Neurons
Brain Regions
Electrodes & Beyond
Mind & Machine
Science Fiction
100

This is the fundamental cell of the nervous system responsible for transmitting information.

What is a neuron?

100

What region of the brain is responsible for motor function?

Motor Cortex

100

This neuroimaging technique measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow, relying on the fact that active neurons require more oxygen.

What is fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging)? (fNIRS, functional Ultrasound)

100

This Elon Musk company is developing ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers.

What is Neuralink?

100

In what franchise series does the main protaganist have his arm cut off and get a replacement prosthetic that seemlessly helps him weld his weapon.

What is Star Wars?

200

The microscopic gap between two neurons where signals are passed via neurotransmitters.

What is a synapse?

200

What region of the brain is responsible for the speech synthesis?

Ventral Motor Cortex

200

The common, non-invasive method of recording the brain's electrical activity using a cap of electrodes placed on the scalp.

What is EEG (Electroencephalography)?

200

This neuroscientist, portrayed in Brilliant Minds, is often credited with his whimiscal writing style seen in the Awakenings, later adapted into a movie.

Who is Oliver Sacks?

200

This Christopher Nolan feature film is about a team that uses advanced dream-sharing technology to perform this act of planting an idea into a target's subconscious.

What is inception?

300

The process by which a presynaptic neuron reabsorbs neurotransmitters from the synaptic cleft.

What is reuptake?

300

Theorized by Francis Crick to be a potential "conductor of consciousness," this thin, enigmatic sheet of neurons situated between the insular cortex and the putamen is hypothesized to bind multisensory information into a unified perception.

What is the claustrum?

300

What do we call an invasive brain recording?

Intracortical/Single Neuron

300

In 2004, this man, paralyzed from the neck down, famously became the first person to control a computer cursor and a robotic hand using the implanted BrainGate BCI system.

Who is Matthew Nagle?

300

This cybernetic alien race operates as a hive mind, linking all members into a single collective consciousness via neural implants.

Who are the Borg?

400

The slow afterhyperpolarization (AHP) that follows a burst of action potentials and is critical for producing spike-frequency adaptation is primarily mediated by the opening of this specific class of potassium channels, which are gated by an influx of intracellular calcium.

What are calcium-activated potassium channels (Kca channels)?

400

This midbrain area, which surrounds the cerebral aqueduct, is the primary control center for descending pain modulation and can orchestrate powerful analgesic and defensive responses (like freezing) by engaging endogenous opioid pathways.

What is the periaqueductal gray (PAG)?

400

This futuristic BCI concept, pioneered at UC Berkeley, envisions thousands of sand-grain-sized, free-floating wireless sensors, or "motes," that are powered and read out by a central transceiver using ultrasound.

What is neural dust?

400

In a groundbreaking 1973 paper, this UCLA professor became the first person to coin the term "Brain-Computer Interface" (BCI)

Who is Jacques Vidal?

400

In this movie, the operators use a BCI to upload knowledge directly into the main character's brain, famously teaching him Kung Fu in a matter of seconds

What is The Matrix?

500

This molecular hypothesis explains how late-phase, protein synthesis-dependent LTP can be synapse-specific; it posits that a strongly stimulated synapse creates a local marker, or "tag," that can then capture plasticity-related proteins synthesized elsewhere in the cell.

What is the synaptic tagging and capture hypothesis?

500

This region of the brain get its name from the blue color its neurons are known to exhibit.

What is the Locus Coeruleus or "blue spot" in Latin?

500

This term describes the challenge where the statistical properties of neural signals change over time—due to electrode migration, tissue scarring, or neural plasticity—requiring BCI decoders to be frequently recalibrated to maintain performance.

What is non-stationarity (or neural drift)?

500

A neuroscientist who went to caribbean to illegally implant himself with a BCI to study speech.

Who is Phil Kennedy?

500

In this movie, the premise is hacking into someone's cyberbrain to manipulate their memories and control their actions.

What is the Ghost in the Shell?

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