Science fiction and superhero films portray brain-machine interfaces as malevolent robots that plug into human brains for fuel in The Matrix (top left) or as power-enhancing devices in X-Men (top right).

Brain-machine interfaces: Villainous gadgets or tools for next-gen superheroes?

Penn Today talked with Konrad Kording, a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor whose group works at the interface of data science and neuroscience to better understand the human brain, to learn more about brain-machine interfaces and where real-world technologies and science fiction intersect.

Bioengineering
Neuroscience

Evolution, Emergence and the Brain

How the Mind Emerges from the Brain’s Complex Networks

How does the brain give rise to who we are? Dani Bassett explains how this question has led to the new field of network neuroscience, which uses a branch of mathematics, graph theory, to model the brain connections that let us read, calculate, or simply sit and tap our fingers.

Bioengineering

Evolution, Emergence and the Brain

Penn Researchers Detect Brain Differences between Fast and Slow Learners

Why do some people naturally excel at learning instruments, languages or technology while others take longer to pick up new knowledge? A new study led by Dani Bassett and Evelyn Tang looked at how brain activation patterns might affect how long it takes for new information to really stick in the brain.

Bioengineering

Evolution, Emergence and the Brain

This physicist is trying to make sense of the brain’s tangled networks

A Ph.D. physicist and a MacArthur fellow by age 32, Danielle Bassett has pioneered the use of concepts from physics and math to describe the dynamic connections in the human brain. Read about her trajectory that catapulted her into a life of research in a largely uncharted scientific field now known as network neuroscience.

Bioengineering
Electrical and Systems Engineering

Evolution, Emergence and the Brain

New center will study the complex genomics within individual cells

Junhyong Kim has been awarded an NIH Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science program grant to fund the creation of the Center for Sub-Cellular Genomics. He and Jim Eberwine will lead a multi-disciplinary team developing state-of-the-art technology to measure genomics elements at the scale of sub-cellular structures in single cells.

Biology

Evolution, Emergence and the Brain

Erdős-Rényi Prize for Danielle Bassett

Danielle Bassett has been named the 2018 recipient of the Erdős-Rényi Prize in Network Science by the Network Science Society (NetSci) for fundamental contributions to our understanding of the network architecture of the human brain, its evolution over learning and development, and its alteration in neurological disease.

Bioengineering

Evolution, Emergence and the Brain

Mathematical model explains why metastasis can occur even when cancer is caught early

In a new study, researchers have crafted a mathematical model to understand the dynamics at play as cancerous tumors grow and spread. Setting their model into action, Jimmy Qian and Erol Akçay were able to explain that mutations that lead to metastasis often arise early in a tumor history.

Biology

Evolution, Emergence and the Brain

Curious Minds: from building knowledge networks to inciting political resistance

What is curiosity? How does it work? And where does its seemingly limitless power to shape the mind and reshape society come from? Drawing on emerging work in cognitive neuroscience and network theory, Dani Bassett discusses enacting a practice of curiosity with a flexible brain.

Bioengineering

Evolution, Emergence and the Brain

News

Brain-machine interfaces: Villainous gadgets or tools for next-gen superheroes?

How the Mind Emerges from the Brain’s Complex Networks

Penn Researchers Detect Brain Differences between Fast and Slow Learners

This physicist is trying to make sense of the brain’s tangled networks

New center will study the complex genomics within individual cells

Erdős-Rényi Prize for Danielle Bassett

Mathematical model explains why metastasis can occur even when cancer is caught early

Curious Minds: from building knowledge networks to inciting political resistance