Sharing how nanotechnology is extending the edge of neuroscience, NYU's Rodolfo Llinas provided some provocative new research that will surely push neurotechnology and our understanding of the mind to a new level.

- Using a noninvasive magnetoencephalography, it is now possible to see (via a computer animated representation) how magnetic fields flux throughout the brain as we think. Because thoughts and emotions occur in the tens of millisecond range, it is possible to see how and where neurons work at specific time frames while people perform different tasks.

- Even more impressive was a new neurovascular approach his team developed that might soon be used to monitor and manipulate the brain using nanowires (5 nm in diameter). In the most impressive visual of the conference, he showed an electron microscope video of a nanowire being moved within the capillary's that stretch throughout the brain. Projecting this technology out into the future, he suggested that computer-based optimization of multiple recordings and stimulation of sites could be structured to allow specific man-machine platforms that could deliver specific neurochemicals to specific sites in the brain.

- While exploring the benefits that this technology represents, he also shared his concern about the future misuse of this technology, especially as the ultimate tool for drug addiction.