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..

Hmmmm

[Symp0sium]

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

Re:Hmmmm

[ag0ny]

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

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.

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

[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.

Big Question Is...

[Scarletdown]

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

Re:Big Question Is...

[Scarletdown]

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

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.

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: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.

I imagine...

[Chr0n0]

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

=|

Mandatory Post

[Timberwolf0122]

Well I for one welcome our new cyborg overlords.

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.

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 >>]]

For a more on the subject

[SwansonMarpalum]

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