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Brain-Implanted Chips Allow Control of Technology
Nilchii writes "The Guardian has an article about implanting electrodes in the brain, allowing paralyzed people to control various software-integrated devices, such as the cursor on a computer and the channel and volume of his television. From the article: 'The experiment took place a few months ago as part of a broader trial into what are known in the business as brain-computer interfaces. Although it is early days, aficionados of the technology see a world where brain implants return ability to those with disability, allowing them to control all manner of devices by thought alone.'" The BBC has coverage of this as well, and we've mentioned this research before.
This may sound like a joke, but I'm concerned about the time when the chip is used to control you.
Johnny Mnemonic!
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Two words: Lawnmower Man
It's all well and good until the Blue Screen and you can't move your arms
Business Voyeur
They have them now, the transmitter is located in most people's living room...
crazy dynamite monkey
Why not make it capable of controlling robotic limbs, etc...things that are more useful than the volume of your tv?
Gibble: Descriptive of an emotional state in which one's mind is scrabbling for some purchase on reality
Why not use it when you're not paralyzed? I think it is _very_ handy for turning the coffee machine on when you're in bed.. :-D
I have a dream...
or will this turn on about anything at the press of a finger? seems scary
Tha-tha-tha-tha-that's all folks!
When I first read the headline I thought to myself "Man, this DRM crap is really getting out of hand..."
Choose yer poison: Prophets or Profits
people that don't need this will get it and we'll all get a whole lot lazier... reading slahdot without lifting a finger? sounds good to me!
ART on dA
Controlling the brain is actually pretty difficult. From experiment they have done, they found the human brain does not take well to control. Frequently, tests subjects would have seizures under such conditions. Even just recording a subject's brain waves and playing them back would induce serious seizures.
Sorry I don't have any links on this, I saw it on Discovery channel a few years ago.
Now you'll be able to get hacked and become part of some script kiddies zombie network yelling spam at everyone you walk past.
Cyborgs and, ultimetly, robots are the future of humanity.
Sure, these "features" (brain controlled computing) will initially be for the disabled, but how long before it becomes acceptable in the general populace to get these modifactions? People will begin seeing them as everyday occurances, and then we will know we've reached the next level.
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The thalamus relays all our sensory information (except for smell). It is also involved in mediating interactions between different areas of the cortex. If we can get input/output devices into the thalamus, you might well have The Matrix.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
Probably a long long time...
For example, my brain controls my left index finger with astonishing precision, but how long will it be for my finger to start controlling my thoughts?
(valid response: As soon as you put it in a garbage disposal)
I believe that this could be a great thing, but do we need implants? Why can't we refine brain wave scanning? In the future, how will we power these systems? I don't want people to open my skull every two years to change my battery! A nural net or something that rests on the scalp would be a less invasive and possibly better solution. Some who knows more about this than me please comment.
In Soviet Russia, technology controls you!
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
is that they require a surgical procedure which makes it risky at the moment and hard to reverse. While it's good for disabled patients (until we can biologically fix neural damage) it's still not the magic neural link that some geeks want it to be. The more interesting research with alternative interfaces comes from tech like subvocalization and other virtual input that NASA is working on. This includes movement recognition where sensors on the surface of the skin (no surgery required) can pick up subtle gestures that would be invsible to others. That would allow you to work your wearable computer without anyone noticing since all of your motions would be subtle.
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Wired article as proof
Naw. I couldn't bother to read the article either.
Welcome to slashdot. You'll fit in nicely.
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Didn't you know? The government has been controlling people via ray-guns since at least the fifties! How else do you think they kept Roswell hidden?
*puts on tinfoil hat*
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
Your finger already controls your thoughts. Just touching the tip of it starts off a flurry of activity in your parietal lobes.
In fact, controlling robotic limbs will be much easier once the communication goes both ways. Most of what you think your brain "knows" about your body was learned entirely from peripheral nervous system feedback.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
These first chips are just "neural output" devices. They're very exciting - we've crossed the watershed to real bionics. But they're "write only" devices, like printers. Which is at odds with actual neural function, which includes feedback at every turn. Neural input feedback will make these devices more accurate and useable (by anyone). And the numb appendages we use while working on that next breakthru will probably make us more neurotic. Here's to escalating the modern condition!
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I'm not handicapped in any way but I want the procedure done immediately!
Its already here:5 01_020501_roborats.html
Remote Controlled Cockroaches
http://www.wireheading.com/roboroach/
Remote Controlled Rats
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/05/0
...and I haven't experienced any adverse effects.
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GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
Am I the only one that is seriously waiting for the socket in the back of my head so I can learn all sorts of things without any effort? I don't think I'd want the control chips implanted... imagine yourself watching TV, all settled in, and just as the shower scene starts, you blink and suddenly you're watching the iron chef? or your garage door starts opening and closing repeatedly? Got only knows what evil would happen if you got a 'head cold'... sneezing is bad enough, but when you sneeze and the dishwasher starts a rinse cycle, that's just out of hand. ?
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I don't think that qualifies as "control". It is communication to be sure, but the brain still decides what to do about it. From a post further up this thread, it sounds like sending complex impulses to the brain (from an outside source) can cause seizures.
I can see that we may be able to artificially send brain like signals to limbs/robotic devices and that could be very useful. Also, I can imagine that finding ways to use "real" signals from the brain to control things could be even more useful. But neither of those circumstances imply control over the brain itself as I believe several parents in this thread are implying.
It is kind of like saying that now that we know how to lead a horse to water, we will soon have them drinking as much as we want.
"Contrarily the lookaside buffer might not be the panacea... "
Step 1) Put chips in handicapped people
"It's okay, they're handicapped. It's all we can do for them."
Step 2) Put chips in normal people to monitor health hazards
"It's important that we know if granny is in trouble."
Step 3) Diseases and illnesses like SARS can be stopped in their tracks with these chips
"We have to use these chips to protect ourselves. Everyone else is doing it and they are fine."
Step 4) We can now use these to detect terrorists by watching for dangerous thought formations.
"It's the only way we can stop them. It must be done."
Step 5) The line between terrorist and criminal is blurred and it's used to stop criminals.
"We might as well do it with criminals since we are already doing it with terrorists."
Step 6) These thought-forms can be prevented entirely.
"If terrorist and criminal thoughts are stopped from the git-go, it will be a utopia. The end of crime forever!"
Step 7) All unwanted thoughts are filtered out
"You have to pay a price for freedom. I am okay with slavery. We need it to be safe. What would you like me to do today?"
See a problem here?!?
The article does a great job surveying some of the major players in the field. I think all of the cited researchers have received grants from the NIH Neural Prosthesis Program.
As mentioned in the article, BCI research is proceeding along invasive, intra-cortical lines as well as more data-processing intensive EEG-based approaches. The latter methods affix EEG leads on the scalp, record brain waves, and employ powerful computer methods to decipher the results. Noise is a problem, so researchers have embraced the more invasive approach of implanting chips directly into the brain. That's what Cyberkinetics and Neural Signals are doing.
The Lab of Brain-Computer Interfaces, Technical University of Graz, has an active group researching BCI, both through EEG and implanted electrodes. I'm surprised they don't get more press. There's also interesting work going on at Anderson's Caltech lab using the posterior parietal cortex, which might have some advantages. Check out the nice slide show on their research.
Great idea, at least until the people receiving the implants start shouting EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! and try to kill large groups of people by photographic over-exposure.
To qualify you must have a healthy, unused, expendable brain.
Applicant: Well, I'm an avid slashdot reader...
Interviewer: Yes, you'll do nicely. To report a bug, just twich randomly and piss yourself.
"How long is it going to be until somebody makes this work in reverse, ie, controlling the brain from a computer chip?"
I have a question: Are you seriously concerned about this, or where you secretly hoping for a cheap 'Insightful' mod?
"Derp de derp."
Wired Story
Wired seemed to stress the opinion of other scientists in the same field, that this research was 'premature' and disaster could bring public outrage and set back (American) research a good ten years.
The thing is, Matt Nagle was a willing volunteer; he's an adult who can comprehend the risks involved in this procedure, and if he's injured, one can't say that it's unexpected. If this niche industry is destroyed when somebody is hurt and this whole chance for mobility gets tossed back like U.S. stem cell research has been, I hope they can find other places to continue this technology -- and that the U.S. government doesn't hold them back.
Matt and the other four volunteers are pioneers, so to say; they want to help further this research and get back some, if not all, of the mobility they had.
Hats off to 'em.
Injecting signals into the brain amounts to controlling it, though. If those signals come from a body part with which the brain is already familiar, great. If not, the brain can learn to process the "foreign" signals as best it can.
:)
Certain situations already cause similar behavior. When a person becomes blind, the part of the brain devoted to visual processing starts taking input from other parts (especially the hands, since they are absolutely loaded with touch receptors). The situation is not identitical to getting feedback from prosthetic limbs, but it does show that parts of the brain can take unfamiliar inputs and figure out what to do with them.
We could just be debating the semantics of the word "control" here. I imagine many people see it as forcing the brain to take a particular action. Although this is probably possible, it also probably isn't desirable. For instance, it would be monumentally difficult to inject a probe into a person's brain and trigger it to get them to raise their hand. This is because it takes a massive amount of motor coordination to get the hand to raise smoothly and subsequently remain in the air, and the probe would produce an unnatural, Frankenstein-like motion.
Instead of trying to force the arm up, it's easier just to ask someone to raise their arm. You are controlling their brain by activating their auditory processing cortex, which leads to them interpreting and understanding your request, then firing off systems in the motor cortex that get routed through the cerebellum to lift their arm and hold it there. More effective than a probe, and easier, too!
We do have RoboRats. Note that the rats are not "forced" in a certain direction, but actually trained to respond to mild electrical stimulus to the "whisker processing" center of their brains that is enforced by stimulating their pleasure centers. Even remotely controlling a rat, it's far easier to provide minimal feedback and let the brain do the bulk of the processing.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
I don't want the instruments anywhere near my brain after the surgeon thinks about what an ass his boss is.
There's also some companies that are looking into ways to lessen the amount of invasive procedures, but as of yet they're not mainstream AFAIK.
http://www.neurotechreports.com/pages/neurosurgery .html
From TFA:
"In January, Stereotaxis received FDA approval for its new Niobe Magnetic Navigation System, which uses computer-controlled magnets, positioned external to the body, to steer catheters and guidewires throughout the cardiovascular system. The system works with Siemens' Axiom Artis dFC digital fluoroscopy system, which is used to visualize the devices as they are navigated. Stereotaxis says the catheter delivery system may eventually be used to steer DBS electrodes to a precise location in the brain."
Can I think "control-c" instead of "copy?"
...completing my sentences! ...me crazy!
How about auto-completing my thoughts?
Me: Computer, stop comp...
Computer:
Me: You're driving...
Computer:
Me: control-alt-delete!
Computer: atl-F4
Me: control-alt-delete!
Computer: atl-F4
Me: Why you little...
Computer: Yes, Dave?
With her brain stem still intact, the computer would act randomly to reflexes, and sometime during the 15 years, would probably open Word or at least notepad.
Then, we just wait to see the string "iwanttolive" or "iwanttodie" or something meaningful to appear. ("hi" at the very least would be likely to appear during the first 1352=26*26*2 letters entered randomly (ignoring other characters).
Being a geek, I will of course get the implant. Though I know it will just be a matter of time before some 12 year old Brazilian kid hacks my head and I'm walking around shouting "GoldenPalace.com" like I have Tourette's syndrome.
Turk: Let's play Steak. J.D.: What? Turk: Steak. The 1st person to finish their steak is the winner of Steak. -Scrubs
I think it would be better put that we cannot evolve anymore. That's the whole point of civilization. As soon as people start working together, evoltion stops. The weak (like the handicapped people we're building implants for) are protected/supported by the strong (those of us with working bodies.)
It works intellectually as well as physically, ie the smart raise up the stupid. We don't all have to discover our own vaccines....
I personally see genetics as influencing our minds and bodies more than cybernetics (it seems easier to tweak genes to get rid of birth-defects than to rebuild bodies after they are born wrong), but the idea of, say a pilot's brain connected directly to a plane does have interesting implications...
The other day I was thinking of this sort of thing in the context of having a huge storage unit connected to your eyes, ears, brain, etc. So that everything you see, hear and think(?) would be recorded for later review if you so choose.
Then I was thinking what the MPAA would do to you if you went into a movie theater.
Shaky Cam indeed!