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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...
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So this means I can surf with NO hands on the keyboard? Think of the possibilities.
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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
Will this make the headaches better or worse?
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
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.
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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.
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!?
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If he is really a "terminal man", we can just telnet to him if something goes wrong.
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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....
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.
Everyone separated by distance from the subject of their work is disabled, if by meters, miles, or a few inches of glass. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the needs of the conventionally disabled are driving augmentation for all of us. The resulting increased capacities might make all of us, prebionics, look roughly equally disabled.
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.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...
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
Are you thinking perhaps, of http://www.ibva.com/?
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?
Well, for any other organ, yes.
For the brain?
Sadly, although humans usually die of some other critical organ (ie, heart) failing, our brains still steadily deteriorate as we age.
By about age 150, we'd all have the mental capacity of broccoli. Now, you might think, "sure, 150 beats beats 80", but consider the bigger problem - Immortal 150+ year old broccoli-controlled mech suits running around your local farmers' market. Do we really want that, for a gain of a few extra years?
I think not.
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
we can just telnet to him if something goes wrong.
root@terminalman# killall -s SIGKILL braind
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
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!
Start practicing today.
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play Pong with 70% accuracy.
Call me when he can play Doom with 99% accuracy and I will volunteer!
bash$
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.
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http://www.atarihq.com/museum/2678/mindlink.html
When can the rest of us adjust the trodes and jack in?
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 =)
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
As a tech support specialist, it's kinda nice to see somebody actually using their brain to operate a computer.
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