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Neural Prosthetic Acts Like "Bridge" Over Damaged Brain Areas
the_newsbeagle writes "If you can't fix it, go around it. That's the thinking behind an experimental treatment for traumatic brain injury. Using an implanted microdevice, researchers recorded the electrical signals from a sensory region of a rat's brain, skipped over a damaged brain region that typically processes sensory information, and sent the electric signals on to the premotor cortex. This cyborg mouse could then move normally. What this means is that we're getting better at speaking the brain's language — even if we don't understand it, we can mimic it."
Now I just need a low-latency wifi, a jar of nutrient solution, and a freezer full of brainless clones of myself. One connected at a time, followed by a 3-week detached workout cycle, then back to the freezer.
They didn't check the lesions were all in the same place.
Stop Hitting Yourself! Stop Hitting Yourself!
Can it help me finally "get" Prolog?
Table-ized A.I.
For a moment I thought I'm playing XCom and reading one of those research reports on aliens autopsies.
The took a page from their book and made a bridge over troubled waters.
Awesome!
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
I wanted to take a look at our cyborg mouse overlord, but watching the video made me sad. :(
(I was fully aware of how the research would have been conducted, and I have nothing against it since it's necessary to improve our knowledge of the brain, but it still made me sad.)
now, that's the meme for modern science.... just like quantum mechanics or particle physics. we can 'make it work', but we really don't know why. Higgs to the rescue? we still don't know. faith-based? anyone?
Radhakrishnan, is it?
There is still hope for mankind.
Please, someone hurry and post of a cookie clicker reference, I can't stand the anticipation.
Notice how much slower the rat is with the implant (the third video) than he was in the other two videos. Converting the signal and rerouting it seems to introduce some serious latency. I guess that shouldn't be surprising at all, but it is a testimate to how quickly the brain processes signals.
Goatse started as a joke, but it attracted all kinds of weird people.
When you're dimwitted
Feeling dumb
When circuits in your brain
Make your mind go numb
I'm in your head
When dendrites are dead
And neurons can't be found
Here's a bridge over damaged cortex
Now your mind is sound
Here's a bridge over damaged cortex
Now your mind is sound
When your motor nerves
Trip you on your feet
When your amygdala fails
And can't comfort you
I'll cure your rats
Who can't get fat
When pellets are all around
Here's a bridge over damaged cortex
Now your mind is sound
Here's a bridge over damaged cortex
Now your mind is sound
Having an implant that can 'patch over' damaged brain areas should make lesion studies more subtle and precise. They can certainly tell us something already, at least in broad strokes, about what functions go where; but it's hard to shake the question of 'if you damage area X, does function Y suffer because area X handles it, or because it depends on connectivity through area X between areas W and Q?' If we have a technique for replacing a functional area with a mere transmission line, that gives us greater ability to differentiate between an area with a functional role in some function and an area with a merely connective role (presumably, there are also areas that are mostly connective; but apply some amount of signal processing between input and output. In the future, maybe we will be able to write arbitrary signal processing filters and patch them in, in software, between the input and the output of this 'bridge' device. That'd be extra neat).
Monster Cables (TM) accurately mimics your system's HDMI signals to drive your television!
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
No-one's mentioned Hans Moravec yet? This is very similar to the concept he outlined years ago for uploading a human brain.
In other words, the Mouse Borg has begun.
Gently reply
Sort of like the I-405 through Los Angeles.
Have gnu, will travel.
I once went to a bioethics panel on computing and neuroscience and asked the ethicist who specialized in rights, "so when we have nanobots that can repair a small portion of damaged neurons in Grandma's brain, we'd probably all view that as a positive development in medical science. And then, as more and more of Grandma's natural neurons fail, the nanobots can take their place, probably before anybody notices symptoms. At some point, nearly all the neurons have failed, and Grandma's brain is mostly nanotech, but nobody on the outside noticed. So, when is Grandma no longer Grandma?"
His answer: "It sounds like you're a philosopher."
Coming generations won't get to answer so coyly. I didn't bother with the follow-up about what happens when the nanobots can duplicate her pattern elsewhere.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If you plug one electronic device into another you are mimicking their communications protocol?
Depends if it's a switch or a hub.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"Transmission line" is a technical term narrowly defined in two fields: electrical power distribution, and communications. In the latter, it's a signal-carrying structure (coax, waveguide, etc.) designed to take into account radiative losses and reflections due to the increasingly dominant with higher frequency wave-nature of the signal. Neural impulses are at orders of magnitude lower frequency, so neither fits. I could see you making an analogy with conditioning the signal during its propagation, in the case of saltatory conduction, but it's quite a stretch as the analogy really breaks down when you try to think of what would the myelin sheath and nodes of Ranvier correspond to in an actual transmission line, in functional terms.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Umm... the brain does this already by itself .... is this technology for people who's body somehow doesn't have that ability or lost that ability?
"Strokes"? Nice one.
Reminds me of "Interface" by Neal Stephenson and George Jewsbury. Scary...
Fascinating. This technique turned a injured rat into a cyborg mouse...
" even if we don't understand it, we can mimic it.""
then comes understanding it, then comes manipulating it, then comes controlling it.
who needs subliminal advertising when you can control it directly....(fry's dream of lightspeed briefs come to mind) since the brain is electrochemical, figuring out how to do this remotely shouldn't be an issue, or following this to it's natural conclusion maybe those tinfoil hats do work and we're all being zapped with the incredulous beam when considering the cries of those who "know better".