Brain Cells Fused with Computer Chips

valamaldoran writes "Looks like organic computers aren't too far off. Live Science has an interesting article about fusing brain neurons with silicon chips. From the article: 'The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.'"

Comments

Better than quantum?

[fatduck]

Seems like programming for a neural network would have much of the same difficulties as quantum computing, only without the considerable advantage of computing power that quantum computing provides. Let's be honest, they just want to get in our brraaiinns..

Re:Better than quantum?

[grumpyjack]

Seems like have a living neuron instead of a simulated neuron would be largely pointless for a software based neural network since simulated neural networks are likely to be much faster processors, especially by the time they pull this off. The brain's power lies in its structure and size.

I'd be impressed if they can get the chips small enough to replace actual neurons for surgical reasons or whatever.

Re:Better than quantum?

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Reminds me of something I've read a long time ago. Suppose you could replace a real neuron with an artificial one and you would replace one by one the neurons of a person by those artificial ones. Each time checking if his brain still functions normaly.
Now when you've replaced all of them, you copy the artificial neuron's configuration to a powerfull computer, programmed to simulate the neuron net.

I find this an intresting thought experiment. Would this person be the same before and after the replacement? Would he be still alive? When copied to the computer, how would that feel?
Both intresting and creeping...

Re:Better than quantum?

[ThePengwin]

Its all good if they want to get into my brain... I want a calculator.. so i dont have to do all that annyoing + - * and / :P

Re:Better than quantum?

[msobkow]

I think there are a few different approaches that could achieve machine intelligence, but we really haven't answered some key questions before we take such chances:

1. Is it moral to create a race of slaves when so many people are out of work?
2. At what point does intelligence become sentience?
3. How can a moral framework be defined and implemented so that such a being would have the compassion to consider all viewpoints and lifeforms as equally important to the whole?

Anime studies some of those ideas, but I think it'll be quite a long time before we've answered the questions and can decide whether to risk the Terminator. After all, if such an intelligence ever got the slightest chance to connect to the internet, we could all be in a world of pain.

Re:Better than quantum?

[x2A]

I don't think so... it doesn't matter how intelligent something is, it can only work through it's "body" (or whatever interface it's given). The most intelligent system ever is no threat if it can only roll forwards, backwards, detect dust, and suck it up (yeah, I need to vac my room!).

As for moral issues, it would be a problem if they were created with the ability to feel pain/unhappiness/etc and forced into being slaves, but if they were only programmed to want to do those things... no problem.

The "so many people out of work" issue... well I think we wanna be a productive race, that means using the best tools for each job... if that's a person, so be it, if not, we can't slow ourselves down to allow those at the back to keep up. It's anti-evolutionary and anti-progression. Even if it does feel bad to move on forwards without everyone... but I don't wanna get too much into this :-p it's too touchy and difficult to say what you mean, I can see it starting a flamewar!

Re:Better than quantum?

[brother bloat]

This is exactly right. Even if a network as complex as the human brain could be reconstructed in a petri dish (which I think is unlikely in the next century or so), it would serve little purpose for pure number crunching. The living human brain is capable of only a few floating point calculations per second; why should a petri dish version be any faster?

The real payoff would be in simulating neural networks using actual living neurons. Even using supercomputers, it becomes unrealistic to simulate individual neuronal ion channels and other abundant tiny structures in a network of thousands of neurons. In fact, for fixed computational power, there has always been a tradeoff between model accuracy and the number of neurons which can be included in the network.

This breakthrough sidesteps the accuracy issue entirely -- living neurons "automatically" simulate their own ion channels, etc. for free.

Going in the other direction (as in, implanting computer chips in the brain for the purpose of regaining function) seems a bit unrealistic. For the same reasons I explained above, a computer simulation will rarely do as well as the real thing.

Also remember that these chips are going to require a (battery?) power source. This means that either the patient is going to need to have major surgery every time the battery is low, OR they are going to need to have a battery pack surgically implanted below the skin or their skull (outside the bone). You certainly wouldn't want to be doing head-knocking physical activities with your brain's battery pack literally sticking out of the side of your head.

Re:Better than quantum?

[networkBoy]

The battery can be inductively charged, thus the pack can be buried deeply in a safe place and the charge coil can be at the surface (say about 5mm below the skin). As to it being unrealistic, tell that to the quadrapleigic wo may once again be able to use his arms and have better control over his bodily functioning... While I think augmentation for enhancement is still a long way off (sign me up when it comes though... I want to be the first Borg), augmentation is much closer if we look at neuro-repair, where the side effects are likely to be more easily outweighed by the benifits.
-nB

Re:Better than quantum?

[Flunitrazepam]

Tell me more about slightest chance to connect to the internet, we could all be in a world of pain.

Re:Better than quantum?

[xtieburn]

The brain works using massive parrallel processing and weighted pathways.

Quantum processors work using probability and super positions.

They're two entirely different technologies and cant really be compared. Neither in the complexity of there algorithms or there speeds in various situations.

It should be noted that Quantum processors arnt very fast unless they are doing very specific tasks like cryptography. Unless someone comes up with more for the qubits to do they will never become anything more than a co-processor in your average desktop of the future.

I imagine an optical processor would be much closer to how a neural processor would work as the idea is based around parallel computing. There is every chance a neural processor would be faster than even those.

Re:Better than quantum?

[Captain DaFt]

Oh, it just means he reads The Register. };-)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/11/self_repli cating_hoover/

Re:Better than quantum?

[MadUndergrad]

If they were to use implanted silicon for enhancement, it most likely wouldn't be repairing the functions the brain already excels at, but adding the sort of functionality that only a computer can provide. Can you imagine a person with the mental processing power of even the crappiest of even a 1970's-era calculator, much less a TI-89?

Re:Better than quantum?

[Anonymous Coward]

The brain works using massive parrallel processing and weighted pathways.

Quantum processors work using probability and super positions.

So you're saying that women have quantum processors instead of brains?

Re:Better than quantum?

[kakos]

Awww, once again, attack of the layman.

Okay, repeat after me: "Quantum computers are likely only fast for a small subset of hard problems."

There are only /three/ problems that are believed to be outside P but in BQP:
1) Factorisation
2) Discrete logarithms
3) Quantum simulation

And we're not sure if those problems are actually outside P. So, Quantum Computers are not the computational power houses that everyone who watches Discovery Channel things they are. In most cases, they are no better than a classical computer, except a whole hell of a lot harder to build.

hippocampus chips

[80 85 83 83 89 33]

Neurochips will replace up to 10,000 neurons in brains damaged by Alzheimer's and stroke: One day, a computer chip may do some of the work of a damaged hippocampus. check out Dr. Theodore W. Berger, University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

the brain has billions of neurons, so this will still be small scale...

Re:hippocampus chips

[fatduck]

What about applications outside of the cranium? When will we see people with Skywalker hands?

Re:hippocampus chips

[wild_berry]

This time it'll be the people opposing such developments on religious grounds who cry out "NOOOOOOoooooooo!"

Re:hippocampus chips

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

If you'd replace a persons mind with artifial neurons, that would do away with the magicaly "soul", wouldn't it?

Hmmmm

[Symp0sium]

I guess it won't belong before resistance is futile.

Re:Hmmmm

[ag0ny]

I guess it won't belong after either. ;)

Re:Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

It's fine with me as long as they have a 7 of 9 bonus give away.. ^_^

Re:Hmmmm

[clydemaxwell]

yeah except she was bald and covered in splotchy grey patches, robotics and implants.
not exactly sexy.

Re:Hmmmm

[m50d]

not exactly sexy.

I think you're on your own there kiddo.

Re:Hmmmm

[Chemicalscum]

I guess it won't be long before the Bichun Revolution.

Re:Hmmmm

[codifus]

Wow, I guess we really will become one with the Borg!

CD

Re:Hmmmm

[clydemaxwell]

I think you're on your own there kiddo.

O RLY?

Re:Hmmmm

[m50d]

Yes, really

Re:Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, C.M., that many men, when judging whether or not a woman is sexy, look only from the neck down.
In fact, some confine their observations to the region between the lower neck and navel.

Knowing the letters ain't reading the book

[Opportunist]

Some might remember this statement. It was said when they started decyphering the human genome.

Just because we can "read" the letters doesn't mean we know what's written. Just because we can pump electricity into nerve cells doesn't mean we understand how they "think". It's still a long, long road to cyberpunk.

Well, at least the technology aspect of this flavor of SciFi. The social aspect is almost achived.

Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book

[Sqwubbsy]

Just because we can pump electricity into nerve cells doesn't mean we understand how they "think". t's still a long, long road to cyberpunk.

Judging by some of the comments around here, I don't know if it's all the long of a trudge.

Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book

[MichaelSmith]

Just because we can pump electricity into nerve cells doesn't mean we understand how they "think".

We can simulate the weather knowing only simple gas laws.

Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book

[somersault]

A general large scale simulation of the weather is a lot simpler than simulating billions of neurons - in fact the weather problem probably becomes a lot more simplified when you work to larger scales.

If you have any 'simple laws' that can quickly and accurately simulate even thousands of neurons all working in parallel, then my simulations predict you're going to get very rich, or at least become famous in the scientific community =p

Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book

[swillden]

Just because we can pump electricity into nerve cells doesn't mean we understand how they "think".

I'm not sure that matters.

For neural interfaces to control prostheses, we don't necessarily have to understand how the brain functions, exactly, because one thing we do know about the brain is that it can learn. People with brain damage can often learn to compensate, performing the necessary processing with different parts of the brain. Given that, it will likely be enough to create the connections, then allow the brain to learn how to manipulate them. The cyberpunk ideal of a jack that can simply be added to a brain to allow a person to immediately and directly interface with machines will probably never be realized, but it seems reasonable that years of training and practice after the implantation of such a jack might come close. Even more if the brain in question is young and still developing (though there are obviously huge ethical issues with that sort of experimentation).

Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book

[Opportunist]

True, very true. But even then, it is a long road to at least enabling us to control a prosthesis. Despite the brain's ability to learn, you can't just offer it some kind of interface and hope it will figure out somehow how to interact with the artificial parts. You at least have to go half the way towards it.

A jack to the brain might come into existance, but you'll have to learn how to use it. Once the brain knows how to tap into the stored information, it will accept a standardized interface. What remains to be seen is whether learning to interface is faster than actually learning the subject.

Then again, we all know the first ones to use it successfully are druggies. :)

Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book

[swillden]

What remains to be seen is whether learning to interface is faster than actually learning the subject.

Not that I really know anything about any of this, but I'll be surprised if it is. I can see a neural interface being a faster and more convenient way to retrieve facts that you didn't know, but I expect the process of integrating facts to create knowledge and draw conclusions to be unchanged.

Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book

[Deliveranc3]

Ah but they've been experimenting with electrodes in the brain for a while now and they've learned something.

The brain's structure is not defined at birth, it develops based on usage and adapts to problems early in life, so if you insert something early enough it can become a functional part of the brain and perhaps even have the brain adapt to use it.

It's still a pretty dicey concept (they've mainly been using it to restore some motor function or add new senses to lab animals) but it has some pretty solid proof, and it seems clear that once the technology we want to implant is there that the time table will be speeded up.

For me all I want is an optical cable to control my trigger finger, nerve transmission is slow.....

Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book

[Feanturi]

Really, so you mean you can actually predict the true accurate weather instead of the vague generalized guessing that we get on the news? You should be one of the richest people in the world in that case, cool...

There's lots of things we can 'simulate', but 'approximate' is a better term.

Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book

[Kadin2048]

If you have any 'simple laws' that can quickly and accurately simulate even thousands of neurons all working in parallel,

Wouldn't this effectively be psychology?

Psychology seems to be to the study of individual neurons what meteorology and weather prediction is to the study of gases and molecular chemical interactions.

Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book

[MadUndergrad]

Actually, they've already had rats feeding themselves with robotic arms that are hooked up to their brains. Forgive me for not finding a link to the study, but I'm about to go to bed. But yes, they can do that already, in a rudimentary way.

Re:Knowing the letters ain't reading the book

[somersault]

No, I think that would be artificial intelligence, or biology. While in psychology you do study neurons and some basic theories on how the brain works, in psychology we tended to learn about the on a larger scale (different regions of the brain such as the hypothalamus, hippocampus, parietal lobe and that kind of thing), rather than single neurons.

Downloading the drivers

[Ithika]

The model and procedure for making the many parts of our body is encoded in our DNA. If we just drop in a a chip how can the body know to interact with it? Unless our genes are rewritten to include driver software (heh!) then the only likely result will be a mucus surface forming around the inorganic material, rather like a pearl forming around a piece of grit. At the basic level everything is done in terms of shuffling chemicals around. There is no "master planner" who will integrate our new chip capabilities (64-bit floating point maths or something) into the normal functioning of our brains.

Re:Downloading the drivers

[fatduck]

The brain exhibits a property called neuroplasticity meaning that it will reorganize its parts for greater efficiency. When brain cells are damaged, other brain cells rearrange themselves to absorb the function that the damaged brain cells can no longer perform. Researchers doing experiments on brain-controlled prosthetics noticed that they did not have to place electrodes precisely on the brain because the brain would recognize the function of the electrodes and organize its neurons to facilitate their effectiveness (in effect, recognizing them as neurons).

Re:Downloading the drivers

[Ithika]

I don't doubt that; but there's a huge step from BMI-based prosthetics to the kind of science fiction being alluded to in Zonk's "dibs on a datajack" comment.

Re:Downloading the drivers

[FirienFirien]

Over time, the human body learns to interact. A child picks up walking by practise, a musician gets better as they practise and worse if they don't, ditto with sports players and gamers and everything at all.

This isn't restricted to behaviour. With practise over the past years, I've gained control of muscles in my face that other people don't even know exist; I find it fun to twitch them and distract people. People who split their tongues as body modification can, with practise, control both tips independently, even though the tongue is hardly designed for it; the muscle is there, and with the cut the movements change.

I very much doubt we need gene modification to control this. While it will of course be hard at first to activate the right neurons, in the same way that most people don't know how to twitch the right muscles to wiggle their ears, tic their cheeks (even though I can tic my left cheek easily, I don't yet have the fine control of my right, though from knowing that I was formerly unable to tic either and can now tic the left one under full control, I have no doubt that the right one will come with practise), or pull the really difficult one that moves the scalp back and forth, they all have the muscles there, they all have the neurons there to do it. Hook the chip up to an interface, then do random things like think about chocolate, wiggle your toes, try to talk in French; when you find something that triggers the chip, you'll be able to practise that trigger and eventually disassociate it from the chocolate/toes/translation to become a simple signal-to-chip.

Watch a pro musician or even a pro gamer play, or a fast typer type. There isn't a conscious decision to play that note or press that key; it's too fast for that. It's something that's practised enough, and it's instinctive and automatic.

Just needs practise.

Re:Downloading the drivers

[Bacon Bits]

I'm inclined to agree. The brain is designed to find patterns and to make sense of black boxes. We're programmed to assume that a response to stimulation is the result of a process, and we can develop understandings of that process through exposure and experimentation. That applies on both a conscious and a basic neurological level. We are designed to develop comprehension.

Re:Downloading the drivers

[TapeCutter]

"At the basic level everything is done in terms of shuffling chemicals around. There is no "master planner" who will integrate our new chip capabilities..."

Since when does the "device driver" dictate the API for the O/S? The trick is figuring out the undocumented API that the implanted chip driver needs to implement. If there is such an API for the calcium pump computer that is typing this post then a metaphoric "pearl forming around a piece of grit" is a very real possibility.

"If we just drop in a a chip how can the body know to interact with it?"

You could have a point. My body refuses to interact with beer, I pour it in and it goes to work seperating the beer atoms from the water. This process can be exhasting to the body and will often cause me to stagger, slur my speach and post on slashdot. After a while this "temporary exahustion" wears off, but not before my body uses the water ( mainly to grow lemons ). Now, like I said, my body does not interact with beer, so it stores the extracted beer atoms under my belly button until it can think of a way to use them. After 4-5 decades it has created quite a noticable bulge and some very juicy lemons. I hear jogging can help shake some of the stored beer atoms loose, but it can also cause heart attacks so I'm not convinced.

Re:Downloading the drivers

[Kjella]

Watch a pro musician or even a pro gamer play, or a fast typer type. There isn't a conscious decision to play that note or press that key; it's too fast for that. It's something that's practised enough, and it's instinctive and automatic.

Well I'm not sure if it's instinct, but it is not waiting for feedback. When I type, it's basicly pipelined, I don't need to see the keys, I don't have to wait for the screen to respond. I could type this blind and still do at least 98% correct. Same with music once you start to know it (I usually play some song for christmas with my family, not even an amateur at that). When you get past fiddling with where the tangents are, it just flows without feedback. That's also why it looks like hell when you miss one key/note and the next five go to hell - your feedback time is much longer then the pipeline, so to speak. Good artists manage to recover by compensating slightly, I don't.

Re:Downloading the drivers

[Illserve]

What you say is true, but there limits. Somethings just can't be learned because the underlying hardware and control structures do not exist. Your ability to learn new facial movements may be impressive, but it may be that you have a particular genetic predisposition to do that.

Simply put, if the nerves from the brain to allow a muscle to do a specific movement do not exist, no amount of practice is going to help let you make that movement.

Rolling tongues, as a concrete example, is something that some people can do and others cannot, and it's controlled by genes.

Re:Downloading the drivers

[xerxesdaphat]

Bollocks. You have no idea the amount of feedback musicians are receiving and compensating for. It just happens so quickly (and once you get used to it, pretty much automatically). When I play a note on my horn, I'm compensating for intonation, tone quality, articulation, dynamic strength, vibrato perhaps - and that's only playing a single note - not even bringing things like rhythm into it. And don't tell me you just figure these things out (``tangents'' you call them) once and then just play the same way. You play a middle G once, then you play it after playing for a minute, it's going to be a different pitch because your horn's warmed up, it's going to sound different because your embouchure has adapted - and you'll have to compensate for it. Feedback in any technical task is by no means pipelined; any stage I Psych course will tell you that.

Re:Downloading the drivers

[Tim C]

I suspect that you don't really mean "designed" or "programmed" at all, assuming that you don't subscribe to creationism theory...

Re:Downloading the drivers

[Thing 1]

When I type, it's basicly pipelined, I don't need to see the keys, I don't have to wait for the screen to respond.

I saw evidence of this in my typing the other day when setting up my new KVM's OSD, so it would show the machine name when I switched to it. As I was typing "ATHLON", I watched the letters on the screen appear "ATAHTLHLONON"! The KVM recorded a "keypress" based on just a "key-down" or "key-up", not a "key-down/key-up" pair. (Although then I typed slower, and saw that it would merge a "key-down/key-up" pair that was uninterrupted by other key actions into just a single character on-screen.)

I was really surprised, and also learned something about my typing skills which previous typing, with less feedback, was unable to show me: almost every keystroke of mine is "intermingled" with both the previous and the next keystroke. (Going from "L" to "O" used the same finger, the right ring, so it kinda breaks the flow of the mix-up.)

Re:Downloading the drivers

[Bacon Bits]

I don't really consider it relevant whether the program or design arrived by it's own means or by some nebulous creator. Evolution -- and any scientific area really -- is generally designed to describe the mechanism without regard to the origins of it. Religion is more concerned about who or what made the mechanism the way it is.

If science were to look at a wood screw, it would explain the dimentions and construction of it, and attempt to make guesses about the use of the device. Religion would be more concerned about knowing the use of the screw, and who or what made the screw and what it was made to do. Mixing science with religion, then, is rather like mixing mechanical engineering with interior design. Or feng shui even. Using one to describe limitations of the other serves only to make you look like an idiot, since neither was ever meant to do what the other one is actually good for.

Not that I expect anybody on SlashDot to have any respect for religion in any form, particularly western religions. Whether that's because they've been exposed to too many close-minded religious types or because they're close-minded themselves doesn't really matter, even, since the effect is still the same. They sacrifice any attempt at rational discourse, and consequently lose the ability to learn anything from people they erroneously consider a thought-enemy.

Re:Downloading the drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

When I went to OSU I went to a talk sponsored by the neurology and computer engineering depts. They had a researcher explaining how they made computer chips that could be implanted into the brain and that the brain will automatically reconfigure itself to interact with the electrodes. They did it with monkeys and they were able to learn to remotely control a arm using a joystick. Apparently the younger you are the better your brain can reconfigure itself. They were talking about using the same technology so that disabled people could control wheelchairs and computer mice. I keep getting the idea that if I got one I'd just need to go meditate in the woods for a while till it started working.

Re:Downloading the drivers

[chocolateeater]

Neurons transmit electrical pulses from the head to the dendrite. So if you attach the dendrite to the chip, the electric pulse will carry over into the chip. The tricky part is in the attachment, which they apparently solved by gluing the dendrite with a conducive protein. The other tricky part is doing it without damaging the neuron itself.

Re:Downloading the drivers

[Deliveranc3]

Look for wireless monkies looking up where to buy bananas in the next few years!

The only question will mapquest or google maps be better from a neuro-heuristic perspective which will the monkies use ADVERTISERS NEED TO KNOW!

Re:Downloading the drivers

[rubberbando]

Yeah, I saw a story on PBS about this (think it was on NOVA). Scientists had a monkey hooked up to a mechanical arm that it could control with its mind. The arm was in another area but it could be seen by the monkey. The monkey would control the arm to pick up a treat and drop it in a chute that would bring it to the monkey. It was quite amazing to see.

Re:Downloading the drivers

[Eternauta3k]

You play a middle G once, then you play it after playing for a minute, it's going to be a different pitch because your horn's warmed up, it's going to sound different because your embouchure has adapted
Our music teacher told us that, when you heard musicians with their instruments before the play, they were heating up their instruments. You say you just adjust....

Not correct

[trifish]

organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.

Well, actually "living neurons" are not not good at crunching numbers. Sillicon chips are much faster and much more precise than any human brain as far as crunching numbers is concerned. In contrast, human brain is much better at intelligence and creativity (imagination).

Re:Not correct

[rbarreira]

Your lack of faith disturbs me.

Re:Not correct

[hairykrishna]

Actually, I'm not sure you're exactly correct. Ever caught a ball somebody threw to you? That's some hardcore calculus right there. Just because you're not aware that your brain is crunching numbers doesn't mean that it isn't. In fact, at a basic level, I guess that imagination is just some rapid number crunching.

Re:Not correct

[DigiShaman]

Ever caught a ball somebody threw to you? That's some hardcore calculus right there

I've missed the ball somebody threw at me a few times.

Yes, the brain is a fantastic processor/storage device. However, it's not governed by raw mathematical calculations. The brain functions through trial and error. We call this adaptation "practice". Other tasks known as instincts are hardcode into the brain from birth. So why is our brain not good at crunching numbers at the conscious level? I suspect it has something to do with our environment. Our environment is analog and not based on a fixed resolution (grid) that can be easily associated with numbers. As such, the brain is tuned to an analog world through evolution since the first life form on earth developed neurons.

Re:Not correct

[Mordaximus]

Actually, I'm not sure you're exactly correct. Ever caught a ball somebody threw to you? That's some hardcore calculus right there.

I think you mean that complex math is used to *simulate* catching a ball thrown at someone. Ever calulate the surface area of a potatoe? That's calculus too... but it doesn't mean the potatoe used caclulus to know how to grow to its final state.

Re:Not correct

[sholden]

I really doubt it.

Children learn to catch a ball through trial and error, over time they notice what they need to do to succeed. It's not calculus, it's just that experience allows them to predict where the ball will end up. They aren't doing calculations they have just seen enough balls thrown to be able to make a prediction because they have seen how a ball travels when thrown. Just like children learn that screaming gets the TV to display their favourite show, and that flipping the light switch makes the lights turn on and off - they don't know the mechanism they've just done it enough to be able to make a prediction based on past behaviours.

Re:Not correct

[TapeCutter]

Think about the following points..

1. Unless, (as Roger Penrose suggests), "mind" is somehow non-deterministic, "Learning through trial and error" could one day be described with mathematics. Even if it is non-deterministic we could still resort to statistics (as demonstrated by QM).

2. The system of axioms that are the foundation of the extrodinary "power of prediction" found in mathematics is somhow deeply related to the data collection and predictive capabilities the mind/body needs to catch a ball. Many philosophers, mathematicians and scientists have asked, why does mathematics "work"? Could it be that mathematics is a crude self describing model of the "raw mathematical calculations" that allow us to percive a common "reality" we call the Universe.

3. Until recently we had only our "God given" five sensory organs to percive "reality", mathematics has played a huge role in developing tools to find hidden parts of the universe that are far stranger than those contained in myths and legend. Leaving aside religion, "mind" can be described as an emergent property of a living brain. The idea that the brain and associated nervous system is both analog and a finite state machine would seem to indicate people such as Friedrich Hayek have only just scratched the surface of that very strange thing we call "mind".

Re:Not correct

[RobinH]

It would be closer to say that the brain is very good a modelling a non-linear feedback control loop. Or, you could say that the brain really IS a bunch of non-linear feedback loops. Learning is just a matter of tuning the parameters of the loop.

You can build a machine that will balance itself on 2 wheels using a feedback control system, and it's similar to how we learn how to stand up on our own. The control system engineer has to "teach" the machine how to control itself by tuning parameters like P, I, and D. You can create a self-tuning system as well.

Part of modern control systems is "prediction". That is, the system maintains an internal model of the physical process it is trying to control, so it can do a better job of controlling it. This is also similar to how a brain works when trying to catch a ball. We develop an internal representation of the ball and our brain makes a prediction of where the ball will go based on experience.

The power of the brain isn't just the ability to catch a ball (I could make a machine that would catch a ball if you gave me enough money), it's the ability to recognize an object as a ball, categorize it as being like other objects previously categorized as balls, then apply a predictive model to the recognized object that outputs a point on the ground where we should move to if we wanted to catch it (or move away from if we want to get out of the way), all in a fraction of a second.

Re:Not correct

[jmacleod9975]

I always thought that the matrix should have used people as some kind of computer.

The needing us for power concept made me laugh when I heard it because it really makes no sense. Why would you get more energyout than you put in?

But just like machines are a lot better at crunching numbers, maybe it was cheaper for the machines to keep human brains around for some kind of computing task which our brains are more suited to. That would explain the need to jack everybody in. If they only needed us for batteries they could just lobotomize us and be done with it.

Neurotransmitters

[jasontn]

Don't nuerons use neurotransmitters to bridge the synapses? How is this able to send signals to hard silicons? Were the silicons created with proper receptors?

Re:Neurotransmitters

[The_Mr_Flibble]

Yes but the neurotransmitters recieved by the neurons stimulate electrical actvity so be stimulating electrical actvity in neurons causes them to release nuerotransmitters.
Now where's my nueral plug ?

Re:Neurotransmitters

[MichaelSmith]

Don't nuerons use neurotransmitters to bridge the synapses? How is this able to send signals to hard silicons? Were the silicons created with proper receptors?

Membrane potentials (literally voltages measurable from one side of a membrane to another) can tell you what is going on in a neuron. In fact there are so many electrical signals inside a brain that a simple device like an EEG can tell you quite a bit about what is going on.

Re:Neurotransmitters

[The_Mr_Flibble]

Yeah my test results came back from my EEG

NO CARRIER

Re:Neurotransmitters

[MichaelSmith]

NO CARRIER

You have a pretty good posting history for a flatline.

Re:Neurotransmitters

[The_Mr_Flibble]

Yeah, I use this machine to keep me alive. Anyway the truth isn't as funny. My temporal lobe has about %15 more activity than a normal persons lobe Whatever that means ???? Is it a temporal anomoly ?

Re:Neurotransmitters

[MichaelSmith]

My temporal lobe has about %15 more activity than a normal persons lobe Whatever that means ???? Is it a temporal anomoly ?

I don't know, I have never seen it expressed that way. I have seen EEG's (including my own).

I believe that personality, behavior and memory are all the same things in the brain: connections between neurons. Its not a computer with separate logic and storage.

If your temporal lobe is behaving strangely then this may be reflected in different ways.

I took medication for my seizure disorder for six years. That kept the problem under control. But at the end of the day I avoid the states which cause problems for me. Its learning, which is reflected in turn in the pattern of connections in my brain.

Re:Neurotransmitters

[The_Mr_Flibble]

The scan was for some dizzy type spells I was having (like being drunk for a short space of time)
In the end it turned out that it was an adverse reaction to some chemicals I had been working with.
The medication they gave me left me feeling constantly distant.

This seems familiar

[discord5]

Ooooh, a bright future ahead for the human race. within a couple of decades we'll be able to artificially enhance our brain with implants. In essence, all we need now is a wireless connection and we'll be able to create a network of minds rather than computers. Think of it, an entire species linked in a network, focussing on the betterment of mankind. What could possibly go#@$^#@@#$@#$... NO CARRIER We are the borg, you will be assimilated. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is useless.

Re:This seems familiar

[Godji]

"focussing on the betterment of mankind" I'm laughing right now...

Re:This seems familiar

[meringuoid]

We are the borg, you will be assimilated. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is useless.

The word you're looking for is 'futile'. Hand in your geek card :-)

The Borg were great, until that Species 8472 business. We've seen how these guys can adapt their equipment to anything they come up against, and how they can extrapolate countless potential applications from a single example of a new technology - look what they made of the Doctor's holographic emitter! But they can't manage to modify their nanites to handle 8472... while the Doctor can.

Let's recheck that.

The Doctor, an emergency backup AI running in the spare CPU time of one smallish starship's computer, can do it.
The Borg Collective, the largest neural net in the known universe, can't.

Star Trek: here. Shark: here. Off switch: here.

Re:This seems familiar

[somersault]

you could put it down to creativity rather than the 'logical' brute force measures that the Borg use? .> I didnt see a lot of Voyager after going to University (pretty much stopped watching TV)

To resist it is useless

Re:This seems familiar

[AgentSmith]

Proposal for first neural implant:

Spell checker.

Re:This seems familiar

[discord5]

The word you're looking for is 'futile'. Hand in your geek card :-)

Damn you Douglas Adams, and your witty guide.

The Borg were great, until that Species 8472 business.

The Borg were great until Voyager really. Species 8472 was just the beginning. The borg episodes are full of plotholes in voyager. For instance, the episode where seven of boobs^H^H^H^H^H nine rejoins the collective as an individual, and the voyager crew saves her. Meh, I guess voyager was just full of plotholes. In fact, how many shuttles did they have on that ship?

The Doctor, an emergency backup AI running in the spare CPU time of one smallish starship's computer, can do it.
The Borg Collective, the largest neural net in the known universe, can't.

In TNG you had particle-of-the-week shows, in voyager it was nanoprobe-time. Man, those nanoprobes could do anything: assimilate technology, create life, resurrect the dead, create a conscience,... Ah well, brain off entertainment.

Star Trek: here. Shark: here. Off switch: here.

In theatres near you: Star Trek XXIII: Space Jaws

Voyager is flung back into the delta quadrant, only to find themselves being chased by a giant spaceshark. Will captain Janeway save her crew from being a crunchy snack for the giant spaceshark using Borg nanoprobes? Will the doctor finally pick a name, or will the crew of voyager feed him to the giant spaceshark as snackrifice?

yeah, i know... i have waaaaaay to much time

Re:This seems familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

ROFL

mod him up

Re:This seems familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

> Voyager is flung back into the delta quadrant, only to find themselves being chased by a giant spaceshark. Will captain Janeway save her crew from being a crunchy snack for the giant spaceshark using Borg nanoprobes? Will the doctor finally pick a name, or will the crew of voyager feed him to the giant spaceshark as snackrifice?

With a phrickin' phaser beam on its head!

Re:This seems familiar

[sandmaninator]

TNG (where the Borg were conceived of) ROCKED. They invented/explored so many interesting concepts in that show.

Voyager just plain sucked.

Better to keep your fond memories of the TNG-Borg than pollute them with the hackery of Voyager.

Big Question Is...

[Scarletdown]

Will it run Linux? And if so, just imagine a beowulf cluster of these organic computers!

Re:Big Question Is...

[fuyu-no-neko]

I'm more worried about the zombienet running on these.
There's something in the braaaiiinnnnnnnnzzzzzzzzzz

Re:Big Question Is...

[Scarletdown]

This could put the Synaptic Package Manager in a whole new light.

Re:Big Question Is...

[Urza9814]

I dunno, but I'm not gonna be one of the testers for the Brain Linux Project.... Geez, hacking it would be a bitch....new meaning to frying your brains.... And what if it gets a virus?

Re:Big Question Is...

[cbiltcliffe]

Frigging. Hilarious.

Don't know why I didn't think of it myself....

Re:Big Question Is...

[grimwell]

Funny but also interesting. Could one build a cluster using "lower lifeforms"? Maybe a tank full of fish? Or go another step further... genetically modified fish to have more grey matter. Or maybe a herd of cattle? Now there is a large pool of unused cycles.

Would this allow cross-species communication? e.g. Birds become spy planes ala BeastMaster mode.

Re:Big Question Is...

[repvik]

Uhhhh, would that be a gang-bang?

Re:Big Question Is...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, computer chips control you!

I guess...

[Symp0sium]

... this will lead to some kind of brain O/S elitism Having said that I don't think I would be using Microsoft Windows Seizure Edition.

Re:I guess...

[MichaelSmith]

I don't think I would be using Microsoft Windows Seizure Edition.

Then you would have The Terminal Man.

Re:I guess...

[draghkarr]

... adds a whole new meaning to Blue Screen of Death.

Re:I guess...

[Clifton Beach]

I don't think I would be using Microsoft Windows Seizure Edition.

Wow, what beautiful blue sky - Those dumb forecasters got it wrong ag......Bzzzzzt...bzzzzt..Aaaagh!

Neural Prostheses for Slashdot Readers

[JonathanR]

A personality implant?

-

"Life... don't talk to me about life."

Re:Neural Prostheses for Slashdot Readers

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would we need one of those ?

It's not like we'd need to use it for anything.

man woman

[fuyu-no-neko]

Even if one of these was implanted into the brain of a woman, you can still bet that no-one would be able to write a manpage for her. ;.;

Singularity!

[Illbay]

Looks like the ride toward the singularity just picked up its pace.

Oh, great, a computer with headaches!

[Anonymous Coward]

"I have a headache due to high CPU usage. would you like to:
a. Shut down some applications.
b. Let me sleep for a while and get back to you.
c. Get me some Aspirin already!"

Re:Oh, great, a computer with headaches!

[rob_squared]

d. I have the utmost ambitions for this mission, just give me some JD so I can open this Word doc.

I imagine...

[Chr0n0]

That this would give a new meaning to the term "Brainfreeze"

=|

Re:I imagine...

[Jesus_666]

I don't really think a human brain could fr

Re:I imagine...

[chocolateeater]

Not to mention the term "blue screen of death".

A little FUD

[FirienFirien]

While it's a long way off, there's possible problems with it just as there's problems with almost all tech these days. An example, Illyan from the Vorkosigan series:

In the book Memory (by Lois McMaster Bujold) we see a man with an "eidetic memory chip" in his head. Technology is far along advanced that this effectively is a huge hard drive, giving this man perfect memory of everything for the 20 years or so that he's had it in. He's then hit by something which screws up the chip in his head; and since his brain has come to rely on it as memory storage, he starts getting scrambled memories, and acts as if they were real, losing touch with reality.

I know it's a long way off and a bit extreme... but we can only hope that the early adopters will have some protection against failure and/or bugs and/or malice.

Re:A little FUD

[fatduck]

Try dropping a hard drive from one meter and see if it still works. Guess we'll all have to wear tinfoil hats to protect our braindisks.

Re:A little FUD

[fbjon]

I recommend a flash drive instead. It will beat the masses into stupefied submission, since if they think too hard, they lose half their brain when the chip fails from too much swapping.

Re:A little FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

More seriously, how is this different from wacking your head hard against an object and getting scrambled memories if not worse afterwards? I think that as long as the hardware is atleast as tough as your brain, if not tougher, that you have fairly little to complain about, well excepting it going haywire is really dangerous ways, obviously it should rather break then let something like that happen.

Quickshot

Re:A little FUD

[Skinny Rav]

He's then hit by something which screws up the chip in his head; and since his brain has come to rely on it as memory storage, he starts getting scrambled memories, and acts as if they were real, losing touch with reality.

And how is this different from damage to organic brain? People with brain damage can behave also pretty weird, have all kinds of hallucinations or weird perception distortions like being unable to percept one side (left or right depending on the placement of damage).

I would be more afraid on effects of perfect memory and availability of such huge amounts of data on one's emotional state.

cheers

Raf

Re:A little FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is to say it isn't already happening? These days if I need to know the answer to something I've already learned and I know it'll be quicker and more accurate to google it than try to remember then that's what I do. At the same time over the past six years since I've adopted this tactic I find my memory is nothing compared to what it used to be. I just simply don't need to remember things now the way I did in the past. I'd love a hard-drive memory, instant access to everything I've ever learned sounds wonderful. As for the book - I can't comment having not read it, but wouldn't it make sense with digital memories to take backups? As far as I can see, the ability to dump all your knowledge to a spare HDD actually renders the technology BETTER than nature's way, where once it's gone it's pretty much gone for good.

Re:A little FUD

[sairel]

It looks like we don't need chips for that:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1738881& page=1

Re:A little FUD

[sairel]

(I meant, it looks like we don't need extra hardware for perfect memory)

Re:A little FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it's a long way off and a bit extreme... but we can only hope that the early adopters will have some protection against failure and/or bugs and/or malice.

Like we have that now? Plenty of people down at the neurological ward, or the mental hospital, that had the OEM warranty on the brain and still came up lacking.

Re:A little FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually that was (somewhat) addressed in the books, though I forget which book in the series. (Probably the aforementioned Memory.) It states that of the 20 or so people who were given that implant, the recall and access to knowledge was too much for all but one of them; only Illyan was able to reconcile the organic and constructed parts of his brain/mind/self. The rest went mad, died, etc.

Think locally

[QuaintRealist]

You're right in that this does not come close to having the number of neurons needed to help in disseminated diseases like Alzheimers. Where it might have promise sooner is in cases of severe locallized injury, such as spinal damage strokes from a small clot, or damaged nerves in an amputation/partial amputation type injury.

We have yet to succeed except in a few lab experiments in regrowing neural tissue. Stem cells might help, but then again might not. Any means to reconnect damaged neurons could have profound impacts on the treatment of some types of injury. This is especially true since this particular method would avoid much of the moral/ethical wrangling involved in the use of stem cells.

Re:Think locally

[marco.antonio.costa]

I think we're missing an important point here. The most important thing aren't the billions of neurons, but the trillions+ of synapses that connect them. Just grafting new neurons in place of 'burnt' ones would accomplish exactly WHAT?

Doublespace

[jlebrech]

Remember not to doublespace ur brain.

Re:Doublespace

[ichigo 2.0]

But you get more space!

Mandatory Post

[Timberwolf0122]

Well I for one welcome our new cyborg overlords.

Re:Mandatory Post

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone ever read the book interface? cant rember whi it is by but it is about a president who has a stroke and then has a brain implant, read it

Re:Mandatory Post

[stx23]

It's by Neal Stephenson & Frederick George (his uncle) writing under the pseudonym Stephen Bury.

Re:Mandatory Post

[Anonymous Coward]

The only appropriate repy is:

WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA...

PS:

To: Lameness filter
From: AC

Bite me!

Would you do it?

[Qbertino]

Fast-Forward into Cyberpunk. Not the friendly Gibson kind, but one with intrusive neural interfaces. People showing clear signs of severe mental deseases but reporting from of the Network that they feel superb and can sense when the stockmarket is about to shift. They are so powerfull they're not even interested in money anymore and experience enjoyments mere mortals can't even dream of. They can slow down time and play WoW 12 live. Their bodies are bloated, drooling, twitching pieces of flesh, with eyeballs turned inward, watched by carebots. It's the better option than just occasionly jacking in and experiencing severe borderline like disorders by trying to cope with the real world when not logged in. Normal programmers are extinct, because these humans interfaced with machines do the jobs to get free acccess everywhere and they do them 10.000 times better than anybody else.
The question:
Would you get yourself a neural jack and hook up?
I wouldn't.

Re:Would you do it?

[MichaelSmith]

Would you get yourself a neural jack and hook up?

I would because it is the only realistic way that my mind can survive longer than my body. I don't think it has to be as bad as the picture you paint. Many people use limited neural implants now: cochlear implants. Even today we have people who spend too much time with technology at the expense of their health. Regardless of the type of interface in use I believe we will remain essentially the same.

Re:Would you do it?

[rbarreira]

Why do you assume your body would die? Lots of things could happen in the cell reconstruction department (and everything related to medicine)...

Re:Would you do it?

[Dachannien]

Given enough time, even a perfectly healthy body will end up involved in a fatal car accident or other such personal catastrophe. But if your mental functions can be downloaded to a reinforced brain casing of some sort, it just becomes a matter of acquiring a new prosthetic body.

Re:Would you do it?

[MichaelSmith]

Why do you assume your body would die?

Depends on how old you are. I am 40, most of the men in my family die between 60 and 70. Twenty years is not long at all in medical science. And you still need to allocate 10 or 20 years to bring a product to market.

When I graduated some friends of mine went into medical science, and I went into aerospace. 15 years later they are restarting their careers outside their original field.

The big difference is pay: people working in research get paid less, consequently science attracts less capable people. Low retention rates mean that it is difficult to carry long term projects through. Medical science is letting us down. There won't be miracle cures from that direction.

Re:Would you do it?

[marco.antonio.costa]

wonder what Mark Rampion would say to that! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Counter_Point

Re:Would you do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd want stay alive to just be alive? I wouldn't. This might not make sense to you, but I believe there is more than just living. If I couldn't love anymore I'd rather kill myself.

Re:Would you do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you assume that by downloading a copy of your consciousness that YOU would survive. It wouldn't be you. You would die when your body died. Concievably, once they have the technology, you could copy yourself while your body still lived. Accessing and copying the data in your brain is not the key to immortality. Like it or not, no matter how many copies we make, if our bodies die, we die.

Re:Would you do it?

[3fiddy]

Well, thanks for clearing that up for us, AC.

Re:Would you do it?

[Cyno]

Could you take responsibility for the actions of your mind long after your body is dead? Do we take responsibility for the action of our mind while we're alive?

I'd be affraid of my mind going insane without the rest of me to keep it in check. With my abilities I could be one of those cyberpunk criminals with all sorts of implants and enhancements. I'd let it happen if I weren't affraid of the consequences. But by then maybe that won't matter to me anymore. The world would be so different, maybe I wouldn't care enough to keep myself in check.

Re:Would you do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you _sure_ you didn't read Gibson's Count Zero?
It already had the bloated, fat dude that spends his entire life on the Grid (the term 'net wasn't around yet). Check.
Direct electronic memory (aptly named MicroSofts)... Check
People selling space on their 'live' brain as 'Portable storage?.... Check (Just Johnny).

But I have to hand it to Shirow Masamune for the opening page of the Ghost in the Shell comic.
He nailed it to a T.

Great

[ms1234]

Do we really want blond computers?

Re:Great

[EmagGeek]

In a recent interview, Seven of Nine respondends said, "Hell yes! We want blond cyborgs!!!"

Woohoo! Wetware!

[DoChEx]

Can't wait till we see what wonderful virus those things can have as they will have both software and biological.

Now the battle changes

[Don_dumb]

Will crackers start using beer to break systems?

I dont like a virus coming around giving my PC a habit.

Crichton was there in 72

[welshwaterloo]

enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders

Jeezy creezy - have they never read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminal_Man/?
 
If we're pillaging Crichton's canon for research ideas, I've got a neat idea about dinosaurs to bounce off you..

Re:Crichton was there in 72

[Anonymous Coward]

And roddenberry in 69. Remember M5?

Re:HEY KID!

[Kerago]

GI Jooooooe! +5 Funny

Re:HEY KID!

[AndyboyH]

<radiohead>OK Computer</radiohead>

Large scale is easy

[Opportunist]

I can, even without a computer, predict that the planets will still revolve around the sun in a few 1000 years, and you can rather easily calculate how much mass they should gain/lose by impact of meteors. It's a game of probability.

On a smaller scale, you're far harder pressed. Weather is pretty well predictable on a large scale. It's still near impossible on small scales. How is the weather going to be in Hicksville in 15 days? It's near impossible to tell that, while it's easy to say that within the next $years years a huge $desaster is going to wash over $continent.

Same with brains. Yes, you can tell that certain areas are responsible for certain activities. Yes, you can "stimulate" them to gain some effect. More or less reliably. It is MUCH harder to stimulate certain cells to get a very specific effect. That kind of research is still at the very beginning, and as much as I'd like to see computers controlled by brains, it's not going to happen soon.

Re:Large scale is easy

[shawb]

ame with brains... you can "stimulate" them to gain some effect... It is MUCH harder to stimulate certain cells to get a very specific effect.(edited for brevity)

From the very little I understand about the state of cybernetics, creating neural interfaces is not about making a device that can be implanted into the brain/nervous system/etc and work right out of the box. It takes a little bit of training on both ends: the machinery learns some basic communication with the neurons by learning the patterns of neural firing for a given desired action/thought/whatever. The big thing though is that the brain is a very plastic organ, and the brain reorganizes itself to better communicate with the interface, either taking information in or sending information out. It would be similar to the state of fairly old voice recognition technology, where the computer had to be trained on individual words, but the operator also had to learn speech patterns that would be recognized by the computer.

In higher numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Could the chips produce enough heat to injure the body?

Re:In higher numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Or keep me warm in the dead of winter?

"Practise"

[Polarism]

Obviously you need more practice with the english language! ;)

Re:"Practise"

[cbiltcliffe]

In some cases he got it right. Just not all.

'Practise' is a verb.
'Practice' is a noun.

So "With practise over the past years, I've gained control of muscles in my face...." is grammatically incorrect, while "a musician gets better as they practise and worse if they don't" is correct.

Having said that, I'm Canadian, which uses a wierd hybrid of British and American English, with both parents being British. This rule could well be from the British side (in fact, I think it is) and any American is going to read this statement and go "WTF?! Stupid /. lamer! <FLAME!!!!>"

To that, I have one thing to say:

It's not my fault you guys forgot how to spell humour.... :)

Re:"Practise"

[FirienFirien]

That would be because I'm Dutch.

Re:"Practise"

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot? We're talking about the United States. These people actively decided to throw away the empirical lexicon in favour of an "all-American" dictionary which compromises the spelling of "night" in favour of "nite". What the niggerfuck is wrong with these people?

Re:"Practise"

[MadUndergrad]

Actually, if you look at the Latin origins of these words (valor, honor, etc.) it was the Brits who corrupted the words by adding in the extra 'u'. We simply reverted back to the ancient, original, pure spelling. :p

Bring me my computer brain mod!

[jtcedinburgh]

"'The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.'"

After trying to figure that sentence out, the number of functioning brain-cells left means that I am very much in the market for a nice computer brain hybrid thingy.

So long as Bill Gates' software isn't anywhere near it. Otherwise I might ju-

Illegal Operation. Please reboot this brain and report the fault to Microsoft.

Ten things to expect from Microsoft Brains

[CFD339]

1.  It will only think Microsoft Thoughts.

2.  It will only think one thought at a time, unless you buy MS Brain Enterprise Server

3.  Sometimes, it will stop thinking.  The human will need to be killed and brought back with the paddles.  This will be considered normal.

4.  Windows software will suddenly make sense.

5.  All your thoughts will be covered under DRM.  You can share thoughts with up to three other people, but only if you are in a connected wireless area and your thoughts can register their new owners.

6.  You may live longer, but large parts of your life will be spent watching a blue bar slowly crawl across your field of vision.

7.  All sex will be done by oblique references.  Nudity will not exist in any form other than pixilated and blurred images.

8.  There will be Open Source brains -- called "Open Minds" but the people who choose them will be considered insane and untrusted by the rest of the MS Brain using world.  These people will be locked away in insane asylums.

9.  There will be Apple OS-X brains.  The people who choose this will be seen as misguided flower children, wandering in airports with be smiles and preaching their message of peace and good music.  They will be largely ignored.

10. There will be <>(@!*@($&&) *  [[<< 0x000000BE or ATTEMPTED_WRITE_TO_READONLY_MEMORY >>]]

Re:HEY KID!

[aplusjimages]

Who wants a body massage? Do we get to pick which brand of brain chip we want? I want a P4 with hyperthreading. No wait I want an AMD 64 because I'm a 64 bit system and want to be optimized.

Neural nanonics anyone?

[PontifexMaximus]

Hmmm, I smell the Reality Dysfunction. Peter F. Hamilton must be some kind of genius. :D Actually I think this is really going to be how the next generation of scientific achievements will be made. Unless of course someone develops rejuve clinic. It takes so long to gelt to the point of being an expert on technology these days that by the time someone is ready to push the envelop they are at or near retirement age and can't push themselves to that next level.

For a more on the subject

[SwansonMarpalum]

For a more thorough treatment on the subject, check out ISBN 0-553-38343-4

use the machine, but trust your ghost.

[cabazorro]

"..this ingredients that make the human body and mind. Like all the components that make up me as an individual with my own personality. Sure I have a face and voice to distinguish myself from others. But my thoughts and memories are unique only to me. And I carry a sense of my own destiny. Each of those things are just a small part of it. I collect information to use in my own way. All of that blends to create a mixture that forms me and gives rise to my conscience. I feel confined only free to expand myself within boundaries."

Major Motoko Kusanagi
GITS.

Re:use the machine, but trust your ghost.

[madstringer]

I was wondering when the hell someone would make a GiTS comment, since this is so closely related to the anime. Of course, there are a lot of cool things in the amime and TV series that are starting to come to pass: cyberbrains, thermoptics, political situations, etc...

Re:use the machine, but trust your ghost.

[jameskojiro]

That is nice, but what happens when you feel like your ghost has left you, are you dead? Can you ever regain a ghost and will it be the same one you had before?

Another Big Question Is...

[lbmouse]

Does it run on electricity, or do we have to feed it baby food? What about the waste? Just imagine a beowulf cluster of computer dung.

Re:Better than DRM?

[cbiltcliffe]

How much do you want to bet that the ??IA would love to be able to embed DRM decoders in our heads? Without paying the monthly codec licencing fee, our brains stop working, and we can't see/listen to/talk about anything content related at all.

(Yes, this is karma whoring, slamming the ??IA by responding to the first post, and just being a general anti-corporate jackass, but I don't give a shit. I couldn't see them trying to pull it off tomorrow, or even this year, but ten or so years down the road, it wouldn't surprise me at all to have them try to push something like this. Even if the technology isn't perfected yet.....)

There are many copies ...

[Helmholtz]

... and they have a plan.

Good tag word?

[infolib]

With all this new fangled tagging it would be nice to have consensus on a good tag for articles related to neural/computer interfaces. Any suggestions?

COOl

[faridx82]

good night everybody....zzzz....(downloading data, runnning seti@home)

Re:Singularity! - mod parent up

[VoidEngineer]

Agreed. Interestingly enough, the evidence towards the Singularity lays in accelerating growth of technological change. So, it's pretty nifty to see not just a linear or geometic change in technology, but a change which appears to be networked, neural, and therefore, exponential in nature.

If you're looking for a good book that deals with cyberpunk, the Singularity, and transhumanism, I highly recommend Accelerando by Charles Stross. Note: It's a very post-modern, post-millennial, post-cyber kind of book (it seems to aim to be post-homosapien, if possible). It comes off as strange reading, unless you're familiar with the basic primise of the Singularity Conjecture.

Nothing New

[wzinc]

My brain fused with my computer years ago; why do you think I spend all day sitting in front of it?

Re:Better than DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we would have old style lynch mob justice if they ever got that far. The day they start putting wetware into people's heads to ensure stable profit margins, they better have snipers positioned on the roof near RIAA HQ.

Re:Better than DRM?

[cbiltcliffe]

20 years ago we would have had lynch mobs if Sony put a rootkit on somebody's computer.

20 years ago we would have had lynch mobs if the RIAA tried to lock an LP to a particular turntable.

20 years ago we would have had lynch mobs if we had to repurchase all our cassette tapes because our player broke and we had to buy a new one.

Think about it.

And you mocked me for shoving that 8087 up my nose

[Anonymous Coward]

Now who's the jackass??? HUH?!?!?

1 million retarded people...

[post.scriptum]

Imagine a nice sun storm, where everybody's chips would stop functionning... that would be freakin nice. A million retarded and naked persons running in the streets "OO BOOLAH BEE LOO AH"

Re:1 million retarded people...

[EmagGeek]

As opposed to just four retarded naked people running into the street screaming, "oo-blah-dee, oo-blah-dah etc..." ?? :)

Re:1 million retarded people...

[post.scriptum]

Well I'm hoping for more naked, but less retarded people.

Re:1 million retarded people...

[slughead]

Imagine a nice sun storm, where everybody's chips would stop functionning... that would be freakin nice. A million retarded and naked persons running in the streets "OO BOOLAH BEE LOO AH"

More like "LOTTERY TICKETS?! I CAN'T LOSE!!"

sight

[gritak]

Megapixel camera, hooked directly to the visual cortex -> the blind can see again. 20 megapixel all-round camera -> 360 degrees all around sight, see in infrared and ultraviolet, night vision. Computer display that interface directly to the brain -> multitask, more time to read /.

Re:Better than DRM?

[jonbritton]

Lynch mobs? WTF are you smoking?

20 years ago the RIAA coerced the government into taxing blank tapes, because that was the most sophisticated copy protection they had at their disposal. No one rioted. There were no "lynchings" to speak of. People bent over and took it. Some even said it was fair (not me.)

2X years later, more sophisticated tech in "experiencing" music leads to a higher bar of tolerance by the average person in accepting these copy-protection methods. DRM gets implemented, most people bend over and take it. Some even say it is fair (not me.)

You're suffering from a misguided delusion that people in the REAGAN ERA were somehow less docile than people today. I'm guessing that 20 years ago, you were in diapers.

It helps no one to argue that we need to revert back to a time that never existed.

Yes, from that movie

[ThreeDeadTrolls]

We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile. I just see some good and bad things with this, ill explain when I have more time.

living cells in a machine environnement?

[tehpwn]

where is it gonna find glucose and O2 to function ? nurons need blood to get those... now of course it could allow machines in organic environments, but I wouldn't want a microsoft crapware in my head.

Resistance is futile

[Dream1979]

We are borg, from this point foward you will service, US. Resistance is futile.

And implants for healthy people?

[bcmm]

I don't have any neurological problems so far, but can I have a math coprocessor implanted?

Hello PETCO

[stuffduff]

I can just see it now:

Forget to feed your computer and it crashes.
Forget to change the litter and it stinks.
It's an XX cpu and will only play games and search Google for pr0n.
It's an XY cpu and is really only good for about one week out of the month.
Overclocking hell, let's give this beauty some psychadelics!
Spill beer on it and all it wants is Country & Western mp3z!
Don't even start about a virus.

Re:Hello PETCO

[cyborg_zx]

It's an XX cpu and will only play games and search Google for pr0n. It's an XY cpu and is really only good for about one week out of the month.

If you're making gender references you've got your chromosomes mixed up - men are XY, women are XX.

Re:Hello PETCO

[stuffduff]

So true, so true. That's what I get for not Previewing . . .

Bad concept

[robyannetta]

The question shouldn't be "can we put X chip in the brain and fuse it to Y", we should be looking at finding a way to create an I/O port that's directly fused with Y. Once a generic external I/O is installed, then we can allow Hollywood to tell us what to "plug in" to it. Nobody wants a seperate surgical procedure to add another "feature". Just plug in the feature and download.

Re:Bad concept

[SleepySheep]

So I can finally get that FireWire implant? Great! Then I could instatly learn kung fu! I could learn every martial art there is and become a master of a multitude of fire arms! I could even learn to fly a Huey! ;^)

That was my last Star Wars joke.

[wild_berry]

That depends. I'm curently of the opinion (and it can quickly change) that the Soul is an emergent property of the system, and that mimicking the system should enable the same behaviour to emerge (and, oddly, intelligent design says the same: the structure was intended to have these properties, so any clone or copy or simulation or alternative implementation should also have these properties). Unless Soul works out to be a DRM provision tying personhood to biological matter...

Re:That was my last Star Wars joke.

[mikeabbott420]

I see the mind as an emergent property of the physical brains complexity. I see the soul as a mind plus the eye of god, permanent in the fourth dimension but finite in all dimensions. My opinions on these matters are also subject to change without written notice :)

Re:Intelligence is relative

[vertinox]

In contrast, human brain is much better at intelligence and creativity (imagination).

The problem is that intelligence is relative to the situation.

If you put a rocket scientist on a desert island with a native he might look foolish to native in simple acts of finding something to eat. And vice versa if you put the native and the scientist into the lab... Well I'm not sure what the native is going to do except enjoy the free coffee and watch the man in the magic box.

However, if you put the native and rocket scientist in a chess match (or maybe a flight simulator) against say... Big Blue or whatever the latest super computer then they are going to loose hands down.

AI is really good in very tactical situations, but fails the more strategic the scenario gets not because of intelligence, but rather man's ability to recognize patterns.

Computers have a really hard time with this because they can usually fire off one computation at a time (well unless you have multi-processors or dual cores and nifty things like that) and even though its really fast compared to the brains neuron speed, it can't compete in the trillions of simultaneous neuron reactions going on in our brain.

We simply (as of now) lack the technology to allow parallel processing at this scale. If we could, we'd have computers that kick our butt in pattern recognition (you know... like stock market speculation... business models... warfare etc...)

Secondly, imagination and creativity isn't that far from what Big Blue did to beat Gary Kasparov. A human just sees the current chess layout and sees a pattern of what might happen and see his next best move (and this might go up to tens to hundreds of moves depending on the skill of the chess player). Big blue on the other hand calculates hundreds of thousands of these moves to determine the next best move. Sure, it isn't really that efficient in recognizing the correct patterns, but it gets the job done.

Imagination is merely man's ability to dream up other scenarios and play them through his head. He might not have a perfect recreation of the scenario, but sometimes he gets onto an idea that may take off.

Ob Dune

[DanTheLewis]

"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind," Paul quoted.

"Right out of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible," she said.

Re:Ob Dune

[Admiral Justin]

it's a straight line computation that the production of integrated human machine minds will lead to machines which immiatate the human mind, which will lead to the rebellion and eventual setup of mentats.

I'm the Quisatz Haderach's great great great great great great great great great great great
*puts this on loop for a while*

*comes back with soda and some doritos*
great great great great great great great great great grandfather.

Interfacing is the Hard Part

[biohack]

The interface between living tissues and silicon is the hardest part of making anything implantable. Almost all current "biocompatible" materials are actually simply non-toxic, so they are quietly covered with a mucus membrane and don't cause inflammation. This problem severely limits the number and spatial resolution of connections that can be established between implants and neurons in vivo, so thinking about large scale integration between the two is a long way off. For such integration, one would need electrode materials (coatings) that stimulate neurons to make connections with the inorganic component, as opposed to the current methods that jam in an electrode by brute force and just rely on surrounding neurons' ability to learn what the periodic voltage pulses from this object may actually mean. Again, there is a difference between producing a coating that does not kill a neuron, which is forced to live on a chip (as done in these cell-chip fusion experiments), and a coating that will meaningfully interface with neurons in a living organism.

Being able to grow living neurons on chips is however useful for studying how neurons function (on silicon chips, anyway - another known major caveat of in vitro studies). In this case, the high spatial resolution of the electrodes on the chip can help to study processes (like signal propagation) within a single neuron and in (hopefully increasingly larger) networks of neurons.

You say that but...

[nathan s]

...when my 40gb laptop hard drive was failing not long ago, I coaxed another week out of it by repeatedly dropping it from about a meter whenever it failed to spin up.

Go figure, huh? So maybe banging your head on the wall a few times will be good for you in this future.

How much

[Anonymous Coward]

How much is that in Ohms? I'm not good with imperial units.

Old Age

[Shadyman]

Oh great, Windows is slow enough as it is, it doesn't need Alzheimers to help it out.

Bigger Question Is...

[manifoldronin]

How will the software on the neural chip be licensed? If under GPL, will that make other parts of my brain "derivative works", because they are going to be, you know, quitely literally "linked" together?

Bright light?

[Anonymous Coward]

So when you die, instead of a bright light will you see the blue screen of death?

Just joshing with ya man

[Polarism]

haha.

Gibson Had It Right

[wintermute1974]

Yes parent post, this does sound very Cyberpunk, however it does apply to Gibson too. Consider the exchange where Molly goes to find the Panther Moderns in Gibson's book Neuromancer:

Behind the counter a boy with a shaven head stared vacantly into space, a dozen spikes of microsoft protruding from the socket behind his ear.
"Larry, you in, man?" She positioned herself in front of him. The boy's eyes focused. He sat up in the chair and pried a bright magenta splinter from his socket with a dirty thumbnail.
"Hey, Larry."
"Molly." He nodded.
"I have some work for some of your friends, Larry."
Larry took a flat plastic case from the pocket of his red sportshirt and flicked it open, slotting the microsoft beside a dozen others. His hand hovered, selected a glossy black chip that was slightly longer than the rest, and inserted it smoothing into his head. His eyes narrowed.
"Molly's got a rider," he said, "and Larry doesn't like that."
"Hey," she said, "I didn't know you were so ... sensitive. I'm impressed. Costs a lot, to get that sensitive."
"I know you, lady?" The blank look returned. "You looking to buy some softs?"

The future of this

[dickdono]

Nowadays parents get wigged out because the kids are getting tattooed. If this kind of technology continues, the next generation will be wigging out when their kids get little moving LED displays mounted in their forheads. Teenagers will be going around doing face-to-face instant messaging with their friends (literally face to face! No need to talk. Teenagers will answer parents questions via the LED message screen in their foreheads (sure to drive their parents crazy) I'm not sure this is a good thing. Imagine walking down the street and finding some poor slob who had some kind of buffer overrun and is now standing on the sidewalk with the Blue Face of Death.

The first chapter of this book already written?

[thedletterman]

I can't believe how this article failed to note that European doctors are in last place in this research. The United States has working brain implantable devices intended to help the blind see, paraplegics walk.

I remember watching a show on the discovery channel back in 2004, which showcased a paraplegic using a wireless brain implant as a mouse for a computer, and showcasing the research of Japanese scientists which were working on mapping brain signals, as to how memory is stored and retrieved, endeavouring to make a protocol for memory storage and retrieval for people with amnesia.

The EU has discovered how to attach neurons to electrical contacts? Eureka! According to the show I saw years ago, neurons naturally attach to the electrically conductive surface, when immersed in a growth formula, just as they naturally branch out and look for other neurons to attach themselves to, creating synapses.

Re:Better than DRM?

[cbiltcliffe]

Taxing cassette tapes is nowhere near as bad as locking a particular recording to a particular device using DRM. 20 years ago people didn't complain about the cassette tax, because they were all saying "Well, it's just that one little thing."

Now look where we are.

40 years ago, people would have bitched horribly about the cassette tax, because you were essentially being fined for something illegal that it was simply possible for you to do.

20 years ago people weren't less docile than they are now. I never claimed that they were.
What I did was infer that people for centuries have always been willing to let things go "just a little bit further" than they currently were. They don't see, of course, that tomorrow it will be just a little bit further than today, and the day after it will go a little bit further again, and further again the next day, ad nauseum.

Everybody sees everything as just one tiny little step, which isn't a big deal. But nobody stops to think that thousands of tiny little steps is a big fscking journey.