Cats and dogs aren’t the only pets fond of chasing things that run away from them. Aquarium fish do it too, as shown in our new peer-reviewed paper that came out just last week in the “Animals” journal! Out of 66 fish species observed, nearly 90% showed interest in or set out to chase moving laser pointed dots.
What makes us especially proud is that the paper came as culmination of a yearlong research that began as our last year’s Fellow Sofia Eisenbeiser’s summer project. As scientists know it all too well, a single year is pretty fast and couldn’t make us more proud!
Another reason for pride is the fact that this research adds another layer of proof to what we’ve been saying all along: (neuro)science doesn’t have to cost a fortune. This particular experiment only requires a couple of things that many people already have: a fish tank with some inhabitants (the more, the merrier!) and a laser pointer or two. Incredibly easy to replicate in, say, your biology classroom!
Picture this: you’re sitting in your bedroom in Germany, video chatting with a friend in South Korea over coffee. You sip your coffee and they have no choice but to sip theirs!
That’s exactly what our new prototype, the Wireless Human-Human Interface, is about. It transmits biosignals from one person’s brain to the ulnar nerve in another person’s arm. Yes, that’s what our classic Human-Human Interface does too. Except that you can now do it remotely!
So far, people could connect remotely via WiFi. Now they can also connect via electrophysiology!
Which is why we’re super excited to announce that the Wireless HHI has made it into the selection for this year’s Amazing Maker Award contest, along with 95 other applicants! The top 12 projects will be selected as finalists and published in Make: Magazine, and the best 3 are to get cash prizes. It’s a juried competition, but community votes will count as well.
Best of all, you can help us too if you like our prototype! Just head over here and hit “Vote”. (You’ll need to log in or register if you haven’t already.) You can vote once per day per project till July 15, when the winners will be announced.
Call for HS Teachers and Undergraduates in Biology, Engineering and the Arts:
Calling all AI and neuroscience nerds (AND nerd wannabes): We are back!
After taking a hiatus due to a global pandemic, we are proud to announce that we are returning with a very special guest star: TinyML! Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML) is a deep learning toolkit made for tinkers, educators and for those who want to know how machine learning really works… and we are excited about what it could mean to neuroscience educators!
For the first time ever, we are inviting K12 teachers to be a part of our summer program! Learn how to integrate Machine Learning into your project-based lessons and help provide feedback on our teaching tools and project curricula!
This summer, our fellowship program will focus on developing creative, wearable, and fun human-machine interfaces that can react with your brain waves, muscle, heart and eye movements using Deep Learning. You will learn the basics of neuroscience, computational thinking, machine learning, electronics, and will go from start to finish on developing your very own project. You will get support from our in house scientists and experts through every stage of your project.
Our AI Fellowship program will be designed around 2 cohorts. The first are undergraduates with a background in Neuroscience, Art, Electrical, Mechanical or Computer Engineering, where they learn how to develop their own innovations, conduct fun experiments around computational neuroscience. We are also recruiting High School teachers interested in learning about AI and how to teach hands-on AI lesson plans in their classroom. Teachers will participate remotely from around the country (1hr / week), and will help guide our projects for optimal use in the classroom.
This fellowship is focused on developing computational skills. To do so, you will learn how to read and write peer-reviewed papers, discuss and plan around ethical concerns of using AI, learn how to develop a project and collect data, how to analyze and test results, how to make your own scientific poster and present your work to the academic communities, and finally how to speak to the public about your work. This program is unique: instead of working on a small part of the bigger project… all fellow projects are yours alone! We will support and guide you through, but you will experience everything from inception to publication… much like the life of a graduate researcher. No prior research experience is necessary or required!
