Word: brainful
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...Instead of a Shia LaBeouf or a Christian Bale, 9 gives us nine puppet-like dolls as stand-ins for humanity, manufactured by the same scientist whose invention of a giant "brain" machine lead to the ruin of man. The filmmakers refer to these as "stitchpunk creations," but in the interest of plain English, we're opting for the term doll. Hand-stitched from either burlap or canvas, the dolls have smooth, rounded heads and protuberant eyes; they look like early aviators. They are both homespun and spooky, like the kind of child's toy that might be purchased...
There are so many. Biologically, they're so close to us. Their brain is almost identical. We have fascinating similarities in social behavior: kissing, embracing, holding hands, shaking the fist. These things are done in the same context that we do them and clearly mean the same kinds of thing...
...recently completed work on whole-brain emulation. Could you discuss that and its relationship with human enhancement? Whole-brain emulation is a hypothetical future technology which would enable human minds to be "uploaded" from biological brains onto computers. This is a radical technology that's a long way off. It is nevertheless worth analyzing now because if it is developed, it would have profound consequences in relation to enhancement. For example, a mind that runs as software on a computer is not subject to biological aging. Such a mind could also be sped up by moving it to a faster...
...genetic data to date in the study of Alzheimer's, and took advantage of the most recent advances in genetic screening to determine which new genes conferred a high risk of developing the disease. "I think this technique is going to be very valuable, especially for diseases of the brain, where it is very difficult to get in there and see what's going on," says Julie Williams, professor of neuropsychological genetics at the MRC Center of Cardiff University, and one of the authors of the U.K. study, published today in the journal Nature Genetics...
...these genes, two - clusterin and CR1 - are known to interact with the amyloid protein that builds up in the brain of Alzheimer's patients and eventually causes nerve cell death and cognitive problems. Clusterin may be involved in helping to clear away the amyloid that forms in the brain; but another variant of the gene may also allow amyloid to form fibrils, the sticky protein arms that further anchor amyloid plaques to nerve cells, much like a spider web ensnares prey. In late-onset Alzheimer's, it's possible that the body cannot balance these two functions of clusterin...