The Cat Cam

PhilHibbs sent us an article from wired that talks about Neuroscientists creating videos from a cats eyes using electrodes implanted in a cats brain. Here are some Pictures.

Comments

Mirror

[Eponymous, Showered]

Here ya go.

Hope they don't mind me taking a load off their server. Be gentle, now!

Re:great news

[zuvembi]

Could these same ideas be used to realize the
dream of Christopher Reeves to walk again someday?

I'm not sure how well this type of technology would apply to spinal injury repair. I do know that more conventional treatments (chemical, forced tissue growth, some others) are starting to make decent advances in this direction. Scientific American had a very good article on precisely this about one issue back.

September 1999 issue

Repairing the Damaged Spinal Cord
John W. McDonald and the Research Consortium of the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation

Paralysis caused by spinal cord injuries has often been seen as irreversible, because disrupted areas of the cord do not regenerate. New treatments under study, however, aim to minimize or reverse the damage from trauma.

Unfortunately they don't have this one online, you'll have to pop down to the newstand to pick it up. I personally think sciam is definitely one of the mags everyone should have a subscription to.

But it looks like (probably) within our lifespan, or even in the next 15-20 years we might be able to correct spinal damage. It's all speculative of course, but still, at least there's some hope now.

This could be trouble....for someone

[emag]

I think every place I've ever worked has had a large stray cat population. Somehow, they always seem to be able to get into the fenced-off areas of the premises. And there's always something requiring one type of clearance or another going on (that's what happens in the defense world....).

Anyway, I'm sure that just about any place w/ enough people has some population of stray animals. Imagine if Boris & Natasha happen to collect up the animals one day, and implant the next generation of these electrodes in the cats, along with transmitters. Suddenly, you've got a large roving population of cameras around places you really don't want pictures taken.

Even if they weren't able to get into any type of restricted area, you'd still likely get several shots of the employees, so you'd know who to target when trying to "turn" someone.

They could even go so far as to train animals from birth to perform certain tasks, such as getting into rooms with doors slightly ajar, knocking over file folders with papers in them and looking at the papers for X seconds, etc. Who would suspect a stray of spying?


Alternately, this could be the ultimate voyeur tool. "Hi, I got you this pet kitten."