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Bionic Rats
EmmaLouise99 pointed us over to an article in which scientists have gotten rats to control a simple robot arm through the activity of brain cells. The report comes in this month of Nature Neuroscience, and the obvious applications are for paralyzed people. I remember reading in Discover as well about a similar situation with little go-karts and insect brains-hooking up the sections that controlled wing movement, and letting them they think they were flying, but actually controlling the karts movement.
I saw something similar in the news a week or so ago where Humans have been able to move a mouse pointer across the screen merely by thinking about it--and with a non-invasive procedure....
-Berck
Yes, but I'm reckoning that you can build a simple bionic appendage that doesn't require as many signals as an atrophied human arm. Not to mention the possibilities for replacing amputated or deformed limbs, or extending human functionality in various ways (of course, they don't say "Our real motivation for this research is that it may be the first step in creating an army of cyborg superhumans who will one day sieze control of the planet")
Imagine "The Secret of NIMH" with commando rats instead of the docile creatures it portrayed...
"DIE Nicodemus!!" *rapid machine gun straffing fire*
"Stick a needle in my neck will you, you B#@$#@rds! Feel my WRATH!"
"Lee of the stone? Hell, we are taking the house!"
-- 100% MS-Free as of 4-4-1999, 11:47:38 PST. "The lapdance is always better when the stripper is cryin'" Free Kevin,
If I read the same article you did (more like a few months ago), I'm fairly certain it was invasive. Tiny cone-shaped sensors were placed in the (quadriplegic?) subjects' brains. They could move the cursor left and right by trying to move their left and right arms, respectively. Granted it's not a long-lastig invasiveness, but I'd think at least twice about having any sensors implanted in my head. (For now, at least)
You forgot the obligatory "Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of these things" -- or would it be a Beomouse?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
An alternative (albeit, less effective and from a far older experiment) method is a set of EEG sensors placed around the head to monitor brain activity. After training for a few (3-6) months, most participants in the experiment could pretty easily control a cursor on a screen in vertical motion. Next step, as of last I heard, was to work on full screen motion for it. As it was, it was already being used to pick out letters by using a "wheel" of letters which could be rotated around to spell out words, or speak by using something between that and one of those chimpanzee boards of simple phrases. Regardless, a cap to be worn over the head (ala "Strange Days" recorder, maybe?) would be far less invasive than any sort of surgery. Ability to put signals back into the brain, however (ala "Matrix") still looks like it's a long way off.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
"Veni; Vidi; Vi C++"
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
... or perhaps RatBorg!
;-)
I had to say it... I'm sorry...
Besides... imagine what rats and other small animals equipped like RoboCop could do in ruins after an earthquake.
Best regards,
Steen Suder
Best regards,
Steen Suder
-- for email: send to
I've tried 2 of the currently available voice input programs.. both took about an hour to train to my voice, and then the non-typing commands only worked about 1 time in 6.. the direct dication had a tendency to pic the wrong word if i didnt enunciate every letter, even if i said the word just the way i said it when training the thing.. so no, i'm going to have to go with that writing a paper just by talking isnt really an option. And if you read my post, you'd notice that i was wondering which would be possible first.. not which we can do now.
As for the moving the pointer around, yes i knew that was available, but that's not what i meant. Even if you have to spend a year learning how to use it, it just seems really odd to me that the technology for input from the nervous system (from wires inserted into cockroach nervous systems to control little cars years ago to the rat thing and the mind-controlled mouse pointer without any invasive procedure) is advancing so much faster than speech input, which seems like it should be easier, considering the human voice can only deviate so far from a norm.. yet they had limited voice input back in the days of apple that wasnt much worse than what they have now.. just with less functions.
I dont expect natural-language processing tomorrow, nor do i expect direct translation of internal language synaps functions tomorrow.. but the way technology seems to be headed, it looks like brainwave input may well catch up to or even surpass voice input. Yeah it's got a long way to go, but voice input seems to be really stagnating while this is moving right along.. and while voice processing may well be more complicated than field recognition, it just strikes me as really odd that it is that way.
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
i seem to remember something a year ago that you put your finger in a device hooked to your puter, and then tried to move the cursor....i've forgotten the details, but it seems this was a game of somekind.
"squeak squeak squeak"
(we have the technology, we can rebuild him)
"Squeak!"
(Oh, no! A bird that eats rats!)
"Sqeak."
(I'll handle this!)
Bird flies away with a black eye and a busted-up beak.
The Bionic Rat. Coming soon to UPN!
Pope Felix the Scurrilous.
Computer Geek by day, religious Icon by night.
It's called a 'Mine Mouse'. I forget who puts them out, but you can buy one for.. i think it was like $3000. It's non-invasive, just a headband with eeg sensors in it. You have to learn how to control it, but afterward you can move the mouse pointer around with the thing by thinking about it. I got an email ad a few months back from the company that makes 'em, but i dont have the link anymore.
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
DOH! Bad! :-)
Goddess help me seek the truth, but spare me the company of those who've found it.
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Or the equally obligatory "Can't wait to play Quake with this".
think of the applications as this gets refined.
...
who needs a steering wheel?
heck who needs a keyboard?
-i know not that profound
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
with little tiny rat guns and other neat shit
too bad we'll just be able to run up behind and stomp em :)
Yes, Brain, but if
we fight Sasquatch,
won't that mean that
we'll have to squint
like Lee Majors?
I wonder, which will come first? The ability to write a paper on your computer simply by thinking at the screen, or the ability to write a paper on your computer by speaking at the screen?
Maybe it's just me, but doesnt it seem odd that we now have the capability to control prosthetics by monitoring brainwave patters, yet we STILL cant come up with a natural language processor? (or even a non-natural language processor that can respond to voice input by non-trained users?)
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
Yes, Brain, but if
we fight Sasquatch,
won't that mean that
we'll have to squint
like Lee Majors?
Yay. No need for a my poor chubby little fingers to get that unneccessary excercise when I want to change channels anymore.
The perfect union of man and machine:
A human/TV remote control.
Reminds me of the old Cordwainer Smith SF stories from the late '50s or early '60s, in which the spaceships were controlled by 'laminated mouse brains,' or something to that effect.
Well, they have also made rats unafraid of cats
and actually try to attack them! Of course, this results in the rats' death.
I guess they get to try out all the cool new drugs.
Warren A. Layton
Just look at Gates! ;)
-- K
If all this is true, where's my mind-controlled 150-foot tall Mecha complete with small futuristic arsenal capable of leveling Redmond?
That is all.
Christopher Kalos
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
Can you say "Robocop"? Just give'm time, money and a willing (or not so willing) subject.
What I would like to know is whether the rats' normal cognitive functions were affected? That is, apart from the obvious hint of having a huge great wire sticking out of their heads, were the rats unaware of the probes and behaving in a pretty much normal way? I wouldn't fancy a neural interface if I'm not me after its installation.
Apart from this small detail, I can see the following barriers to using this technology for general control of computers:
- invasiveness - is this kind of technique ever likely to be implementable without massively invasive surgery? Keyhole techniques don't really apply when you have to drill a hole to get in.
- training - in these experiments, great care was taken to learn what neural activity indicated thirst in the subjects. Is there any way this individual training could be genericised?
Cool thing, though.--
Dunx
Converting caffeine into code since 1982
Catch-all comment: So when does the linux driver come out?
BioControl Systems is one company I know of. I saw and played with their stuff back in '95 at a VR conference (MecklerMedia VRWorld '95)
BioMuse is one I played with.
--The more you know, the less you know.
It was posted on Slashdot. Search for it...
Despite the amazing research being done on rats, the application to a human host is at least a decade away. Unfortunately, the FDA makes any current technology about ten years behind.
Hmm, I wonder if the rats can move computer cursors with their brains also. Would give new meaning to the 'mouse.'
Re: "reconnecting the severed 'wires'"
This is already being done. Recent experiments have shown the following (no, I don't remember the citations, but this has all been within the past 3 months or so):
--It is possible to reconnect damaged nerve tissues (experiment involved severing mouse spines and reattaching them).
--Embryonic stem cells can be used to stimulate neural growth in the brain (done on an experimental basis with some Parkinson's patients. At least 1/3rd have shown significant improvement).
As I recall, there was some work 10-15 years ago on using low-powered radio transmitters to bridge gaps in the spinal column, but there was some sort of problem with the procedure.
This is an interesting time to live in.
Void the Warranty
Actually, I kind of like my cordless phone...
Just wish it had NiMH instead of NiCd.
Uh-oh! He's locked-up! CLEAR! *Pah-phomp!*
Now we have to wait for ScanBrain to complete and hope nothing vital got corrupted. Where are those back-up disks?
I read an article on this some time ago (can't remember where now). Sensors on the scalp allowed a paralysed patient to control a cursor. The problem was, the brain reshapes itself over time; so after a period of time, it no longer works unless realigned to the new brain structure.
So this article doesn't seem to report anything new, and makes the problem seem far less hairy than it actually is.
Interestingly, I think the article also reported that the parts of the brain used to control the cursor actually grew bigger (the region of the brain where signals were detected increased) over time.
(nt)
> scientists have gotten rats to control a simple robot arm through the activity of brain cells.
Jeez, I don't know, the last thing I'd want is to have to carry around my own rat to control my body.
So what happens when the Microsoft MindWindows interface in the base of your skull freezes with a General Protection Fault? Epeleptic seizures, convulsions, autisticism, coma? And after the reboot, are you still you, or merely an imperfect copy? Do you have to pay Bill Gate's heirs to stay you, lest they turn you off for license infringement? Who owns the rights to your creativity? You, or Microsoft? For that matter, who owns you? You, Microsoft, or Your Benign Government, via the Good Citizen(tm) module required in every federally licensed neural interface? If we think using Linux or *BSD gives us a competitive edge today, just imagine tommorow!
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I believe that the term here would be cyberware, though I could be mistaken. To be bionic, I think that it would have to be actually bionetic in origin, (i.e. the arm would be a real arm, not a robotic one, though bionetic and bionic may be two seperate categories). Cyberware is an implanted electronic device controlled by, or providing input to, the neural impulses of the brain.
The last part there is the important one. "controlled by, or providing input to, the neural impulses of the brain", which distinguishes things like this arm, and a pacemaker. Can we say Cyberpunk, Shad owrun, or Wil liam Gibson anyone?
something clever
From the end of this snippet:
Anybody know anything more about this? URLs appreciated...
bradley
There's a lot of work being done on that as well. Some progress has been made.
Only time will tell which method will work out the best and soonest. I'm sure most people would prefer that the nervs be re-connected, or in the case of an amputation, that the prostetic be connected to the peripheral motor nerves rather than into the brain, but it never hurts to have a plan B in the works.
This will be an absolute boon to all of those brains sitting around in jars with absolutely no way to interact with their environment :^) Soon they will be able to control X-10 devices and send eathother email! Imaginative types in jars will take day jobs as part of a rendering farm or other computational clusters.
I was watching something on discovery a while back about a nerve replacement operation on some girls arm. Apparently it worked, but the show was more about the operation itself than how it worked.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
All we need now is the nadda nadda nadda theme from the Bionic Man/Woman!
No one has seen what you have seen, and until that happens, we're all going to think that you're nuts. - Jack O'Neil
Okay, so there's a computer programmer walking down the street with a rat on his shoulder....an old lady sees this and says: "what are you doing with that filthy creature?"
"Squeak, squeak" says the rat.
:^)
...to find ways of repairing/reconnecting the spinal cord/nerves?
[/analogy]
It seems to me that if I cut the wire to my telephone, it's better to reconnect that cut wire, rather than to find some expensively convoluted way of connecting my telephone to a radio transceiver, then connecting the other wire to a similar device to get the telephone working again.
[end analogy]
I can see the research justified if the aim is to find a thought interface to a computer etc. But I feel the money would be better spent inventing methods of reconnecting the severed "wires" from the brain to [whatever limb(s) etc.].
Just my 2p worth.
rgds.