Hardware Implants Mimic Brain Cells

An anonymous reader writes "PopSci is reporting that Ted Berger, a USC scientist, has been working to engineer a brain implant the mimics the functions of neurons. Early tests on rat brain cells have shown promise, and if successful, Berger's implant could remedy everything from Alzheimer's to absent-mindedness — and reduce memory loss to nothing more than a computer glitch"

Comments

Had to be done

[Darth Hubris]

Press earlobe-eyeball-nose to continue

Time to recycle the MS-Borg icon

[davidwr]

Methinks it's high time to make a generic borg icon for cyborg-tech stories.

Engineered humans?

[Checkmait]

I am torn over this idea because clearly it represents a potential major advance in science and a cure to several insidious, incurable (as of today) diseases. We could probably extend the life expectancy of humans by a decade or so.

However, it also presents some less optimistic possibilities: for example, someone might be able to "program" humans as we program computers today. Imagine some terror organization such as Al Qaeda creating a fearless, seven-foot, feel-no-pain specimen....

Re:Engineered humans?

[badboy_tw2002]

A decade? That's much to short sighted. Something like this could eventually enable immortality. Think about it - if you replace enough neurons, pretty soon most of who you are would live inside the machine. At that point, who's to say where your consciousness lives? Whats to stop you from transferring to a completely electronic brain and living on as long as you have juice? Of course, there's a lot of metaphysics around this - would "you" still be "you", what if you made a copy, etc. etc. Fascinating stuff. Of course, we're a long ways off from it, but if you look where transistors and such were 50 years ago, its not such a stretch to think this will be a possibility in the next few centuries.

Let's do it RIGHT this time!

[StefanJ]

Let's build DRM into those artificial neurons, so that the Man of the Future loses bladder control and convulsively vomits if he tries to access pirated media.

Re:Let's do it RIGHT this time!

[MoodyLoner]

I must be running a beta.

Or do American Idol and Survivor do that to everybody?

You know.....

[LordPhantom]

I, for one, welcome our new hyper-intelligent engineered-brain rat overlords! I've also invested in cheese futures.

Is absent mindedness something you can "cure"

[antifoidulus]

or is it just part of being human, and more importantly, a part of who you are as a person? I exhibit all the signs of adult ADD(lets not go into the debate of whether it is really a disease or not) but I refuse to take personality altering drugs. I may wind up more successful etc. but I lose a fundamental part of who I am. I won't take anti-depressents for the same reason. So I personally fail to see how absent mindedness is something different. Its part of who you are, embrace it!

Re:Java?

[AKAImBatman]

Does the main bus of your computer run Java? Does it run x86 instructions? Does it run anything of the sort?

This technology appears to be mainly about routing signals, not generating or processing them. It assists with memory by properly storing and retrieving those signals, but it does not interpret them. (As evidenced by his comment, "I don't need to understand music to repair a CD Player.")

The article is correct, however, in that this technology will bring us one step closer to understanding how the brain functions. Since these neurons are artificial, the signals passing through can be sampled and stored on an external device. This would allow researchers to reverse engineer many signals in parallel rather than trying to trace one or two signals through the brain as they've been doing.

Unfortunately, I doubt this technology will outright unlock the secrets of conciousness. Remember how neural networks were intended to be an invaluable research tool into self-awareness? Well, the resulting networks ended up working in a similar but fundamentally different way from the organic brain. That fundamental difference prevented the networks from fully simulating the human brain.

So we'll take the next step forward, and learn where our previous mistakes were. Not to mention, uncover thousands of new questions. :)

Raises some interesting questions

[Orange Crush]

I find the philosophical issues especially interesting. How much of the brain can be replaced before the original "self" no longer exists? I guess it doesn't really matter in the scheme of things so long as the pattern is replicated . . . I guess our brains are constantly gradually replaced throughout our lives--the molecules we were born with aren't necessarily the molecules we're currently made out of.

Re:Raises some interesting questions

[Tipa]

It's that old thought experiment -- if you have an axe and you get a new head for it and then later replace the handle, is it the same axe?

Playing the Alzheimers card to get funding?

[KokorHekkus]

I don't thing this could be useful for any Alzheimers treatement in a very long time if ever (and we've probably solved it in another way even if it ever gets there).

As I understand it Alzheimers is basically a case of protein misfolding creating amyloid plaques on the neurons and that really screws up the functions (perhaps some with actual medical/biological knowledge can expand on that). Anyway, it's not just one part that you can hot-swap to use a computer term... it's happening all over the affected area. So you're not going to just plop in a new frontal lobe and call that a cure are you?

And yet the researcher goes on and makes a big point of this:

Today an estimated 4.5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's, at an annual cost of some $100 billion, according to the Alzheimer's Association and the National Institute on Aging. "And those figures are just going to climb as my generation gets older," says Berger, who can rattle off the grim statistics from Alzheimer's and other brain disorders that disturb memory. Another 5.3 million Americans are victims of traumatic brain injuries

I do belive that this technology could have many many wonderful uses but that Alzheimers isn't one of them... and by using on of the scariest biggest diseases just to flag down some interest he's doing not only himself but the whole research area a disfavour.

Re:Great mambo Chicken

[ciaohound]

At what point are you more machine than person?

Well, if Obi-Wan is any authority on this, I guess it's when you have both arms and legs cut off and you can't live without a breath mask and respirator.

Interesting Timing

[jfdawes]

This guy is making chips that can "talk" to the brain in signals the brain can understand, even if he doesn't know what the signals mean. Pure mimicry.

Oddly enough, the people mentioned in Hacking Our Five Senses (Apr-03-2007) are using similarly arbitrary but mechanical means to also send signals to the brain (admitedly using existing pathways).

Would it be possible to combine these two techniques, as well as a few miniturization techniques (and perhaps standard "ports") to enable people to not just replace storage capacity but indeed "add" senses?

Instead of using a belt to buzz "north", use implants to send one of a set of predetermined signals. It won't matter what the signals would originally mean (if anything) - because if Hacking Our Five Senses is any indication, the brain is capable of creating maps for the the new signals anyway.

Borg indeed.