A couple of months back there was quite a bit of hype (which vanished rapidly as people forgot all about it when the next new thing came around) about the NIA brain-computer interface from OCZ Technology (which is also known for its build-your-own-laptop kits). Ostensibly, it's a consumer-grade, non-invasive EEG that you strap across your forehead and jack into a small interface unit which then plugs into a USB port on your computer. The unit comes with drivers that can map certain inputs from the dermatrodes (good call, Mr. Gibson) to keyboard and mouse events defined by the user.. the …

Researchers from the University of Nevada and IBM's Almaden Research Lab have used the BlueGene L supercomputer to run a heretofore unprecedented simulation of about one-half of a mouse's brain. It's not easy to keep an organic brain going outside of a living body so they did the next best thing, which was write a program that emulates the organic brain as closely as they could. This isn't as easy as it sounds because neural networks more advanced than those of worms have so many interacting factors that taking them all into account is a gargantuan task. It is also …