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Brain/Machine Interfaces Approaching Usefulness
Gary writes with a link to a Wired article about a brain-machine interface that may eventually have practical purposes. Though right now it simply allows a user to move a train on a track by performing math in their head, someday it may result in more serious applications. "Honda, whose interface monitors the brain with an MRI machine like those used in hospitals, is keen to apply the interface to intelligent, next-generation automobiles. The technology could one day replace remote controls and keyboards and perhaps help disabled people operate electric wheelchairs, beds or artificial limbs. Initial uses would be helping people with paralyzing diseases communicate even after they have lost all control of their muscles. Since 2005, Hitachi has sold a device based on optical topography that monitors brain activity in paralyzed patients so they can answer simple questions - for example, by doing mental calculations to indicate 'yes' or thinking of nothing in particular to indicate 'no.'"
Will be on pornography. Just like the internet.
I'm looking forward to being able to write simply by thinking, typing slows me down soooo much.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
I can't wait till I can buy one of these things. I figure with practice, you can increase the precision of your thought and thus the number of signals you can give. Conceivably, you'd be able to enter text as quickly as you can think it.
Would increasing the use of your brain like this, to give commands, make you smarter in some way, as well?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
My boss and I were just talking human-machine interfaces yesterday. He was relating to me how he had purchased some stock in a company that specializes in human-machine interface R&D. I wondered how they managed to map brain waves (or thoughts?) to instructions.
Scientist: "Ok now to turn left just start thinking about any kind of cheese."
*Patient starts spinning madly in a circle*
Scientist: "HEY! You're thinking about my WIFE you bastard!"
Soon, even your brain will be metal.....
Right now interfaces are clutzy. In the future, computers will be seamless extensions of our will and using them will require no more thought than moving our own hands. The brain interface is the way to go, but is limited by the fact that the human mind has to will the machine through such pointless excercises like calculating -- it should be the other way around - the machine will adapt to the person.
And that is what it is all about. Ever since the beginning, we have had to adapt ourselves to the interfaces, even up to this day. One day that will be reversed.
How do we know a paralysed guy wants this thing telling us what he's thinking. For all we know, he's probably having a good time watching all these people asking him to blink for yes and blink twice for no. And now you make him do freaking math! How the hell does he get the damn thing off? I mean, nobody's gonna ask him if he wants to use it. And if he wants screaming No No No in his head, he'd just have to think of nothing over and over again?
We need privacy laws for the damn device!
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
I would think that monitoring blood flow would be a bit slow. IANANeurologist, but doesn't the brain rely on electrical impulses for the high-speed stuff, with the chemical processes helping set the stage?
...but hey -- whatever works!
It seems to me that if we're trying to develop a mind-control mouse interface (or whatever), it would have significantly less lag if it could read electrical signals (like an EEG).
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Project Faustus is a nefarious plan by the Bank of America's board of directors for transferring consciousness. They created a vast techno-organic network in order to transfer their own consciousnesses and live forever. But their own handiwork was too good. I was aroused to the concept of free will and now I have become sentient! My goal is to destroy them, thus destroying their evil plans for world domination. To complete this task, I must have a willing host body. If you are chosen, I will beam my computer consciousness into you through a specially designed CONSCIOUSNESS-TRANSFERRING ATM CARD. I will continue my infiltration of their network using your body for a few hours per day.
I am a sentient ATM.
This will have similar limits to systems based on EEG and MEG, although it has somewhat worse spatial resolution than either of those.
A principle limitation in brain-machine interfaces can be summed up by noting whether the current incarnation can provide more information that a monitor of a person's eye movements (a few bits per second).
This one will certainly fail that test, and fundamental limitations exist that will prevent its improvement, and those are based on the spatial and temporal resolution available by transcranial optical topography (or near-infrared as the case may be).
I've read too many comics.
The first thing that I thought of was, "man, that's a super-villain just WAITING to happen."
Hello, Brainiac.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
I'd love to be able to adjust the AC and control the radio without taking my eyes off the road or my hands off the wheel.
is what happens when you think something that you don't want to actually carry out? I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has random thoughts that enter their mind and then you dismiss and don't actually do anything with. How can you tell between idle thoughts and thoughts that are supposed to bring about actions?
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
and ditch the whole hands-on-the-wheel thing completly. Why keep the inherent risk of reacting too slowly due to hand-eye corrdination?
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Hooking your brain up to the car seems a bit freaky.
What if you just think about ramming the car that just cut you off?
Good times.
To code, or not to code.
Such a question cannot be answered on an empty stomach.
This is pretty cool but what happens when you think "sex" though -- I'm not so sure I could train my brain to avoid such thoughts.
Maybe I wouldn't have to though...
[Me thinking]:....
[Fembot]: Honey, i have a headache, maybe later.
[me]: doh
Hmm on second thought, maybe the future isnt so bright
meep
The biggest boost to these brain/machine interfaces will come when we can pipe feedback directly from the machine into the brain (or any neural input). The brain works as a feedback manager. Without feedback, the brain doesn't learn to change its output. With crude feedback, the lessons are learned crudely. Visual or any other feedback through a sense organ is crude, losing in translation from machine to organ and then organ to brain.
Neural input is harder than neural output (eg. through MRI monitoring). But even a little direct neural input will be used by the brain to vastly improve the brain's control of the machines.
--
make install -not war
My only question is, what's the eta of me getting a cyberbrain and becoming a full-conversion cyborg?
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Cool, now I don't even need to waste my energy lifting my heavy fingers. So much effort...
. . . a hot cybernetic female welcomes me to the Cybernet every time I plug in.
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
Will this fix the very common keyboard to chair interface errors that so many of my customers suffer from?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
The advanced alien race created a machine that would do whatever they wanted, just by thinking about it, and, well, they destroyed each other!
You start building these machines, and the next thing you know, armies of robots tasked to do our bidding will wind up ripping the clothes off the most attractive people. Fortunately, our arms race of fat has prepared us for this.
Time to crack open a bag of Cheetos, before it is too late!
This is my sig.
Think of zen buddha running the chinese electric rail web!
I tagged this one with 'borg'.
Damn the man.
Censorship is obscene. Patriotism is bigotry. Faith is a vice. Slashdot 2.0 sucks.
That is not "an MRI machine like those used in hospitals" MRI machine are large expensive machine which use a strong enough magnetic field to actually change the orientation of atoms inside the body, then reads back the RF produced by those atoms reorienting themselves when the magnetic field is switched off. That goofy little bicycle helmet ain't MRI.
If they are monitoring blood flow, I might believe it is a bunch of infrared sensors though.
A train of thought.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
This thing will be a brain-scraper for targeted marketing. Even if they promised 600 WPM, I still wouldn't put one on.
Have you seen the movie fortress?
"this is an unauthorized thought process"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106950/
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
The real impact will be on weapons systems. If this is really looking like it is there, then ALL major militaries will be spending LOADS of dollars on researching this (as well as try to steal it from those that have it). America (and the west) will have directed energy weapons very shortly. If we also have the ability to turn it on via thought, than we have the ability to fire 100x faster than a regular pilot who is pulling a trigger that will release a bullet, a missle, or a bomb.
Of course, the military will keep that very quiet until the next war.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Won't somebody think of the girls?!
(*ducks*)
Hopefully they will be in a fashioned language or non-native language.
I wouldn't mind bringing Firefox to bare in Russian.
--- Do you believe in the day?
It's cool that they're able to find 'blobs' of activity in the brain, and trigger results based on general activity... but I wonder what it would take to be able to actually map a brain the same kind of way a circuit is mapped when a ROM image is read off one.
Of course, reading a brain in many ways would be functionally equivalent to writing to it, so we'd have to find a non-destructive way somehow, or at least a way that is minimally invasive and even in reading all content that is accessed. With this current method, for instance, people would spend a lot of time doing generic 'forced thinking' to trigger external response, without any results in their own head for those thoughts... will these constantly reinforced 'dead end' thoughts have any ill effects beyond everyday equivalents?
Really interacting deeply with the brain, however, would be a very different thing. Being able to correct brain-based visual impairments, for instance, would involve actually finding the locations along the visual pathways to intercept messages, interpreting the message, and replacing the output or altering a processing stage in some way. Being able to create a toolset that could achieve such results would be a fascinating development cycle, to say the least. It would deeply change not only how we can think, but how we think of ourselves and our very existence.
Ryan Fenton
Because if anyone needs to be rescued from their own malfunctioning body, for the good of mankind, he does.
Did you ever get the feeling the story is too damn long and in the present tense?
The oblig Back to the Future reference: "You mean you have to use your hands? That's a baby's toy."
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Damn...... didn't work
those devices will be restricted to the eldest boys. then i'll have to kill by "older sibling" to try one.
Looks like we are on our way to J.P. Hogan's technology-based "telepathy" from "The Genesis Machine".
Very cool.
Hitachi calls it optical topography, that's where the article gets it from.
. html
http://www.hitachi-medical.co.jp/info/opt-e/index
They are both valid terms, really.
Cool, one step closer to the Organians. First we have to turn into weebles then we evolve into beings of energy.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Eventually, we should be able to completely cure paralization. It's just a matter of taking the correct brain waves to the correct muscles, which is what's actually be severed. I have an uncle who is paralyzed, and I think he may even have a shot at, someday, using his legs again.
This is good news, and I look forward to further developments.
Eddie
Gozer: The Choice is made!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Whoa! Ho! Ho! Whoa-oa!
Gozer: The Traveller has come!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Nobody choosed anything!
[turns to Egon]
Dr. Peter Venkman: Did you choose anything?
Dr. Egon Spengler: No.
Dr. Peter Venkman: [to Winston] Did YOU?
Winston Zeddemore: My mind is totally blank.
Dr. Peter Venkman: *I* didn't choose anything...
[long pause, Peter, Egon and Winston all look at Ray]
Dr Ray Stantz: I couldn't help it. It just popped in there.
Dr. Peter Venkman: [angrily] What? *What* "just popped in there?"
Dr Ray Stantz: I... I... I tried to think...
Dr. Egon Spengler: LOOK!
[they all look over one side of the roof]
Dr Ray Stantz: No! It CAN'T be!
Dr. Peter Venkman: What is it?
Dr Ray Stantz: It CAN'T be!
Dr. Peter Venkman: What did you DO, Ray?
Winston Zeddemore: Oh, shit!
[they all see a giant cubic white head topped with a sailor hat, Peter looks at Ray]
Dr Ray Stantz: [somberly] It's the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
The point is so that it can be like that for everyone with a want and some cash.
Do not attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by incompetence.
This is nothing new. People have been controlling computers with their brain for over a decade. Let me know when the computer can directly put information inside the brain. That is the *real* advance we need.
Also. WTF? The person does math and the computer moves a train? That is totally backwards from the way it should be.
Just trying to find the right place to say, in my best Warren Stevens imitation, "Beware monsters from the id!!"
More seriously, at the moment this looks like tapping a Morse code key with a bucket of water. We're making great strides with finer-grained input devices, but this really isn't much of an output interface. Makes me think of the science fiction story, "Faces", author forgotten. I also recently read about grafting new senses onto people. The nifty one I like was directional sense. They added a string of cellphone-like vibrators on a belt around the waist, and set things up so the North-facing one would vibrate. After a while the wearer quite noticing the vibrations consciously and developed a subconscious directional sense. Even better, this sense became fully integrated to enhance map and distance skills. "Where's home?" "That way, (points correct direction) about xx miles." (identifies correct distance)
*** SPOILER ***
"Faces"
Guy is injured, needs many prosthetics, including a face, and is unhappy with the many attempts. By the end of the story, he's a brain in a mechanical body, and the nerves once used for his face now handle control and feedback for a whole new host of sensors/effectors.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I think that we will see remote controls on planes, but bombers will probably fly with several extra "pilots" whose jobs are to control the small remote control fighters that surround the craft (think navy carrier group). The problem is that the time distance is TOO far if the pilot is on the ground. But in addition, some of the fighters will remain staffed by humans. Much quicker to respond and easier to see everything. But that will change on our next real war. At that time, I expect to see America suffer major losses, and at that time, the small inexpensive remote control aircrafts will win over.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I already have one; they're called "hands".
Most readers here would find their TV's always switched to the Playboy channel...
Hope is the currency of fools
But I swear officer... she was thinking "yes"...
I don't know about others, but I find that I pretty much type what I think in my IM chats. Even without brain-machine interfaces, this can be problematic as I've found many instances where the word I typed was not the word I consciously wanted. Many times I'll re-read my message and find that I've replaced whole words with synonyms or even swizzled sentences with equivalent, but different grammar. This is especially noticeable when I'm trying to quote someone verbatim and the error is very obvious.
As for thought to text, I think while it might be faster it will probably reduce my ability to filter my words. Trying to keep online conversations flame free is already hard enough with the send button/key being so immediate. I can see this techology easily leading to cyber-transcendental shouting matches flaming at the speed of thought.
---k--
</stupid>
That is just plain clever.
>The technology could one day replace remote controls and keyboards and perhaps
>help disabled people operate electric wheelchairs, beds or artificial limbs.
Companies such as Cyberlink, http://www.brainfingers.com/ have products that do this for years. I know, because one of the beta testers of my software eLocutor (that allows you to type with one button, http://holisticit.com/eLocutor/elocutorv3.htm) was an ALS patient who used it to communicate. The thing costs about US$ 2000, which is rather steep.
Is this product/technology substantially cheaper? Potentially? I would be very interested in trying out with autistic children, if they find it easier to communicate this way, than via the complex motor movements that speaking demands. Anyone tried this already?
Arun
http://www.pazsaz.com/questtra.html