Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only Newswise The University of Illinois College of Medicine has presented to the universitys Board of Trustees a white paper with a series of recommendations that would integrate engineering and technology into medical training programs, develop a new bioengineering institute, and build upon research that would attract more federal dollars to the four regional College of Medicine campuses at Chicago, Peoria, Rockford and Urbana-Champaign. The initiative would draw upon the strengths in engineering and medicine that exist across all campuses of the University of Illinois. The UI College of Medicine, based at the Chicago campus, is the largest in the nation -- and the most diverse -- and is part of a comprehensive health sciences center. The Urbana-Champaign campus, in turn, has one of the top-ranked colleges of engineering in the country, as well as renowned strengths in supercomputing, basic and applied sciences, and humanities. The University of Illinois is well-positioned to leverage and integrate existing engineering and medical expertise to provide our students new opportunities for learning and research in bioengineering and biotechnology, said Dr. Dimitri Azar, dean of the College of Medicine. A unified College of Medicine, together with UICs six other … Continue reading →

September 30, 2014 Photos of the faces of Angelina Jolie and Halle Berry were morphed together in a bioengineering experiment to determine how neurons react to ambiguous faces when individuals try to decipher identity. We are constantly bombarded with noisy and ambiguous sensory information and our brain is constantly making decisions based on such limited data, says Professor Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, director of the Centre for Systems Neuroscience and Head of Bioengineering at the University of Leicester in the UK. Using the morphed image, Dr. Quiroga and his team concluded that the neurons activate upon recognition of the faces rather than the visual stimulus of the features. Looking at a face, he says, one recognizes consciously that its the face of a friend, for example, but the process of identifying the individual features is sub-conscious. The neurons the researchers observed in the study illustrated this point to perfection, according to Dr. Quiroga, who says they fired upon perception, not upon contemplation of the features. Furthermore, he says, the experiment proves Aristotle was correct in saying that humans create images of the external world and seal them into memory more than they gather information from visual stimuli. This result supports the … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 30-Sep-2014 Contact: Ken Ma ma28@llnl.gov 925-423-7602 DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory @Livermore_Lab LIVERMORE, Calif. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) a grant today to develop an electrode array system that will enable researchers to better understand how the brain works through unprecedented resolution and scale. LLNL's grant-funded project is part of NIH's efforts to support President Obama's BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, a new research effort to revolutionize our understanding of the human mind and uncover ways to treat, prevent and cure brain disorders. NIH is seeking exceptionally creative approaches to address major challenges associated with recording and manipulating neural activity for this endeavor. The agency announced its first wave of investments totaling $46 million in FY14 funds to support the BRAIN Initiative's goals. More than 100 investigators in 15 states and several countries will work to develop new tools and technologies to understand neural circuit function and capture a dynamic view of the brain in action. "The human brain is the most complicated biological structure in the known universe. We've only just scratched the surface in understanding how it works or, unfortunately, doesn't quite work when disorders and … Continue reading →