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Neuroscientists At MIT Developing DNI
coolphysco1010 wrote to discuss the possible development of a direct neural interface, ala 'The Matrix', that could eventually allow for instant object recognition. From the article: "Now, neuroscientists in the McGovern Institute at MIT have been able to decipher a part of the code involved in recognizing visual objects. Practically speaking, computer algorithms used in artificial vision systems might benefit from mimicking these newly uncovered codes ... In a fraction of a second, visual input about an object runs from the retina through increasingly higher levels of the visual stream, continuously reformatting the information until it reaches the highest purely visual level, the inferotemporal (IT) cortex. The IT cortex identifies and categorizes the object and sends that information to other brain regions."
Now were you R'ingTFA, or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?
i am not at MIT, but I can tell you this aint about to happen any time soon.
i am working on optical neuron-computer interfaces, and this is probably the most efficient and direct route for reading neurons. I know of researchers who can also stimulate neurons to fires via light, so in principle, we could build a complete neuroptical computers tomorrow... if neurons were not complete bastards to work with.
you see, they just dont like to stay place. where i research, they often build tiny fences to keep them in place, but even then, they go shooting theyre axons anywhere they feel, with no concern for the feelings of the researcher.
we also grow neurons on microchip surfaces, which allows for high speed and high resolution stimulation and reading of single neuron activity, but in two dimensions, which is excellent for retina etc.
but the neuron-chip or old fashioned neuron-electrode are hard to place, and optical reading of neurons still has bugs to sort out (id guess from 4-10 years more basic research). whenever you see these cool brainscan pics with MRI etc, remember theyre resolution is on the order of millimeters, and thats a lot of complexity lost.
http://www.biochem.mpg.de/mnphys/ has a nice review of the problems involved, if you like hardcore solidstate chemistry, silicon physics, and neurobiology
Kudos to MIT!
Every visual neuroscientist, ever, has been working on "deciphering part of the code involved in recognizing visual objects." Poggio and DiCarlo's contribution is mostly that they were able to record from a large number of neurons simultaneously in the inferotemporal cortex (IT). It's a logical (but interesting, to be sure) progression of work that has been done for decades in IT -- most of that work done elsewhere.
Neural prosthetics and DNI are the bullshit that people trot out to make neuroscience interesting to the public. It's worth pointing out that neither of the actual named scientists in this work raise the possibility, and in fact, other than the abstract, there's nothing that even hints at the idea. These guys aren't working on a DNI. They're doing basic science. Years, decades down the road, some engineers might take the work that built on Poggio and DiCarlo's work and turn it into a DNI. Or at least, we can so hope.
Name a university, and I can guarantee that the odds are that they'll have some basic science research underway with as much potential for the betterment of society as this stuff. So when you say "kudos to MIT" like this, remember that you're praising their PR department, not their scientists.