Slashdot Mirror
Cortical Cybernetic Implants
Floody writes "Wired is running a story with amazing cyberpunk "wow factor." Implanted visual cortex stimulation, complete with "percutaneous pedestal"; a metal jack installed directly into the skull. Where can I get a night vision enhancement module for this with HUD and distance finder?" We've posted a couple of previous stories about Dobelle and his work on bionic eyes, but this one has more details: one frame per second, $100,000. Wow.
The article states that the device was set at 1 frame per second initially. The first part of page 4 states then they would "...gradually work the frame speed up...".
The first version of this device installed in Jerry 20 years ago could acheive at least 4 FPS, so this version should be faster.
yeah actually it says 10.9, which is Wired issue 9, volume 10 I believe - making it current (besides which it says september 2002 right next to it).
Not to complain too much, but check the date on Dobelle's website:
"All eight (8) patients had an uncomplicated hospital course after implantation in April, 2002. There have been no infections."
Seemed to say instead that they started out the alpha patient at 1 fps (a la the topic description), and increased it as he could handle (thus allowing him to drive the car.)
This is without a doubt of the more impressive HCI developments I have seen in the last decade, and steady progress is being made.
I note that progress is also beging made in the reverse process (generating an image by monitoring neurons firing in the visual cortex). Check out this paper:-
Visual Decoding
Which details images generated directly from a cats brain.
One point to keep in mind is that sadly this technology can only help people whom had sight at birth, but lost it after early childhood. If the patient has been blind from birth, the parts of their brain that would be normally used for vision have not developed and have been "reassigned" to other sensory tasks. (Which is why blind people tend on average to have more actue senses of hearing, smell, touch and taste - there are more neurons available to process them!) If this device was deployed on such a person, it is doubful that they could make much sense of what they could "see".
The thing about the sorts of x-ray photos we've all seen before, like the type a doctor would use, is that to get such a photo requires more than just a device that can "see" x-rays on film. It also requires a device that *emits* them ot be seen, since, as the other poster pointed out, there isn't a whole lot of x-ray "light" down here on Earth occuring naturally. Thankfully.
Just like trying to use normal vision on somewhere like, say, Pluto, where you would need a flashlight to see anything, here on Earth you would need an x-ray "flashlight" to see anything with your x-ray vision. And I doubt you'd be allowed to just walk around dosing random strangers with it.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Isn't this in their fiction section?
peace,
core
"There is no Death. Only a change of worlds."
After one day of calibration and one day of the patient being plugged in so his brain learns to interpret the signals, patient alpha got into a car and drove it around the parking lot. Sure it started at 1 FPS when they turned him on, but it is clearly operating at a much higher level than that, and all with only one eye calibrated.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.