also responded weakly to others.

After briefly distracting the patients, the researchers then asked them to think about the clips for a minute and to report “what comes to mind.” The patients remembered almost all of the clips. And when they recalled a specific one — say, a clip of Homer Simpson — the same cells that had been active during the Homer clip reignited. In fact, the cells became active a second or two before people were conscious of the memory, which signaled to researchers the memory to come.

“It’s astounding to see this in a single trial; the phenomenon is strong, and we were listening in the right place,” said the senior author, Dr. Itzhak Fried, a professor of neurosurgery at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Tel Aviv.

His co-authors were Hagar Gelbard-Sagiv, Michal Harel and Rafael Malach of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and Roy Mukamel, of U.C.L.A.

Dr. Fried said in a phone interview that the single neurons recorded firing most furiously during the film clips were not acting on their own; they were, like all such cells, part of a circuit responding to the videos, including thousands, perhaps millions, of other cells.

In studies of rodents, including a paper that will also appear Friday in the journal Science, neuroscientists have shown that special cells in the hippocampus are sensitive to location, activating when the animal passes a certain spot in a maze. The firing pattern of these cells forms the animals’ spatial memory and can predict which way the animal will turn, even if it makes a wrong move.

Some scientists argue that as humans evolved, these same cells adapted to register a longer list of elements — including possibly sounds, smells, time of day and chronology — when an experience occurred in relation to others.

Single-cell recordings cannot capture the entire array of circuitry involved in memory, which may be widely distributed beyond the hippocampus area, experts said. And as time passes, memories are consolidated, submerged, perhaps retooled and often entirely reshaped when retrieved later.

Though it did not address this longer-term process, the new study suggests that at least some of the neurons that fire when a distant memory comes to mind are those that were most active back when it happened, however long ago that was.

“The exciting thing about this,” said Dr. Kahana, the University of Pennsylvania professor, “is that it gives us direct biological evidence of what before was almost entirely theoretical.”

Here's the abstract of the original report by Fried et al, as published September 5, 2008 in the journal Science.

Internally Generated Reactivation of Single Neurons in Human Hippocampus During Free Recall

The emergence of memory, a trace of things past, into human consciousness is one of the greatest mysteries of the human mind. Whereas the neuronal basis of recognition memory can be probed experimentally in human and nonhuman primates, the study of free recall requires that the mind declare the occurrence of a recalled memory (an event intrinsic to the organism and invisible to an observer). Here, we report the activity of single neurons in the human hippocampus and surrounding areas when subjects first view television episodes consisting of audiovisual sequences and again later when they freely recall these episodes. A subset of these neurons exhibited selective firing, which often persisted throughout and following specific episodes for as long as 12 seconds. Verbal reports of memories of these specific episodes at the time of free recall were preceded by selective reactivation of the same hippocampal and entorhinal cortex neurons. We suggest that this reactivation is an internally generated neuronal correlate of the subjective experience of spontaneous emergence of human recollection.

The abstract of the Science paper (cited above) reporting findings in rodent brains follows.

Internally Generated Cell Assembly Sequences in the Rat Hippocampus

A long-standing conjecture in neuroscience is that aspects of cognition depend on the brain's ability to self-generate sequential neuronal activity. We found that reliably and continually changing cell assemblies in the rat hippocampus appeared not only during spatial navigation but also in the absence of changing environmental or body-derived inputs. During the delay period of a memory task, each moment in time was characterized by the activity of a particular assembly of neurons. Identical initial conditions triggered a similar assembly sequence, whereas different conditions gave rise to different sequences, thereby predicting behavioral choices, including errors. Such sequences were not formed in control (nonmemory) tasks. We hypothesize that neuronal representations, evolved for encoding distance in spatial navigation, also support episodic recall and the planning of action sequences.

The system, invented by University of Tokyo researchers, involves manipulating ultrasound waves that create a focal point, which your hands would perceive as an object. The system also uses a camera to track hand positions, communicating their movements to interact with the "object."

The researchers say the technology could be applied to video gaming, sparing gamers the need to buy controllers, joysticks and so on. Sweet! Now, if only we could get rid of that TV and plug our consoles into our brains...Whoa! I know Kung-fu.

Ultrasound to give feel to games [BBC News]

So what’s the alternative? LEDs. They’re getting cheaper to manufacturer. They use significantly less energy, require no harmful chemicals to produce and can be tuned to give off any hue in the visible color spectrum. The markets are already flooded with a handful of LED bulbs but they have failed to reach mass acceptance and Frog Design believes this is due to poor design.

Their LED bulb looks like an incandescent. It works like one, uses the same aluminum socket and gives off the same warm color. The only difference is energy savings and a life span of 30+ years. In marketing these bulbs, is there even a need to educate the public about the advantages of LEDs? If you package your design to look like the defacto, then you may have a Trojan horse - ready to make the transition to LED bulbs invisible and a reality. Many LED bulbs on the market today are futuristic, modern, and require specially designed sockets. It’s no surprised you don’t see them in grandma’s vanity. I believe Frog Design may have hit the proverbial nail.

Designer: Frog Design

Teases for hologram technology are commonplace nowadays, but it is usually taken for granted that the projected images will provide no haptic feedback. Though the researchers have said little about integration with other projection systems, the possibility of a tactile hologram now doesn't seem totally out of the question. There's a major catch, though: the virtual objects won't be provide much resistance or seem very "hard," because at high enough levels the aurally imperceptible ultrasound will destroy your eardrums. Even considering the limitations, my hope remains: that we may soon be able to (very delicately) slap people though a webcam. [BBC]

Nick Bunkley featured this new company in the August 24, 2008 New York Times, as follows:

Making a Hybrid Heard

Automakers have spent decades trying to make their cars quieter than the competition's. Now two entrepreneurs have formed a business around the notion that some cars are just too quiet.

Everett Meyer and Bryan Bai, two recent Stanford graduates, have formed Enhanced Vehicle Acoustics in Santa Clara, Calif. They soon hope to begin selling a module that can be installed in hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius to create artificial engine noise through speakers mounted near the wheels. Normally when hybrids travel at slow speeds on electric power, they are silent, which safety advocates say poses a danger to pedestrians — particularly blind ones.

A bill introduced in Congress this year and supported by the National Federation for the Blind would set minimum sound levels for hybrids. Regardless, Mr. Meyer and Mr. Bai are optimistic about their invention.

“People who drive Priuses are generally pretty conscientious and aware,” Mr. Meyer told the Stanford News Service, “so it seems like a good beginning market.”

I'm convinced.

You?

It has a SIM card inside just like a real cell phone, and even stores four speed dial numbers, accessed through paw-squeezes. Awww. It vibrates and makes noises when you have incoming calls. When you get a call, just answer by gripping the bear's tail and end the call in the same way.

Oops. At the IFA 2008 trade show, Hama is showing a range of cases for the rumored 4G iPod Nano. And this isn't just some fly-by-night Chinese knockoff merchant: Hama is a venerable and well respected company.

Engadget Spain got the scoop. The pictured case is a regular silicone sheath and can be bought now for €10 ($14). There is also a shiny plastic model (pictured below) with a mirror-like finish. The screen is actually covered and looks invisible when switched off, although it can be seen clearly when running.

We take this to be pretty convincing proof that the new, longer Nano is real. Bonus points to Digg's Kevin Rose, who first published leaked shots of the new iPod. We're sorry we doubted you, Kevin.

IFA 2008: Hama shows more sleeves for iPod Nano 4G [Engadget Spain via Mac Rumors]

DIY - How to Build a Traffic Cone Lamp!

Traffic Cone Lamp seems like a such a great idea for making traffic cones safer in general by contractors and alike who use them on a daily basis.

In case you want to just make a Traffic Cone Lamp for your garage, here’s how to do it.

Cones are available on eBay for cheap, but the shipping can be a bit much. Orphan cones are a dime a dozen in cities, but often too dirty and messed up to use. Please don’t steal them from active job sites, because they are safety equipment for someone. Other good places to check are auto salvage yards and the county/municipal dump, because that’s where the local government takes their bulk waste.

My cone is 28″ tall and 14-3/4″ square at the base, and weighed about eight pounds before the lamp parts were added. They come in all different sizes, and you could even make a desktop one out a of a little tiny cone. I used a 75-watt equivalent compact fluorescent. A brighter fixture could eliminate the need for the holes. Do not use conventional bulbs; they get hot enough to damage/burn/melt the cone if there’s nowhere for the heat to escape.

via instructables

Brought to you by: Zedomax.com

DIY - How to Build a Traffic Cone Lamp!

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I like the angles on these. They look vaguely alien. Harmon Kardon unveiled the GLA-55 see-through speakers at IFA 2008. They offer a 100-watt bi-amplified digital amplifier coupled with DSP equalization along with proprietary tech like the Atlas AL drivers and woofers and a CMMD tweeter, plus optimization for digital sound. They sport touch sensitive controls and they do stand out. They should be available in autumn 2008 worldwide. No word on pricing.

[New Launches]