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Brain Controlled Computing a Reality
pchernyakov writes "Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems told attendees at the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation annual conference that a 25-year-old quadriplegic with wires run from 100 tiny sensors implanted in his brain and out to a computer can use his thoughts to control a computer well enough to operate a TV, open e-mail and play Pong with 70% accuracy."
*blink* *blink*
Sounds like it's time to break out the tinfoil hat...
Still need to cut back on the wires and get the pong paddle moving a little faster. This isn't really anything new.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
So this means I can surf with NO hands on the keyboard? Think of the possibilities.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
Now connect it to a robot, and have a virtual human.
and play Pong with 70% accuracy
Damn, I can't even play Pong with 70% accuracy.
Can this be much farther behind?
-R
How well does he do with Halo? I don't need any more competition.
... to be permanently hard-wired to my computer.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
Will this make the headaches better or worse?
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
The line starts here!
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
It would be the first post if you'd had a direct connection. None of this wimpy keyboard crap, I'm getting one of those!
or rather, quadraplegic, yeah
Are far beyond helping the disabled. ;) ] jet fighter pilots.
Think driving, mouse pointing, surgery. And to top it off, computer games and [almost the same...
wiring it up to an electric wheelchair?
Wireless, perhaps?
Robotic arm on said wheelchair?
Seems they aren't plumbing the feasible current possibilities yet, and i'm not even talking about artificial legs and arms. Yet.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Michael Crichton's "The Terminal Man"
:P
Eventually this guy will go nuts and start commanding things to kill people
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Back in '98 I remember reading an article about one of the guys working on these research teams and made a headband that enabled him to type ~30 words/min. What happened to that device?
Now all they need to do is figure out how to keep the brain alive after the body is ready to die and we can be essentially immortal! It's got to be way easier to extend the life span of just one organ when you don't have to worry about keeping the rest of your body alive, right?
I hope that isn't the "slippery slope" they're talking about not going down.
Hey I've got some miniature drill bits to get those extra 100 holes in your head! Got some novacaine around somewhere.
How fun would it be to deal with a virus, a worm or excessive spam...in your brain.
open e-mail
His first email? INCREASE THE SIZE OF YOUR PENIS! PLEASURE WOMEN!
sigh. kinda makes you wish that email had never even come around...
(Jordan, if you see this...GET BACK TO WORK! =]
I'm more interested in using brain-implanted computers to shift the communication paradigm - imagine being able to instantly and wirelessly communicate with anyone, the increased bandwidth and throughput from regular spoken or written word would be phenomenal.
Heck, I have full use of all my limbs and I can't play Pong with 70% accuracy. Maybe I should get these implants.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
Is it just me or is it a coincidence that this was in Warwick, also the last name of Captian Cyborg. :(
Read The Register for more info on Capt. Cyborg. I guess they can't make so much fun of him anymore
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
One possible reason why such advances seem to take longer than for the pacific tectonic plate to move a mile is the hemlock cup with its swill of politics, corporate greed, litigation and religion. Between them, they throw up enough obstacles in the path of medical advancement - sometimes justifiable on ethical grounds - but mostly to advance to their own selfish power plays.
Makes one wonder though what the side-effects would be though - would the procedure be safe for someone like Stephen Hawkins? Would the hundreds of electrodes somehow kill something off making time travel impossible? (oh! wait - he already reneged on that ....). But seriously, some study into the invasiveness quotient of this would surely be welcome.
As a parting thought - is any one else surprised that Pong made it to the top 3 list of things to do?! whatever happened to pr0n!?
Obligatory sign-off - its futile - you will be assimilated.
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
Both our senses and our volition emerge from our thalamus. We should be going to the source, and eventually make a cyberthalamus that hosts sentience in an engineered machine.
-I am an elective eunuch.
It is interesting, however because even though your reference was most likely meant to be humerous. I would submit that something like this would be somewhat akin to the birth of flight or even similar in many ways to SpaceShipOne in the pioneering first steps toward commercial spaceflight.
Quite possibly even an eventual route to the elusive "fountain of youth" once machines can be manufactured to mimic human bodies. Because if you think of it- a human body is nothing more than a fantasticaly complex machine.
....move along....nothing to see here....
Just let me know when they can do this without cracking my head open.
I smell superman 3 in all this...
Playing pong at 70% accuracy, I can't think to imagine if we hook this technology and make him play CS what the end result would be.
Either a nonstop madness of headshots or a teamkilling madness by grenading his teammates cause he's getting "bs" from the team.
.
sign me up!
Hope they update punkbuster.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
The quote really sounds impressive the way they wrote it, but it seems like the patient is using only three degrees of freedom in their control.
Use the mind to make the paddle go up . . . use the mind to make the paddle go down . . .
Use the mind to make the channel go up . . . Use the mind to make the channel go down. Use the mind to switch to volume and repeat . . .
Use the mind to select next email . . . Use the mind to open the email . . . Use the mind to close the email.
I count three degrees of freedom . . . This is no different than the guy that was wired up to use his mind to scroll through and select letters to write emails. It sounds good when one says he can play pong, check email and and control a TV, but the truth is that I think that using the mind to control with three degrees of freedom has been done before. This just sounds better because they framed the control in terms of some common tasks.
so I can play pong against him online?
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
But will the pilot have to think in Russian? Firefox.
Let the great Pong stadiums be built for the amusment of the masses!
The great catastrophe of the neural interface: Spyware will be uploaded to our minds, eventually enslaving the entire developed world to a teenager in South Korea.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
Stick the damn chip in my head already!
What the fuck have I been using to accomplish tapping on these damn keys?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
The joke is in reference to the expanded pilot episode of the original Star Trek. Turn in your membership card, former nerd #774728.
.viv movies is a nuisance.
There are always some wrinkles to be worked out of the first generation of any new technology.
Getting the latest generation of graphics card and finding that it somehow interferes with playback of my old
Getting the latest generation of cyberware and finding that it causes epileptic seizures in combination with the interference with my cordless phone? Rather more than a nuisance.
All things considered, I'll let the parapelegics handle the alpha testing for all this stuff, thank you very much.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
this is what makes the brain so powerful. it builds itself as needs be. The neurons that form pathways to move yrou hands, can just as easily learn to manage other body parts. I remember my sister who is a research scientist showing pictures of nuerons before and after trials. where they would paralyze a rat in a certain area then the rat woudl learn to walk with it's limited capacity. then looking on the nueeron pathways that formed in responce to learning the new task was incredible.
can use his thoughts to control a computer well enough to operate a TV, open e-mail and play Pong with 70% accuracy
I can do the first two easily enough, but he's got me beat on the 70% Pong rate...
A beowolf cluster of human brains.
That means yourin the top 30% of people who have played him.
And I thought it was only a movie. This is too scary to be true.
I can't even image what kind of "thoughts" you'd have to think to get a mouse pointer to move. How do you learn to send the right signals?
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
Remember to mount a scratch monkey.
When will it be 802.11G capable? Once that comes out count me in!
My sig beat up your sig.
now I can drink coffee, get my work done, and masturbate while browsing for porn
ahhhhh, watching the karma burn
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
but your g/f will have more of them :-P
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Boy, I thought Slashdot was getting bad with dupes, but they had this one back in the 80s!
2 60 0/mindlink.html
http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/
(Yes, this is supposed to be funny)
I agree.
Moo.
I'm actually using this system right now to type this comment. It works really wellOH MY GOD LOOK AT THE HOOTERS ON THAT NEW SECRETARY OH OH DONT SUBMIT
Yea, what's the machine going to sound like in our heads? Ooohhh maybe we can "skin" the sounds. I'd like hal personally.
I've told her on numerous occasions.. "look, I don't care if I end up as just a brain in a jar with thousands of wires coming out of it, I WANT TO LIVE FOREVER!" Besides, with the CCD retinas out now that inject data directly into the optic nerve, it'll be just a matter of time before vision can be completely maintained for the sighted. We could end up in labs, just rows and rows of brains in jars, all wired up and experiencing artificial vision and life experiences presented by some massive computer system. Gee I wonder where I've heard THAT before.
Come on! Who's with me!?!?!
Intelligent Life on Earth
When this technology gets far enough along that it can interpret more than just directional and selectional thoughts, things are going to get damn interesting. When technology can extract words from thoughts, rather than just up, down, yes and no, it could use search technology to retrieve information. It could also put information out into a network.
Have everybody hooked up to something like this and suddenly there's no such thing is individual knowledge. You've got a massive P2P network of thought. De Chardin's noosphere, if you're optimistic. Or the Borg, if you're not.
Quite scary. Telepathy's coming, and we're not going to have to wait for evolution to deliver it to us. Technology's going to short-circuit that process.
I'll bring the pitchforks if someone else can commit to the torches.
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
In fact if you had actually paid attention and thought about the article after reading it, it would be rather obvious that the quote
There are 100,000 neurons in a square millimeter of cortex. There are very precise codes in the neurons. The details matter."
Is referring to the details of neural patterns being picked up, not individual neurons. Just as the quote from the article implies, the devil is in the details.
The big thing about this is that now they are working to take out the fingers and keyboard part, and make it "Brain to Computer."
Honestly, I see a few frightening issues, though. For example, I can walk up to my computer on a dry day, sit down, grab the mouse, and send a static shock through the USB port, effectively freezing the USB capability. Now, what happens if somebody is using this wonderful new technology, and gets a static shock straight to the brain? Or, for even more fun, if there is no isolation circuit in the input system, what happens if the power supply to the computer blows and applies a comfortable DC voltage directly to your brain?
The entire "In" part is what bugs me. "In his skull", "In his brain"... It makes it seem more exciting, but honestly, IMHO it opens up so many more possible problems. Just the fact that you need to get brain surgery to just START to use this thing is enough as it is. If it were non-invasive, I'd be a lot more impressed.
@Whee
I worry about the opposite of this situation... People wired to control their computers that cease to use their muscles for anything else. You think couch potatoes are bad? Just imagine someone hard wired to the Net 24/7.
We already are at the point where we can give the blind 25 pixel vision. directly through the brain. Just wait until that increases to 1024 x 768, and you can bring in other, erm, sensations as well. Welcome to the new couch potato. They won't go anywhere!
seriously, rather sad irony that a breakthrough like that comes to our attention two days after Christopher Reeves passed away.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I can whack off with 2 hands now!
--
I wonder if any of the researchers know about the NSA (I'm currently reading Body of Secrets). They deal with billions of signals and try to sift out the wheat from the chaff. To me, signals are signals and the gains to be had from an NSA-style mapping of the brain merit further discussion. A listening post in the brain? It might not be too far off.
Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle lucid dreaming.
Exactly! All that information on the Internet reproduces sexually.
ssh into my brain and do an apt-get install women-skills
i can see this technology helping a lot of slashdotters
Using a slightly-modified version of Dasher, the patient would almost be able to use every function of a computer. The article states he can play pong fairly well, so it should not be a big leap to be able to use Dasher for text input. It's great to see this technology advancing this far so fast; just imagine 10 or 20 years in the future utilizing thousands of sensors and vastly more powerful computers.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
Sign me up. I'll be a "test monkey", but not a Scratch Monkey(TM)!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I think you'll agree that this is a less invasive and probably cheaper computer/brain interface. Oh yeah, for you Mac trivia junkies, IBVA's gear started Mac only =) They've branched out over the years though.
play Pong with 70% accuracy.
Call me when he can play Doom with 99% accuracy and I will volunteer!
bash$
While raising the concentration level needed to initiate an action would but a realativly easy fix to the problem, it will then screw up things like multitasking. Meaning I would have to stop what I'm doing, think really hard about some other (and possibly unrelated) thingand then get back to waht I was originally thinking about. Some may be ok with this but I personally can't stand being interupted while thinking.
I think this will be a big obstacle to overcome before brain control technology is ready for the masses; knowing what really is the desired thought/action. And hopefully if they get it right, we won't have a fancier version of Clippy that acts on all the wrong thoughts.
--
Registered .sig quotient : 1337
"Oh, but if you love me, you'll plug-in for a chat" The war is lost, before the battle had begun.
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www.fairtax.org
The article briefly touches on morality as a possible deterrent for this technology. Does anyone here have a problem with the ethics of interfacing directly with a human brain?
Personally, I don't see the ethical dilemma. Even if things progressed to the point of "improving" on the human body, does anyone see this as an ethical no-no? I'd like to hear your reasons.
He was typing along happy as a clam, with 100% accuracy for 21 characters, and then the 30% error rate popped up and out came "rm -Rf /".
Oh well, no more pong.
Convert RSS to HTML - integrate webfeeds into your website
simply don't allow any interfacing that could upload information to your brain. keep the signals going in one direction while allowing a "buffer check" to keep information from overflowing i.e. Your arm can only exert so much pressure as defined by the "control chip" so it doesn't ruin itself. This could be applied to the brain sending info to the computer, just design the software so it reads what's going on, and by the next signal sent, it can determine that any previous signal was actually interpreted by properly.
sound good to you?
http://www.atarihq.com/museum/2678/mindlink.html
can be found here . Also, PBS.org has a similar storie here involving a man with robotic arms.
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
When can the rest of us adjust the trodes and jack in?
They'll just be abe to hook up the villan and read his thoughts.
I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
I know its not going to happen any time soon, but would something like this be, useful in helping people with the same physical problems as Steven Hawking, as well ??
Would be good to see the Mighty MC Hawking busting some moves from a Robotic Exo-Skeleton =)
What does Yuri Geller say about it?
First of all, he could have achieved all of those with only 1-degree of freedom (plus time). Pong is one degree, obviously. Channel up and down is one, then holding up or holding down could be volume, etc etc.... Anyway, "degrees of freedom" is not a measure of the power of the interface with the brain. There are many more parameters. For example, take a single degree of freedom. There is resolution on this degree of freedom (if its speed, how many different speeds can he control). There is the responsiveness (how long does it take for the computer to interpret his thoughts). Accuracy, and probably a lot more of things I can't think of.
As Opposed to letting people use electronics in their brain's for their <b>own personal benefits</b>(Newer), using electronic-brain-devices for a third-party's maniacal ideas/benefits is nothing new Jose Delgado's (<a href="http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/brainimplan ts.htm"> experiments</a> had some weird conceptions/motives/ideas. <a href="http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/brain/stimo ceiver.jpg">Heres The Chip Picture</a>. If you glance at the article you will see that these experiments were conducted in the past quite a while ago <b>(1967)</b>. "Delgado, in a series of experiments terrifying in their human potential, implanted electrodes in the skull of a bull. Waving a red cape, Delgado provoked the animal to charge. Then, with a signal emitted from a tiny hand-held radio transmitter, he made the beast turn aside in mid-lunge and trot docilely away.28 He has [also] been able to "play" monkeys and cats like "little electronic toys" that yawn, hide, fight, play, mate and go to sleep.." If you think about the technological advancements from 1967 compared to 2004. We need to look at the things people are studying, and make sure that we don't end up all being mind-control-subjects
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
References have been made to the ability to surf pr0n with no hands and whatnot, but for any technology to be successful, doesn't the adult industry (or military, i guess) have to figure out a way to make money off of it?
./ ought to collectively reccommend to a select few pr0n magnates that mind-controlled DVDs would be a worthwhile investment, then we'd start to see some real results...
Space travel is nice and all, but DVDs, VCRs, the IntarWeb &c. have mostly been made accessible (and affordable) via the helping hand of prurient e-commerce, right?
Maybe
I think I'll use my first cybermodules to upgrade PSI and PSI pull...
*remote System Shock 2 reference fo rthose unsure*
This is nothing really new. Dr. Phil Kennedy was the first to successfully implant a person at Emory University in 1999. He has done five more implants and two lasted over two years. Go here for more details His company is working on the third generation version. Neural Signals
"Congress is pushing to database every thought made by every human by the year 2008. The 0WNED Act seems all too necessary in light of recent terrorist attacks involving trash-can fires, shoe-destroying gum on sidewalks and the shooting of certain forms of wildlife. 'Terrorists,' said President Bush, 'Saddam Hussein, 9/11 Al-Queda Iran terrorists... Kerry terrorists November. Terrorists, Axis of Evil, economy World Trade Center Judgment Day leadership freedom safety America strategery militaration defendation intellectualizationism!' Congress cheered loudly over Bush's speech omitting the usual fluff between keywords. It's said they'll be holding a feast of a thousand human hearts over this occasion the act is on its way to the constitution."
Well at least typing will be easier.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
According to some basic probability, his games should last 1/.3 or 3.3333 hits on average. I don't see this guy topping any scoreboards...
As a tech support specialist, it's kinda nice to see somebody actually using their brain to operate a computer.
So maybe this, a HUD, and Croquet OS would provide a quadriplegic a very tangible sense of freedom from his/her physical constraints.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I was reading AppleGeeks earlier, this was in one of their blogs. Was thinking I should've submitted it. Oh, well.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
Maybe he's just crap at playing Pong.
... But everyone knows these activities will rot you brain!
ôó
ah but they users do use their brain, thats the problem. Honestly, I work in a computer lab in my school, most of my users run into trouble when they try to figure out how to do something instead of just asking
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
As Opposed to letting people use electronics in their brain's for their own personal benefits(Newer), using electronic-brain-devices for a third-party's maniacal ideas/benefits is nothing new Jose Delgado's ( experiments had some weird conceptions/motives/ideas. Heres The Chip Picture. If you glance at the article you will see that these experiments were conducted in the past quite a while ago (1967). "Delgado, in a series of experiments terrifying in their human potential, implanted electrodes in the skull of a bull. Waving a red cape, Delgado provoked the animal to charge. Then, with a signal emitted from a tiny hand-held radio transmitter, he made the beast turn aside in mid-lunge and trot docilely away.28 He has [also] been able to "play" monkeys and cats like "little electronic toys" that yawn, hide, fight, play, mate and go to sleep.." If you think about the technological advancements from 1967 compared to 2004. We need to look at the things people are studying, and make sure that we don't end up all being manchurian candidates.
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
The brain makes use of both time and frequency domain multiplexing. Also, individual neurons encode information in highly dimensional spaces. So, the may well be far more the 100 degrees of freedom available. It depends on the decoding algorithm. The is particularly true when you record from high level cognitive areas of the brain.
I attended at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil, at wich some researchers developed technology that permitted multi sclerosis patients to choose letters through brain-wave control and form words back in 1994!
Sorry my english, just got home and I'm drunk!
\m/
Over 200 comments and not a single:
"Resistance is Futile, You Will be Assimilated"
remark.
Must be all the presidental debates with brainsucking signal waves coming out of the TVs.
Well back to my game of global thermonuclear war, on the new site I just haccked into.
...my brain crashed.
I mean seriously, what happens if you get a virus or experience some kind of major crash in your brain? This brings true meaning to the phrase, "Blue Screen of Death".
"Remember, you must think in Russian."
- White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts
This message was created without the use of hands.
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Check out Wired August 2001 - there's an article about exactly this kind of thing. They describe an experiment with a parapalegic by the name of Ray, who received an implant in his motor cortex hooked up to a computer mouse. After about a month, his mind had learned to treat it as a new limb...
Jw
I once looked at a place called other90, http://www.other90.com/ I never made up my mind if that was for real, and thought their kit was too expensive to find out. Anyone ever try their kit?
*Crash!*
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Logic, macros, and more
...if a certain president were connected to this thing :)
:)
Blue windows screen of death
I wanna get wired up to IRC so *everyone* can hear the voices in my head..
Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
I echo the welcomes to our new quadraplegic wired overlords, but have to ask the obvious question:
where does this lead the eminent scientist Kevin Warwick, who really is a cyborg (not just an attention seeking media whore) and has contributed *so* *much* to such computer/human interfacing?
Will he have to resign his post as "world's only true cyborg" that he dubbed himself?
Will he now have to get a life?
(For the hard of thinking, I do not think much of Kevin Warwick, and am glad to hear that technology is being used to embiggen* people)
*embiggen is a trademark of Jebediah Springfield
Kind of DeusEx-ish in a way...
*me'sa suspec'ta some'ona see'na to'a mann'a SCIFI-movi'/seri'as =)*
cortex - the tissue forming the outer layer of an organ or structure in plant or animal.
medulla - the inner part of an organ or structure in plant or animal.
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
It's simple - THINK of a program, then implement it.
Yes, but no user will ever need more than 3 degrees of freedom.
..and Roald Dahl wrote a nice little story about it - the title of which escapes me, unfortunately.
;)
A brilliant but control-freak scientist ends up as a supported-brain-in-the-jar (with a single remaining eye floating on top) in the care of his wife...who proceded to aim the eye and force him to watch all the sorts of behaviour he'd abhored whilst mobile
Be careful what you wish for!