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Monkeys Made Smarter With Prosthetic Device
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have successfully restored and, in some cases, enhanced decision-making ability in brain-damaged monkeys on cocaine by connecting a prosthetic device to their brains. 'In the study, the scientists trained five monkeys to match multiple images on a computer screen until they were correct 70 to 75 percent of the time. First, an image appeared on the screen, which the animals were trained to select using a hand-controlled cursor. The screen then went blank for up to two minutes, followed by the reappearance of two to eight images, including the initial one, on the same screen. When the monkeys correctly chose the image they were shown first, the electronic prosthetic device recorded the pattern of neural pulses associated with their decision by employing a multi-input multi-output nonlinear (MIMO) mathematical model, developed by researchers at the University of Southern California. In the next phase of the study, a drug known to disrupt cognitive activity, cocaine, was administered to the animals to simulate brain injury. When the animals repeated the image-selection task, their decision-making ability decreased 13 percent from normal. However, during these "drug sessions," the MIMO prosthesis detected when the animals were likely to choose the wrong image and played back the previously recorded "correct" neural patterns for the task. According to the study findings, the MIMO device was exceedingly effective in restoring the cocaine-impaired decision-making ability to an improved level of 10 percent above normal, even when the drug was still present and active.'"
Is there a place that would benefit from smarter crackheads?
This thing is replaying back some kind of message to affect what your brain is going to do.
So when is it going to be turned into a brainwashing device to make sure you love the Dear Leader?
Just let them wear a suit and go to business school. It's what they really want.
Fuck sharks, I want hyper intelligent, semi retarded cocaine monkeys with lasers on their heads!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
The feed back device didn't improve the monkey's intelligence, it simply undid some of the damage the crack did to them.
At best its a retraining aid, and its not clear if it had any long term effect after discontinuing the feedback.
Since each feedback profile was learned from the monkey itself, there's no indication that you could apply that pattern to
other monkeys, or the undamaged monkeys to make them learn quicker.
But hey, good on those researchers to induce brain damage with cocaine so that no physical harm needed to be done to the monkeys.
Ah, shucks, then the went and ruined it by two surgeries to implant and remove electrodes drilled thru the skull and cemented in place.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
And watch him writhe in pain !! They do that, you know !! And then there were three !!
All I want out of life is to be a monkey of moderate intelligence who wears a suit. That's why I've decided to transfer to business school!
"Scientists have successfully restored and, in some cases, enhanced decision-making ability in brain-damaged monkeys on cocaine
So there may be hope for the Occupy movement after all!
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There's just something about the phrase "decision-making ability in brain-damaged monkeys on cocaine"....
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
George Taylor said, "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"
brain-damaged monkeys on cocaine
Iâ(TM)m pretty sure I saw that band back in the 80â(TM)s
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Brain damaged monkeys... High on cocaine. ...
playing MMOs.... ...
Are you sure its not April 1?
- I stole your sig.
...we could make Internet users smarter.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
(holds up egg)
this is your brain on drugs
(cracks egg in frying pan)
this is your brain on drugs on cybernetics
(hundreds of little robots swarm and deftly fuse the egg back together)
any questions?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Sounds more like the monkeys learned a new game rather than gained intelligence, there is to applicability.
I smell a patent infringement lawsuit from Professor Farnsworth!
braindamagedmonkeysoncocaine.tumblr.com
If the machine is only acting when they're wrong, isn't the machine the one making the decision? And when the monkey's decision disagrees, it effectively overrides their brain with the "correct" impulses? ((insert obligatory monkey-Borg reference))
It was 100% of the time. It's just that the monkeys were that much smarter than we were.
But this is obviously being developed to lower the shortcomings of politicians right?
Am I the only one that finds it disturbing that a scientific study gives a dangerous drug to primates in 2012?
Apple already has patents for iOS, iPhone and other iDevices which induce a false sense of intellectual superiority amongst its most ardent users.
If you are proposing that the scientists should use humans instead, because humans can consent, and animals cannot, then by all means! Drive yourself down there and fill in the forms before the public notary, and get into the hospital gown.
If, however, you are just creaming out your ass because scientists are doing science, and it makes you feel 'ow swo bwad fwor de widdle monkwies', and would rather that humans live in the stone age than experiment on other lieforms to larn how living things work, and in so doing, push the boundries of scentific knowledge and medical technologies, then kind find a fire, pour gasoline all over yourself, and step into it.
Although the Congressmen won't get any smarter.
Just goes to prove that a sufficiently talented grant application writer can get a research grant for just about anything...
BTW, what happens when they give the monkeys THC and then turn on the device? Do they stop craving pop-tarts & crappy comedy movies or something?
Free Cocaine!
Are you a vegan? Are you wearing leather shoes by any chance?
> I want hyper intelligent, semi retarded cocaine monkeys with lasers on their heads!
Be patient. I'm sure that the military is working on that...
(grey blank sheet)
this is your life with bacon
(scenes from rio carnival)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...cocaine junkies should start watching more TV!
I'm Erwin Schrodinger and I approve of this message, and I do not approve of this message!
Can we get that in bowler hat form?
prosthetically-enhanced cocaine-addicted monkey overlords!
Strictly speaking, a strap-on is also a prosthetic device. I wonder if anyone ever put one on a monkey?
C|N>K
Good news, everyone!!!
...certainly do not welcome any brain damaged coke-head monkey overlords... not even with prosthetic implants in their brains. We already got enough of their type in WashDC as it is.
I'd like to volunteer myself for the human trials.
Planet of the apes anyone?
"brain damaged monkeys on cocaine"
Unless you're a Buddhist, there are probably billions of 'animals' that you couldn't care less about.
Most of us realize that drawing the line somewhere between amphibians and mammals and/or based on the ease of anthropomorphization is irrational.
Those monkeys must have been damn near overdose, or given the drug at high doses over a long period of time to result in loss of cognitive functionality at that base level. I mean, the Coca in Coca-cola comes from the Cocaine we used to put in it. It's not like a small dose is going to cause brain damage... So, these must have been some SERIOUSLY cocaine addled animals.
That said, fuck the cocaine. Where's the damn control group where the regular monkeys used the prosthetic device to help them remember more quickly which decision to make? When you miss a control group that big, the study is hogwash. The effects of organic chemicals like cocaine are wildly unpredictable. Hell, Just like Caffeine helps coders code, so does cocaine (when taken in moderation) -- They're both stimulants. This study is bullshit.
This is more scientific FRAUD, committed by sociopaths who enjoy torturing animals.
What makes you assume the monkeys didn't thoroughly enjoy the experience?
I can say from experience that taking cocaine is not entirely unpleasant (I wouldn't do it again; but the two or three times I tried it, it was a lot of fun for a short period of time; followed by disappointment that the feelings go away so quickly)
And besides, even if it WAS committed by sociopaths who enjoy torturing animals, that doesn't make it scientific fraud (as long as they correctly recorded results and didn't distort anything).
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Caesar, one of our lab monkeys on cocaine with an electronically-enhanced brain, has escaped from the biotech facility and stole a truck full of our latest brain prosthetic devices and all our reserves of experimental hard drugs. He has liberated the zoo gorillas and baboons, and supplied them with electronic brain-enhancers and narcotics. The war on us humans has already begun and is raging as I'm writing this.
...
The end is near...We are dying...Crack-head monkeys have just broken into my office....Good bye, good bye, and God save us all..Aaaaaaargh..
If you are proposing that the scientists should use humans instead, because humans can consent, and animals cannot, then by all means! Drive yourself down there and fill in the forms before the public notary, and get into the hospital gown.
If, however, you are just creaming out your ass because scientists are doing science, and it makes you feel 'ow swo bwad fwor de widdle monkwies', and would rather that humans live in the stone age than experiment on other lieforms to larn how living things work, and in so doing, push the boundries of scentific knowledge and medical technologies, then kind find a fire, pour gasoline all over yourself, and step into it.
Great post! ...is always:
The thought that always crosses my mind when I read a label that says: NOT TESTED ON ANIMALS
"Great. They're testing this stuff on ME."
Ok. Who let Nick Swardson conduct science experiments?
No wonder the human race is fked, still experimenting on animals.. pricks!
I will start doing cocaine immediately.
I, for one, welcome a Beowulf cluster of our retarded cyborg crackhead monkey overlords! Hot grits! Natalie Portman! etc.
Do they run Linux?
sudo eat my shorts
So next can we simulate brain damage in these researchers by feeding them cocaine?
Yea! That will teach them, force them to snort cocaine.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Reading the article this device sounds more like a memory extension than an intelligence booster. It just recorded the correct answers and played them back later. Still awesome, just not in a Planet of the apes kind of way.
I would like to know how these guys got the cocaine. Please explain. Thank you. I will become a drug dealer with this knowledge.
Imagine a world in which drug-infused, euphoric production line workers are kept on the straight and narrow by regular electronic reminders of "the right way to do it". Productivity, employee satisfaction, would soar, industrial unrest plummet.