This week we delve deep into the secrets of the brain. We'll find out how MRIs could be used to read your mind, and how they could help unlock what is going on in the brain of a person suffering from delusions or hallucinations. In the news we'll hear that the process of nerve repair could offer clues to cancer spread, and how it was gorillas that originally gave us malaria. Plus in Naked Engineering, Dave and Meera explore the amazing world of superconductors...
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Now new results from a Cancer Research UK-funded team led by Professor Alison Lloyd at University College London have found an important link between nerve repair and how tumours may spread within the nervous system, and they've just published their findings in the journal Cell.
Scientists in Germany have uncovered a previously overlooked aspect of the disease process that underlies the development of multiple sclerosis (MS).
Historically, scientists thought that the most severe form of malaria, known as falciparum malaria, first spread into humans from chimps. But now, scientists have found that, in fact, it was gorillas that gave us malaria rather than chimps.
In a breakthrough that might also help to explain why amputees suffer phantom limb pain, scientists have hit the nail on the head in explaining why we clasp our two hands together after we injure one of them.
A satellite designed to measure the Earth’s gravitational field with unprecedented accuracy may sound like something out of a James Bond film, but it is in fact a reality. The European GOCE spacecraft or "Gravity field and steady state Ocean Circulation Explorer" has been doing...
Using computers to read the mind might seem more suited to the pages of a sci-fi thriller, but scientists are edging closer to this reality using brain imaging technology such as functional magnetic reasonance imaging - fMRI. Professor Jack Gallant and his team from the Univers...
As well as helping us to understand what’s going on in the brain when it’s at work, brain scanning techniques can also be used to look at what might be happening to cause some unusual experiences. Professor Paul Fletcher from the University of Cambridge uses fMRI to investigate ...
40:16 - Superconducting Levitation
One of the most bizarre and beautiful pieces of physics is superconductivity
My friend told me that I shouldn't eat the core of an apple and that I should throw it away. Is it poisonous?
Why do I talk out loud when I dream? My wife hears only half the conversation, and I don't even remember it.
Do we really only use 10% of our brains or is that a myth?
If a hallucination is seeing what isn’t there, how would a brain scan then see the same thing which isn’t there?
What are the long term consequences of so many brain scans? Are they safe?
If you can get auditory and visual hallucinations, can you get ones that make you believe you can smell or touch things?
Mysterious forces - Eddy Currents
Here is a lovely little experiment you can do if you can get hold of a small rare earth supermagnet. Using just a couple of tubes you can produce surprising forces.
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