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Controlling Monkey Brains and Behavior With Light
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers reporting online on July 26 in Current Biology have for the first time shown that they can control the behavior of monkeys by using pulses of blue light to very specifically activate particular brain cells (abstract). The findings represent a key advance for optogenetics, a state-of-the-art method for making causal connections between brain activity and behavior. Based on the discovery, the researchers say that similar light-based mind control could likely also be made to work in humans for therapeutic ends."
Great, now I'll need to find some matching sun glasses to go with my tin foil hat..
"...I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease." - Linus Torvalds
With the proper feedback mechanism the primate can be compelled to perform a variety of directed tasks. One such method is the mod point.
Note to self: Investigate modulating the LED intensity via a s/w trojan planted on laptops as a means of mind control and the first step to acheiving world domination.
Bwaaaah haaaa haaaa!
Have gnu, will travel.
Humans are apes. "Monkey" excludes hominids.
Americans and TV
This gives a whole new meaning to the term "Mood Lighting."
Controlling people's behaviour with light impulses was part of the plot line in last week's episode of "Continuum".
What was once true, is no longer so
They call it television. It works very well by telling people what is cool and what isn't. Also in election years, the politicians tell the people what they want to hear by spending money, and naive voters pick their candidate on this. Big media does their part too by making the bought and paid for candidate sound smart and the opposition sound like a negative radical.
God spoke to me
What a great idea . . . although, I guess Facebook already does that.
They were very successful at convincing their users to buy their stock.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
As another poster pointed out, we have known this for years concerning neurons.
The deal here, is that we need to introduce a benign photopigment gene (like jellyfish fluorescent protein) into the target's neurons, then produce a contact-free BCI that uses small solid-state laser diodes as the signalling pin grid array, coupled with a sensitive CCD that records the flash patterns of the activating neurons underneath.
Using different frequencies of light for signal and reception allows you to isolate signal data.
A fully contact-free BCI could be created this way.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3009633&cid=40793757
My other UID is three digits.
I'm always suspicious of stock wallpaper shipping with a distro or a beast like Microsoft Windows. Think of the millions of eyes which view these same images every day, for hours and hours on end.
The same for popular music where millions are listening to the same single copy reproduced millions of times, possible subliminals backed by powerful companies with possible occult ties.
Most media coming from powerful countries is controlled, shaped, and fashioned to provide a concentration camp effect for the mind.
Good, TFA never mentions how this could be used for nefarious purposes. I mean, with algae-based gene therapy on brain cells and fiber optic cables crammed into your head, what could possibly go wrong?
what about Mozilla's Persona, could it be a real alternative?
At least gives power to the users and not to the websites...
https://login.persona.org/about
http://identity.mozilla.com/
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/BrowserID
We all believe that, right?
This is a very promising technology. Minimally, it is already proving invaluable for neuroscience research. What it means is that using genetic engineering (e.g. viral introduction of engineered genes into the brain) you can activate or inhibit a specific class of neurons (more precisely: neurons in which a specific genetic promoter is active) in a small brain region (using a surgically implanted optical fiber), and you can do so on the time scale of normal neuronal firing.
This is a very powerful tool for mapping out the function of genetically identifiable classes of neurons. Turn 'em off, see what functions are impaired. Make 'em fire action potentials, and see what happens.
Moreover, this is potentially a mechanism for introducing information directly into the brain. We don't really understand the brain well enough to do anything terribly useful with that, but taking the (very) long view, it could be a technique for direct brain-computer interfacing. Of course, activating all of the neurons of a particular type in a small region is still pretty crude compared with directly addressing individual neurons, so it is hard to know how useful this will be in practice. Even at this crude level, it will probably be medically useful for treating neurological disorders like epilepsy and Parkinson's Disease, and in the process we will identify and resolve the safety issues. You'd have to be nuts to do this sort of thing to a human being just for research purposes, but for treatment of severe disease, it will likely be worth the gamble.
Also, for a real interface you want bidirectional information flow. But it might be possible to get information out of the brain optically as well, using genetically engineered fluorescent proteins that react to things like changes in neuronal calcium levels or membrane voltage, exciting the proteins and picking up their emissions using the same kind of surgically implanted optical probes.
A small step for mankind, a giant leap for monkeys writing the complete works of William Shakespeare.
Here is a nice video for a more striking visual example. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88TVQZUfYGw
Loads of stupid, moronic posts about this, as if it's all a 'bit of a laugh', right?
Do you know what the word 'pain' means? Have you ever experienced it?
Couldn't your sociopathic minds even begin to wonder what those monkeys went through? Why no video footage of this pointless 'research'? Wouldn't that be hugely beneficial for other scientists? Oh wait - we can't have the public seeing what these nutcases do to animals, can we.
God help your children (if any of you wankers manage to ever have any) - imagine having a father who can't feel your emotions, and can only pretend to be 'normal' and empathic.
Does anybody else remember the movie 'Looker'?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/
Great, now I'll need to find some matching sun glasses to go with my tin foil hat.
Only if you've had your brain injected with the artificial retroviral biotech material.
This is just an application of an existing technology to primates. No big news.
The technique involves injecting the brain in the desired region with an artificial retrovirus-like agent. This contains a gene for an artificial surface protein that triggers the nerve to fire when exposed to a particular color of light, along with a promoter that activates the gene only in the correct type of neuron. The combination of the selective promoter and selective injection site makes it possible to target a particular set of nerves.
A couple of similar gene hacks can be used to get output by making selected cells flash in one of two colors when they fire.
(I read TFA hoping they'd found a way to use light to fire general nerves without first modifying them. But that was apparently not the case.)
So if the mind controllers haven't been drilling holes in your skull and sticking needles into your brain you don't need the shades.
Yet. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Recent data shows that "monkey" is only a monophyletic group if you also include apes. So no, humans are monkeys after all, in the exact same a that birds are dinosaurs.
Wasn't this last week's episode of Continuum verbatim?
Graet minds is what I'm going with...if it can be used for good it'll be adapted for evil. Althoughm fortunately, if A=B, B=A.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I was thinking more of the funny science fiction novel "Shades of Grey" by Jasper Fforde where people get healed by being shown certain colors (and can even overdose on certain pleasure-inducing colors). Maybe not so far-fetched after all? It's quite amazing how many seemingly absurd elements of that story start to make sense after a while, I can't wait for part 2 and 3.
(note: I did not mean "fifty shades of grey" which is an entirely different book that appears to be more popular for some reason)
Good, TFA never mentions how this could be used for nefarious purposes. I mean, with algae-based gene therapy on brain cells and fiber optic cables crammed into your head, what could possibly go wrong?
If this technology were built up by the wrong people in the right way it could replace waterboarding.
Wait, is the light shown to the monkeys or is it injected inside their brains?
The other night I saw a video of a cat being shown a video. Electrodes in the cat's brain, were wired to a screen showing a slightly garbled version of that same video. So light from a video went in the cat's eyes, then electrodes in the cat's brain took the image and fed it to another video screen and the image was recognizable. I for one am impressed.
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