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Scientists Develop Brain-Microchip Bridge
dreampod writes "Canadian scientists have developed a microchip capable of monitoring the electrical and chemical communication channels between individual neurons. This is the first time scientists have been able to monitor the interaction between brain cells on such a precise and subtle level. In addition to providing the ability to see more easily the impact of drugs on various mental disorders during testing, this provides one of the first fundamental steps towards real mind-machine interface."
What I really want is a vampire plug that sits on my optic nerve(s) and captures everything I see and records it to a hard drive. I would like it to automatically tag timestamps with my thoughts at the time, but that can wait for version 2.0.
I thought this sort of thing was quite difficult, without vapourizing the tissue and dropping it into a mass spectrometer. I know CSI can drop a grain of goop into a breadmaker and have it pinpoint every compound, dna profile and isotope distribution in a few seconds, but I kinda guessed that was a TV-ish thing.
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. - GB Shaw
I believe this will be an easier way to immortality than any genetic treatment.
If you think about, from the moment on that you can store you memories and later thoughts in a chip, just like you do in your brain, how can you distinguish between what goes on in your biological brain and digital one? Where is the barrier?
I know we are still far from that time. Perhaps decades at the best, but just think about the philosophic implications of that and how the concept of life, intelligent life and humanity will need to be re-defined.
It's a "brave new world".
Before jumping on this, read the small print.
They take out a piece of brain tissue, and implant it into the machinery, not the other way around. I'm not sure about you guys, but that kind of interface doesn't seem too useful to me, although it could be useful for diagnosis.
I rather suspect if it were the other way around, (implants for arbitrary interfaces) there would be a bit of a hue and cry. Especially when human subjects are discussed.
Its the safe way to do the research without attracting the attention of political or religious groups.
Its pretty patently clear that implantation is the ultimate goal, and this opens a whole can of worms best left unopened while the research is young.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Sure, but the idea is to monitor thousands or even millions of them....at least if you are planning on doing the kinds of sci-fi-ish things we'd like to do. The issue here is what resolution are we working at. Current technology is several orders of magnitude less than neuron level. Neuron level (or even higher, synapes level) would be good, even if each individual neuron may not be giving a lot of info. (just as every pixel in an image doesn't have a lot of info)
Whether we can ever do it, and whether we'll be able to process all the data meaningfully, no one knows. But the future is long.