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Device Reads Messages From Surface of the Brain
Al writes "Technology Review has a story about a start-up company that has developed a more-accurate and less-invasive way to read a patient's thoughts. Neurolutions, based in St Louis, has developed a small implanted device that translates signals recorded from the surface of the brain into computer commands. The device, which is less invasive than implants and more accurate than scalp electrodes, uses a grid of electrodes placed directly on the surface of the brain to monitor electrical activity. This technology is currently used to find the origin of seizures in patients with uncontrolled epilepsy before surgery. But the company says it could also help paralyzed patients control a computer and perhaps prosthetic limbs using their thoughts. Tests involving more than 20 patients have shown that people can quickly learn to move a cursor on a computer screen using their brain activity."
For a lot of Internet uses it'd just read a one word message.
"Vacant".
More stories like this please.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
When this becomes a standard human input device...I don't want it. How will you explain when your browser suddenly navigates to your favourite porn site.
We can already let blind people see by connecting cameras to their tongues. If this sort of technique becomes easier/safer, it could be used for any sort of human/machine interface. Prosthetic limbs are only the beginning...
I hope this does not have nasty side effects like increased chances of tumors...
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
Non invasive brain interfaces is nothing new. Here's a video of a HL2 mod where you're using your mind to pick up objects and throw them at other players. The question is if the mind reading is accurate enough to actually control a mouse pointer efficiently or reliably start macros (voice recognition style).
How much longer till we can figure out how our brain "codes" things then exploit it for our own benefit? Just think about it, custom-made drugs to make it seem like you are flying, fighting a dragon, more epic than any video game imaginable, all while being perfectly controlled with little to no side effects. Or take a pill and have the entire library of congress memorized. I wonder how much longer this will take.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
"Focus-follows-brain" will hopefully be followed by "do what I meant, not what I said" ;)
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
"More-accurate and less-invasive" is misleading, since the thing that it is "more accurate" than is not the same thing it is "less invasive" than. It is more accurate than the minimally-invasive electrodes-on-the-scalp method, and less-invasive than the more accurate electrodes-implanted-into-the-brain method.
It is, likewise, less accurate than the electrodes-in-the-brain method, and more invasive than the electrodes-on-the-scalp method, so it would be as accurate (and as hyperbolic, in the opposite direction) as TFS to call it a "less-accurate and more-invasive" method as it was to call it a "more-accurate and less-invasive" method (simply switching which existing method it was compared to for accuracy and which it was compared to for invasiveness.)
It would be most accurate (and not at all hyperbolic) to call it a method which is intermediate between two existing methods in terms of both accuracy and invasiveness.
Quote:
developed a small implanted device that translates signals recorded from the surface of the brain into computer commands. The device, which is less invasive than implants
How's that again?
I suppose I could break down read TFA.....
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I hope you don't twitch under extreme pain. Could end up in some kind of endlessly recursive feedback loop. Which would hurt. Muchly.
I liked the other thing you were going to say much better.
Neurolutions, based in St Louis has developed a small implanted device that translates signals recorded from the surface of the brain into computer commands. The device, which is less invasive than implants and more accurate that scalp electrodes, uses a grid of electrodes placed directly on the surface of the brain to monitor electrical activity
Awesome! They developed an implant which is less invasive than implants!
Next up, a duck that quacks louder than a duck!
Laying an electrocorticogram array (that's what they're using -- it's not new) on the surface of the brain requires removing a section of the scalp, skull and dura mater. There's nothing about it that's not invasive as well as dangerous. Single cortical or deep electrodes can be put in through very small drilled holes. The former requires a full neurosurgical suite/team. The latter can be done in a clinic visit if localization isn't critical, or else in a CT or MR scanner with no more invasive electrode technology than the clinic version. The draw back to implanted electrodes is that inserting them into proximity of the neurons of interest can cause them to die off immediately, and will cause them to die off eventually.
Both are unnecessary for the application. In 1994 a researcher working at Radford University with Karl Pribram developed an EEG analysis program that could recognize various shapes, sizes and colors (various combinations thereof) of objects both seen and only internally visualized, with a 95% accuracy. Such accuracy among the many permutations of possible signals could very easily translate into control signals sent to another device. Fully designed but not built around this technology was such a control device intended to run an 8 stepper motor robotic arm using a standard parallel printer port. Since it rests on the scalp, an EEG electrode such as we used here is not invasive in the least. Well, the sticky glue electrode paste necessary to keep the electrode on and conducting for several hours tend to pull out hair, but that's annoying and slightly painful, but not invasive.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
If computers can be controlled by thoughts, why is a cursor needed at all?
Surely it's possible to interact with the controls directly through thought.
I'm pretty sure people are working on cursors that follow your eyes, but the crazy bastards I heard about were just using cameras pointed at the eyes.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Except your eyes don't sit staring at one spot even when you think your staring at one spot, your eyes continuously flicker around and scan the general direction your looking at in order to build up a image of the world. I think there has already been several machines that read where your looking from the reflection off your eyes, with middling results. In general people just can't hold the stare, even if the machine can average out the microscans of the eyes.