Research Interests in Collaborative Project

Part 1:

My choices of assignments are, in order:

Neuropsychology: Rather than just plain psychology, I am specifically interested in neuropsychology because anything related to the human brain fascinates me; it's the one interest that has been constant throughout my school years. My goal in becoming a biomedical engineer is to focus in on the neural engineering branch and I believe that learning how behavior, emotion, and cognition are related to brain function. 

Biomedical Engineering: I am majoring in Biomedical Engineering, as I want to combine my passion for medicine and the human body with my love for physics and mathematics. As I stated above, my real interest lies within the branch of neural engineering; my largest desire is to be part of the community that creates devices for neurological disorders. 

Robotics, Computing, AI: Within this topic, I would like to concentrate on: robotics related to biomedical engineering or how artificial intelligence will impact the future. I'm particularly interested in how surgery can be revolutionized by robotics and the programming behind such a machine. Also, I'm interested in experts' opinions about whether artificial intelligence is a viable option for the future of humanity.

Part 2:

I found the following articles on my three topics:

Neuropsychology: http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/02/28/autistic-brain-networks-are-connected-differently/52056.html

This article discusses research that claims that autistic brains are wired differently from so-called “typical” or “healthy” brains. By comparing EEG readings from two control groups and two groups of autistic children, the research showed that children with autism have more short-range connections within different brain regions, but fewer long-range connections across the brain. Though this article was basically a summary of the research rather than a more detailed journal article, I found it extremely interesting as I have always been seeking answers to why and how autism develops ever since I first read about it in middle school.

Biomedical Engineering:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130228093829.htm

This article from today (2/28/13) literally made my jaw drop. A group of neural engineers have successfully “developed a fully implantable and rechargeable wireless brain sensor capable of relaying real-time broadband signals.” What’s even more astonishing is that this device runs on less than 100 milliwatts of power. This is just amazing because this is basically the first of its kind in the brain-computer interface field. It has been successful in animal testing; therefore, it most likely enter the human testing phase. I am extremely excited about this ground-breaking product; this is exactly the kind of thing I strongly desire to work on.

Robotics, Computing, AI: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/11/121119-biobot-hearts-robots-cells-health-science-disease/

This article discusses a bio-robot that runs on rat heart cells rather than on plain electricity. The contraction of the heart cells cause the body of the biorobot to move forward less than an inch per second. Why even create robots out of both synthetic and biological material? The engineers that work on these kinds of projects believe that their products have abilities that purely mechanical robots do not possess. Engineers have not been successfully in creating synthetic biological materials, so they have ingeniously decided to fuse biology with man-made material.