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.'"

Comments

Applications?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a place that would benefit from smarter crackheads?

Re:Applications?

[Hal_Porter]

Well it might improve the editing on slashdot.

That is unnecessarily cruel

[0xdeadbeef]

Just let them wear a suit and go to business school. It's what they really want.

yessss

[binarylarry]

Fuck sharks, I want hyper intelligent, semi retarded cocaine monkeys with lasers on their heads!

Unintentional humor?

[Carnildo]

There's just something about the phrase "decision-making ability in brain-damaged monkeys on cocaine"....

Planet of the Apes

[Ice Station Zebra]

George Taylor said, "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"

this is your brain

[circletimessquare]

(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?

Re:Great News

[Required Snark]

You've got it backwards. The Occupy movement has had a significant real world impact. It brought the issue of effective tax rates for the rich into the presidential race, including the obscenely low 15% tax rate paid by Romney.

http://media.talkingpointsmemo.com/slideshow/mitt-romney-taxes

Now that Mitt Romney's confirmed what we've long suspected about his effective federal tax rate -- "It's probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything" -- we have a fact worth contextualizing. Though it could easily be less, assume Romney effectively pays 15 percent in taxes on all his income to the federal government. How does he stack up to the rest of us, most of whom are regular wage earners? When you account for the fact that most people also pay payroll taxes, and don't enjoy enormous deductions, credits or other benefits, you see that Romney's making out about as well as a taxpayer who makes $50,000 a year. Not bad for a man whose net worth is estimated to be in the neighborhood of a quarter billion dollars.

Meanwhile, the Republican controlled House has voted 33 times in 18 months to repeal Obamacare.

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/healthcare/Republicans-Vote-to-Repeal-Obamacare--Again-and-Again.html

Breaking news!! The House of Representative voted to repeal all of Obamacare – for the 33rd time.

In a recurring political ritual, Republicans in the chamber denounced the law as a government takeover and said that all of it has to go. Then they backed up their statements with a vote.

The action has virtually no chance of becoming law. The Democratic majority in the Senate is certain to block it. And if for some reason it does not, Obama has promised to veto it.

So who is acting more like a troupe of cognitively impaired monkeys? I would bet that after so many failed attempts the monkeys would have given up and moved on to something more useful.

Score: Monkeys 1, Republicans 0. It's not fair to compare either monkeys or Republicans to the Occupy movement because they are not playing in the same league.

Re:Smarter or just less impaired?

[bbecker23]

The feed back device didn't improve the monkey's intelligence, it simply undid some of the damage the crack did to them.

Really? Not even going to RTFS?

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.'"

Emphasis mine. Your other points may be valid, but this technique certainly did more than just undo the effects of the drug.

Re:Let me get this straight

[artor3]

Sounds like most of the people who show up in PUGs.

WTF?

[mordejai]

Am I the only one that finds it disturbing that a scientific study gives a dangerous drug to primates in 2012?

Re:WTF?

[jrumney]

Yes. The rest of us realise that controlled clinical administration of drugs has no relation to the hysteria surrounding street drugs, regardless of whether the substances are the same.

Re:WTF?

[Air-conditioned cowh]

Am I the only one that finds it disturbing that a scientific study gives a dangerous drug to primates in 2012?

It's like feeding caviare to pigs! What a terrible waste.

Research grants

[funkboy]

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?

Re:Great News

[SydShamino]

Maybe you don't know how Congress works? No one has to "vote to overturn" the repeal bill - it dies automatically when it's never taken up by the Senate, the same as the last 32 times.

Re:Great News

[sjames]

The Democrat's action in that case is actually working. It isn't retarded to apply a successful strategy successfully multiple times.

Re:Hasn't anyone ever used Cocaine?

[YttriumOxide]

Hasn't anyone ever used Cocaine?

Two or three times, yes... but I decided it's really not for me. I find the "high" doesn't last long; and there was significant impairment in my ability to rationalise decisions (especially those relating to social behaviour - similar problem to alcohol but without the messiness and stumbling all over the place)

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 don't think they actually CAUSED brain damage using cocaine. They simulated it using cocaine. See the bit I wrote above about impairment in my ability to rationalise.

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.

I generally agree with you here. It does seem odd to skip the control group of monkeys that weren't given something to simulate brain damage. Especially since their results apparently showed these "damaged" monkeys performing better with the assistance of the device than they performed with neither the device nor the cocaine.

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.

In very light moderation, it might help; but large amounts of either is going to damage my coding. Being impulsive; not stopping to think about better ways to do things; etc. These effects come from both caffeine and cocaine, it's true; but caffeine is easier to moderate to a small dose in general (and legal - not that that bothers me for other substances I do like to take on rare occasions; but for something I use daily like caffeine, I'd be wary about replacing that with cocaine!)