Cognitive Labs

Is it time to check your brain's relative 'power?' or brain age? If so, this scientifically-designed exercise can provide a numerical ranking of your speed and accuracy, closely linked to your "real" brain age rather than your calendar age. It's like the "RealAge" folks are getting around to brain quizzes.

By combining physical and cognitive fitness, it is possible to have a brain for the ages, with greater quickness and flexibility than other people who don't maintain their brains. The theory is, those who engage in mental cross-training build cognitive reserve. If you haven't taken this test, now's your chance.

Let me take the test | No wait, I really want to take it.



Everyone wants to find out. It seems like people can't resist a challenge.

Cognitive reserve has been theorized as relevant in populations as diverse as nuns and London taxi cab drivers, as well as engineers, teachers, scientists, and academics.In each case, people have inculcated large amounts of information.

Is there a connection between brain power and freedom? Amongst those in history most opposed to developing cognitive reserve, the most notorious is Hitler, who criticized mental exercise and cognitive development as a waste of time.

Labels: age, brain, brainage, cognitive, power, reserve

As mentioned, Cognitive Labs keeps on rolling - with June our biggest month yet in terms of visitors and page views, surpassing our previous high. It's not only an important mission, it may be one of the most important missions ever for humanity - in the evolution of our cognitive platform. For the first time, tools that can assess the brain and optimize it are available and can be distributed widely. It's so important that its nothing less than a Promethean advance in capability, a leap forward from the cognitive equivalent of the Folsom point; and it foreshadows where we will go in the future.

The performance totally dwarves June '07. This is pretty exciting for all of us as it means that we're reversing a general internet trend - we've got a favorable hand; rather than a seasonal decline in the warm months, coupled with heavier use when people are indoors-we're seeing a royal flush of steady growth.

It's well known that weather and even freak events impact web traffic according to Dr. Hal Varian, whether you have 50,000 visitors per month, 550,000 visitors per month (cognitive labs), 34,000,000 per month (FaceBook) or 149,000,000 (Google sites). I don't recall Google passing Yahoo!'s sites before, but now it has.

Anyway you look at it the total audience of the Internet is about 190,000,000 people per month. Our growth plans are pretty aggressive and involve leveraging our cognitive reserve - that is, all of you, so stay tuned to visualize how this evolves.

Best, and like they said in the old lemonade commercial, 'thanks for your support.'

Labels: cognitive, folsom, june2008, prometheus, rolling, varian

Here is more on the cognitive reserve theory...now in Time Magazine. What is not mentioned, however, is IQ's association with longevity and also reaction time, which seem to form a triangle of interrelatedness.

Labels: cognitive, cognitive-reserve, labs

Watch out...if your reaction time slips too far, not only might that be a sign of impairment - if it happens too many times, you might see this at the end of a test

Labels: chronometrics, cognitive, reaction time, rickrolled, time

Imperial bystanders watch coglabs traffic take off...


It's going to be a great 1st quarter 2008 for Cognitive Labs, with new highs in every area (what's new?). March 2008 is by far our biggest month yet, with a 10% increase in page views over last month, and more than a 10% increase in visitors over last month, despite the fact that we're not sending out any newsletters (we'll resume pretty soon, most likely).

More stats later....

I'm writing this from a little cafe right around the corner from Facebook, e,g., University Ave. and Ramona, where I just had a quick meeting - that is, at the cafe. Free wifi rocks.

Facebook is in a building that used to house a company called neuron data. I'm also real close to where bamboo.com had an office, pre-IPO, and a block or so from photobucket.

Labels: bamboo.com, cognitive, ipo, photobucket

Coglabs Reached a Million visitors in 2008 a couple of minutes ago - we're now at 1,000,342.



Thanks. BTW...Mike Myers is set to reprise his role as Dr. Evil, rumor has it.
Sharks with 'frickin laser beams

Labels: 1million, cognitive, cognitive-evolution, cognitivelabs.com

Cognitive Labs just reached 800,000 visits in 2008. I created an alert bug that would send a text SMS to my phone when it happened. And it just did. This compares to about 3 million in 2007 - hopefully the growth will accelerate even further. Speaking of accelerate, I just heard about a company called XLR8 Mobile. Funny, because I was affiliated with a company called Accelerate Mobile, both as a professional and a personal investor. It developed packet loss reduction and data acceleration technology and had a successful trial on the KDDI EVDO (Evolution Data Optimization) network in Tokyo. Wonderful things.

Labels: 800000, cognitive, evdo, kddi, xlr8mobile

This shows the stepwise growth of Cognitive Labs - Q4 2007 was more than 300% over Q4 2006, with about 1.5 million visitors. Q1 2006 and Q4 2006 both had number one hits on digg. With the acquisition of brain.com, we've had additional lift.

We're up to 2,319,000 users. I never thought it could get this big, and we're basically in stealth mode. However, it's likely that this is only the beginning. Where should we go from here? We have some ideas, but let's hear yours: michael@cognitivelabs.com or poke me. Spam/shmam - but I do get about 4,000 emails/day, unfiltered.

Labels: cognitive, digg, labs, q4, traffic

New research from Washington University in St. Louis suggests that more education in a person leads to a realization that there may be a concern sooner, leading to earlier diagnosis. Self-awareness is key. Just like a car's engine, be sensitive to any signs of systemic change.

A review of epidemiological data finds that people who spend fewer years in school may experience a slight but statistically significant delay in the realization that they're having cognitive problems that could be Alzheimer's disease.

Scientists at the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC) at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis reviewed data on 1,449 Alzheimer's patients from their center and 21,880 patients from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center (NACC), a collaboration of approximately 30 Alzheimer's disease research centers nationwide.

"We may have a group of people who are at risk for slightly delayed detection of Alzheimer's disease," says lead author Catherine Roe, Ph.D., a neurology research instructor at the ADRC. "Early detection of Alzheimer's disease is important as we progress toward treatments and cures because those treatments will need to be applied as early as possible to have the maximum possible benefit."

The paper appears in this month's issue of Archives of Neurology.

In an earlier study of patients with a form of Alzheimer's disease linked to a genetic mutation, Roe and other Washington University researchers found patients with more years of education were likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease earlier. This surprised them because higher levels of education have typically been associated with decreased risk of Alzheimer's disease.

The new study confirmed those surprising results, revealing that patients with 12 years or more of schooling were on average slightly younger when diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease than patients with less than eight years of schooling. Age of diagnosis for a group with eight to 11 years of schooling fell in-between the other two groups.

Next, researchers analyzed the severity of patients' dementia when they went to the Alzheimer's disease center for the first time. They found that patients with fewer years of education were likely to be more severely impaired on their first visit.

Labels: adrc, cognitive, louis, st., university, washington

2007 was a great year, we've now hit the milestone of 3.5 million visitors who are concerned with brain fitness.

The chart above shows the rate of growth.

In 2008 as of 11:40 Pacific time on 1/3 we have 73,000 visitors and 196,000 page views so far.

Labels: 196000, 2007, 2008, 73000, cognitive, labs, pageviews, visitors

Cognitive Labs traffic reaches 3 million visitors, and the 18th straight month of increases. We've passed 1 million visits this quarter. Thanks.

Compared with some of the large casual game networks, we're around 5-10% of their traffic-but just focused on the brain-including scientific games-the DNA of a revolution in how you train your mind.

Labels: 3million, arcade, casual, cognitive, dna, fish, real

A classic article from the achive: the Gamer-IQ dictionary, which outlines cognitive training, interventional actions, and substances that improve cognitive ability.

Since this was published (end of 2005) the caffeine-cognitive link has been more thoroughly established. This essay also predates Nintendo BrainAge in the U.S., though a colleague in Japan pointed out the popularity of his books to us "learning therapy" in Japan as early as 2003.

Labels: cognitive, dictionary, gamer_IQ, gamerIQ, training

3 Related ideas: Your health, Your genes, and your brain speed. Brain Speed might be better termed "neural conduction velocity."

If you body was a PC or hi-def tuner, the assessment might be called 'bandwidth.' It is a measure of how quickly your brain can process symbolic functions. It is no coincidence that brain speed is correlated with IQ. The kind of exercise that measures 'brain speed' - known as ECTs or elementary cognitive tasks, were viewed initially as another, possibly superior version of IQ test.

For example, early IQ tests and even the Stanford-Binet test had the well-known cultural limitations apparent in such constructs as the Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) which favored white, upper middle class students with probably a suburban reference point. Depending on how close you were to this archteype, your were more likely to do well. Take your SAT test, designed for suburban kids in Princeton, New Jersey and give it to a teenage Dinka tribesman in the Sudan of similar age. Obviously the Dinka would barely be able to write his name on such a test and would not understand any of the associations and analogies. Even the quantitative reasoning section would be biased. Translating the test would not improve the outcome.

Now take an extremely simple measure without words or with a simple Yes/No option - such as how quickly you can push a button when a light comes on or a symbol flashes, and you have an instrument which can be used across cultures and even across species in some cases. The result is actionable information that can be used to correlate with human genetic types and variations, disease and health conditions, and create a personalized plan for optimization, which includes greater longevity and cognitive ability.

In other words, the process is now coming into place for us to step forward and make a major jump in evolution and perceptive ability, which is not necessarily the same thing as our ability to design and build devices or machines that 'simplify' our lives. Going back into human history, there was a time when humans were able to understand symbols as a form of communication and expression, despite having only elementary manipulative technology to alter their environment. To some extent, perception of symbolic meaning might be lessened or 'dampened' in direct proportion to our reliance on manipulative technologies (tools) that reduce our ability to visualize by filling our perceptive fields (sight, sound, olfactory, and more) with a distracting level of activity that serves no purpose other than justifying its own existence.

By improving human bandwidth or brainspeed with repetitive symbolic exercise we train ourselves to develop more flexible, effective, and enhanced cognitive abilities, a benchmark of health, longevity, and thinking into the future.

Labels: big brain academy, cognitive, fast thinking, symbol

Cognitive Threat Assessment

Remember Luke Skywalker's 'binoculars' that he used to pan the horizon looking for R2-D2 in Star Wars IV right before he says "Boy, am I gonna get it?"

The Pentagon is starting an effort which will merge soldier's brains with visual devices - integrated at the frontal cortex, called "Luke's Binoculars."

Or we could add, reminiscent of the "Six Million Dollar" man and his enhanced vision, or Arnold Schwarzenegger's visual acuity as the Terminator in T 1,2,3.

The agency claims no scientific breakthrough is needed on the project -- formally called the Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System. Instead, Darpa hopes to integrate technologies that have been simmering in laboratories for years, ranging from flat-field, wide-angle optics, to the use of advanced electroencephalograms, or EEGs, to rapidly recognize brainwave signatures.

In March, Darpa held a meeting in Arlington, Virginia, for scientists and defense contractors who might participate in the project. According to the presentations from the meeting, the agency wants the binoculars to have a range of 1,000 to 10,000 meters, compared to the current generation, which can see out only 300 to 1,000 meters. Darpa also wants the binoculars to provide a 120-degree field of view and be able to spot moving vehicles as far as 10 kilometers away.

The most far-reaching component of the binocs has nothing to do with the optics: it's Darpa's aspirations to integrate EEG electrodes that monitor the wearer's neural signals, cueing soldiers to recognize targets faster than the unaided brain could on its own. The idea is that EEG can spot "neural signatures" for target detection before the conscious mind becomes aware of a potential threat or target.

Darpa's ambitions are grounded in solid research, says Dennis McBride, president of the Potomac Institute and an expert in the field. "This is all about target recognition and pattern recognition," says McBride, who previously worked for the Navy as an experimental psychologist and has consulted for Darpa. "It turns out that humans in particular have evolved over these many millions of years with a prominent prefrontal cortex."

Read the Whole Article - Wired

Labels: cognitive, wired

Stephen Hawking's moments of weightlessness in the global media eye underscores the efforts by entrepreneurs to create a new space industry, which is boldly moving forward. Now is the time for people interested in this effort to get ready - by training their brains.

You'll find the topic of brain health in space is getting more attention, due to changes in perception caused by weightlessness - and also the impact of things like gamma rays. Similar to the fight against cognitive degeneration here on Earth due to Alzheimer's (sometimes genetically induced) -these factors need to be overcome before there is a move, as Stephen Hawking calls for, towards exploration and colonization of space.

So we're releasing Spacebrain tests (starting with a simple cognitive test used in our recent Stanford research)to help people show support for consumer spaceflight!

Anyone can use it. You don't have to come to this site to play it; put it on your site or blog, where it's handy and accessible. (see below!)





save brains. get
the code

Labels: cognitive, health, space, spacebrain

This code works perfectly on Blogger and will display a memory game in your post (just like below) and also works on your template, for example, next to your Ads. Give people something else to do while reading your posts. Here is what is produced....Get the code for blogger right here

Labels: blogger, code, cognitive, labs, widgets

The link where you can get Brainpal and other tools for your site is here.

(1) Copy the code
(2) Paste into your site, forum, or blog template
(3) Publish the page.

note: with blogger, remove the reference to the part of the code ending in ".js" as they do not support live scripts within the page. We'll be posting a separate blogger version shortly. If you remove the reference to cognitive.js it works fine. Other than that, get started.

You will then be able to build traffic to your site with a free test.

Labels: brain, cognitive, mindtools, widgets

From time to time, we'll bring your music from the past...for example, who remembers this video? It is 19.75 years old! incredible.



Something to do before or after your cognitive exercise.

Labels: 1987, cognitive

Improve the inner space to improve outward space. (part 1)

One of the reasons to improve cognitive functioning is that it optimizes the brain so that it can be prepared to achieve higher and higher levels of awareness. In this state, as in Gandhi's Satyagraha, achieving control over others and behaving agressively becomes antithetical to the individual who is at peace. Such an individual has confidence they are performing their best at a given task, there is no need for fear and sense of inadequacy, which drives hostile behavior. Mental enhancement reduces fear of situational unknowns. When there is a network of such individuals, living without fear, the level of tranquility and engagement with tasks beneficial to both society and the individual creates a spirit of cooperation, understanding, and learning. External relations between individuals, groups, and the unknown improve - since there is nothing to fear. There is no such thing as an "unknown" - merely items and experiences that are in our present state of awareness, and those which are not. Simply because something is not perceived at present through one set of sensory inputs - does not mean it does not exist.

Labels: balance, cognitive, satyagraha

I am putting together a "top ten developments on the brain" for 2006, a retrospective on a year in which Cognitive Labs grew by almost Herculean proportions, as if by the studied, dispassionate efforts of an "invisible hand" of mythical sapience. But before we get to that...

The credit for the growth goes to you, dear reader, who have decided, time and again, to return to this humble stall for a sampling of the day's catch, intrigued and expectant of what might be found in the nets, laid out to dry in a Meditteranean sun.

Let us hope, you and I, as we journey into the sunset of this year together, a gentle wind at our back filling our sails, that we will find further discoveries in the coming year, enchanted isles where pieces of the puzzle that can be considered neuroscience are assembled with the care of an archaeologist resurrecting potsherds, gradually bringing us into a more holistic understanding of the world, nee the universe in which we live, gently floating on the majestic molecular breeze that fills the hallowed spaces between the stars.

Labels: archaeologist, cognitive, neuroscience, stars

The Brain Works Constantly on Hidden, System-Tray Tasks...




Our cognitive processes keep working at a furious pace even when there is no visual stimuli. The implications for cognitive treatment, education, and entertainment could be staggering.


Researchers at the University of Rochester have found in reality that 80 percent of our cognitive power is cranking away on tasks completely unknown to us. Curiously, this clandestine activity does not exist in the youngest brains, leading scientists to assert that the mysterious functions that absorb the majority of our mindpower are dedicated to subconscious reprocessing our initial thoughts and experiences. The research, which has possible profound implications for our understanding of reality, appeared in a recent issue of the journal Nature.

"We found neural activity that frankly surprised us," says Michael Weliky, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. “Adult ferrets had neural patterns in their visual cortex that correlated very well with images they viewed, but that correlation didn't exist at all in very young ferrets, suggesting the very basis of comprehending vision may be a very different task for young brains versus old brains.”

A second surprise was in store for Weliky. Placing the ferrets in a darkened room revealed that older ferrets' brains were still humming along at 80 percent as if they were processing visual information. Since this activity was absent in the youngsters, Weliky and his colleagues were left to wonder: What is the visual cortex so busy processing when there's no image to process?

Initially, Weliky's research was aimed at studying whether visual processing bore any resemblance to the way real-world images appear. This finding may help lead to a better understanding of how neurons decode our world and how our perception of reality is shaped.

Weliky, in a bit of irony, set 12 ferrets watching the reality-stretching film The Matrix. He recorded how their brains responded to the film, as well as to a null pattern like enlarged television static, and a darkened room. Movies capture the visual elements that are present in the real world. For instance, as Keanu's hand moves across the screen for a karate chop, the image of the hand and all the lines and color it represents moves across a viewer's visual realm essentially the same way it would in real life. By contrast, the enlarged static-blocks of random black and white-has no such motion. Weliky was able to graph the movie-motion statistically, showing essentially how objects move in the visual field.

The test was then to see if there was any relationship between the statistical motion of the movie and the way visual neurons in the ferrets fired. Each visual neuron is keyed to respond to certain visual elements, such as a vertical line, that appears in a specific area of the ferret's vision. A great number of these cells combine to process an image of many lines, colors, etc. By watching the patterns of how these cells fired while watching The Matrix, Weliky could describe the pattern statistically, and match those statistics of how the ferret responded to the film with the statistics of the actual visual aspects of the film.

Weliky found two surprises. First, while the neurons of adult ferrets statistically seemed to respond similarly to the statistics of the film itself, younger ferrets had almost no relationship. This suggests that though the young ferrets are taking in and processing visual stimuli, they're not processing the stimuli in a way that reflects reality.

"You might think of this as a sort of dyslexia," explains Weliky. "It may be that in very young brains, the processing takes place in a way that's not necessarily disordered, but not analogous to how we understand reality to be. It's thought that dyslexia works somewhat like this-that some parts of the brain process written words in an unusual way and seem to make beginnings of words appear at their ends and vice versa. Infant brains may see the entire world the same way, as a mass of disparate scenes and sounds." Weliky is quick to point out that whatever way infant brains may interpret the world, just because they're different from an adult pattern of perception does not mean the infants have the wrong perception. After all, an adult interpreted the visual aspects of the film with our adult brains, so it shouldn't be such a surprise that other adult brains simply interpret the visual aspects the same way. If an infant drew up the statistics, it might very well match the neural patterns of other infants.

The second, and more surprising, result of the study came directly from the fact that Weliky's research is among the first to test these visual neurons while the subject is awake and watching something. In the past, researchers would perhaps shine a light at an unconscious ferret and note which areas of the brain responded, but while that method narrowed the focus to how a single cell responds, it eliminated the chance to understand how the neural network of a conscious animal would respond. Accepting all the neural traffic of a conscious brain as part of the equation let Weliky get a better idea of the actual processing going on. As it turned out, one of his control tests yielded insight into neural activity no one expected.

When the ferrets were in a darkened room, Weliky expected their visual neurons to lack any kind of activity that correlated with visual reality. Neurologists have long known that there is substantial activity in the brain, even in darkness, but the pattern of that activity hadn't been investigated. Weliky discovered that while young ferrets displayed almost no patterns that correlated with visual reality, the adult ferrets' brains were humming along, producing the patterns even though there was nothing to see. When watching the film, the adult ferrets' neurons increased their patterned activity by about 20 percent.

"This means that in adults, there is a tremendous amount of real-world processing going on-80 percent-when there is nothing to process," says Weliky. "We think that if you've got your eyes closed, your visual processing is pretty much at zero, and that when you open them, you're running at 100 percent. This suggests that with your eyes closed, your visual processing is already running at 80 percent, and that opening your eyes only adds the last 20 percent. The big question here is what is the brain doing when it's idling, because it's obviously doing something important."

Since the young ferrets do not display similar patterns, the 'idling' isn't necessary for life or consciousness, but since it's present in the adults even without stimulus, Weliky suggests it may be what gives subjects an understanding of reality. The eye takes in an image and the brain processes the image, but 80 percent of the activity may be a representation of the world replicated inside the ferret's brain.

"The basic findings are exciting enough, but you can't help but speculate on what they might mean in a deeper context," says Weliky. "It's one thing to say a ferret's understanding of reality is being reproduced inside his brain, but there's nothing to say that our understanding of the world is accurate. In a way, our neural structure imposes a certain rubric on the outside world, and all we know is that at least one other mammalian brain seems to impose the same structure. Either that or The Matrix freaked out the ferrets the way it did everyone else."

This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Post to:

Labels: brain, cognitive, cognitive_labs, matrix, system_tray

The Seminoles have just bought out the Hard Rock Cafe and Casino chain in what is believed to be the first leveraged buyout led by an Indian tribe.

It is unknown if they will make a Michael Eisner-like grab for "synergy" between various brands.

Like, giving away coupons for the Hard Rock Cafe at all Florida State Seminole football games in Tallahassee.

Next on the buyout list....the Blackfoot tribe in Idaho leads a leverage buyout of J.R. Simplot's potato empire and therewith, becomes the nation's largest provider of Freedom Fries.

Gordon Gekko would be proud.

Labels: cognitive, eisner, synergy

Researchers have linked chemotherapy with short-term structural changes in cognitive areas of the brain, according to a new study. Published in the January 1, 2007 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study reveals that within 12 months of receiving adjuvant chemotherapy, significant regions of the brain associated with memory, analysis and other cognitive functions were significantly smaller in breast cancer patients who received chemotherapy than those who did not. Within four years after treatment, however, there were no differences in these same regions of the brain.

While the development of chemotherapy has had substantial and beneficial impact on cancer survival rates, it is also linked to significant short- and long-term adverse effects. Gastrointestinal complaints, immunosuppression, and painful mucositis, for example, are the immediate risks of the treatment.

Patients receiving chemotherapy have also long complained of problems with memory, problem-solving and other cognitive abilities. Although chemotherapy was thought not to affect brain cells due to the blood-brain barrier, recent clinical studies have confirmed declines in cognitive functions in patients receiving chemotherapy. Animal studies have shown physical changes in the brain and in neurons caused by chemotherapy drugs. In human studies, however, the little data that is available is only available through imaging and is not consistent in the long-term. In addition, lack of controls in studies makes it difficult discern cancer- versus drug-effects.

Led by Masatoshi Inagaki, M.D., Ph.D., of the Breast Cancer Survivors' Brain MRI Database Group in Japan, researchers used MRI to take high-resolution images and measure volumes in specific areas of the brain of breast cancer patients who received chemotherapy and those who did not one-year after surgery and three-years after surgery. In addition, they compared brains of cancer survivors one-year after surgery and three-years after surgery with healthy subjects.

They found that at one-year, patients treated with chemotherapy had smaller volumes in cognitively sensitive areas, such as the prefrontal, parahippocampal and cingulate gyri, and precuneus regions. However, at three-years post-surgery there was no volume differences. That there were no differences between cancer patients and healthy controls at any time point demonstrates that there is no observable cancer-effect in cognitive deficits.

Labels: alzheimers, brain, cancer, chemotherapy, cognitive

How can you use your brain to help the environment? Since the U.S. is the largest contributor of greenhouse gases - individual Americans, by changing their lifestyle slightly, can make the most difference.

If you want to learn more, read about how a science teacher in Massachusetts cut his energy bill by 2/3 through simple household changes. Slight changes, since they are easy to carry out, can make a greater difference than major initiatives requiring civic, regional, or national legislation (also, no need for bureaucratic ennui).

In the last 100 years since temperatures have been measured, five of the hottest ten years on record have occurred in this past decade.

Some of the simple things you can do to "cool down" the earth, including what the wise teacher did, are listed in this article. Small actions, like aggregate 'cooling' due to the air circulation from the beating wings of a 100 million butterflies, just might make the difference in reversing environmental change.

Labels: brain, butterfly, cognitive, environment, global, global_warming, superstorm

Cognitive Data: A snapshot of brain performance from the heights...This miniature chart (below)will lead you to a full size graph of 3 axes of data - age (year of birth) performance and frequency (who takes tests).



You can get a sense of cognitive performance over time.It's amazing how much information can be captured in a sample of a little over 100 people. Now think of the data from 1 million people, or 10 million, or 100 million - impossible before the advent of the Internet, fast CPUs, and fast connections, with 100 million personally-relevant pages or data profiles.

Labels: brain, brainspeed, cognitive, normative_cognitive

George the Robot is playing hide-and-seek with scientist Alan Schultz.

For a robot to actually find a place to hide, and then to hunt for its human playmate, is a new level of human interaction. The machine must take cues from people and behave accordingly.

This is the beginning of a real robot revolution: giving robots some humanity.

"Robots in the human environment, to me that's the final frontier," said Cynthia Breazeal, robotic life group director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The human environment is as complex as it gets; it pushes the envelope."

"Robots have to understand people as people," Breazeal said. "Right now, the average robot understands people like a chair: It's something to go around."

The places we will first see these robots that can connect with humans in a more "thoughtful" way are in the most human-oriented fields - those that require special care in dealing with the elderly, young and disabled.

As a machine, George is not a breakthrough. He's an off-the-shelf robot reprogrammed at the Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence, which Schultz directs.

When they play hide and seek, George doesn't hide very well, and it takes him longer to find Schultz than vice versa, but it's the fact that he does either that makes him special.

"We have only scratched the surface," said Sebastian Thrun, the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab director who won the Defence Department's Grand Challenge for a self-driving robot car through the desert last year. He predicted that 10 years from now robots will roam the health care system and that in our homes, multi-armed robots will be doing the cleaning. "There will be a lot of personalized devices," he says.

That's a big switch. The latest commercial home robots - the vacuuming iRobot Roomba, and its floor-cleaning cousins - are designed to work best when people leave the room. But the promise of robots for scientists is represented by Rosie, the vacuuming robot of "The Jetsons" cartoon series.

"If Rosie is going to be around and in your face, it would be good if the interaction is natural and easy," says Rod Brooks, director of MIT's artificial intelligence lab.

So after spending decades tinkering with wiring, some roboticists started studying humans, and the new field of human-robot interaction was born. Unlike the rest of robotics, many of its leaders are women. It has social scientists, language specialists, medical doctors and even ethicists who wonder if putting robots into places like nursing homes is the right thing to do.

That's a big change from 50 years ago, when the field of artificial intelligence was created at a forum at Dartmouth University. The experts focused on puzzles and chess and skipped over concepts such as perception, a sense of where you are, what's around you and how to interact.

"They all thought perception was easy - a two-year-old could do that - but smart people play chess," said Brooks, co-founder of iRobot Corp. "They all missed it and Hollywood missed it. The stuff a two-year-old could do, that's the hard stuff."

One preschooler-type skill, the ability to take someone else's perspective, "turned out to be a very important capability that we needed on our robots so that they could really work comfortably with humans," said Schultz.

Thus, Schultz hopes in the next year or so to have a robot that could, like an old-time movie detective working a case, tail a person walking through the naval research lab campus unseen.

Similarly, researchers are working on teaching language-reasoning - not just dumping a dictionary in the robot's database - gestures and eye contact so robots can understand the many ways people communicate. At NASA, astronauts are working with Schultz and a spacewalking-prototype called Robonaut to make machines understand when an astronaut points to something and says "there."

We as humans understand that, but getting robots to put those clues together is proving to be a big leap, he said. And then there are subtle clues that humans pick up without even knowing it, such as nods and eye contact.

Research scientist Candy Sidner at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab in Cambridge, Mass., found that people respond better to more animated robots - those that nod, move and point. So she developed Mel, a pointing, nodding penguin robot. You nod at Mel, Mel nods back.

"It's absolutely very compelling. People tell me, 'I like Mel because he's really kind of cute,' " Sidner said.

How should a robot look? There's debate on that. On one extreme are the stroke-therapy robots of MIT scientists Neville Hogan and Hermano Igo Krebs. Those look like exercise machines with video game screens. They guide the arms and legs of paralyzed stroke patients through physical therapy, and the patients don't even realize they are robots.

On the other end of the spectrum are David Hanson of Dallas and Osaka University's professor Hiroshi Ishiguro whose robots look creepily human. Ishiguro's robot Geminoid looks just like Ishiguro.

Such uncanny resemblances have led roboticists to coin the term "uncanny valley" syndrome. It suggests that people respond better to robots the closer they resemble humans - up to a point. If the resemblance is too good, people "are weirded out," Sidner said. At that point, acceptance plummets. That's why Sidner prefers her penguin robot.

Sherry Turkle at MIT worries about robots that seem too human.

"We're cheap dates," she says. "If an entity makes eye contact with you, if an entity reaches toward you in friendship, we believe there is somebody there . . . But that doesn't mean that there is. That just means that our Darwinian buttons are being pushed."

Turkle, who directs the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, fears people will be subconsciously tricked into giving robots more credit than they deserve. Her point is that when you are sick, hurt, or elderly, "you really do want a person," not a robot.