These stories are amazing. After reading them, my mind is spinning, full of wonderful ideas. Feel free to borrow these ideas and make them your own!
The first one, from Science Daily has to do with the switch in the brain that keeps a person young.
Flip of a Single Molecular Switch Makes an Old Mouse Brain Young
Mar. 6, 2013 — The flip of a single molecular switch helps create the mature neuronal connections that allow the brain to bridge the gap between adolescent impressionability and adult stability. Now Yale School of Medicine researchers have reversed the process, recreating a youthful brain that facilitated both learning and healing in the adult mouse.
Scientists have long known that the young and old brains are very different. Adolescent brains are more malleable or plastic, which allows them to learn languages more quickly than adults and speeds recovery from brain injuries. The comparative rigidity of the adult brain results in part from the function of a single gene that slows the rapid change in synaptic connections between neurons.
The second one, from Yahoo News, concerned linking the minds over rats over the Internet. Its the Hive Mind people!
“Mind melds” move from science fiction to science in rats
By Sharon Begley | Reuters – Thu, Feb 28, 2013
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The scientists call it a “brain link,” and it is the closest anyone has gotten to a real-life “mind meld”: the thoughts of a rat romping around a lab in Brazil were captured by electronic sensors and sent via Internet to the brain of a rat in the United States.The result: the second rat received the thoughts of the first, mimicking its behavior, researchers reported on Thursday in Scientific Reports, a journal of the Nature Publishing Group.
Charming Tales 