Shoot me an email at tim(dot}blakely[at)gmail and I'd be happy to tell any information I have. Can't disclose too much on the internet, but email correspondence is fine.
About that "neural code" you're talking about... one of the long-term goals of Dr. Leuthardt - the lead neurosurgeon in our lab - is to find that code:)
We approached the problem in two ways:
1. One dimensional control, where the "on" signal moved it to the right, and an "off" signal moved it to the left.
2. Two dimensional control, where one "on" signal moved it to the right, and another "on" signal moved it to the left.
3. Three dimensional control, similar to two but another for "fire".
We used the program BCI2000 for this task. This program allows us to sample 16 specific electrodes at a rate of 1200 hz, attaining frequencies up to 600hz. By reading data from calibration tests, we can then select the best electrodes that have the highest r^2 value for use with controlling it. I believe we're currently using a form of ICA for the signal analisys and we may move to something mroe complicated in the near future, but I'm the programmer on the team and not the electrical engineer.:)
Anyone who's doing BME research runs into ethical issues, and our lab is no exception. Ethically we cannot implant electrodes into a perfectly healthy human in vitro. The risks of risks far outweigh the benefits. However if we can help epileptic patients while doing research, we can aid in the healing of the patient while getting data at the same time.
Hi. I'm SkyFire360, I wrote that program. I'm the guy in the blue shirt.
Though we're the first lab to use the ECoG technology, even our resolution is too poor to accurately control things in more than two dimensions. A breakdown of the different resolutions of Brain-Computer-Interfacing is here. The problem with EEG is that the skull acts as a signal damper that disperses and blurs the electromagnetic waves created by the neurons. Though we can still detect the waves created, it becomes increasingly more difficult to discern what area of the brain created these waves, much less what neuron(s) did.
A breakdown of the different types of BCI currently being developed and researched:
EEG - Electro-Encephalograph - Biggest advantage is that anyone can use it, as it can be worn like a helmet or a headband. Though because it is non-invasive, it has extremely poor resolution
ECoG - Electro-Cortocography - Though it needs to be implanted inside the skull, it produces fairly good resolution. Also, because it only sits on top of the brain as opposed to inside gray matter, it has much less of a chance to form scar-tissue (though still greater than zero). Tough to get more than one dimension of control.
Single Receptor - A microscopic electrode is placed directly in contact with a specific neuron or group of neurons. This allows researchers to directly measure the potential of one neuron firing. Of course, this requires the electrode to be implanted. This form of BCI is also very prone to scar-tissue buildup, causing the signal to become weaker and possibly lost as the body reacts to a foreign object in the brain.
Light Reactive Imaging - Still very theoretical - A laser is trained on a single neuron and its reflectance is picked up by a separate sensor. When the neuron fires, the laser light pattern and wavelengths that are reflected change slightly. This allows researchers to monitor a single neuron while leaving the tissue "untouched", negating the issue of scar-tissue buildup. However, this technology is not able to penetrate the skull yet, as would be needed for external/non-invasive BCI
More information about BCI and ECoG can be found in a presentation from a WashU professor... actually, he's the guy standing behind the computer. Check pages 9-11 for some good slides
Though keep an eye out for us at BMES... we just found coding for direction and velocity, and it is scalar.:D Oh yeah, anyone have any questions?
I'm working for a group that does ECoG (Electro-Cortocography), and even our resolution is too poor to accurately control things in more than two dimensions. A breakdown of the different resolutions of Brain-Computer-Interfacing is here. The problem with EEG is that the skull acts as a signal damper that disperses and blurs the electromagnetic waves created by the neurons. Though we can still detect the waves created, it becomes increasingly more difficult to discern what area of the brain created these waves, much less what neuron(s) did.
A breakdown of the different types of BCI currently being developed and researched:
EEG - Electro-Encephalograph - Biggest advantage is that anyone can use it, as it can be worn like a helmet or a headband. Though because it is non-invasive, it has extremely poor resolution
ECoG - Electro-Cortocography - Though it needs to be implanted inside the skull, it produces fairly good resolution. Also, because it only sits on top of the brain as opposed to inside gray matter, it has much less of a chance to form scar-tissue (though still greater than zero). Tough to get more than one dimension of control.
Single Receptor - A microscopic electrode is placed directly in contact with a specific neuron or group of neurons. This allows researchers to directly measure the potential of one neuron firing. Of course, this requires the electrode to be implanted. This form of BCI is also very prone to scar-tissue buildup, causing the signal to become weaker and possibly lost as the body reacts to a foreign object in the brain.
Light Reactive Imaging - Still very theoretical - A laser is trained on a single neuron and its reflectance is picked up by a separate sensor. When the neuron fires, the laser light pattern and wavelengths that are reflected change slightly. This allows researchers to monitor a single neuron while leaving the tissue "untouched", negating the issue of scar-tissue buildup. However, this technology is not able to penetrate the skull yet, as would be needed for external/non-invasive BCI
So don't hire mere mortals, Hire "Real Programmers"
Zeus was booked, Apollo was out of town, Hermes is still learning, Posideon just signed a 500-year agreement with Apple and Ares was killed off in God of War, so most of the good non-mortal programmers were out of the question. Hades claims to be a writer instead of a programmer, but most of the plot lines he comes up with ends up with everyone dead.
Yup. Considering that Sony also owns the rights to all BluRay technology, they will make money in the form of royalty off of every single BluRay disc that is sold in WalMart, Best Buy, Target, etc. BluRay is really what Sony seems to be hedging its bets on, not necessarily the PS3.
I'm guessing the parent an example of Guerilla Marketing. The when the Penny Arcade guys expounded that the marketers hung out in various popular forums, I instantly thought there might be some on/.
Re:I can't justify that sort of monthly expense
on
MMOGs Branch Out
·
· Score: 1
Check out Guild Wars. Buy the game once, then never pay ever again. Well, except for expansion packs, but that's normal:) Like the FAQ says (emphasis mine):
Several people in my family (or guild) intend to play Guild Wars. Do we each need to purchase a copy?
Like every other online game, anyone who wants to have a Guild Wars Game Account needs to have his/her own copy of the game. There is never a monthly fee to play Guild Wars, so you will have tremendous savings over most online games. Spawning multiple copies from a single purchase is disallowed and account sharing is a breach of the Rules of Conduct.
Overall, these findings suggest that it is likely to take a significant conscious effort to change one's level of physical activity and override one's intrinsic inclination to be active or inactive.
New!
Pr-escr|ptioN gene therapy delvred r|ght t o y0u r door. 3nl4rg you_R worK ethic by four-00 percnt!
AO did this, but there was one big difference between the two: you can play Anarchy Online for free. Instead of making revenue from monthly subscriptions, they make their money from advertisers. Last time I checked, The Matrix Online still had a monthly fee... which means SOE will be getting not one but two revenue streams.
My personal view on this is: If you're going to make me pay for a game, don't subject me to advertisements I most likely don't want to see anyway.
Does the music industry put out 80 really succesful albums a year?
That all depends on your definition of "really successful". In terms of this article, "really successful" means turning a profit. It doesn't take a big stretch of the imagination to see that the music industry makes a large chunk of money spread out over a number of different albums. In terms of "big hits", I would guess that the gaming industry has a much higher percentage of successful games than the music industry.
Of course, most successes in big-business are mesasured by the former.
I'm sure they showed GTA. Do you think they showed the mission where CJ was driving the tanker truck to the delivery drop? How about the pilot training missions? Or do you think they showed CJ gettin' his groove on with his girlfriend then promptly beating a hooker and a cop with a baseball bat?
It's hard to tell the content of a full game in one short sitting. Though I have to admit I am suprised that the surveyed parents "think the ratings are too strict another 5 percent of the time."
...sounds better than any iTunes 128Mbps-compressed tune.
128Mbps-compressed tune?! Holy crap, a 3 minute song would be 2.51 gigs! That's 62 GB for a 74 min CD! I think we're going to have to skip a few generations of removable storage... HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are just not gonna cut it with Apple's new iTunes compression schemes.
Randell Mills... claims to have built a prototype power source that generates up to 1,000 times more heat than conventional fuel.
While at first glance this seems to be a wild, science-shaking claim, there seems to be one key thing that is left out of this fact:
"What is the definition of 'conventional' fuel?" - I would consider gasoline and butane to be "conventional" fuels. A thousand times greater than gasoline has already been achieved within nuclear reactors (I could be wrong on the magnitude, but I know it is far greater). Is uranium considered "conventional"?
Washington University in St. Louis isn't either. It made the front page of our school's newspaper - though, admittedly, that's not entirely hard... "Student gets hit by pie" was a front page headline too.
Has anyone else played Illbleed for the Dreamcast? The game's scariness did not come from shock/jump tactics that were employed in Doom 3, for example, but from the outright twisted ideas behind the game. Though plagued by horrendous controls, the mere concept of some of the challenges were enough to keep me from playing for extended periods of time.
Imagine a young girl playing jumprope with some happy playground music going in the background.
Now imagine that girl being told by something invisible that she was going to play jumprope with it, and the rope would now be made of razors.
This may be a good trend, if other governments follow suit. What would the precedent be now if someone found a proven cure for a disease - say, AIDS or Leukemia - but could not put it out into the world because the gene it was based off of was patented?
I thought this would be nice as I'd get to listen to music at work, however the quality is so bad (highly compressed, low bandwidth)that it's not worth it.
Have you checked out ShoutCast? 30,000+ free internet radio stations, most of them commercial free, and streaming at the bitrate of your choosing (well, most stations). The sound quality is quite good, and can even reach spectacular quality using the combination of Winamp and a plugin called Ozone. Play around with the settings and listen to the difference... it's amazing what analog modeling can do for a 128k music file. Works with MP3s, Streams, and even videos too!
If 30,000+ radio stations seems a little overwhelming, might I suggest my favoriate station Beatblender (128k, streaming WMA) for some great ambient, work-inducing music.
Slashdot Mirror
Shoot me an email at tim(dot}blakely[at)gmail and I'd be happy to tell any information I have. Can't disclose too much on the internet, but email correspondence is fine.
:)
About that "neural code" you're talking about... one of the long-term goals of Dr. Leuthardt - the lead neurosurgeon in our lab - is to find that code
Your statement about EEG is correct. Your statement about the article is not.
We use ECoG, which is vastly different from EEG. ECoG reads directly from the cerebral membrane. See my above comment for some good reading links.
MankyD, you are right on target!
We approached the problem in two ways:
1. One dimensional control, where the "on" signal moved it to the right, and an "off" signal moved it to the left.
2. Two dimensional control, where one "on" signal moved it to the right, and another "on" signal moved it to the left.
3. Three dimensional control, similar to two but another for "fire".
Hi!
:)
We used the program BCI2000 for this task. This program allows us to sample 16 specific electrodes at a rate of 1200 hz, attaining frequencies up to 600hz. By reading data from calibration tests, we can then select the best electrodes that have the highest r^2 value for use with controlling it. I believe we're currently using a form of ICA for the signal analisys and we may move to something mroe complicated in the near future, but I'm the programmer on the team and not the electrical engineer.
Anyone who's doing BME research runs into ethical issues, and our lab is no exception. Ethically we cannot implant electrodes into a perfectly healthy human in vitro. The risks of risks far outweigh the benefits. However if we can help epileptic patients while doing research, we can aid in the healing of the patient while getting data at the same time.
Though we're the first lab to use the ECoG technology, even our resolution is too poor to accurately control things in more than two dimensions. A breakdown of the different resolutions of Brain-Computer-Interfacing is here. The problem with EEG is that the skull acts as a signal damper that disperses and blurs the electromagnetic waves created by the neurons. Though we can still detect the waves created, it becomes increasingly more difficult to discern what area of the brain created these waves, much less what neuron(s) did.
A breakdown of the different types of BCI currently being developed and researched:
- EEG - Electro-Encephalograph - Biggest advantage is that anyone can use it, as it can be worn like a helmet or a headband. Though because it is non-invasive, it has extremely poor resolution
- ECoG - Electro-Cortocography - Though it needs to be implanted inside the skull, it produces fairly good resolution. Also, because it only sits on top of the brain as opposed to inside gray matter, it has much less of a chance to form scar-tissue (though still greater than zero). Tough to get more than one dimension of control.
- Single Receptor - A microscopic electrode is placed directly in contact with a specific neuron or group of neurons. This allows researchers to directly measure the potential of one neuron firing. Of course, this requires the electrode to be implanted. This form of BCI is also very prone to scar-tissue buildup, causing the signal to become weaker and possibly lost as the body reacts to a foreign object in the brain.
- Light Reactive Imaging - Still very theoretical - A laser is trained on a single neuron and its reflectance is picked up by a separate sensor. When the neuron fires, the laser light pattern and wavelengths that are reflected change slightly. This allows researchers to monitor a single neuron while leaving the tissue "untouched", negating the issue of scar-tissue buildup. However, this technology is not able to penetrate the skull yet, as would be needed for external/non-invasive BCI
More information about BCI and ECoG can be found in a presentation from a WashU professor... actually, he's the guy standing behind the computer. Check pages 9-11 for some good slidesThough keep an eye out for us at BMES... we just found coding for direction and velocity, and it is scalar.
I'm working for a group that does ECoG (Electro-Cortocography), and even our resolution is too poor to accurately control things in more than two dimensions. A breakdown of the different resolutions of Brain-Computer-Interfacing is here. The problem with EEG is that the skull acts as a signal damper that disperses and blurs the electromagnetic waves created by the neurons. Though we can still detect the waves created, it becomes increasingly more difficult to discern what area of the brain created these waves, much less what neuron(s) did.
A breakdown of the different types of BCI currently being developed and researched:
More information about BCI and ECoG can be found in a presentation from a WashU professor. Check pages 9-11 for some good slides
Just curious... are you the same OMF from Eva Monkey Forums?
So don't hire mere mortals, Hire "Real Programmers"
Zeus was booked, Apollo was out of town, Hermes is still learning, Posideon just signed a 500-year agreement with Apple and Ares was killed off in God of War, so most of the good non-mortal programmers were out of the question. Hades claims to be a writer instead of a programmer, but most of the plot lines he comes up with ends up with everyone dead.
Yup. Considering that Sony also owns the rights to all BluRay technology, they will make money in the form of royalty off of every single BluRay disc that is sold in WalMart, Best Buy, Target, etc. BluRay is really what Sony seems to be hedging its bets on, not necessarily the PS3.
I'm guessing the parent an example of Guerilla Marketing. The when the Penny Arcade guys expounded that the marketers hung out in various popular forums, I instantly thought there might be some on /.
Check out Guild Wars. Buy the game once, then never pay ever again. Well, except for expansion packs, but that's normal :) Like the FAQ says (emphasis mine):
Several people in my family (or guild) intend to play Guild Wars. Do we each need to purchase a copy?
Like every other online game, anyone who wants to have a Guild Wars Game Account needs to have his/her own copy of the game. There is never a monthly fee to play Guild Wars, so you will have tremendous savings over most online games. Spawning multiple copies from a single purchase is disallowed and account sharing is a breach of the Rules of Conduct.
Overall, these findings suggest that it is likely to take a significant conscious effort to change one's level of physical activity and override one's intrinsic inclination to be active or inactive.
New!
Pr-escr|ptioN gene therapy delvred r|ght t o y0u r door. 3nl4rg you_R worK ethic by four-00 percnt!
AO did this, but there was one big difference between the two: you can play Anarchy Online for free. Instead of making revenue from monthly subscriptions, they make their money from advertisers. Last time I checked, The Matrix Online still had a monthly fee... which means SOE will be getting not one but two revenue streams.
My personal view on this is: If you're going to make me pay for a game, don't subject me to advertisements I most likely don't want to see anyway.
Does the music industry put out 80 really succesful albums a year?
That all depends on your definition of "really successful". In terms of this article, "really successful" means turning a profit. It doesn't take a big stretch of the imagination to see that the music industry makes a large chunk of money spread out over a number of different albums. In terms of "big hits", I would guess that the gaming industry has a much higher percentage of successful games than the music industry.
Of course, most successes in big-business are mesasured by the former.
I'm sure they showed GTA. Do you think they showed the mission where CJ was driving the tanker truck to the delivery drop? How about the pilot training missions? Or do you think they showed CJ gettin' his groove on with his girlfriend then promptly beating a hooker and a cop with a baseball bat?
It's hard to tell the content of a full game in one short sitting. Though I have to admit I am suprised that the surveyed parents "think the ratings are too strict another 5 percent of the time."
Always avoid alliteration. Artificial amateurs aren't at all amazing.
...sounds better than any iTunes 128Mbps-compressed tune.
128Mbps-compressed tune?! Holy crap, a 3 minute song would be 2.51 gigs! That's 62 GB for a 74 min CD! I think we're going to have to skip a few generations of removable storage... HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are just not gonna cut it with Apple's new iTunes compression schemes.
While at first glance this seems to be a wild, science-shaking claim, there seems to be one key thing that is left out of this fact:
Washington University in St. Louis isn't either. It made the front page of our school's newspaper - though, admittedly, that's not entirely hard... "Student gets hit by pie" was a front page headline too.
Has anyone else played Illbleed for the Dreamcast? The game's scariness did not come from shock/jump tactics that were employed in Doom 3, for example, but from the outright twisted ideas behind the game. Though plagued by horrendous controls, the mere concept of some of the challenges were enough to keep me from playing for extended periods of time.
Imagine a young girl playing jumprope with some happy playground music going in the background.
Now imagine that girl being told by something invisible that she was going to play jumprope with it, and the rope would now be made of razors.
"killing each other" gave us the IP stack of protocols
It's true, it's true! They say that the war in Iraq is supposed to give us something called IPv6!
This may be a good trend, if other governments follow suit. What would the precedent be now if someone found a proven cure for a disease - say, AIDS or Leukemia - but could not put it out into the world because the gene it was based off of was patented?
I thought this would be nice as I'd get to listen to music at work, however the quality is so bad (highly compressed, low bandwidth)that it's not worth it.
Have you checked out ShoutCast? 30,000+ free internet radio stations, most of them commercial free, and streaming at the bitrate of your choosing (well, most stations). The sound quality is quite good, and can even reach spectacular quality using the combination of Winamp and a plugin called Ozone. Play around with the settings and listen to the difference... it's amazing what analog modeling can do for a 128k music file. Works with MP3s, Streams, and even videos too!
If 30,000+ radio stations seems a little overwhelming, might I suggest my favoriate station Beatblender (128k, streaming WMA) for some great ambient, work-inducing music.
It'll be a cold day in a volcano when they find life on Mars!
Wait a minute...