Latest Electroencephalography Stories

Penn-led team develops microelectronic device to map brain activity A team of researchers co-led by the University of Pennsylvania has developed and tested a new high-resolution, ultra-thin device capable of recording brain activity from the cortical surface without having to use penetrating electrodes. The device could make possible a whole new generation of brain-computer interfaces for treating neurological and psychiatric illness and research. The work was published in Nature...

NEW YORK, Nov. 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Tapping into the human brain to understand its functions in daily life -- as well as its malfunctions in illness -- has long been a challenge for researchers. Mapping brain activity requires unwieldy, invasive arrays of electrodes and sensors that can damage tissue while only reading activity in a limited area. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20091027/NY99197LOGO ) Jonathan Viventi, assistant professor at the Polytechnic Institute of New York...

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have developed a flexible brain implant that could one day be used to treat epileptic seizures. In animal studies, the researchers used the device – a type of electrode array that conforms to the brain's surface – to take an unprecedented look at the brain activity underlying seizures. "Someday, these flexible arrays could be used to pinpoint where seizures start in the brain and perhaps to shut them down," said Brian Litt, M.D.,...

Brain stimulation, already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of Parkinson's disease and essential tremor, has now been shown to offer significant relief to patients with intractable seizures for whom drugs and other treatments have not worked. This is the major finding of a first-of-its-kind study of responsive electric brain stimulation in adults with "medically refractory," or hard to treat, epilepsy. The NeuroPace Responsive Neurostimulation (RNS)...

Clinical trial findings show memory improvement with daily intake of medical food product A second clinical trial of the medical food Souvenaid confirmed that daily intake of the nutritional intervention improves memory in people with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). Results of the trial - called Souvenir II - were presented at the 4th International Conference on Clinical Trials in Alzheimer's Disease (CTAD) in San Diego, California on Friday, Nov. 4, 2011 by Philip Scheltens, MD, PhD,...

Scientists measure dream content for the first time and find that dreams activate the brain in a similar way to real actions. The ability to dream is a fascinating aspect of the human mind. However, how the images and emotions that we experience so intensively when we dream form in our heads remains a mystery. Up to now it has not been possible to measure dream content. Max Planck scientists working with colleagues from the Charité hospital in Berlin have now succeeded, for the first...

Scientists have designed a novel, noninvasive system that allows users to control a virtual helicopter using only their minds, as reported in the online journal PLoS ONE on Oct. 26. The researchers, led by Dr. Bin He of University of Minnesota, created an EEG-based, noninvasive brain-computer interface that allowed users to accurately and continually navigate a virtual helicopter simply by thinking about where they wanted to craft to go. The task required users to direct their helicopter...

Haxby found that the brain's responses to movies reveal a detailed code that is the same for all individuals A team of neuroscientists at Dartmouth College has shown that different individuals' brains use the same, common neural code to recognize complex visual images. The paper, "A common, high-dimensional model of the neural representational space in human ventral temporal cortex," is in the October 20, 2011, issue of the journal, Neuron. The lead author of the paper is James Haxby,...

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a devastating and incurable disease that causes abnormal poverty of movement, involuntary tremor, and lack of coordination. A technique called deep brain stimulation (DBS) is sometimes used to improve motor symptoms in patients with advanced disease. Now, a study published by Cell Press in the October 20 issue of the journal Neuron describes a new and more effective DBS paradigm that makes real-time adjustments in response to disease dynamics and progression and...

[ Watch the Video ] Totally paralyzed people could communicate and control robots Imagine living a life in which you are completely aware of the world around you but you're prevented from engaging in it because you are completely paralyzed. Even speaking is impossible. For an estimated 50,000 Americans, this is a harsh reality. It's called locked-in syndrome, a condition in which people with normal cognitive brain activity suffer severe paralysis, often from injuries or an illness such...