Neurocomputing Makes Headway

SuperguyA1 writes "Salon is running this almost unbelievable story on "Thought Activated Computing". This was the one thing I always wanted to see that I figured wouldn't be possible in my lifetime. " Really, really amazing work being done - makes me happy to be alive right now and able to see stuff like this. Currently the technology is being used to help paralyzed people now and the possibilites in the future are endless.

Comments

Re:Mutability of the brain?

[Anonymous Coward]

I figured someone on slashdot might know the answer to this.

Well, I'll give it a shot...I have a BA in Anthropology, and my advisor was one of the best known physical anthropologists/neuroanatomists in the US, so I heard a fair bit about brains in college.

How predetermined is out number of senses and limbs?

Rather! After all, your genes determine both your body structure and your brain anatomy. HOWEVER...the brain is a surprisingly plastic thing, and is capable of "reprogramming itself", so to speak, to deal with new/different situations and inputs.

If I was to implant some device like this into my brain would it always a) feel unnatural b) necesserily interfere with the movement of my arm or c) eventually behave entierly unconciously just like the movement of my arm does now.

Well, it's a little hard to say exactly. It would probably feel unnatural and forced at first - think of trying to write with your 'weak' hand, or of making fine motions with your toes - but like those examples, it would probably become easier, even natural, with practice.

Is the same true of senses? If I attached a little I/O port into my brain would it eventually be integrated as a 6th sense or are out brains to preprogramed for this to happen?

Again, it's difficult to say, since we've never had to deal with it before. My guess is that you would eventually be able to deal with it, but it's far from a sure thing. There have been experiments in which people have been fitted with goggles which distorted their vision; at first they find it very disorienting, but they learn to function perfectly, compensating for the distortions on the fly. On the other hand, there was a case in which a man blind almost from birth had his sight restored, and (unlike the movies, in which he'd jump up crying "I can see! I can see!") it took him a lot of effort to make sense of what he was seeing, as his brain just wasn't wired for visual input anymore.

Would the answers be differnt is we implanted the devices in utero?

Quite possibly. See above for the story about the man who had his sight restored. There have also been experiments in which animals have had their eyes covered for the first few months of life; when their sight is restored, they really seem not to be able to learn to see. The brain is much more malleable at an early age - check out how well adjusted people are who were born without hands versus those who lost them later.

Re:Yikes!

[PG13]

I believe that the trophic factor (encourages nueral development around the implant) is what is proprietary. It was not at all clear from the article that the scientist involved held the patent to the trophic substance. The implant is an extremly simple broadcaster of nueral activity.

This kind of opposition to human improvments is as pervasive as it is strange. In the US at least their is some sort of weird moral structure that says it is okay to "fix defects" but not to improve healthy people. These sorts of attitudes seem to be holding back research a great deal. What if their were no quadrapalegics to benifit from this sort of technology then it might never have been developed. Perhaps without this strange restriction we would have drugs improving the memory and intelligence of the population as a whole.

Ba-humbug, I say!

[kinesis]

A perspective from a grumpy old man...

In my day we didn't have any of these fancy "punch cards". We pulled giant levers and watched big iron gears grind tediously away. It took days to do a simple multipication and the answer was usually wrong. That's the way it was, and we liked it! We loved it!

Why I remember getting my arm stuck in an adding machine. Crushed every bone in my hand. That's how real men compute! You can have your advanced "vacuum tubes" and "elec-tricty".

Bah-humbug, I say! Any computer that doesn't need to be oiled is a devil-machine!

Now they tell me they've got fancy games you can play on these computers. When I was your age, the engineers played "touch the red-hot spinning metal disc". And we liked it! We loved it!

Bah.