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Brain Chip Approved For Paralysis Research
dalillama writes "The BBC is reporting that tests are underway for the clinical trials of the "Brain Gate" computer chip, placed in the brains of paralysis patients. They hope the chips will map out nerve impulses which are sent to limbs, so that they can then be translated into computer code and sent to future artificial limbs. " Thanks to Robert Brooks for pointing out this closely related piece.
Why cant they just connect the brain to the legs and get the guy moving?
Im thinking in the case where a person JUST lost movement on the legs due to an accident, etc...
Who is this Karma guy and why is he bad ??
"Honey, can you please reboot my dick? I accidently just did the cat. Thanks"
Table-ized A.I.
I wonder if one of them is the reason I got a kernel error the other day while compiling Mozilla with -pipe.
...when High Times picks it up!
Combine this with the robotic exoskelton legs that MIT(?) just revealed, and we'll have Stephen Hawking in the marathon in no time (a la Onion)
I'd mouth off to John Ashcroft. That's how Bush got his.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
From the article: "The signals will be monitored through wires emerging from the skull, which presents some danger of infection. The company is working on a wireless version"
If they can work out a way to hook it into an 802.11g home network, i'd get one fitted, paralysis or not!
Imagine being able to control devices in the home as easily as controlling a limb. Of course controlling those same devices when drunk would be another matter entirely...
...the porn / spam industry get's a hold of these?
I can't wait until I start receiving the "enhance your member through the powers of bionics!" spam...
This sounds like a very cool development, but why not try to have the chip send impulses to a real limb rather than an artificial one. My (admittedly limited) understanding of the brain is that it sends an electric impulse to the muscles so why not try to emulate that impulse?
Didn't Scorpius implant a brain chip into Kryton?
It seems it would be so much easier to take a biological approach and let nerves reattach themselves. This type research may be useful in potential mind-machine interfaces.
It's about time we started working on things like this. I'm ready for my bionic eyeballs any time now, guys.
I wonder if they are going to have some kind of "reboot" feature in case the hardware starts failing or the software goes haywire. (Insert standard Windows BSOD joke here.) Seriously, though, I'd hate to see somebody's limbs just start moving erratically and without any control. That would be a nightmare.
I don't know how they would actually implement such a feature, but it just seems kinda dangerous to me without it.
That's all I'd need ... a chip running Micro$soft .. BSOD could take on some other serious meaing!
Mc Hawking found prior art.
When Cyberkinetics was a lab at Brown University, I design an amplifier array for the wireless implant mentioned in the article. The medical possibilities for the research are really pretty interesting, especially once the next generation probe is done. The trouble is that the medical possibilities are icing, and the cake is a control system for the exoskeleton of the soldier of the future... that's right, another fine DARPA technology.
- - - Patent applied for and deliver us from evil
OK, so you start with artificial limbs, move on to military projects with vision, audio, vehicle control, then in 30 years it hits the commercial market.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
We have the technology. We can rebuild him, make him faster, stronger, better...
Whooo chechechechechecheche...
-- the only good thing the French ever did was two chicks at one time
Taking the biological route is humiliating. Where is the innovation?
Surely we must outdo nature by our technology. Otherwise we can never fully escape the nature's trap of evolution by mortaility.
How long before I can use my laptop to hack into my friend's motor control and make him dance?
~~Guildencrantz
Penguin Trivia #46: Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were. -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
who immediately thinks of a remotely controlled girlfriend with force-feedback? :)
Universal Soldier.... nuf said
Evolution or ID?
Ray Kurzweil wrote an interesting book about the progression of technology over the next 100 years. Based on his law of accelerating returns, he predicts various events for the next few decades until the Singularity.
The book was published in 2000, and already he'd made quite a few accurate predictions, and many since then have been accurate as well.
no comment
fwiw, the same story appears to have showed up before the times, etc. in a march issue of forbes.
/ 18 6.html
http://www.forbes.com/business/forbes/2004/0315
If it wasn't, you could give a whole new emphasis to the computer term "zombie". :)
Cogito ergo sum in Slashdot.
Instead of trying to map out the exact instructions which may change from person to person coudln't you just have an interface that learns the commands of the user via positive feed back?
Hello Cruel World
I'm no expert, and it doesn't mention walking in the article, but I wonder if one will be able to walk using a system like this since the impulses from the nerve endings in the legs will never be sent back into the brain. It's kinda like trying to walk without being able to feel your legs. I doubt I could do it.
That will be the first thing out of any non-computer-literate folk when they hear about anything computer-micro-chip-gadget these days.
Imagine this conversation:
"Hey, let's go for a walk?"
"Love to honey, but my knee is too busy playing solitare."
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
While this is interesting and innovative technology, when is it too much? How much further will this go? Not to sound like a tinfoil fashion junkie, but what if this kind of stuff gets put into the wrong hands? Honestly. With companies like Cisco, APC, and others putting hardcoded backdoors into their products, what if someone decided the same was neccessary on a wireless version of this device? Don't get me wrong, new technology is amazing. But IMHO it is something to be feared and respected. Maybe somethings are best never invented. Pacemakers are awesome, but a chip to control muscle functions in the brains of paralysis patients seems a bit frightening. Especially if a wireless version is to emerge. No, it wouldn't be un-wep'ed 802.11b, but nonetheless this, to me is an alert. I don't know anyone personally who is paralyzed, so maybe I don't take this as seriously as others, but I can't see myself having a foreign object implanted into my brain any time soon. Of course extensive testing will be done to ensure that the product is usable for deployed to patients but can you imagine a failure of this? What if it (the chip) becomes uncontrollable for any number of reasons?
while true ; do echo this is my sig; done
My question is: What is the bandwidth of the human brain. If we put it into terms of both latency (time before signal hits destination and a result is returned) and pipe size (how much data can we push through at a given time).
Does our bring have a "ping." That is to say, if we had a leg where the nerve receptors has died, but the muscle nerves work (leprosy?), can you tell if it is moving when we want it to, or is the only return signal from the nerves that sense touch?
It would be interesting to see if a wireless connection could handle brain bandwidth. I'd imagine that for the simple operatings such as moving an object etc low bandwidth is required. For a fully pluggable experience (how about integrating touch, hearing, and the optic nerve to pilot a mini-plane) I'd imagine that quite a lot of bandwidth is needed, as well as fairly low latency.
But then again, I was recently at the doctor's doing exercises when I noticed that if I tried to do leg pumps too fast, my leg would be trying to "pull" when at times it should be doing a "push" and so I either get a short stroke or a shutter. Is this the same as a data collision or just lack of reaction speed due to the muscle not being well enough toned (the muscle is degenerated due to being immobilized from a break, but muscle tone is probably already average compared to most people).
mapping the brain could be interesting. especially on boundary conditions like in programming. what happens when the brain dies, what are the last signals it sends out?
Dude, I just pinged your head. Your brain is lagging big time.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Very fitting is 0wnz0red by Cory Doctorow, the Nebula award l0ser from two stories ago.
My user number is prime. Is yours?
Aputees and other similar cases. If you fall into one of the following:
a) Irreperably severed muscle
b) Severely degenerated muscle (may be retoned, but for long-term degeneration it could be a long haul)
c) Missing limbs
If the muscle is broken, or the limb missing, then you haven't got anything to work with. Making the signal work with electronics is a large portion of the battle (in terms of mapping how human nerve impulses work) and being artificial limbs or electronic assistance equipment (think motorized leg braces) it can cover more people.
Bionic limbs? Stronger?
$6M man meets Superman?
no shit. it's just one liners left and right.
moderators should just give up and move on to the stuff that isn't on the frontpage.
Seizures, particularly epileptic. Involuntary muscle movement etc are part of that as well.
Tourettes tics are usually smaller in scale (unless supressed in which case they can "explode" out)... not sure if the causes are very different or not from epileptic seizures in term of stay nervous impulses.
I'm curious about the feedback potential, somewhere down the line. If we can map out which impulses to use to cause an artificial limb to move, it may be dangerous to the patient without some feedback, or "feeling", from that limb. How much different would that be than simply reversing the technology of moving the limb in the first place?
... Slashdotters stop working the threat of more spam into every posted topic?
Not long, I hope
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
This method can get data out of the brain. But, strictly speaking, we've been able to do that for ages (not quite so directly or in a way that you can carry around easily, but still)... It will get a lot more interesting - and potentially dangerous - when we have something that can send info back into the brain, in the form of, say, images added directly to what the eye can see within the brain.
--- Bwah?
"Gentlemen, we can rebuild him, we have the technology. We have the capability to make the worlds first Bionic Man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better. Stronger. Faster."
Had to be said...
they don't exactly know what part of the brain controls all the stages of motor movement... deciding to move, planning to move, executing the movement, and coordinating the movement (the decision area in particular isn't known for certain)
Also, it depends on what kind of movement you are doing... and is the movement a voluntary one, a planned movement, or is it being done in response to a stimulus?
I'd be interested to know exactly where they're mapping out these movements... motor planning is usually done in the frontal cortex, near the precentral gyrus. The motor cortex actually moves the muscles, though coordination is thought to require cerebellar input.
For as complex a process as movement actually is, this article is a little thin on details. Still... interesting research.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Just think of all the things that this tech means for the human race. Maybe that hydralic assited suit isn't so off for me....heh
-Pizentios
Imagine if you could communicate via a wireless connection. This could litterly let you do that.
/target:brain1
If these chips will let people walk again why not communicate with others with a similar chip via a low power network? Instant telepathy, just add water.
This reminds of the premise of Ghost in the Shell. Whats next, Ghost hacking?
fdisk
format brain1:\
copy c:\hackpattern.gz brain1:\
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Stephen Hawking Builds Robotic Exoskeleton.
Even better... How long before I can download dance routines and actually know how to dance? ;)
with Crichton's terminal man (ok book, good idea) and the ratbot (http://www.nature.com/nsu/020429/020429-9.html) that we have all read about, and monkeys controling computers with thier minds (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1871803 .stm), who will win? good or evil? i can think of great uses for both good and evil, but i think evil is better funded.
things like the power-loaders from aliens sure could help in both the commercial and military sector, but what is the likelyhood of an exosleleton or walkers helping the disabled before the military uses such things for advanced target acquisition (a non direct brain input -ie following eye movements- is already used by the gunners in apache helicopters, you look, it shoots where you look) and super ninja exoskeletons from my favorite animations. hell, anybody remember exosquad? mechwarrior?
i guess it would even out, the technology would be used to create disabled people, and then could be used to help them walk again -albeit with servos and hydraulics.
|plastic....or gasoline?|
Let's see if we can get an example for ya. Imagine you had a computer and a working printer, connected by a cable. It's one of these closed source jobs, where you don't know the communications protocol, just that it works. Now, have an accident, and chop the cable in half. Looking at the ends, you find that the designer went the easy route and none of the cables are colored (more efficient when you dont need that production stage, after all).
Now, imagine you have 5,000 "wires" running in parallel, and you're getting close to the spinal cord bundles estimate of the minimum associated with useful locomotion. Except these aren't wires, they're more like optical connections, where once severed the "ends" begin to "scar" making future reconnection more difficult.
I want to see wireless communication. Imagine, implanting a chip that allows you to communicate with others over a wireless grid. ESP made to order. I would think that the government would have already been looking at this for combat situations, but then with wireless security in the state that it is currently in I'd hate to have somebody try to use my brain as a net access point.
Does it go "RIIIP!" and a chunk of your skin is torn off the side of your head? ;)
Now we need to perfect the genetic technology so that Spider Man can fight him off when he shows up and starts trashing New York.
I may be wrong, but, this seems to me that this type of research would be akin to the steam engine on a train compared to an ion engine on a space probe; with all the advances in humanoid robotics and now approved human research. I'd be willing to say that there are some silent people in the background looking for a possible escape from death by finding an artificial fontain of youth.
Once they map out the throughput requirements, signaling, sequencing, and hardware (robotic body) what is to stop them from just taking a human brain from a failing (old, or diseased) body and placing it into a robot (much like robo-cop)?
What would be the implications of such a move? Would the resulting 'person' still be considered human? i.e. the only organics left would be the brain.
....move along....nothing to see here....
"Does our bring have a "ping."
Well, apparently my brain has rather high latency right now... mainly due to lack of proper fuel (coffee)...
Apparently though, even in malfunctioning my brain is rather poetic.
This is very cool in a sense. I'd love to play around poking things in my brain to see what happens, but what if you break something. Your brain is not a hard drive which you can just reformat and start fresh. You are a sum of your life experiences and that makes you unique. Even the tiny characteristics in your brain makes you unique.
If you get brain damage, the fact is, you are not the same person you were before. Think about frontal lobotomies. You may not know the difference and chances are no one else might notice, but the person you are now will cease to exist if you get braindamage.
Braindamage scares the bejezus out of me, but I'm not about to wear a helmet 24/7. Point is, If they stick something in your brain, there must be SOME damage, if not minimal. This will change who you are. I know my aunt had brain surgery to remove a tumer and she acts VERY differently now.
If you are going to get an implant for no reason at all, consider the risk. For people in which it can mean a better life, great idea.
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right. --Isaac Asimov
BINE DER MEISTER
I've been working in the field of artifical limbs and braces for a few years and I must say that the past few years have been quite exciting. In the past we emphasized on muscular motion to help move limbs as well as biomechanics and physics to create harnesses to battle gravity. As time progressed, science blessed us with better surgeries, adhesives and materials. I know I probably saw my last wooden leg three years ago and that thought makes me happy. With the recent successes of artifical muscles, nerves and exoskeletons, the field will be changing again as it did after WWII and the plastics revolution.
On a side note, I'd love to see the mapping of patients with phantom limb pain. I'm curious as to see if the signals would be the same to a patient with a similar amputation but no phantom symptons.
"They hope the chips will map out nerve impulses which are sent to limbs, so that they can then be translated into computer code and sent to future artificial limbs."
I doubt anyone whose had one of these chips implanted will want to get artificial limbs after an accident then. Just imagine how boring it will be when your body starts to redo your entire life and all you can do is watch. Damn, people will be pissed!
"So unmerciful is life, that everything afterwards is too late."
You don't "cease" to exist from any sort of brain damage. Do you disappear from a night of drinking? Nerve cells die naturally--do you cease to exist when you get old? But there is a risk. I view the paralyzed as test subjects--if this really does work, I would jump at the chance (as a non-paralyzed person) to do it.
-I am an elective eunuch.
I feel like the one handicapped now, until these things get perfected in the paralyzed and then brought out to everyone. What could be more important than controlling the signals to and from your consciousness?
There's a region called the thalamus in the brain that appears to be where your actual consciousness lies. In the farther future, we'll input/output directly to this area. Then we'll see how to emulate it, and complete break from what we were before. This would be a critical event in the singularity--where we have trouble even grasping what happens after that.
One thing's for sure--we won't be worrying about something like FDA approval at that point.
-I am an elective eunuch.
But I don't want to spend a lot of money...
I'm highly uninformed on the possibilities of such a thing, but are there "parts" of my brain which can still produce "move tail now" signals? :-)
As cool as this is I'm also very much interested in the implications to controlling virtual reality. This could turn into a datajack straight out of shadowrun or snowcrash. /me Lies in bed playing Quake 7.
Just the slightest movement or external stimulus will "snap" my perception of limb position back into place.
So, in my case at least, this proprioception seems to be related to the sense of touch.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Evidence is beginning to indicate that the central nervous system is not hard-wired. In other words, signals take different (a varity of) routes depending on other things going on in/with the body.
Wouldn't this be a contra-indication for computers, chips, and paralysis?