Ultrathin Silk-Based Brain Implants

hatboyzero writes "University of Pennsylvania engineers have designed silk-based electronics that can stick to the surface of the brain, allowing for better brain-computer interfaces. The researchers say the silk-based devices are thin and flexible enough to reach previously inaccessible areas of the brain."

Comments

I'm sure it'll be brought up..

[allaunjsilverfox2]

Kinda like the interface from avatar. And just about every other Science Fiction story I've read.

Re:I'm sure it'll be brought up..

[nospam007]

But it must be buggy since the stuff comes out the ass of a bug.

Next steps, please

[Thanshin]

Ok. I've got the guy's brain in the silk bag, how do I set up the interface now?

Re:Next steps, please

[idji]

it's really often very scary what gets tagged informative or funny on slashdot.

Re:Next steps, please

[Thanshin]

I don't know if it's the case, but I think at some point in the past, some people decided to stop using "Funny" because the combination of a "+1 Funny" with a "-1 Overrated" ended up being a -1 on karma, which could make a single unevenly popular joke empty any amount of karma.

Re:Next steps, please

[mcgrew]

"Funny" gains no karma. The way to tell if someone doesn't care about karma? If they joke a lot, they're no karma whore. And some of us are swimming in karma and really don't worry about it.

Re:Next steps, please

[ajrs]

"Funny" gains no karma. The way to tell if someone doesn't care about karma? If they joke a lot, they're no karma whore. And some of us are swimming in karma and really don't worry about it.

I can tell you care about Karma because you didn't make a joke.

Re:Next steps, please

[mcgrew]

I can tell you care about Karma because you didn't make a joke.

You must not visit here often.

Re:Next steps, please

[Ol Olsoc]

What was his name - Abby Normal?

Oblig XKCD

[rachit]

http://xkcd.com/644/

Re:Oblig XKCD

[Strange Ranger]

Perfect.

Re:Oblig XKCD

[ultranova]

You know, if you connected a USB port to a brain, the chances are that you would learn to control USB devices with it eventually. You'd need some extra electronics to handle the interface - since USB is a high-frequency serial bus and brain uses low-frequency parallel bus - but this far, it seems that simply patching the signals from/to somewhere in the brains is sufficient for them to adapt.

That's only natural, really: converting signals between different levels of abstraction, inferring conclusions, and converting the results back to low levels is what intelligence is all about.

Re:Oblig XKCD

[bytesex]

Maybe. I just don't see how your body is going to put the 5 Volt on it, though. Or, more importantly, how your body is going to cope with the Amperage if some device down the line short-circuits it.

Re:Oblig XKCD

[gringer]

at least in that comic, he's asking for an arm implant. The body tries its hardest to keep foreign stuff out of the brain (possibly including immune cells, I can't quite remember) -- I'd rather keep it that way.

Re:Oblig XKCD

[mcgrew]

The brain doesn't use a bus, its connections are parallell yet serial. Nothing man has devised is anywhere near as complex. We know vastly more about the brain than we did fifty years ago, and we still know next to nothing about it.

If this were as advanced as some of you guys are making it out to be, blindness, deafness, and paralysis would be a thing of the past. We're still a long way from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.

Re:Oblig XKCD

[algormortis]

Mod parent up. He's completely right--the electrical signals of the brain have to be interpreted by computer software in order to do the most basic of functions. It took years just to get a monkey to move a robotic arm, or a quadriplegic to use a computer mouse. You can't just connect something to the brain and expect it to eventually work.

Re:Oblig XKCD

[ultranova]

Maybe. I just don't see how your body is going to put the 5 Volt on it, though.

Like I said, it would need some adapter electronics. The USB power requirement could be met with a glucose fuel cell, perhaps?

Or, more importantly, how your body is going to cope with the Amperage if some device down the line short-circuits it.

Hey, I never said it's a good idea ;). Anyway, we could deal with this by using a wireless transmitter between the brain-silk and external devices; this would also solve the problems associated with having wires going through your skull

Re:Oblig XKCD

[ultranova]

The brain doesn't use a bus, its connections are parallell yet serial. Nothing man has devised is anywhere near as complex.

True, but that's true of life in general. Also, modern microchips are getting close.

We know vastly more about the brain than we did fifty years ago, and we still know next to nothing about it.

We know, in general terms, how it works. We know how neural networks work, we know what areas of brain do what. We don't have a complete model of it yet, but that's mainly a question of sheer amount of data to be inputted.

Most importantly, we know that brain is extremely flexible and will, in general, adapt to make sense of pretty much anything that gets inputted there.

If this were as advanced as some of you guys are making it out to be, blindness, deafness, and paralysis would be a thing of the past.

We're working on that.

We're still a long way from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.

Yes, I'm certain you'll have to wait a long time for a fictional future to come true. The real future, however, has already began. Please ignore the ominous music and the grinding sound of the wheel of time coming towards you from behind :).

Re:Oblig XKCD

[Monkeedude1212]

If this were as advanced as some of you guys are making it out to be, blindness, deafness, and paralysis would be a thing of the past.

We have achieved some great leaps in those fields. There was a woman who spent a lot of money to get an electric eye implanted in her. And she could identify shapes of objects placed within 4 feet of her. She described it as many tiny bumps appearing and disappearing rapidly, but otherwise couldn't describe it.
And even those with lesser deafness can get hearing aids. And like that XKCD comic, Somewhere in a lab there are monkeys controlling robotic arms with just their brains. We've made simulations that you interact with using just your thoughts, by processing the brainwaves you emit.

While we don't understand the inner-workings of the brain, we understand its input-output enough to use it. It's like Object Oriented programming, and we just don't have the API.

Re:Oblig XKCD

[mcgrew]

Yes, I'm certain you'll have to wait a long time for a fictional future to come true.

I'm 58; I already live in a science fiction world. When I started reading science fiction at age twelve there was no space travel, no self-opening doors, no PCs, no microwave ovens, no flat screen TVs, no cell phones, no way to record a TV show, etc.

I've already waited a long time for a fictional future to come true, and it has.

Re:Oblig XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's all fun and games until someone hacks the WEP in your cheap knock-off version and you become the Manchurian candidate.

Re:Oblig XKCD

[TheRaven64]

no space travel, no self-opening doors, no PCs, no microwave ovens, no flat screen TVs, no cell phones, no way to record a TV show, etc.

Of the things on your list, only the PC, flat screen TV, and cell phone did not exist in some form in 1964. Hand-held two-way radios did, so cell phone is stretching it a bit. PC is stretching it a bit too, because there were single-user minicomputer around that time.

As someone half your age, I find it slightly sad that flat screen TV is the defining feature of your science fiction world.

Re:Oblig XKCD

[ConceptJunkie]

If this were as advanced as some of you guys are making it out to be, blindness, deafness, and paralysis would be a thing of the past. We're still a long way from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.

Yeah, for one thing the clerk at 7-11 totally refused to let me pay in whuffie.

Re:Oblig XKCD

[mcgrew]

In 1964 Yuri Gagarin had gone to space (and straight back down) only three years earlier; space flight was in its infancy (I posit that it still is). Space stations (the Russian MIR was the first) were far into the future, as were communications satellites (IINM the first was launched that year). There was no GPS, of course.

There were no self-opening doors; in Disney's biography, it notes that some time after Star Trek debued, Disney went to Paramount to try to get the tech for the self-opening doors, only to find that it was just stage hands pulling the doors open; grocery store doors had handles and didn't open by themselves until the late sixties or early seventies.

There was a microwave oven in 1947, but it was almost two meters tall; microwave ovens in the home didn't happen until the seventies. TV sets still used tubes, as did most electronics; the IC came much later (a small IC cost $1000 per circuit in 1960 dollars). Video recorders existed, but only for commercial use, not in the home, and nobody dreamed that some day you would be able to "time shift".

The two way radio I had in the USAF in the early seventies was the size of three bricks and weighed about as much, and could hardly be characterized as a "cell phone", You couldn't call anyone not on your frequency, let alone call anyone in the world who had a telephone.

Minicomputers were multi-user computers; the PDP-7 pictured in the wiki article was the size of a couple of refrigerators. "SRI researcher Douglas Englebart in 1968 gave a preview of what would become the staples of daily working life in the 21st century - e-mail, hypertext, word processing, video conferencing, and the mouse. The demonstration required technical support staff and a mainframe time-sharing computer that were far too costly for individual business use at the time."

That list just scratched the surface of what we take for granted that didn't exist, or existed only in the lab or commercial use at the time. There weren't even digital watches or digital clocks. Autos didn't have fuel injectors, ABS, air bags, or even seat belts. It was an analog world; the only interaction most people had with computers were utility bills that came on Hollerith cards that said "do not fold, bend, staple, or mutilate". That meant no digital music, no digital video, no internet, no word processors; hell, carbon paper was more prevalent than photocopiers.

When I broke both my arms at age seven, they knocked me out with ether -- automotive starting fluid, and used plaster casts. When I had a hemmoroid operation in 2002 there were all sorts of sophisticated monitoring devices. The doctor said "ok, you're going to sleep now" and the next thing I knew I was awake in the recovery room and couldn't even tell I'd been drugged (although they warned me that if I drove in the next 24 hours I'd get a DUI). That's in stark contrast to ether, which was horribly nightmarish going under and sickening after waking back up. I wrote about a friend's experience with modern medical tech in a journal last year.

I have an implant in my left eye that was FDA approved in 2003; after being extremely nearsighted all my life, and farsighted as well in middle age, I now have better than 20/20 vision. That's better tech than Dr. McCoy, who had no cure for Kirk's age-related farsightedness except antique reading glasses. The device cures nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, and cataracts; it's a lens that replaces your eye's focusing lens, and sits on struts so you can focus (most people can't after middle age, the lens gets hard).

There was nothing wireless except transistor radios. The list goes on and on; it was primitive as all get out, but didn't seem so to us at the time.

Re:Oblig XKCD

[mcgrew]

Yeah, but Slashdot pays you in whuffie. They just call it "karma".

Re:Oblig XKCD

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Thats because you're a bollock brained idiot. n/t

we're doomed

[dudpixel]

I for one, welcome our new, silk-laden, cyborg overlords...

Re:we're doomed

[gyrogeerloose]

I for one, welcome our new, silk-laden, cyborg overlords...

Or maybe our new, silk-laden arachnid overlords?

Re:we're doomed

[cmdr_tofu]

The Spiderians are actually more closely related to Earth-elephants than they are to Earth spiders.

Re:we're doomed

[TheFakeMcCoy]

What about the Silk Worm, just implant that via the ear canal and then it does the rest of the work for you/

Re:we're doomed

[dudpixel]

hmmm, which is easier?

humans using silk or silk worms using chips (ie. circuitboards)?

What can we access from the brain surface?

[!eopard]

The brain is a three dimensional matrix, however TFA only mentions wrapping around what appears to be the outer surface of the brain. How much of the brains' functions are available purely via the outer surface?

Re:What can we access from the brain surface?

[toastar]

Believe it or not the soft tissue of the brain is easier to read through then the skull, not to mention the problem of refraction.

Re:What can we access from the brain surface?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite a bit is localized to the cortex, such as motor control. It's also used for higher thought, but that's too random to really do much with. Humans have the most advanced cortex of any animal, although that also means it's thicker (1.5 - 4.5 mm), which may present the problem you propose.

Re:What can we access from the brain surface?

[Hurricane78]

Luckily it doesn’t matter much. It’s not about what we can access. (There is a much better interface to that, called speech! ;)
It’s about plain interfacing. With feedback. And in that matter, the brain can without any trouble reconfigure itself (=training/learning) to do whatever you want.
It’s what you do all day long anyway.

Remember those experiments where they stuck a couple of wires in a monkey’s head, and he “magically” learned to use them to control a robotic arm... in addition to his other limbs!
That’s what I mean.

If you know how a (really any) dynamic neural net works, it’s obvious. (But it gets harder with old age. Though I think there are drugs that can partially undo it. But you don’t want to mess with those, since it’s the same thing as forgetting old habits... and you may find yourself forgetting someone or how to do something important.)

I have no doubt, that you can train yourself to send any patterns of signals over those wires. And sense anything that’s coming in As long as they are below your brain’s maximum resolution (in time and space) and in the proper voltage/current range.

Re:What can we access from the brain surface?

[pieisgood]

The brains cortex is where all the processing is done. When we go deeper into the brain what you get are long axons that interconnect regions of the brain. In the middle of the brain is the corpus collosum which acts an information transfer center from the left to the right brain and vice versa. Now the cortex its self is a 3 dimensional matrix, as you said. I doubt we will be able to (in any near future scenario) build small enough electrodes and exact placement techniques as to make brain implants that function perfectly along side our own brain activity. This silk interface is good for rough signaling and signal reception... which is a great first step. /tangent

Re:What can we access from the brain surface?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you can train the cells that you can reach that way to work as an interface to 'deeper' stuff. I imagine something like interfacing with some extra-sensors or some machinery to control things would be possible. I mean the brain is not static.

Re:What can we access from the brain surface?

[gringer]

Luckily it doesn’t matter much. It’s not about what we can access. (There is a much better interface to that, called speech! ;)
It’s about plain interfacing. With feedback. And in that matter, the brain can without any trouble reconfigure itself (=training/learning) to do whatever you want.
It’s what you do all day long anyway.

Sorry for trotting this out again, but why do we need to use the brain if it's about interfacing and feedback rather than access? Surely a less invasive place (e.g. arm, leg) would be just as effective, and less likely to cause problems.

Oh, BTW, when did sigs stop appearing for non-registered users?

Re:What can we access from the brain surface?

[mcgrew]

There is a much better interface to that, called speech!

Speech is an incredibly bad interface or nobody would ever be misunderstood.

And sense anything that's coming in As long as they are below your brain's maximum resolution (in time and space) and in the proper voltage/current range.

The brain is not elecrtical, it's electrochemical, with most connections being purely chemical. Thought, senses, movement, are really just complex chemical reactions.

Re:What can we access from the brain surface?

[Hurricane78]

Actually I don’t think we do need it. But it certainly is simpler to get a higher bandwidth with so much neural contact surface. Also, I don’t think normal nerves can adapt that much, if at all. And finally, Laying something on your brain may not be as invasive as splicing nerves close to your back bone.
I think the main problem with dedicated nerves (e.g. in arms or legs), is that you can either use them for their normal function, or of your interface. Not both. So you’d have to e.g. wiggle your toes at the same time of doing stuff. Which can be exhausting, silly, and just plainly not what you want to do.
In the brain there is no real dedicated functionality. Sure, when you grow up, the parts become more and more specialized. But that is mostly rather arbitrary. It is proven to easily change. E.g. in case of an injury or simply lacking that part. Which is why the monkey could do that third-arm trick.

Re:What can we access from the brain surface?

[Hurricane78]

Speech is an incredibly bad interface or nobody would ever be misunderstood.

Don’t mix up language with speech! I agree on the language part. But that’s simply a matter of which language you choose. Just like with electronic interface data formats.
Also, It’s the only quick way to transport the whole information. Emotional and logical content, accentuation, etc. This text here, for example, still misses all my accentuation, and therefore, if you expect something I say to be accented in an angry way, you may mod me troll, even when I, myself did not mean it angry at all.

Also in any case, it’s still much better and simpler to get working now, than some BCI implant and interpretation software. :)

The brain is not elecrtical [sic],

Wrong.

it's electrochemical,

Correct.

with most connections being purely chemical. Thought, senses, movement, are really just complex chemical reactions.

Completely wrong. Yes, the transmitters in the synaptic clefts are chemical. But the whole flow in neurons, from the dendrites, trough the cells and their the axon into the synapses, is electrical. I think this is also commonly known even by children, by now...

The chemicals moving around outside, are the broadcasting system, and used for body-wide effects, like emotions.

But logic and learning is the effect of forwarding/firing/non-firing trigger levels changing. Which is an electrical effect.
A software neural net simulates this. (Nowadays you can also simulate those global messengers.)
So we can still interconnect things.

Or do you really believe that those already existing BCIs work chemically??

Re:What can we access from the brain surface?

[Anonymous Coward]

rocked you like a hurricane!

I for one...

[hedgemage]

welcome our new silkworm overlords. You wouldn't think that they would pass up a chance to control our brains by pooping silk into them, would you?

Bring it on

[Wolvenhaven]

Just what I want, pop ups in my head triggering all my senses. Although 90% of it will be porn so we shouldn't complain. Along with that, full sensory recording would be really cool.

Re:Bring it on

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm curious if one brain could be wired to another. Imagine not having to explain something out when you could pop the idea directly into another persons head. Also imagine what corny jokes there could be if it were possible to make a beowolf cluster of the greatest minds on slashdot.

Re:Bring it on

[Merls the Sneaky]

Do it wireless and you have invented the technological equivalent of telepathy.

Re:Bring it on

[mcgrew]

This isn't about wiring your brain to the internet, it's about wiring cameras to blind people's visual cortexes, microphones to deaf folks' auditory cortexes, and using thought to control artificial limbs. We're a LONG way from directly accessing the internet with your brain.

Re:Bring it on

[Toasterboy]

Actually, "the computer", and by extension "the internet" would be just another device to control as far as these interfaces go. In the various cybernetic monkey experiments, the robotic parts ultimately become an extension of the body; a two way digital communication link to the outside world would probably be adapted to in the same way; eventually the user would sort of "think at" the link to be able to read and write information. Would work a lot like io completion ports and device registers, which is how current drivers communicate with current devices. Bit of a challenge to work out a protocol for meaningful communication, but this part does get bits in and out.

This class of device is quite close to the minimum requirements for a direct neural interface. (Assuming the infection bits get worked out and so forth.) Would not want to be a beta tester though.

Video and image transfer requires a lot of bandwidth to transmit, but audio streams are nowhere near as intense. Won't take too many generations of the technology to get bandwith rates that are high enough to sustain a data stream the size of a voice data stream; the brain will pretty much automagically learn to interpret the data.

It is a long way from something like the Matrix, with total override of perception, though.

Ahh...

[djupedal]

For the softness she wants and the protection you need....

Re:Ahh...

[Anonymous Coward]

speaking of women, maybe they can patch the monthly memory overflow that seems to occur. you know, the one that is timed exactly during that other overflow.

Re:Ahh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck with that one. I think that's built in there somewhere deeper than anyone probably actually wants to try to reach. There may be hope, but don't count on it in our life times.

AAAIIIEEE !

[Rollgunner]

Now I'm going to be having nightmares about having Brain Spiders for a month...

Re:AAAIIIEEE !

[weirdcrashingnoises]

Don't worry, they should have a patch for that next week!

Re:AAAIIIEEE !

[mcgrew]

Silk comes from silkworms, not spiders. So now you can have nightmares about brainworms.

Re:AAAIIIEEE !

[Anonymous Coward]

The brain spiders will? Good god!

Reminds me of Beneath a Steel Sky

[Cryacin]

Robert Foster: I need a neuroport like I need a hole in my head.
Doctor: Ummmm... it is a hole in your head.

Re:Reminds me of Beneath a Steel Sky

[Anonymous Coward]

Schreibman Port
Just saying.

Re:Reminds me of Beneath a Steel Sky

[Hordeking]

Schreibman Port Just saying.

I just keep screaming that the Steel Sky is falling, but no one is listening!

Engineering Fashion Analogies ...

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Engineers have now designed silk-based electronics that stick to the surface of the brain, similar to the way a silk dress clings to the hips.

From TFA. Now, what is on those engineers' minds . . . ?

Can someone tell me what the Large Hadron Collider is with a woman's fashion analogy . . . ?

"The Large Hadron Collider is leaking liquid helium again today . . . it's like having a run in your stockings. It has been patched with nail polish."

Re:Engineering Fashion Analogies ...

[timmarhy]

they probably haven't been laid in a long time i suspect..

Re:Engineering Fashion Analogies ...

[Abstrackt]

Can someone tell me what the Large Hadron Collider is with a woman's fashion analogy . . . ?

It's like an expensive pair of shoes that look great but are a terrible fit. Most of the time you curse spending all that money on them because you hardly get a chance to use them but they're so darn cute you keep trying anyway.

(Minutes ago, I yelled across the house, "hon, can you think of a shoe analogy for the LHC?")

Sci-Fi based implants

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I was thinking how much this was like the implant in John Crichton's head in Farscape.

Re:Sci-Fi based implants

[Tx]

I always wondered what the "Neural Lace" implants in Iain M. Banks' Culture novels were made of; perhaps the fabric implication of the word "lace" is about more than structure after all.

It gives a whole new meaning to...

[stevediver]

cobwebs on the brain.

Disappointing

[H0D_G]

I wanted one that I could click my fingers to open

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Game

finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

finally i can get my neocortex-m3 implant!

Juvenile

[DoctorUnk]

If I want reams and reams of juvenile rants I would read teens.com , I used to follow slashdot rigorously for the insight , irreverent though it may be. This technology could be the future for spinal injuries, possibly even act as stem cell scaffolds, but all you see is trolls and idiots trying to out lame each other. This makes me very sad

Re:Juvenile

[timmarhy]

what slashdot have you been reading for the last 5 years? nothing insightful here in a long time, please go back to your teens.com (i bet that's a porn website)

Re:Juvenile

[Anonymous Coward]

i bet that's a porn website

Yes, yes it is.

Breaking And Entering

[mindbrane]

Nature went to a lot of trouble to isolate our brains. In terms of the skull, the Pia Mater and the blood-barrier. I don't know if I'm ready to go sticking stuff in there, especially in light of evolution's work to keep stuff out, and, our still insufficient knowledge of the brain.

Re:Breaking And Entering

[Lotana]

I don't know if I'm ready to go sticking stuff in there, especially in light of evolution's work to keep stuff out, and, our still insufficient knowledge of the brain.

No one is talking about starting to implanting things right now. These are the first steps. Of course researchers will be careful to make sure it is safe (Or at least worth the risk) before starting human trials.

And this is a very important area of study. Imagine someone that is paralysed or missing a limb. If we can build artificial limbs and able to interface it directly without causing infections or rejections, this will substantially improve their quality of life!

This is actually very exciting news. We should definitely pursue this as much as we can.

Re:Breaking And Entering

[Dodgy G33za]

So fine then, unless you are a monkey in a research lab. So perhaps we should prepare to welcome our simian cybernetic overlords....

Inaccessible areas

[wombatmobile]

thin and flexible enough to reach previously inaccessible areas of the brain.

The back of your mind?

The tip of your tongue?

The part that eats in moderation, stops drinking early, wins the girl and wears the condom?

Freudian slip...

[fredrik70]

I read that as 'Ultrathin Silk-Based Breast Implants'...

oops.. oh well, shows what goes on in my head...

Re:Freudian slip...

[Wabbit Wabbit]

You're not the only one.

Made in...

[ZirconCode]

Made in China

Man, Georgia was right

[Arancaytar]

Just in time!!

Transhuman Manchurian - blue screen - candidate

[voodoo cheesecake]

Hopefully this will turn into something useful for handicaps we haven't been able to tackle yet such as psychological disorders and perhaps even color blindness. I for one would love to see what enhancements get developed. I've always been curious what it would be like to experience the parts of the electromagnetic spectrum I don't have sense organs for, not to mention being able to record my dreams. Add an internet connection and it all goes to hell in a hand basket! Welcome to the construct!

Re:Transhuman Manchurian - blue screen - candidate

[plastbox]

For extra senses, see sensory substitution. Tons of research show again and again that sensory information from outside sources (camera, touch-gloves, balance magnets, compass etc.) presented to the brain through the skin/tongue using vibrators or electrodes are integrated into ones perception of the world. I don't think you can record your dreams since every brain is rather different, but research has shown that what you see is "projected" onto your visual cortex in a way that makes it possible for researchers to guess what you are looking at (at least basic shapes) with rather low-res medical imaging equipment. If you want you can learn to communicate while you dream though. Lucid dreaming is when you become aware that you are in a dream without waking up. Paired with EOG and the fact that your eyeballs actually move left/right corresponding to the direction you look in the dream has allowed a few people to output morse code while dreaming, communicating from a "different world". =P

Re:Transhuman Manchurian - blue screen - candidate

[mcgrew]

Hopefully this will turn into something useful for handicaps we haven't been able to tackle yet such as psychological disorders and perhaps even color blindness

Color blindness* is caused by the retina's cones being the wrong size; the only way this would help that is to have cameras wired into the brain. Correcting color blindness wouldn't be worth it, but it would be to someone who is totally blind.

* Actually the "color blind" do see color; my dad's color blind. They just don't see the same colors as we do.

Silk?

[DavidD_CA]

I prefer the way velvet feels, actually. I know it's not as clingy, but it breathes better.

And we all know the brain needs oxygen.

Wow!

[Lotana]

This is awesome! I hope this research will not encounter any major barriers and we will finally have a way to interface with the brain directly.

What an amazing age we live in.

Re:Wow!

[ProfessionalHostage]

Just in case you dont know yet we CAN do that already. We call it reasoning.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sheesh, don't tell him. He will need a brainchip to figure that out. Or, failing that, Wikipedia.

Idiocracy meets Nineteen Eighty Four. Really, barring a few persons, most of the 'Slashdotters' here are beyond gone - totally sold on the 'transhumanist' hype train.

Re:Wow!

[mcgrew]

What an amazing age we live in.

Amazing, yes, but primitive. It always seems like the "now" is advanced; to me, it's all science fiction come true. But look back at today in thirty years and you'll marvel at how you got by without [not yet invented tech] and how primitive it was back then (now).

Iain M Banks Culture

[rallycellie]

In the novel 'Excession' I believe, a description of the neural lace is to be found. No acces to the book atm though.

Stuff is already stuck in there without much issue

[LockeOnLogic]

Implants for instractable epilepsy and other neurological conditions have existed for many years and are tolerated well.

Silk is a biological substance , rejection risk?

[Viol8]

Current implants all use biologically inert man made substances. With silk being a biological substance isn't there a high chance of rejection from the immune system? Not something you really want to happen inside your skull.

Add the packet radio interface...

[TrentTheThief]

It sounds very much like the sort of thing used in "The Long Run" by Daniel Keys Moran.

Sign me up!

Re:Add the packet radio interface...

[Anonymous Coward]

Silk... Stockings... The Long Run... There's a joke in there somewhere...

Re:Add the packet radio interface...

[TrentTheThief]

LOL, good one, mate.

if you like cyberpunk, the book a good read.

Too bad this is illegal...

[wiredog]

in Georgia.

Emergency patches

[Anonymous Coward]

I worry about emergency patches, sometimes they brick the system.

Neural Lace

[RivenAleem]

I knew Iain M Banks was on to something.

Worms

[pipingguy]

Wait - isn't silk made by worms? So now we have computer AND brain worms? Aaaarghhhh!