Lawyers, educators, economists and businesspeople, as well as scholars of sociology, philosophy, applied ethics and policy, are incorporating the concepts and methods of neuroscience into their work. Graduate and professional students, working professionals and college and university faculty are encouraged to apply. The only prerequisites are a grasp of basic statistics and at least a dim recollection of high school biology and physics. (A short set of readings will be made available prior to the Boot Camp to remind you about the essentials.) Participants will be housed on campus in air-conditioned apartment-style suites with private bedrooms.

2. National Neurotechnology Initiative Act: Momentum for this recently introduced legislation which provides $200M a year for federal R&D aimed at accelerating translational neurotech innovation and improving the effectiveness of FDA review process for neuroscience drugs, devices and diagnostics grows.

3. New Sources of Stem Cells: The discovery of new sources of neural stem cells are opening up new avenues and potentially whole new treatment strategies for stroke, vision loss, hearing loss, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and ALS.

4. Deep Brain Stimulation: New clinical research into the use of deep brain stimulation devices for the treatment of neurological diseases and psychiatric illnesses continues to provide new hope to those suffering from drug treatment forms of these illnesses.

5. Addiction advances: New research that clarifies the role of impulsivity in treating cocaine addiction and synaptic plasticity in the control of inhibitory circuits could potentially lead to new treatment strategies for this epidemic impacting over 1.1 billion worldwide.

6. Stress prevention: New research shows that even a few hours of stress can reduce neural connectivity and that chronic stress, in particular early in life, can shrink critical areas of the brain. These findings may lead to new treatment strategies for PTSD and other anxiety-related disorders.

7. Traumatic brain injury advances: Early detection proves important for effective treatment while new research into inflammation may provide new treatments for people with brain injuries and stroke.

8. Get your sleep: More research points to the critical role that a proper night’s sleep plays in the memory consolidation, learning and mental illness further validating the need for effective therapeutics which engender healthy sleep patterns.

9. Discovery tools underpin innovation: New imaging techniques coupled with advances in neuroinformatics, image-based neural circuit analysis, and neural computation are accelerating the pace of neuroscientific discovery beyond what was imagined a decade ago.

10. Neuroscience infiltrates society: From neurofinance, neuroeconomics to neuroesthetics to neuroethics and neurolaw, the influence of neuroscience on society continues to grow.

"The FDA has even the neuroscience crowd scratching their heads.

Some folks from the Neurotechnology Industry Organization, a trade group for neuroscience companies, and three of its members stopped by Health Blog HQ today. Our chat really heated up when it turned to the current regulatory environment...(more)

Neuroentertainment: Current technologies such as video games will merge with future one (such as those involving neural feedback) so gamers might wear EEG-type caps that read their brainwaves and pick up their emotions. Conceivably, story lines would move forward in real time, the plot changing based on each person's response, says Zack Lynch.

Neuroeducation: The more we learn about the neurobiology of learning - how the mind develops, what to make of differences between individual brains - the better we can "sculpt" teaching methods. Lynch predicts educational software will be tailored to students' individual brain patterns to improve math and language acquisition as well as creative thinking.

Neurospirituality: New tools such as real-time FMRI technology, Lynch says, promise to accelerate our capacity to access deeply meditative and spiritual states.

Check out the article as it scans several areas of the neurosociety.

Stem cell companies focused on the central nervous system (CNS) have the potential to address some of the largest unmet healthcare markets including: Alzheimer's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, depression, hearing loss, Huntington's disease, lysosomal storage disorders, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, retinal disorders, spinal cord injury, stroke, traumatic brain injury, and other brain and nervous system disorders.

The report analyzes the scientific approaches and challenges to utilizing stem cells in the CNS, discusses trends and drivers including funding and regulatory issues, reveals promising treatment indications and pipelines, examines business models leveraging the promise of stem cells, and sheds light on investment opportunities and risks. It provides in-depth profiles of twenty seven companies that are shaping the field and spearheading the use of stem cells in the brain and nervous system.

The twenty seven trend setting companies reviewed in the report include: Aastrom Biosciences, Advanced Cell Technology, ArunA Biomedical, Athersys (Nasdaq: ATHX), Beike Biotechnology Company, BrainCells, Inc., BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics, California Stem Cell Inc., Cell Cure Neurosciences, CellMed AG, Geron Corporation (Nasdaq: GERN), International Stem Cell Corporation, NeuralStem, NeuroGeneration, NeuroNascent, NeuroNova AB, Neuronyx, NsGene A/S, Pfizer Regenerative Medicine, Q Therapeutics, ReNeuron Group (LSE: RENE.L), RhinoCyte, Stem Cell Sciences (LSE: STEM.L), Stem Cell Therapeutics (TSX: SSS.V), Stem Cell Technologies, StemCells, Inc. (Nasdaq: STEM), and Theradigm, Inc.

The 175 page report, "Stem Cell Approaches in Neurology and Psychiatry: 27 Trendsetters for 2009" is available immediately.

"Fear plus herding equals panic," says Gregory Berns, a neuroeconomist at Emory University. "You bet it's biologically based."

At the core of the market mess are securities that were backed by extremely risky mortgages. The theory was that slicing and dicing mortgages diluted the risk away.

But the ratings agencies were being compensated by issuers of the mortgage-backed securities, and neuroeconomics says that created big problems. "You don't get mistakes this big based on stupidity alone," says George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University. "It's when you combine stupidity and people's incentives that you get errors of this magnitude."

Consider this forthcoming research by Loewenstein, Roberto Weber and John Hamman, all of Carnegie Mellon. They organized volunteers into partners. One partner is given $10 and told to split it however he sees fit. On average, the deciding partner keeps $8 and gives away $2.

Then researchers repeat the game. This time, the decider pays an "analyst" to decide how to split the money fairly. The game continues for multiple rounds and the decider can fire the analyst. With this change, the decider gets everything. Paying somebody else to ensure assets are divided fairly actually makes things less fair.

So what's a regulator to do? Read about that in Herper's full article here.

Overall, it seems that the science and technology policy community (including industry) has the most comprehensive grasp of current and future emergent issues pertaining to nanotech. Developing dilemmas related to synthetic biology and its applications in biowarfare and implications for global security pose an ongoing, vexing problem for S&T policy. S&T policy issues related to advancing neurotechnologies seemed most fragmented with little coherence on what can or should be done with respect to the development and application of these technologies beyond therapy. Rightly so, many participants were quite alarmed with what could be on the neurotech horizon in terms of "perception shifting", neurolegal implications and the squelching of neurodiversity. Several participants, especially LSE's Scott Vrecko (who I met at last November's Neurosocieties conference in London), reminded the policy community to identity current issues in neuroscience rather than pondering "what ifs." That said, it was great to hear Natasha Schull's thoughts on the potential public policy implications of neuroeconomics research, George Khushf's presentation on the ethical implication of neural implants and Mike Chorost's pontifications on the future of neurodevice development.

It took a few years, but after Jonathan Moreno wrote Mind Wars, the US defense community woke up and put together a committee, lead by Moreno. Last year I had the opportunity to speak on the current and future state of neurotechnology with the National Research Council committee convened by the Department of Defense who were focused on Military and Intelligence Methodology for Emergent Neurophysiological and Cognitive/Neural Science Research in the Next Two Decades.

The committee's report, "Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies," was released yesterday, highlighting some emerging possibilities including pharmacological landmines, lie detection, mind reading, cognitive enhancement and more. In my forthcoming book, Neurosociety, which is being published by St. Martin's Press in late spring 2009, I cover many of these ideas and more. Until then, I recommend reading the report.

One great illusion explained in the article revolves around how our visual cortex processes stimuli has is seen in this trick by the Great Tomsoni. "The magician has an assistant appear on stage in a white dress and tells the audience he will magically change the color of her dress to red. He first does this by shining a red light on her, an obvious ploy that he turns into a joke. Then the red light flicks off, the house lights go on and the now the woman is unmistakably dressed in red. The secret: In the split-second after the red light goes off, the red image lingers in the audience’s brains for about 100 milliseconds, covering the image of the woman. It’s just enough time for the woman’s white dress to be stripped away, revealing a red one underneath."

The paper with many more explanations and links to video of a magician's performance can be found here.