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Neural "Extension Cord" Developed
moon_monkey writes "Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a 'neural extension cord' by growing neurons attached to a microchip. The cord is made by gradually moving two batches of neurons apart, as they naturally grow towards one another. This biological 'data cable' could then interface with the brain once implanted, the researchers say." From the article: "...in the long run, it may not be necessary to interface directly with nerves at all. 'In Europe most researchers in this field are using non-invasive EEG,' [an outside researcher] explains... 'The signals are weaker so more complex processing is needed, but not having to perform surgery on the nervous system has many advantages,' [he] says."
Is it compatible with Windows Vista's DRM requirements?
not having to perform surgery on the nervous system has many advantages
I nominate this guy for the Understatement of the Year award.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I, for one, welcome our energy sucking brain slaving Matrix overlords
Extension cords are well and good, but what we really need is a neural power strip. You can never have too many of those.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
The cord is made by gradually moving two batches of neurons apart, as they naturally grow towards one another. This biological 'data cable' could then interface with the brain once implanted, the researchers say.
That way, in the future, people can have an almost lifelike experience watching Ow! My Balls!
Push Button, Receive Bacon
"Real" virtual p0rn!
Come to Papa, Jenna.
Forget eyesight, I want sonar. Brain to brain networking would be cool to, maybe.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
I for one welcome our Emergents of the Emergency Overlords
I know several people with severe spinal injuries that could potentially benefit from something like this. Heck using this to restore the use of amputated and reattached limbs/appendages springs to mind as well.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Instant learning for classes. No I can finally finish college.
I knew procrastinating worked...
Shakespeare poems - infinite monkeys with infinite time.Computer tech support - a few trained ones working from 9 to 5.
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
Sure - being able to read the impulses sent to muscles, immune systems, etc. will be great. Being able to interact with a truly naturally developed informational system can lead to a lot of obvious and non-obvious insights.
What would be fascinating is if we were to discover interfaces that allow contents of memory or other brain contents to be read in this way. Of course, this is the start of a lot of sci-fi stories, few of which have a good ending - but if we were able to use such 'clean' techniques to read and store at least some of the contents of minds, I still think it would be a very good net change. Even if very few things are able to be read, and even then very slowly, it would open up many important insights - how massively multi-nerve systems communicate, how memories change in terms of pure data.
On a personal level, it would be a really nice change to be able to leave behind a little undiluted, untranslated part of my memories and self in the world beyond genetics and teaching others, rather than just let it all rot or hope for a supernatural rescue. It's not the loss of the self that annoys me about our current idea of death, it's the total loss of information that we currently accept as part of the process. Even if it was just a database for others to query, I'd love for my raw memories to live beyond myself.
Ryan Fenton
If you have one of the older model brains without the polarized plugs, this setup may be troublesome. Also if you plug in more than a couple of brains, the cord gets real hot. And for the kayakers out there or those considering deployment of super-intellegent Christmas lights, the current versions are for indoor use only.
Now we can make hybrids to control the operation of our base stars!
We're almost there....
While being able to detect neural impulses and induce them in live connected nerve cells is an impressive feat, it does not really make deciphering or producing complex nerve signals, such as those associated with sight, hearing or thought, particularly easier.
The ability to apply a voltage to a few dozen nerve cells does not make it possible to interface with the human nervous system in a seamless way as is suggested as future advancement. I can only assume that this refers to a long time in the future, after a significantly increased pace of advancement. However this hopefully does not preclude the interception of basic muscle motor neurone impulses for prosthetic limbs, and the feedback into the nervous system of touch sensors on the end, perhaps, which is a more realistic and highly useful, for those affected, form of technology/research.
There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face - Ben Williams
If any story deserves to have the "Bill Gates Borg" icon, it's this one.
I love hearing about this research. I'll be one of the first in line to get a brain-computer interface installed/implanted. It's been a long time dream of mine to be able to lay back and do some programming without having to lift a finger. I've already started working on my own EEG, but I'm a bit too lazy to finish it. I have more to say, but I'm too lazy to continue typing.
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
Can anyone explain non-invasive EEG versus (I guess) invasive EEG?
I know kung foo.
I saw a subtitle for the matrix once for when Neo wakes up: "I'm lying naked in a vat of nutrients, with my bodily functions handled by tubes, connected to the internet by a fiber-optic cable wired directly into my brain...THIS IS LIKE A DREAM COME TRUE!!!"
You are awash in a sea of fiercely stated opinions. Obvious exits are: 'File->Quit', 'Reply', and 'Page Down'.
The days of the memory stick industry are counted ...
It's all well and good to "biopatch" if you will, but machine-biological interfaces are really the holy grail. Machine engineering is far easier than biological engineering, more replaceable, more durable, and eventually more versatile. If your arm is amputated, we can either restore some basic functionality with a neural extension cord, or we can put a big fat processor connected to precise abiological sensors on it to provide all the proprioceptive and tactile data the original arm would have supplied. The only problem is presentation of that data to our biological brains. For that we'd still need some sort of electrode grid or something. Not an easy problem, but at least if it's solved once it's more or less solved for all time. Trying to regrow biological parts involves a gajillion types of tissue and membranes and so on in bewildering variety. Nature did not design us for easy reverse engineering.
In any case, biopatching is great and tractible for reconnecting pieces that already fundamentally work, but for wholesale replacement at a high grade of function we still need that bridge.
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
I bet Barzan Ibrahim wished he had one.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
i've wanted a neural jack ever since i first watched Johnny Mnemonic
So does this mean I can finally just send my brain to work while I stay home without dieing? hmmm.... I'll need to grow hands from my brain too, so it can shut off the alarm clock on its way out.
I know flung poo.
I want a neural power squid.
Would it be possible to use this or a similar technique to join breaks in the spinal cord? Maybe even for limited functionality if the 'bandwidth' of one of these cords isn't enough?
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
as long as the chip is not a Pentium 4.
One of the things I like about the TV series is the depth and the questions they pose about the issues with this technology.
Better question is if it can be stopped. The thing is that when you watch that series, you wonder about the safety rating of this technology. The first Window 95 computers were open to the world, internet wise, so will it be the same for the first 'cyber brain' installs? Will there be a point where you MUST have a retina mechanical replacement or atleast an optic nerve pass though just to read a book? Better yet, what about education? If all your books are DRM encrypted that is mandated to be bought from a school virtual book shop, used books, hell, books could just disappear. We talk about a lack of critical thinking NOW....
Heck, it even creates the ultimate lower class. Those who not only can't afford to eat, but due to the lack of implants, even achieve a decent job. I mean, it becomes a decision to have your entire body mechanically replaced for a 5 year mining contract or living at the lowest end of the spectrum.
Maybe I am over thinking this, but its psodo-mandatory that you have a state ID, why would some kind of implant.
Unless, of course, one happens to be an evil genius and/or mad scientist bent on evil world domination. I for one have had it with the constant anti-evil spin you brief mortals are constantly putting on scientific breakthroughs like this.
"What are we doing tonight, Brain?"
"The same thing we do every night, Pinky... no-longer-necessary surgery on the nervous system!"
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
...at least when it is in a good and positive way.
I don't so much like it when its a "Big Brother" is watching your every key-stroke kind of way. (Hi BB!)
-2cents
Relocating to San Francisco / Palo Alto... Hire me?
...to having my wet wire so I can download my engram to a black box. This will allow my program to run before hardware failure causes early termination and permanent data loss. Dreams anyone? I have dreams for sale.
Not to mention that non-invasive EEG would be one way. I don't want anyone hacking my brain.
but not having to perform surgery on the nervous system has many advantages
You would still need to drill a hole in your skull and insert a little rubber grommet into the hole. Then, you tie a knot in the cord that is slightly larger than the grommet. This will keep people from accidentally tugging or jerking on the cord and pulling out part of your brain.
With machines, you can just replace damaged parts. Biological parts usually wear out even faster than machines, but as you point out there's mechanisms in place to repair the bioparts along the way. Think of modern manufacturing as being the repair process writ large and simplified. In that view, a number of 16th century windmills have far outlasted any of the biological machines that built them. Perhaps those are insufficiently complex to qualify in your mind, or maybe they are insufficiently non-stop in their operation. I would say they are nonetheless excellent candidates for comparison to, say a knee, which is a very complex device designed to accomplish a fairly simple task. Also, a knee in constant use without rest will break down in an awful hurry.
It would seem fairly easy to, when one's cybernetic arm is mechanically damaged, to take the spare out of your closet or whatever, flash the firmware with the virtual neural state of the damaged arm, and blammo, it feels exactly the same. Then you ship the damaged arm back to the manufacturer.
There are limits, of course. As long as the brain remains biological (and it seems likely to remain so for a long time) then one must have functioning metabolism feeding the brain, so full body replacements don't appear to be immediately in the offing. It might even be easier to "migrate" the mind from wetware to hardware than to work out ways to accommodate the incredibly convolute requirements of the various metabolic systems. "Easy" in the sense of being plausibly tractable by the end of the century.
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
If this technology ever came to be, I would like to visit all of my old professors, most especially the math professors. And NO, I am not interested in getting their knowledge of math directly from their brain. I really, REALLY want to give them back everything I got from their classes. I can't think of a worse thing I could ever do.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Having partial data from peoples' brains seems likely to be about as useful as 48 bits of a 128bit key - it might help in some way for those crunching the ciphertext, but on its own it's not going to make anything intelligible.
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
To communicate with the brain properly you need to interface with many individual neurons.
I keep seeing people talk about decypering these communications. That's not how it really works.
It may be possible to see some patterns, but to do it right, the computer side and the brain side need to adapt and learn together how to interract and communicate. Litterally the Brain grows new connection in the process of learning. Having Neurons grown on a chip in a dish and then have the whole thing implanted near the center of the brain you need to interface to would be the ideal way to do this, because the extermal grown neurons will have grown and learn how to interface to the chip and now those neurons will then adapt and grown with the brain's.
The chip that interfaces will also have to have a simulated neuron network that will also learn and adapt to eventually negotiate how to communicate with the brain.
Neuron's aren't like digital logic, no group of brain cells learn and grow the same way and any others, they are all unique and have to in some sense negotiate how to communicate messages with each other, using a reward and punishment system.
John
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
TFA reminded me of something I stumbled across last year: http://www.gfai.de/~heinz/. It's mostly german, but this guy's publications contain many new concepts and ideas and are definitely worth some time and consideration.
http://www.gfai.de/~heinz/historic/index.htm has more material on the topic.
I thought this article was going to talk about floating wires up into your brain through the bloodstream. http://www.pbs.org/22ndcentury/story_brain.html
I caught the show the other night but PBS has it online, as well.
It would be great; a harkonen heartplug and a datajack all-in-one.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
Now I can finally learn kung-fu in a few hours
I hope it won't lag.