Put the breaks on using BRAIN POWER!!!

When trying to stop a fast moving car, our intent to jam break happens much earlier than the actual action of stepping on the break. 

A group of scientists in Germany found that the brain sends out unique messages during this period of "intent to jam break".

They then designed a system that reads the driver's brain signals, combines this with the muscle signals, and stops the car even before your foot touches the pedal.

Their system reacted 130 ms earlier than previous systems. For a car going at 100 km/h, this amounts to reducing the braking distance by 3.66 m!

That's pretty cool! Is it practical though?

1) Imagine looking like this everytime you drive

Image source: Mercedes 500sec.com

2) False alarm - Car stopping when it's not supposed to!

Image source: http://www.cawlocal584.com/humour.html 

3) Over reliance on the system

Methinks, neh.. not yet.

Beauty and the brain

Beauty, be it a beautiful face, art, or piece of music, activates the part of our brain known as medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC, red area in diagram below). mOFC is also involved in our emotions, feelings of reward and pleasure, and ability to make decisions.

Diagram from  Milad et. al. PNAS 2005

In response to this finding, John Lehrer suggested in "Why Does Beauty Exist" that the feeling of beauty is useful. According to Lehrer: 

"Beauty is a particularly potent and intense form of curiosity. It’s a learning signal urging us to keep on paying attention, an emotional reminder that there’s something here worth figuring out... ... We know just enough to know that we want to know more; there is something here, we just don’t what. That’s why we call it beautiful."

A few years back, R.J. Dolan and colleagues also showed that our mOFC is more active when we are looking at a happy looking face, as manifested in a smile. 

mOFC more active                                   mOFC less active

mOFC more active                                   mOFC less active

                           mOFC more active                                           mOFC less active

So,  

SMILE AWAY!!!!!