There is no way you can tell what the person is mentally processing by virtue of the fact that a particular image happened to be reflected in their eye. All you can reasonably conclude is that they were facing in a particular direction.
You CAN however correlate what a person is looking at with a brain waveform called a P300. That waveform is essentially an evoked potential that signals recognition. It does not tell you anything else about that recognition, only that the person has seen the image or object or person before.
It's too bad the coolest tech is immediately subverted for evil. The possible applications listed include 'surveillance cameras that spot suspicious behavior.'
Hey guys, like much of the popular sci-fi literature will illustrate, its not what you might be looking at or visually or cognitvely attending to or even thinking.......its what you actively do with those thoughts or attentions. Prosecuting folks for visual attention to things that stand out (like items folks covet such as that rather nice looking Porsche below and outside my window) will be fruitless. Same goes for prosecuting "thoughtcrimes". However, cheating on exams.......could be more easily documented I suppose.....
An addendum: Apple has worked damn hard to get the record labels to get on board with this while giving end users reasonable liberties with the music they paid for. This effort by Real undermines this process and will only serve to make record labels more unwilling to participate in electronic delivery and dissemination of media.
I've been watching this whole thing unfold for some time now and paid attention to the overtures Real was making to Apple some time ago. Basically issue here is that the folks who designed the iPod and the iTunes music store really cared about the music, whereas Real is concerned with making money by delivering media rather than caring anything about the media per se. Let me repeat that for the folks at Real........It's about the music.
From the linked interns blog and speaking of Bill Gates: "His response (verbatim, might I add), "well it was the dumbest thing I've ever read!". I have actually heard him say this very statement with a crass addendum or modifier in response to an engineers rather thoughtful bit of insight into a problem. Perhaps he was having a bad day, but I found this to be more than a little arrogant and perhaps may go part way in explaining why Microsoft has problems with innovation. As to the title, "Gates gets government guards for gala", I would suggest in Bill's defense that the guards are for some of the guests which is not unusual. I've not been to a soiree at the Gates compound, but I have been to plenty of other events with government folks who pack their own "escorts". Gates likely has his own security detail which if they work like other security details, will usually defer to the secret service (or other federal) detail supervising any government officials who may be present.
So what you're saying is that you don't know, but you're using Hume's wrecking ball to say that because you don't know that there is a problem, that nobody can say that there ISNT one.
No, I am a scientist. What I am saying is that there are potential problems. The hypothesis is that there are no problems, but you have ideas and hypothesis that should be tested, so the next step is testing them and either accepting or rejecting the hypothesis. That is pretty basic seventh grade science dude.
As an aside, in much scientific prose, you will find a tone that is not so aggressive in its portrayal of findings or suggestions. It is a style, and I tend to like that style rather than getting in ones face about things unless you are absolutely convinced of the preponderance of scientific evidence.
Perhaps I should have clarified some of this for the non-biologists here. Baroreceptors are receptors found in the aortic arch and internal carotid arteries that are sensitive not only to overall pressure in the cardiovascular system, but also to rates of pressure changes which are critically important in cases where you suddenly undergo rapid loss of blood pressure. (like when you are bleeding......alot). In cases like these, your body starts a series of physiologic changes to keep you alive and interfering with those sorts of things were what I was referring to.
These issues may also be important for maintaining cardiovascular fitness as well as recovering from myocardial infarcts, and because the alternating pulse pressure is eliminated in turbine models, I would worry about possible losses of negative feedback which might result in runaway blood pressure which could lead to hemorrhagic strokes, kidney damage and other such unpleasantries.
Oh, and since the Slashdot crowd appears to be preoccupied with sex, there is some evidence that penile erections are dependant upon alternating pressures to, ahem.....get the job done.
There are certain advantages to having a "pulse". Examples are: The alternating low and high pressures may allow the bodies baroreceptors to better control blood pressure and there are other important feedback mechanisms associated with having alternating high and low pressures in response to the heart contracting. I would worry that some of the new pumps could undermine those mechanisms.....
So, what is new here? Seriously.........Is this another case of Microsoft coming late to the game and saying "Oh, well, we have one too", or is this another case of Microsoft publicizing they have something in the works that will come out any time now to keep other folks from entering into the fray? Come on, if you are going to get into the game, offer something new. For instance, take a page from the Apple playbook when Apple realized a little late that mp3s and online music was the way to go, Apple put some thought and effort into things and came up with not only the iTunes music store, but also the iPod. Both of which were nice innovations and spurred other companies to improve their products.
From the looks of Microsoft's news bot site here it appears that ther innovations are links to Hotmail, shopping, other proprietary properties and news programs of either Microsoft and NBC, and notably in the Science/Health categories, we have business news about companies such as Boston Scientific rather than real Science news. It's also more bandwidth intensive than the Google news site.
Well, I guess it could be reasoned that since much of the US economy is based on IP, then this would be a terrorist act because it undermines the very fabric of the country..........yeah, right. Seriously though, while I am all for copyright protection and laws protecting intellectual property, one would think that the toolbox of laws used to prosecute such crimes as IP theft would be carefully used, particularly when they come from a set of tools designed to protect the nation from terrorism. However, there are those in law enforcement that will use whatever tools happen to be at their disposal whether they are appropriate or not for the case, never mind the right tool for the right job metaphor. This example is exactly why sweeping laws that fall under wide ranging legal jurisprudence should be VERY carefully applied and under constant review. If not, we are putting in danger our freedom.
Wow, this kinda reminds me of the Palm IPO pricing bit, where when I found out about the price per share, I lost complete interest in purchasing any and told my broker to not purchase. (boy am I glad about that). However, this is a different matter in that the search engine is in just the beginning of its time here while the Palm IPO was what.....8 years after the Newton was released? Also, even though I am a fan of the Palm Pilot, Palm has had no real innovation going on for quite a while (it would be nice if Apple had released their PDA to force folks to innovate a little more). While Google on the other hand is still running their company like they are actually interested in innovating and are forcing a number of fairly sizable companies to innovate to keep up which is always good for the consumer. This is a company that I will be interested in investing in even at $108-$135/share.
Your Newton can also function as a web server among many other things, but the important thing to remember about the Newton is that this was all possible over ten years ago when the Newton was introduced in 1993 making a return on investment for a Newton quite impressive.
This also brings up another issue......Since Apple has left the PDA market, how much innovation has occurred? Color screens perhaps, but what else?
I would think that being pissed would include the fact that the donor was anonymous. It seems to me there could be a great deal of conflict of interest here with an "anonymous donor" underwriting the first year of this service. What do you want to bet about who the "anonymous donor" is? How much do you want to bet that there is a significant conflict of interest?
Steve Allison of Midway charges: "The guys bitching about this new trend are inching up on 35 years old, and they grew up on old-school gameplay. They're a very vocal bunch, but they're just not the market anymore."
Well, this is likely true, but as one who used to play online shootemups, I can say the trend toward this has been going on for a little while at least. When all the little white kids got their computers around the same time hip-hop started going mainstream, you started seeing comments like "Whasssup Biatch" when someone joined the game or "I'm your pimp daddy" or some other affected effort at manifesting some pathetic street cred. I have sort of expected this sort of thing for a while now, but see it as a continued effort to squeeze some more marketing $$s out of a saturated hip-hop market. Perhaps when NWA or Ice-T was around this would have been interesting but come on now folks, the hip hop scene is dead and has been replaced by the thug-life affected persona that now simply looks and appears absurd. Nowhatimsayin?
So, essentially what Steve Allison from Midway is saying is that Midway has sold out and are adopting the grow the company, mainstream marketing bit. Steve..........Do you know what this means?.............It means that Midway is no longer cool. This of course is the risk companies take when they try to break from their roots and become something they are not, but hey......that's America and at least companies have that option.
Your first sentence is why he went out of his way to avoid publishing in medical journals or what not.
You must be trolling? The previous poster is correct: Ethical and professional bounds are there for a reason. I will tell you from a scientific perspective that there is no way for an eye to be transplanted completely and when it has been done, there has been no way to get it to rewire. The cells fester, dye and cause infection and immune related reactions that must be suppressed or the eye has to be removed again.
Thanks for judging him though.
Judging him here is not at issue. Practicing this sort of surgery without scientific merit or basis is dangerous to the profession and to the patient. If this is true, perhaps your father should be investigated and have his license to practice medicine revoked?
You are most correct. When you look into the eyes past the pupil, you are indeed looking at the brain. The tissue at the back of the eye, called the retina is composed of highly specialized neurons wired together in very specific ways which pre-process visual information and then send that information on to higher centers in the brain for further processing.
Could you please elaborate on this? Which parts of the documentary in particular are you referring to?
The portion where Dr. Humayan was talking about their implants specifically. They showed some of my data of a retina going through degeneration which demonstrates major problems for many of the current approaches to bionic implants. Namely, the targets most of the bionic vision community believes they are targeting are either no longer present or exhibit altered circuitry.
Well, stem cell research and other biological approaches..... and related.
Actually, it depends upon what approach you are talking about. I believe that there may be some very promising biologically mediated approaches.......
Sure. What most folks do not realize is that human vision is not the pinnacle of evolution in visual systems. Certain amphibians and avians hav much more sophisticated visual systems than we do. For instance, whereas we see in typically three-space (red, green and blue), a turtle for example may see a much richer world than we could ever hope to perceive in seven (or more) space.
Yes, the Discovery documentary team actually used some of my data in that show, but got it all wrong and presented the data along with Mark Humayan's talk which demonstrated exactly the opposite of what Dr. Humayan was talking about. At any rate, I somewhat agree with you in that pin grid arrays and artificial retinas may be the way to go. We also have to consider stem cell research and other novel biological approaches may move things forward. (Disclaimer: I know and am friends with the leading proponent of the micro electrode array for vision rescue).
What do you think are the chances of ever seeing a complete eye transplant ? In 10 years ? 50 ? 100 ? Or maybe never at all ?
I've thought about this a lot. There is some very promising research in the neuromuscular community that suggests that spinal motor neurons can rewire rather successfully. The problem is that the retina (and the "wires" (axons) that come off of it is a very complicated tissue and rewiring them might be too much to attempt even if you could 1) get the retinal neurons to survive and 2) get them to rewire properly and perform the precise pathfinding necessary. Immunological considerations are another issue, so the approaches I am interested in a other biological and possibly bionic approaches.
The implications would have been staggering if they had been able to transplant an entire eye
Thus my interest.
a "BladeRunner" level of futuristic technology. "I made your eyes", etc
I am working on it.... Seriously.....
It would presumably also be relatively easy to graft an artificial electronic "eye", to create vision enhanced cyborgs - or to plug a video feed straight into the optic nerve for the ultimate in immersive graphics.
There are folks that are working on these solutions as well. One guy has a good approach while the others are basing their solutions on flawed assumptions of the basic biology. We are working on correcting these flawed assumptions.
You are not reading the article very carefully. Only the cornea or the transparent outer portion of the eye was transplanted in this case, NOT the whole eye. Furthermore, the two references you report are bad science. First off, let me ask you if organ rejection is something to be considered, would you trade a lifetime of immunosuppresants causing kidney damage and joint disease for vision? Next, the two references in Wired are missing the boat and were written by some very deceptive science. Dobelle is a bit of a crackpot who is using high current electrodes on the surface of the brain and is kindling those patients brains increasing the likelyhood of seizures. Indeed seizures have been reported in those patients. Furthermore, from a conceptual point of view, stimulating visual cortex with crude electrical stimulii will certainly make one see phosphenes, but you can also see them by getting punched in the head. In other words it is not vision and those that are suggesting it is are either deceived or worse. To make things even more dubious, Dobelle has yet to publish his work in a peer reviewed journal and has to perform it outside the US because nobody will let him do it here.
The issue is much more complicated than these individuals would have you believe. There are a couple of corporations that have been started that are very good with media hype. They have good engineers, but the engineers are looking for a solution without understanding what the biology is.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no way you can tell what the person is mentally processing by virtue of the fact that a particular image happened to be reflected in their eye. All you can reasonably conclude is that they were facing in a particular direction.
You CAN however correlate what a person is looking at with a brain waveform called a P300. That waveform is essentially an evoked potential that signals recognition. It does not tell you anything else about that recognition, only that the person has seen the image or object or person before.
It's too bad the coolest tech is immediately subverted for evil. The possible applications listed include 'surveillance cameras that spot suspicious behavior.'
Hey guys, like much of the popular sci-fi literature will illustrate, its not what you might be looking at or visually or cognitvely attending to or even thinking.......its what you actively do with those thoughts or attentions. Prosecuting folks for visual attention to things that stand out (like items folks covet such as that rather nice looking Porsche below and outside my window) will be fruitless. Same goes for prosecuting "thoughtcrimes". However, cheating on exams.......could be more easily documented I suppose.....
An addendum: Apple has worked damn hard to get the record labels to get on board with this while giving end users reasonable liberties with the music they paid for. This effort by Real undermines this process and will only serve to make record labels more unwilling to participate in electronic delivery and dissemination of media.
I've been watching this whole thing unfold for some time now and paid attention to the overtures Real was making to Apple some time ago. Basically issue here is that the folks who designed the iPod and the iTunes music store really cared about the music, whereas Real is concerned with making money by delivering media rather than caring anything about the media per se. Let me repeat that for the folks at Real........It's about the music.
From the linked interns blog and speaking of Bill Gates: "His response (verbatim, might I add), "well it was the dumbest thing I've ever read!". I have actually heard him say this very statement with a crass addendum or modifier in response to an engineers rather thoughtful bit of insight into a problem. Perhaps he was having a bad day, but I found this to be more than a little arrogant and perhaps may go part way in explaining why Microsoft has problems with innovation. As to the title, "Gates gets government guards for gala", I would suggest in Bill's defense that the guards are for some of the guests which is not unusual. I've not been to a soiree at the Gates compound, but I have been to plenty of other events with government folks who pack their own "escorts". Gates likely has his own security detail which if they work like other security details, will usually defer to the secret service (or other federal) detail supervising any government officials who may be present.
So what you're saying is that you don't know, but you're using Hume's wrecking ball to say that because you don't know that there is a problem, that nobody can say that there ISNT one.
No, I am a scientist. What I am saying is that there are potential problems. The hypothesis is that there are no problems, but you have ideas and hypothesis that should be tested, so the next step is testing them and either accepting or rejecting the hypothesis. That is pretty basic seventh grade science dude.
As an aside, in much scientific prose, you will find a tone that is not so aggressive in its portrayal of findings or suggestions. It is a style, and I tend to like that style rather than getting in ones face about things unless you are absolutely convinced of the preponderance of scientific evidence.
Perhaps I should have clarified some of this for the non-biologists here. Baroreceptors are receptors found in the aortic arch and internal carotid arteries that are sensitive not only to overall pressure in the cardiovascular system, but also to rates of pressure changes which are critically important in cases where you suddenly undergo rapid loss of blood pressure. (like when you are bleeding......alot). In cases like these, your body starts a series of physiologic changes to keep you alive and interfering with those sorts of things were what I was referring to.
These issues may also be important for maintaining cardiovascular fitness as well as recovering from myocardial infarcts, and because the alternating pulse pressure is eliminated in turbine models, I would worry about possible losses of negative feedback which might result in runaway blood pressure which could lead to hemorrhagic strokes, kidney damage and other such unpleasantries.
Oh, and since the Slashdot crowd appears to be preoccupied with sex, there is some evidence that penile erections are dependant upon alternating pressures to, ahem.....get the job done.
There are certain advantages to having a "pulse". Examples are: The alternating low and high pressures may allow the bodies baroreceptors to better control blood pressure and there are other important feedback mechanisms associated with having alternating high and low pressures in response to the heart contracting. I would worry that some of the new pumps could undermine those mechanisms.....
So, what is new here? Seriously.........Is this another case of Microsoft coming late to the game and saying "Oh, well, we have one too", or is this another case of Microsoft publicizing they have something in the works that will come out any time now to keep other folks from entering into the fray? Come on, if you are going to get into the game, offer something new. For instance, take a page from the Apple playbook when Apple realized a little late that mp3s and online music was the way to go, Apple put some thought and effort into things and came up with not only the iTunes music store, but also the iPod. Both of which were nice innovations and spurred other companies to improve their products.
From the looks of Microsoft's news bot site here it appears that ther innovations are links to Hotmail, shopping, other proprietary properties and news programs of either Microsoft and NBC, and notably in the Science/Health categories, we have business news about companies such as Boston Scientific rather than real Science news. It's also more bandwidth intensive than the Google news site.
Is copyright infringment now a terrorist act?
Well, I guess it could be reasoned that since much of the US economy is based on IP, then this would be a terrorist act because it undermines the very fabric of the country..........yeah, right. Seriously though, while I am all for copyright protection and laws protecting intellectual property, one would think that the toolbox of laws used to prosecute such crimes as IP theft would be carefully used, particularly when they come from a set of tools designed to protect the nation from terrorism. However, there are those in law enforcement that will use whatever tools happen to be at their disposal whether they are appropriate or not for the case, never mind the right tool for the right job metaphor. This example is exactly why sweeping laws that fall under wide ranging legal jurisprudence should be VERY carefully applied and under constant review. If not, we are putting in danger our freedom.
My point was that while innovation has stagnated with the PDA market, innovation in the search engine market has been impressive.
Wow, this kinda reminds me of the Palm IPO pricing bit, where when I found out about the price per share, I lost complete interest in purchasing any and told my broker to not purchase. (boy am I glad about that). However, this is a different matter in that the search engine is in just the beginning of its time here while the Palm IPO was what.....8 years after the Newton was released? Also, even though I am a fan of the Palm Pilot, Palm has had no real innovation going on for quite a while (it would be nice if Apple had released their PDA to force folks to innovate a little more). While Google on the other hand is still running their company like they are actually interested in innovating and are forcing a number of fairly sizable companies to innovate to keep up which is always good for the consumer. This is a company that I will be interested in investing in even at $108-$135/share.
Your Newton can also function as a web server among many other things, but the important thing to remember about the Newton is that this was all possible over ten years ago when the Newton was introduced in 1993 making a return on investment for a Newton quite impressive.
This also brings up another issue......Since Apple has left the PDA market, how much innovation has occurred? Color screens perhaps, but what else?
A case of viral marketing? Move along....
I have to wonder if these simulations or plans account for bicycles or pedestrians?
I would think that being pissed would include the fact that the donor was anonymous. It seems to me there could be a great deal of conflict of interest here with an "anonymous donor" underwriting the first year of this service. What do you want to bet about who the "anonymous donor" is? How much do you want to bet that there is a significant conflict of interest?
Steve Allison of Midway charges: "The guys bitching about this new trend are inching up on 35 years old, and they grew up on old-school gameplay. They're a very vocal bunch, but they're just not the market anymore."
Well, this is likely true, but as one who used to play online shootemups, I can say the trend toward this has been going on for a little while at least. When all the little white kids got their computers around the same time hip-hop started going mainstream, you started seeing comments like "Whasssup Biatch" when someone joined the game or "I'm your pimp daddy" or some other affected effort at manifesting some pathetic street cred. I have sort of expected this sort of thing for a while now, but see it as a continued effort to squeeze some more marketing $$s out of a saturated hip-hop market. Perhaps when NWA or Ice-T was around this would have been interesting but come on now folks, the hip hop scene is dead and has been replaced by the thug-life affected persona that now simply looks and appears absurd. Nowhatimsayin?
So, essentially what Steve Allison from Midway is saying is that Midway has sold out and are adopting the grow the company, mainstream marketing bit. Steve..........Do you know what this means?.............It means that Midway is no longer cool. This of course is the risk companies take when they try to break from their roots and become something they are not, but hey......that's America and at least companies have that option.
Your first sentence is why he went out of his way to avoid publishing in medical journals or what not.
You must be trolling? The previous poster is correct: Ethical and professional bounds are there for a reason. I will tell you from a scientific perspective that there is no way for an eye to be transplanted completely and when it has been done, there has been no way to get it to rewire. The cells fester, dye and cause infection and immune related reactions that must be suppressed or the eye has to be removed again.
Thanks for judging him though.
Judging him here is not at issue. Practicing this sort of surgery without scientific merit or basis is dangerous to the profession and to the patient. If this is true, perhaps your father should be investigated and have his license to practice medicine revoked?
You are most correct. When you look into the eyes past the pupil, you are indeed looking at the brain. The tissue at the back of the eye, called the retina is composed of highly specialized neurons wired together in very specific ways which pre-process visual information and then send that information on to higher centers in the brain for further processing.
Could you please elaborate on this? Which parts of the documentary in particular are you referring to?
The portion where Dr. Humayan was talking about their implants specifically. They showed some of my data of a retina going through degeneration which demonstrates major problems for many of the current approaches to bionic implants. Namely, the targets most of the bionic vision community believes they are targeting are either no longer present or exhibit altered circuitry.
Well, stem cell research and other biological approaches..... and related.
Actually, it depends upon what approach you are talking about. I believe that there may be some very promising biologically mediated approaches.......
Sure. What most folks do not realize is that human vision is not the pinnacle of evolution in visual systems. Certain amphibians and avians hav much more sophisticated visual systems than we do. For instance, whereas we see in typically three-space (red, green and blue), a turtle for example may see a much richer world than we could ever hope to perceive in seven (or more) space.
Yes, the Discovery documentary team actually used some of my data in that show, but got it all wrong and presented the data along with Mark Humayan's talk which demonstrated exactly the opposite of what Dr. Humayan was talking about. At any rate, I somewhat agree with you in that pin grid arrays and artificial retinas may be the way to go. We also have to consider stem cell research and other novel biological approaches may move things forward. (Disclaimer: I know and am friends with the leading proponent of the micro electrode array for vision rescue).
What do you think are the chances of ever seeing a complete eye transplant ? In 10 years ? 50 ? 100 ? Or maybe never at all ?
I've thought about this a lot. There is some very promising research in the neuromuscular community that suggests that spinal motor neurons can rewire rather successfully. The problem is that the retina (and the "wires" (axons) that come off of it is a very complicated tissue and rewiring them might be too much to attempt even if you could 1) get the retinal neurons to survive and 2) get them to rewire properly and perform the precise pathfinding necessary. Immunological considerations are another issue, so the approaches I am interested in a other biological and possibly bionic approaches.
The implications would have been staggering if they had been able to transplant an entire eye
Thus my interest.
a "BladeRunner" level of futuristic technology. "I made your eyes", etc
I am working on it.... Seriously.....
It would presumably also be relatively easy to graft an artificial electronic "eye", to create vision enhanced cyborgs - or to plug a video feed straight into the optic nerve for the ultimate in immersive graphics.
There are folks that are working on these solutions as well. One guy has a good approach while the others are basing their solutions on flawed assumptions of the basic biology. We are working on correcting these flawed assumptions.
You are not reading the article very carefully. Only the cornea or the transparent outer portion of the eye was transplanted in this case, NOT the whole eye. Furthermore, the two references you report are bad science. First off, let me ask you if organ rejection is something to be considered, would you trade a lifetime of immunosuppresants causing kidney damage and joint disease for vision? Next, the two references in Wired are missing the boat and were written by some very deceptive science. Dobelle is a bit of a crackpot who is using high current electrodes on the surface of the brain and is kindling those patients brains increasing the likelyhood of seizures. Indeed seizures have been reported in those patients. Furthermore, from a conceptual point of view, stimulating visual cortex with crude electrical stimulii will certainly make one see phosphenes, but you can also see them by getting punched in the head. In other words it is not vision and those that are suggesting it is are either deceived or worse. To make things even more dubious, Dobelle has yet to publish his work in a peer reviewed journal and has to perform it outside the US because nobody will let him do it here.
The issue is much more complicated than these individuals would have you believe. There are a couple of corporations that have been started that are very good with media hype. They have good engineers, but the engineers are looking for a solution without understanding what the biology is.