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Other Edinburgh events

Brain plus technology: robo-limbs and cyber-brains

Past event - 2016
25 May Doors 7pm
Event 7.30-9.30pm
The City Cafe, 19 Blair Street,
Edinburgh EH1 1QR
Sold Out!
Our brains are pretty amazing as it is, but can they be fixed or simulated using technology? Come along to the City Cafe at 7pm (basement function room) to find out! You will meet Dora, a computer program that learns language like a human child, and learn about prosthetic hands controlled with the power of thought! Pint of Science Edinburgh is supported by an Innovation Initiative Grant from the Edinburgh Fund at the University of Edinburgh.

Neuroprosthetics: bridging the gap between the brain and movement

Most people are familiar with prosthetic devices that are used by amputees to restore the appearance and sometimes the functionality of a missing limb. But is there anything we can do to deal with paralysis or quadriplegia? In this talk, I will introduce some fascinating research from the world of neuroprosthetics. I will talk about brain-machine interfaces; machines controlled by the power of thought. We’ll even see a live demo of how signals originating from the brain can be translated into movement.

How do we out-think the apes?

Humans stand above other members of the animal kingdom in our cognitive capacities. We develop maths, write poetry, and try to build machines that compute much faster than we can. However, we share almost our entire genetic (and neural) structure with our close primate cousins. How, then, do we so massively out-think them? What was the “cognitive great leap forward” that so separated our cognitive capacities from our evolutionary relatives? In this talk I present a simple idea that might underlie all of our cognitive differences... come along to find out more!
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