To Brain is Human

It's a great time in the history of humanity to still have a brain. 

Chimeric brain models can help bridge the gap between animal studies and human neurological disorders

May 2025, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-05-chimeric-brain-bridge-gap-animal.html

Scientists create models by transplanting human brain cells culled from stem cells into the brains of animals such as mice, thereby creating a mix of human and animal brain cells in the same brain. This environment is closer to the complexity of a living human brain than what can be simulated in a petri dish study.

via Rutgers University: Ava V. Papetti et al, Chimeric brain models: Unlocking insights into human neural development, aging, diseases, and cell therapies, Neuron (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2025.03.036

https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2025.03.036

Image credit: AI Art - Smiling Doctor w Huge Mechanical Brain - 2025

Biological Computer: Human Brain Cells on a Chip

Jun 2025, IEEE Spectrum

https://spectrum.ieee.org/biological-computer-for-sale

In a development straight out of science fiction, Australian startup Cortical Labs has released what it calls the world’s first code-deployable biological computer. The CL1, which debuted in March, fuses human brain cells on a silicon chip to process information via sub-millisecond electrical feedback loops.

Check the specs: https://corticallabs.com/cl1.html

Scientists detect light passing through entire human head, opening new doors for brain imaging

Jun 2025, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-06-scientists-entire-human-doors-brain.html

In case you didn't catch that - light passing through entire human head

The press article doesn't mention the method so I just copy from the main:

A pulsed laser is projected against the side of the head above the ear. Diametrically opposite the source, a demagnifying tapered fiber bundle is placed in close proximity to the scalp and redirects light to a photomultiplier tube. The PMT operates in photon counting mode, such that the detection of a photon produces an electrical pulse that can be synchronized with the laser emission to produce a photon ToF distribution using a time-correlated single-photon counting module.

University of Glasgow: Jack Radford et al, Photon transport through the entire adult human head, Neurophotonics (2025). DOI: 10.1117/1.NPh.12.2.025014

https://dx.doi.org/10.1117/1.NPh.12.2.025014

Brain-computer interface shows promise for decoding inner speech in real time

Aug 2025, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-08-brain-interface-decoding-speech-real.html

It's so good that it picks up the stuff you didn't mean to say out loud ...

The BCI was also able to pick up what some inner speech participants were never instructed to say, such as numbers when the participants were asked to tally the pink circles on the screen.

The team also demonstrated a password-controlled mechanism that would prevent the BCI from decoding inner speech unless temporarily unlocked with a chosen keyword.

via Stanford University: Inner speech in motor cortex and implications for speech neuroprostheses, Cell (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2025.06.015.

https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2025.06.015

 

To Synchronize is Human

aka Sync or Swarm

aka Sync and Share

To synchronize is only human. No need to resist. The meatnet is our future.

Robot swarms follow instructions to create art

Oct 2020, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-10-robot-swarms-art.html

One of those things that I should be really excited about but I'm not because I thought we were doing this like ten years ago: "This system could allow artists to control the robot swarm as it creates the artwork in real time". Now if we got swarms of artists to control swarms of robots in real time?

Image credit: I had to take this picture of synchronized fireflies from the New York Times, because this article just came out. 

How you and your friends can play a video game together using only your minds

July 2019, University of Washington News

https://www.washington.edu/news/2019/07/01/play-a-video-game-using-only-your-mind/

A University of Washington team is doing telepathic collective problem-solving. It's called BrainNet. Three people play a Tetris by talking to each other with their brain waves and wireless signal. I don't know why this doesn't freak me out as much as the networked monkey brains. 

Playing Tetris by committee

May 2019, BBC

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-48282532

Similar to the above article, this one from UC Davis -- The Octopad it's called. It's a single button controller where each player can only do one movement in the game, forcing consensus between players.

Shared control allows a robot to use two hands working together to complete tasks

May 2019, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2019-05-robot-tasks.html

Bimanual robot manipulation by sharing control with a human being. "A more fully capable augmented assistant".

Spontaneous robot dances highlight a new kind of order in active matter

Jan 2021, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-12-spontaneous-robot-highlight-kind.html

This article has it all: microrobotic swarms, active matter, metamaterials and smarticles. The scientists propose a new principle where active matter systems spontaneously order. Something about "low rattling" states.

Fish-inspired robots coordinate movements without any outside control

Jan 2021, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-01-fish-inspired-robots-movements.html

From the lab that brought you the 1,000-robot Kilobot swarm and the termite-inspired robotic construction crew.

Researchers develop a mathematical model to explain the complex architecture of termite mounds

Jan 2021, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2021-01-mathematical-complex-architecture-termite-mounds.html

"Here is an example where we see that the usual division between the study of nonliving matter and living matter breaks down," said Mahadevan. "The insects create a micro-environment, a niche, in response to pheromone concentrations. This change in the physical environment changes the flow of pheromones, which then changes the termite behaviors, linking physics and biology through a dynamic architecture that modulates and is modulated by behavior."

Valve’s Gabe Newell imagines “editing” personalities with future headsets

Jan 2021, Ars Technica

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/01/valves-gabe-newell-imagines-editing-personalities-with-future-headsets/

"Russian forest". Video game makers are thinking about virtual reality. But they're also thinking about controlling your brain with a computer, or vice versa. 

Scientists create new class of “Turing patterns” in colonies of E. coli

Feb 2021, Ars Technica

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/scientists-create-new-class-of-turing-patterns-in-colonies-of-e-coli/

Some sci fi shit right here. It might not seem like a synchronization thing at first, but it will be. Keep an eye out for the activator-inhibitor morphogens that make leopard spots and tiger stripes, because they will also me making decisions for you in the future. 

Scientists prove Turing patterns manifest at nanoscale

Jul 2021, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2021-07-scientists-turing-patterns-manifest-nanoscale.html

It's algorithms all the way down -- these patterns are found in the positions of individual atoms. But what's more: "The finding of the mysterious Bi stripes was serendipitous".

Implanted wireless device triggers mice to form instant bond

May 2021, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05-implanted-wireless-device-triggers-mice.html

GTFO. First of all, "remote-control social interactions among pairs or groups of mice". Actually, that's all. 

For the first time ever, Northwestern engineers and neurobiologists have wirelessly programmed—and then deprogrammed—mice to socially interact with one another in real time. The advancement is thanks to a first-of-its-kind ultraminiature, wireless, battery-free and fully implantable device that uses light to activate neurons.

via Northwestern University: Wireless multilateral devices for optogenetic studies of individual and social behaviors, Nature Neuroscience (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41593-021-00849-x

Post Script:

Women's menstrual cycles temporarily synchronize with moon cycles

Jan 2021, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-01-women-menstrual-temporarily-synchronize-moon.html

Also:

Sync or Swarm, Network Address, 2012

When Humans Caught Up With Evolution

I certainly didn't know this, but the spleen acts as a biological SCUBA tank during extended periods underwater.

There are some people from the southern Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia who evolved bigger spleens because they spend a lot of time diving deep underwater. They live on houseboats, rarely go on land, and spend 8 hours a day repeatedly diving underwater. They split from a very similar group of people nearby about 15,000 years ago - the one group stays on land and the other in the water. Their genes are very similar, except for this distinction, and so the spleen enlargement is correlated to this behavior/culture change.

This is a discovery worthy of reporting because most of the basic body plan that includes our organs is pretty similar across all humans, or so we thought.

We have this idea of a Human Genome being uniquely human, and as a thing we all share in common. (Or at least I do; maybe I just haven't been to 5th grade for a long time, kind of like people who don't realize that just about every star we can see in the night sky has planets revolving around it, a discovery of only the past few years.)

But there is this thing that happens about 10-15 thousand years ago, where human creativity (i.e. technological memes or cultural evolution) evolves faster than our genes. Diving in the ocean all day long doesn't by itself constitute a technological advance, but then again, this is at the 15,000 mark. 10,000 years ago, we see the genetic changes resulting from dairying practices. Because of this, some people continued to be able to digest milk into adulthood (not possible for other mammals).

The change in dairying practices must have relied on some techological change, but it's still hard to call this technology. Is agriculture a technological development? Animal husbandry? Because this is where 'drinking milk' comes from. Leaving the land to live on the water is not so much a technological advance as a group-behavior advance - cultural evolution we could call that. Memetic evolution some would call it.

The main idea here is that at some point around 10,000 years ago, humans began changing themselves faster than their environment changed them. When you hear Ray Kurzweil talk about the Singularity (a moment in our near future where humans learn to evolve ourselves at will), note that we have been evolving ourselves already for thousands of years.

Notes

Bajau people 'evolved bigger spleens' for free-diving
Apr 2018, BBC

Evolution of lactase persistence: an example of human niche construction
Philosophical Transactions B, 2011

Network Address:
Milk Does a Body
FurFuryl Mercapton, Abstract Foods, and Flavor Networks

Think About This

Dr. Frankenstein Light Switch, turn it up.

Carefully crafted light pulses control neuron activity
Nov 2017, phys.org

Specially tailored, ultrafast pulses of light can trigger neurons to fire and could one day help patients with light-sensitive circadian or mood problems, according to a new study in mice at the University of Illinois.

The study used optogenetic mouse neurons - that is, cells that had a gene added to make them respond to light.

"What we're doing for the very first time is using light and coherent control to regulate biological function.

To Shape the Future

Crystal balls over here

Predicting the future with the wisdom of crowds
Jun 2017, phys.org

Don Moore and a team of researchers found a new way to improve that outcome by training ordinary people to make more confident and accurate predictions over time as superforecasters.

The team, working on The Good Judgment Project, had the perfect opportunity to test its future-predicting methods during a four-year government-funded geopolitical forecasting tournament sponsored by the United States Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity. The tournament, which began in 2011, aimed to improve geopolitical forecasting and intelligence analysis by tapping the wisdom of the crowd. Moore's team proved so successful in the first years of the competition that it bumped the other four teams from a national competition, becoming the only funded project left in the competition.

The study differs from previous research in overconfidence in forecasting because it examines accuracy in forecasting over time, using a huge and unique data set gathered during the tournament. That data included 494,552 forecasts by 2,860 forecasters who predicted the outcomes of hundreds of events.

The Wisdom of Crowds
James Surowiecki, 2004

Swarm A.I. Correctly Predicts the Kentucky Derby, Accurately Picking all Four Horses of the Superfecta at 540 to 1 Odds
Yahoo Finance, April 2016

The Chinese Flesh Engine
BBC 2014

POST SCRIPT

This kind of thing always reminds me of a passage from Levy-Bruhl's Primitive Mentality - the indigenous people he writes about are perplexed at the ability of the white scientists to "predict" a lunar eclipse.

They live in a timeless world. Hence, for example, an omen doesn’t just reveal what will happen, it is evidence that it is already happening.

They ask of the whites – how could you predict it (a lunar eclipse) if it was not you who caused it?

I have also found, among some folks who have less of a functioning prefrontal cortex if you know what I'm saying will tend to blame the person who predicts the situation as if they caused it. Take for example, an angsty adolescent - you tell them not to do something because of some probable result (don't smoke pot in the high school bathroom because you'll probably get caught) they will blame you as if your prediction actually caused the outcome. Some of us are no different from Levy-Bruhl's "primitives".

Primitive Mentality, Lucien Levy-Bruhl, 1923, trans 1966

Primitive Mentality
Network Address 2012

Magnonic Holographic Memory Device

Your Mind is Belong to Us

Researchers demonstrate holographic memory device
phys.org, Feb 2014


and on that note:

Scientists develop thought-controlled gene switch
BBC News - Nov 2014

Self-deceived individuals deceive others better
phys.org, Aug 2014

"These findings suggest that people don't always reward the most accomplished individual but rather the most self-deceived."

Over confident people can fool others into believing they are more talented than they actually are, a study has found.

These 'self-deceived' individuals could be more likely to get promotions and reach influential positions in banks and other organisations. And these people are more likely to overestimate other people's abilities and take greater risks, possibly creating problems for their organisations.

-from Newcastle University and the University of Exeter 

All Bodies Are Virtual

Adults become more like children in a virtual world
BBC 16 July 2013

In a virtual world adults in a child-like body start to perceive the world more like a child, a study has shown.

Adults were either placed in a virtual four-year-old body or an adult body scaled down to the same size.

It was found that participants in the child's body overestimated the size of objects and identified better with child-like attributes.

Illusory ownership of a virtual child body causes overestimation of object sizes and implicit attitude changes.

source: pnas

Sexualized avatars affect the real world, researchers find
Oct 10, 2013, phys.org
A Stanford study shows that after women wear sexualized avatars in a virtual reality world, they feel objectified and are more likely to accept rape myths in the real world. The research could have implications for the role of female characters in video games.

On Time and Humans

Shinichi Maruyama, Nude #1, 2012

http://www.shinichimaruyama.com/

"The light of stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars - and yet they have done it themselves." Friedrich "The Madman" Nietzsche