Tag Archives: Video

“The Missing Scarf” by Eoin Duffy

October 4th, 2014 | Space

The Missing Scarf Eoin Duffy

Watch the video! What a wonderfully animated short by the Irish filmmaker, Eoin Duffy. I’m not surprised “The Missing Scarf” took home top awards in virtually every film festival in the world. It was also shortlisted for the 86th Annual Academy Awards.

The story starts out following a squirrel’s journey to find his missing scarf, but it evolves into something truly astronomical! The animation technique is exquisitely polished. It’s a beautiful way to use motion graphics — each new design was well timed and added to the scene. And not to mention… George Takei is narrating, so this short is really great by all accounts.

To find more from Eoin Duffy or congratulate him on a job well done, here’s his website.

-RSB

Virtual Reality Sculpting Using the Oculus Rift

October 2nd, 2014 | Robot

Virtual Reality sculpting Oculus Rift Spider

Ever since Facebook purchased Oculus Rift for 2 billion dollars, I have been waiting for applications of the virtual reality technology that made sense. Of course, gaming as always been a target, but to justify that kind of money, virtual reality must become mainstream, so to speak.

As Zuckerberg said himself, “Immersive virtual and augmented reality will become a part of people’s everyday life. History suggests there will be more platforms to come, and whoever builds and defines these will shape the future and reap the benefits.”

The application above demonstrates a digital sculptor making a few designs; a face, a spider, etc.. and it seems to make a lot of sense. You can imagine that this technology could be combined with a 3D printer to create a seamless design pipeline.

virtual reality sculpting sculpture

In this case, the artist is using a Razer Hydra as the controller, but I think some sort of Power Glove would be much cooler (and easier to learn). I am now realizing that the Oculus Rift can potentially be a very useful tool and not just a gaming fad.

If you have any interest in playing around with the Oculus Rift or giving virtual reality sculpting a try, there is a Development Kit available now, although you’ll have to shell out some serious cash (~$800)

-RSB

A Journey Through The Visual System

September 24th, 2014 | Brain

A Journey Through The Visual System 1

A Journey Through The Visual System 2

Welcome to “A Journey Through The Visual System”! I made this video to promote brain awareness for the general public. As a neuroscience researcher, I’ve always believed it’s important to help people understand the complexities of the human nervous system. Thus, I hope this video can be appreciated by kids and adults alike, and something will be learned by all.

The project was inspired by the old Magic School Bus show I used to love as a kid. In the video, you will go on a 5-minute journey from the eye all the way to brain, learning the neuroanatomy along the way.

If you are feeling kind, you can vote for the video here (before Sept. 30th). This was submitted as part of a contest hosted by the Society for Neuroscience and BrainFacts.org.

Anyway, thanks for watching!

Here is the script for the video in case you missed something important:

“We begin our journey with the eye, specifically the iris, which gives the eyes its distinctive color. Now, the iris can be green, or blue, or brown, or black depending on the level of melanin which it contains. When the lights go off, the muscles connected to the iris contract, which makes the dark circle in the center of the eye, the pupil, get bigger. When the light goes on, the pupil gets smaller to allow less light to enter. This is how the eye adapts to light.

Ahh, that must be Ellie. She’ll be our tour guide on this journey through the visual system. Hi Ellie, how are you? To get a better look at the visual system, we’ll need some light. Let’s observe the anatomy of the eye in a little bit more detail. If we peel away the skin, we can see the arteries and veins, which supply important nutrients to the area. Next, we can see the surrounding muscles, which help move the eye in all directions. Now, let’s cut the eye in half to see how light enters the visual system. First, it hits the cornea, the protective layer of eye. Then, through the whole in the iris known as the pupil. Lastly, the job of the lens is to bend light to focus it correctly on the retina.

It’s time to enter the eye. Ellie has her jetpack and now we’re looking at the surface of the inside of the eye. The optic nerve on the right is where all the nerve fibers leave the eye heading toward the brain. Let’s follow Ellie has she heads toward that dark spot in the distance. This is the fovea centralis, a small pit in the retina responsible for our sharpest, clearest vision. Foveal vision allows us to do things like read books, or drive cars, or play video games.

Now, let’s look at a cross-section of the retina to see how neurons respond to light. Light is absorbed by rods and cones, which are specialized photoreceptors. This starts a chain reaction, which excites the bipolar cells and then subsequently the ganglion cells, to send electrical signals off toward the brain. The amacrine and horizontal cells work to modulate the circuit.
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Ok, we’ve successfully made it out of the eye, and now it’s time to head back toward the brain.
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Visual information flows along the optic nerve like a river of electricity. At the optic chiasm, the signals split such that images from the left visual field head to the right brain, and images from the right visual field head to the left brain.

After the optic chiasm, the visual signals make a quick stop at the lateral geniculate nucleus, or LGN. The LGN is organized into 6 layers, which all receive extensive feedback control from higher visual areas.

From the LGN, the visual signals travel along optic radiations back to the visual cortex. The cortex is where we use the signal that originally came from the eye to construct our visual reality. The billions of neurons in the human brain work to encode and process the information. Information is sent forwards and backwards. See, the beauty of the visual system is that everything we see is affected by our memories, and our feelings, and what we’ve seen before.

Well, that concludes our journey through the visual system, see you next time.”

-RSB

“Horde” by the Brutus Collective

August 10th, 2014 | Robot, Space

Horde

“Horde” is a new short film by the Brutus Collective, a group of 4 talented artists: Thibaud Clergue, Aurelien Duhayon, Sebastien Iglesias and Camille Perrin. The story is succinct and engaging, and the animation is top-notch. I particularly liked the implementation of reduced frames to animate the faces, while the clothing maintained a higher, more fluid frame rate. It is certainly pro-level work.

The motorcycle fight was heavily inspired by one of the best moments in the history of animation, Akira’s biker gang scene. If you have any interest in animation, I suggest checking it out. They held their own with this new rendition.

-RSB

80,000 Neurons Firing in the Brain of a Zebrafish

July 29th, 2014 | Brain

Labeled_Zebrafish_80000_neuronsA team led by Drs. Jeremy Freeman and Misha Ahrens recently recorded the activity of approximately 80,000 neurons firing in the brain of a zebrafish larvae. The technique they implemented is called light-sheet microscopy. Briefly, the scientists genetically engineer zebrafish neurons to emit a fluorescent signal just after the neuron fires. Laser beams are the shot through the fish so that the activated neurons will glow and an overhead microscope records the whole thing. Of course, this technique only works because the zebrafish are entirely transparent, so don’t expect to have your brain scanned in this manner any time soon.

“At the beginning of the movie, the fish is resting and the forebrain region on the far-right is flashing away. That may represent whatever the fish is thinking about when it’s just hanging out.

Scientists then created the illusion that the fish was drifting backwards by sliding bars in front of its eyes.
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Its intent to swim to catch up was measured with electrodes on its muscles. When the bars start sliding, a few neurons sitting just behind the eyes light up followed by a huge cascade of activity, including massive pulses initiating swimming.”

“There must be fundamental principles about how large populations of neurons represent information and guide behavior,” says neuroscientist Jeremy Freeman of Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia. “In this system, where we record from the whole brain, we might start to understand what those rules are.”

We know that the processing of sensory input and the generation of behavior involves large networks of neurons, and Dr. Freeman believes that observing networks with this sort of technology will enable us to gain deeper insight to how the brain functions.
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It is important to note that the temporal resolution is fast enough to identify which neurons are involved in a given behavior but too slow to count how many times they fire. Thus, there is no way that this technique could ever decipher the neural computations that take place at the millisecond timescale in the human brain.

I think we’ll probably need nanobots to ever fully decode the brain…
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Find the full article here… if you have a subscription :/

-RSB

[via Wired]

Dock Ellis D

June 12th, 2014 | Brain

Dock Ellis No-Hitter

On this day, 43 years ago, Dock Ellis threw a no-hitter on ACID. It’s quite the accomplishment! Only around 300 such feats have ever been pitched since Major League Baseball began recognizing the statistic back in 1876.
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No Mas and artist James Blagden stumbled across a four minute interview with radio producers Donnell Alexander and Neille Ilel, which appeared March 29, 2008 on NPR’s Weekend America. They were inspired to create this short animated account of Ellis’ legendary feat as a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates on June 12, 1970.
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Unfortunately, Dock passed away a couple of years back, but this achievement will surely live on for a long time.
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-RSB

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