Ines Violante, Postdoctoral Fellow at Imperial College London and University College London, Romy Lorenz, cognitive neuroscientist at Imperial College London, and Tre Azam, Founder of virtual reality gaming company Myndplay,  involved the Future Forum students in a fascinating exploration of the latest developments in neuroscience and application of gaming technology to help train the brain to focus and relieve anxiety.

Ines and Romy first explained how the brain works and how neurotechnology can help to treat the ‘diseased’ or injured brain. They started by tricking students’ senses with optical illusions to show that we don’t always see what we think we see- because of the way our brain perceives and interprets the world. They then demonstrated some of the technologies used in their lab to understand the structure and function of the human brain, including electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).  The highlight of their session was conducting a real-time demonstration of a brain stimulation experiment, 'zap the teacher'- on Dr Clark!  Brain stimulation is a non-invasive technique that applies a weak electrical current through the scalp, and is used to help restore communication between brain areas that is faulty due to disease or has been damaged by an accident. 

Next up was Tre, who gave students the chance to use the latest VR ready MyndBand EEG Brainwave headset and the MyndPlayer interactive mind controlled video platform to control, influence, and interact with video games, apps and movies using only their mind and emotions. Grounded in brain research the MyndPlay platform was created to help users to train their brains to improve attention, meditation skills, and also overcome mental obstacles through entertainment, simulations and guided training applications.  Student volunteers played golf and tug of war in the session while being able to see their very own brainwave reports on screen visualising their ability to focus and concentrate to improve their scores- akin to how athletes train to get into 'the zone" of complete focus and relaxation to achieve top results. 

Future Forum invited Murray Shanahan, Professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College, London, and Lisa Knoll, post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, to look at the fascinating developments in artificial intelligence and ask the question to Future Forum students, “will machines become cleverer than humans?”

The students were enthralled by the session, and one lower 5th student reported:

Both the talk on the development of the adolescent brain by Lisa Knoll, and on A.I. by Murray Shanahan were extremely engaging. Ms Knoll’s talk showed us how the human brain changes as it grows, and how this affected decision making and behaviour in different age groups. The most memorable and interesting points of the talk were the difference in grey matter between different age groups, the way the human brain attempts to empathize with inanimate objects (some triangles were shown moving about on the screen, even though their movements meant nothing, I felt as though a story was being told), and, most interestingly, the changes in behaviour when member of an age group is alone, or with others of the same age. Ms Knoll showed us some test results from a questionnaire, in which an individual is asked to rate the risk of a particular action. After being shown how others rated the same action, they were asked to change their rating. We could see that young children followed the example of others, while adolescents were affected by decisions of others of their age groups, and adults stuck with their decision.

Mr Shanahan’s talk focused on A.I., particularly the development and progress made in AI in the past 16 years. He started off by talking about DeepBlue, the computer which beat the chess world champion in 1999, by looking far ahead into the possible moves that could occur after it’s turn and picking the best option. He then went on to tell us that Google’s DeepMind, which on 16/03/16 defeated the Go world champion 4-1. Mr Shanahan told us about the differences between DeepBlue and DeepMind, showing us that while DeepBlue went through a list of possible moves, DeepMind used a far more complex method in order to recognise whether the configuration of a board after a particular move would be beneficial or not. The fact that DeepMind won Go was an amazing feat, there are apparently more configurations of the Go board than atoms in the observable universe (it is played on a 17*17 grid, and each position can have 3 states). Mr Shanahan then told us about the possibilities of AI, and talked about the possible timescale of progressing the AI field. He suggested that by 2100, human level intelligence could be possible, and quelled any worries that AI would rise up and take over any time soon.

Future Forum Talks continued in October 2015 with Professor Ian Henderson, Professor of Microbial Biology, University of Birmingham and Dr Mark Lorch, Senior Lecturer in Chemistry, University of Hull,  taking the stage this time.  Click here to watch the podcast.

Professor Henderson enthralled the audience in his talk about the world of microbiology.  Did you know that 99.99 % of the planet is made up of microbes, with 10 times more viruses than bacteria?  That there are 100 times more viruses on the planet than there are stars in the universe?  Or that we have 10 times more microbes living inside us than there are human cells comprising our body?  Mind boggling facts abounded!  Microbes represent the greatest portion of biodiversity on the planet. These organisms play essential roles in biogeochemical cycles, industry, animal and human disease. For example, the human bacteria are now known to play a decisive role in maintaining the balance between health and disease (and did you know that 'poo transplants' are being used to cure people of various disorders?).  Changes in the population of bacteria are now detected in those with non-infectious medical conditions e.g. obesity. In contrast, microbial pathogens still present a major existential threat to humanity particularly in light of the declining arsenal of antibiotics to treat infections; currently infectious disease is responsible for one third of deaths worldwide. Understanding microbes and their contributions to the life cycle and health of the planet is key to addressing many of the challenges facing humanity. Ian explored the many facets of microbiology and revealed the contribution this hidden world makes to your everyday life!

Dr Lorch spoke on a subject that has fascinated him for years. It is a biological process of such staggering complexity that the world’s greatest supercomputers have only just scratched its surface. It is a process that goes on billions of times a second in everyone’s body and when it goes wrong it leads to such things as Alzheimer’s disease, cystic fibrosis and cataracts.  Using incredible models made from Minecraft Mark’s talk  focused on the process of ‘protein folding’ which is how the molecular machines in bodies self-assemble.  For the protein to function properly it has got to fold up into a precise three-dimensional structure. If that structure is even slightly wrong then the protein won’t do its job. These final structures also happen to be beautiful and intricate and if just a tiny bit of it is out of place it won’t work. The staggering fact is that there are more possible ways for a protein to fold than there are atoms in the Universe. So how then does the protein know how to get from a long string to its precise structure in milliseconds? Not only that but every copy of the protein has to get it right every single time!  This is what was explored using fascinating models in Mark’s interactive session.