Brain Beat: Imaging Technology, Language, and More

Saturday, December 04 8:55 am

A proliferation of new imaging technologies is allowing scientists to glimpse parts of the human brain like never before, writes Abigail Zuber in a recent New York Times article “An Odyssey Through the Brain,” which highlights a new book of brain imagery and discusses technological advances that are also showcased in the Museum’s new exhibition Brain: The Inside Story.

The book, Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century, features essays by leading neuroscientists, including Joy Hirsch, director of the Program for Imaging & Cognitive Sciences at Columbia University and a consultant on Brain: The Inside Story. (Portraits of the Mind is available in the exhibition gift shop.)

Hirsch, who has incorporated functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology into her research for over 15 years, has helped to advance the understanding of brain neurocircuitry that underlies language, visual perception, and cognition. Her work is featured in the exhibition’s immersive Brain Lounge, where floating projections of fMRIs tell the stories of several people—a translator who moves seamlessly between languages, a basketball player reacting during a game, and musicians enjoying the sounds of classical and rock music—via images of their brains.

Hirsch’s research on language and the brain is also the subject of a Museum Science Bulletins video feature and an article in the fall issue of Rotunda, the Museum Members’ magazine

Recent news stories on language and the brain include:

“When Your Tongue Tricks Your Brain” in The Economist, a fascinating look at the link between sounds and perception of size—why mice “squeak” while elephants “roar”, for example—a phenomenon known as “phonetic symbolism;”

“Lost in Translation,” in The Wall Street Journal, a snapshot of new cognitive research into how different languages shape perception;

“This is Your Brain on Metaphors” in The New York Times, a playful look at the human brain’s capacity for metaphorical thought.

Cutting Edge: A Bold Brain-Computer Experiment

Sunday, November 28 9:45 am

As Dr. Anthony Ritaccio enters the operating room, the procedure is already in progress: two neurosurgeons have retracted a portion of the patient’s scalp and removed a section of skull about the size of a playing card. “We’re getting close,” says Ritaccio, leaning over the exposed, visibly pulsing brain. In minutes, the team will carefully slip a sheet of 64 electrodes onto the tissue, draw the attached wires out of the incision, and connect them to an experimental computer system. It’s the first step of an attempt to use computers to directly read the intention of the human brain—in a way, to read minds.

Science Bulletins, the Museum’s multimedia program covering current science, sent cameras into the operating room in May to record this unique attempt at building what’s called a brain-computer interface, or BCI. (The footage appears in a two-minute film in the new exhibition Brain: The Inside Story. A seven-minute film will also be displayed in the Museum’s Spitzer Hall of Human Origins and online at amnh.org/sciencebulletins.) To find this project, a collaboration between physicians at Albany Medical Center and scientists from Albany’s Wadsworth Center at the New York State Department of Health, Science Bulletins producer Sandya Viswanathan interviewed several experts in the field. Like all BCI projects, the Albany project is built on the idea that brains and computers have fundamental similarities.

By studying brain activity transmitted as a test subject concentrates on various words or sounds, researchers hope to develop a system that will let people communicate without speaking. © AMNH

“The brain itself is an electrical organ,” says Ritaccio,a neurologist at Albany Medical Center. “Brain cells communicate through electricity.” Each brain cell, or neuron, transmits electrical pulses to other neurons, like wires in a computer chip. This transmission generates complex patterns across the neuronal network that change from second to second. For decades, it seemed logical that scientists could tap these electrical signals to communicate directly with the brain. But initial attempts encountered a major problem. Read more »

Bio Bulletin: Oil Spill Poses Risks to Gulf Ecosystems

Wednesday, May 19 3:10 pm

When the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded on April 20, it set off an oil spill that may exceed the extent and impact of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Of grave concern is the oil’s near- and long-term effects on both wildlife species and Gulf ecosystems at large. In this Bio Bulletin produced by the Museum, view satellite imagery of the shifting surface oil and learn what’s at stake.

Click to Watch Latest Bio Bulletin

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Science Bulletins Travel to Mexico Thanks to Historic Agreement

Wednesday, March 31 3:08 pm

Director General of CONACYT Juan Carlos Romero Hicks and AMNH President Ellen V. Futter sign international agreement. © AMNH / D. Finnin

Last week, the American Museum of Natural History signed a historic agreement with Mexico’s Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT), which for the first time will bring Spanish translations of the Museum’s award-winning Science Bulletins video presentations into Mexican universities and higher education institutions.

Museum President Ellen V. Futter and Director General of CONACYT Juan Carlos Romero Hicks sat down to sign the two-year agreement which grants CONACYT exclusive rights to distribute the Museum’s Science Bulletin content in Mexico and opens the way for further collaboration between CONACYT and the Museum. This partnership also marks two significant firsts: the first time that the latest scientific research presented in new Science Bulletins has been translated into a language other than English and the first time that CONACYT (Mexico’s equivalent of the United States’ National Science Foundation) has partnered with a foreign natural history museum.

The four Bulletins (Astro, Earth, Bio, and Human) feature breaking news of discoveries, geologic and weather events, visualizations of satellite data, astronomical images, and short video features (five-seven minutes) reporting the latest research from scientists in the field.  Produced through a collaboration of AMNH’s curatorial and scientific staff, and a team of Museum video producers, designers, writers, and educators, the Bulletins set a new standard for museum exhibitry through the combination of in-depth, current science with high production values and regularly updated content. Science Bulletins are distributed to nearly 40 museums and science centers around the world, bringing the latest science to an audience of more than 10 million people.

Science Bulletins is a production of the National Center for Science Literacy, Education, and Technology (NCSLET), part of the Department of Education at the Museum.

New Astrobulletin Feature Investigates Dark Mystery

Wednesday, March 24 3:46 pm

The Expanding Universe, a spectacular new seven-minute video produced by the American Museum of Natural History for the AstroBulletin, investigates one of the major mysteries confronting astrophysicists today: why is the universe expanding at a steadily increasing rate? When astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding in 1929, scientists assumed that the gravitational attraction between galaxies would slow the expansion rate of the universe. But in 1998, two teams of scientists discovered that the expansion rate was not slowing down but was, in fact, accelerating. Could the mysterious “dark energy” be responsible, or perhaps some aspect of gravity we have yet to understand? The Expanding Universe interviews two leading scientists, Alex Filippenko, of the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California’s Lick Observatory, and Josh Frieman, of the theoretical astrophysics group at Fermilab, to untangle this cosmic mystery.

Click to view ‘The Expanding Universe’

The Expanding Universe is just the latest feature produced for the AstroBulletin, a large high-definition screen in the Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space where visitors can see the latest discoveries in astrophysics. AMNH scientists collaborated with a group of Museum video producers, computer designers, writers, and educators to produce The Expanding Universe, which is presented as part of a year-long Museum celebration commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Rose Center and marking the 75th anniversary of the opening of the original Hayden Planetarium. The AstroBulletin is one of four award-winning Science Bulletin video productions—visually stunning updates on the latest in astrophysics, Earth sciences, biodiversity, and human biology—displayed on high-definition screens in four permanent halls in the Museum. Additionally, Science Bulletins are available online.

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