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The Future of Putting Chips Inside Our Brains
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at the University of Florida (UF) have developed chips which someday might be inserted in the brains of people affected by epilepsy or who have lost a limb. These neuroprosthetic chips 'can interpret signals in the brain and stimulate neurons to perform correctly.' The University claims this is the future of medicine. This is maybe a little bit extreme. Just the same, the researchers are already studying these chips with rats and hope to have a prototype ready within 4 years that could be tested on humans."
"The future of medicine." I'm sure. In any case, I'm always happy to hear about something to help people to live better lives, even if it sounds a bit too much like something out of a cyberpunk novel. What does concern me are things such as, say, sensitivity to EMP. I'm sure that there will be ways to work around this... This is interesting: "We have intermediate designs that connect to the brain, interpret signals and can wirelessly send commands to devices," he said. "This is another path of technology we're pursuing." While the summary doesn't mention this, the prospect of controlling things across the room with a thought is perhaps not as far away as one might think.
Ooo! What flavour?
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Lets hope that if people try this on a real brain with Epilepsy they read The Terminal Man first.
As for me, I will continue rely on home brewed behaviour modification to treat my seizure disorder. Though I am pleased to see more treatment options for people with very serious conditions.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I'm not sure that anyone has ever reached the "storage capacity" of his brain, or that there is any confirmation that such a thing exists. Our memory seems to be more of a dynamic thing than a static collection of information with an identifiable upper limit.
I just installed a Troll Chip, and it's working great! I've never fealt better or smarter. Oh, and by the way, both emacs and vi suck eggs to high hell, and C# is better than Java.
Table-ized A.I.
instant porn in the middle of boring meetings. Brilliant!
Table-ized A.I.
I'd be satisfied if I could just figure out the restaurant tip in my head.
How about something that filters out pointless conversation instead? In the middle of some intense thinking and and some numbskull walks wanting to share some boring story again? Expecting an urgent email but tired of reading each message as it pops up? Tired of having to concentrate and focus on "conversation" with the Wifey or kids (aka, saying "uh-huh" at the right time)?
Get a Conversation Coprocessor! It handles mundane written and verbal conversations for you! Worried about missing something important? Conversation Coprocessor records all conversation for later review and recall. If any current conversation meets the conditions you specify as being "worth attending to" it immediately triggers a small sneezing/coughing/belching fit and plays back the previous conversation buffer to you. End result: you waste less time on pointless conversation and are able to time-shift conversations! It's like Tivo for conversation.
Now I can stop moving altogether and type only with my mind, thus completely leaving the animal kingdom.
Philosophy.
That's an interesting thought. I have synesthesia , so I'm very familiar with experiencing certain things in ways that are foreign to most other people. It's interesting to ponder what types of sensations can be created by external forces applied directly to the brain. Some studies have shown that direct stimulation to some parts of the brain can produce first-person sensations, such as smell, taste, etc. I think that some type of great leap in the way that we understand the brain would be necessary before something like that could even be thinkable. Concerning your statement that we don't reach our brain capacity in our lifetime because we're slow at learning, there appears to be evidence to the contrary. First, consider all of the information we take in. It's true that most people do not assimilate (as far as we know) all of the textual, factual information that they encounter. However, we remember so much more than simple factual information. We remember not only facts, but events and sensations. We, furthermore, remember the associations. Consider this: In just one day, what is there to remember? There are people, conversations, feelings, environments, thoughts, countless objects. We don't necessarily remember all of it, but we remember quite a bit. Also consider some exceptional cases of people who can remember everything that they read (and read extremely quickly). There was a video about such a person on YouTube, but I can't seem to find it. He not only read at an incredible rate, but also could do calculations extremely quickly and reproduce entire landscapes. His brain has yet to get "full.' In addition, any autistic people have been shown to factor large primes extremely quickly. In any case, I think that it is very premature to refer to the brain as though it is merely a biological computer with a biological hard drive.
... And then brain spam. Must buy more viagra...Must buy more viagra...
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Big or small tits? (I'm going to hell)
Quack, quack.
Then the rest of my brain could concentrate on the problems the computer isn't good at.
Such as finding a purpose for doing 4096-bit RSA in your head. Unless you mean doing 4096-bit RSA encryption in your head to your head, in which case the rest of your brain had better be concentrating on the key.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Read about a brain implant that has already been tested in humans: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=182802 &p=irol-newsArticle_print&ID=1026764&highlight=
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Inserting such an object into someones brain I believe should only be done in extreme cases. I don't see why this can't be done with some embedded computing in a cap or hat with electrodes and a bio-feedback mechanism. Headphones with binaural beats and eyeglasses running alphawave patterns. Surely this neat device could prevent the need to insert a chip in many cases. Bio-feedback EEG is already being used for Epilepsy at www.adhd.com.au and there has been an open source eeg for years at http://openeeg.sf.net/ Quantative EEG (http://www.adhd.com.au/QEEG.htm) databases to give us the mean to write protocols for normalizing brain function.
Must be a bitch when you come in for a next-gen upgrade and it uses a different socket. =/
Haha- so this is the sort of article that I miss when I sleep? Anyway, I have collected some links that somebody might find useful to go start some more research. Maybe setup a basement lab or something.
... ... with Prozac?
-- General
* Irazoqui's neurotransceiver [pdf] [2003] The problem with Irazoqui's device is that it is maybe 1% power efficient, so maybe some electronicists can come around and make some suggestions to improve the coil design and so on. He did his testing on rats, not humans.
* Direct brain interface bibliography from the University of Michigan
* Gleamed from an article below: wireless visual cortex implant publications
-- EEG
* Controlling computers with EEG signals
* EEG via soundcard from OpenEEG
* Wireless EEG
-- Slashdot goodness
* Scientists couple nerve tissue with semiconductors
* Post re: neurosilicon junction with PDF
* Thinkware
* Good post w/ links on neurocomputation
* Brain slice experiments
* Neuroscientists at MIT doing direct neural interfaces- but this post sets things into perpsective as well as this one
* Single neuron recordings w/ ref
* Sorry to dash your hopes, but
* Autonomously adjusting electrodes? and more
* Artificial hippocampus and stimulating neuron growth / neurogenesis
* Implant a chip inside your head- though it does not discuss the specific surgery skills you would need
* Working nerve chip of silicon and snail neurons
* Re: Kevin Warwick- interview- the so-called "Captain Cyborg" since '98 or something
* BrainPort
* Fusing neurons with computers
-- More
* Artificial vision
* The vision quest
*