Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community  

Go Back   Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community > The Academy > Tilted Philosophy


 
 
LinkBack Thread Tools
Old 10-12-2004, 03:09 PM   #1 (permalink)
Sky Piercer
 
CSflim's Avatar
 
Location: Ireland
The stuff of science-fiction keeps getting nearer and nearer

Link
Quote:
A 25-year-old quadriplegic sits in a wheelchair with wires coming out of a bottle-cap-size connector stuck in his skull.

The wires run from 100 tiny sensors implanted in his brain and out to a computer. Using just his thoughts, this former high school football player is playing the computer game Pong.

It is part of a breakthrough trial, the first of its kind, with far-reaching implications. Friday, early results were revealed at the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation annual conference. Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, the Foxborough-based company behind the technology, told attendees the man can use his thoughts to control a computer well enough to operate a TV, open e-mail and play Pong with 70% accuracy.

"The patient tells me this device has changed his life," says Jon Mukand, a physician caring for him at a rehabilitation facility in Warwick, R.I. The patient, who had the sensors implanted in June, has not been publicly identified.

The trial is approved by the FDA (news - web sites). Cyberkinetics has permission to do four more this year.

The significance of the technology, which Cyberkinetics calls Braingate, goes far beyond the initial effort to help quadriplegics. It is an early step toward learning to read signals from an array of neurons and use computers and algorithms to translate the signals into action. That could lead to artificial limbs that work like the real thing: The user could think of moving a finger, and the finger would move.

"It's Luke Skywalker," says John Donoghue, the neuroscientist who led development of the technology at Brown University and in 2001 founded Cyberkinetics.

The brain in control

Further out, some experts believe, the technology could be built into a helmet or other device that could read neural signals from outside the skull, non-invasively. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding research in this field, broadly known as Brain Machine Interface, or BMI.

DARPA envisions a day when a fighter pilot, for instance, might operate some controls just by thinking.

BMI is a field about to explode. At Duke University, a research team has employed different methods to read and interpret neural signals directly from the human brain. Other research is underway at universities around the world. Atlanta-based Neural Signals - a pioneer in BMI for the handicapped - has also been developing a system for tapping directly into the brain.

To be certain, the technology today is experimental and crude, perhaps at a stage similar to the first pacemaker in 1950, which was the size of a boombox and delivered jolts through wires implanted in the heart.

The Cyberkinetics trial "is great," says Jeff Hawkins, author of On Intelligence, a book about the brain out this month. But measuring enough neurons to do complex tasks like grasp a cup or speak words isn't close to feasible today. "Hooking your brain up to a machine in a way that the two could communicate rapidly and accurately is still science fiction," Hawkins says.

Layered on all of the BMI research are ethical and societal issues about messing with the brain to improve people. But those, too, are a long way from the research happening now.

Monkeys chasing dots

The Cyberkinetics technology grew out of experiments with monkeys at Brown.

Donoghue and his research team implanted sensors in the brains of monkeys, and got them to play a simple computer game - chasing dots around a screen with a cursor using a mouse - to get a food reward. As the monkeys played, computers read signals from the sensors and looked for patterns. From the patterns, the team developed mathematical models to determine which signals meant to move left, right, up, down and so on. After a while, the team disconnected the mouse and ran the cursor off the monkeys' thoughts. It worked: The monkeys could chase the dots by thinking of what they'd normally do with their hands.



A driving concept is to make the computer control natural, so a patient doesn't have to learn new skills.

The reason it works has to do with a discovery made by neuroscientists in the 1990s. The billions of neurons in each region of the brain work on physical tasks like an orchestra, and each neuron is one instrument.

With an orchestra, if you listen to only a few of the instruments, you could probably pick up what song is being played, but you wouldn't get all its richness and subtlety. Similarly, scientists found that if you can listen to any random group of neurons in a region, you can decipher generally what the region is trying to do - but you wouldn't get the richness and subtlety that might let a person do complex tasks.

The more neurons you can listen to, the more precisely you can pick out the song.

Cyberkinetics' big breakthrough is listening to up to 100 neurons at once and applying the computing power to make sense of that data almost instantly. The 100 sensors stick out from a chip the size of a contact lens. Through a hole in the skull, the chip is pressed into the cortex surface "like a thumbtack," Donoghue says.

Most of the sensors get near enough to a neuron to read its pattern of electrical pulses as they turn on and off, much like the 1s and 0s that are the basis for computing. Wires carry the signals out through a connector in the skull, and the computer does the rest.

Patient gaining accuracy

Cyberkinetics technicians work with the former football player three times a week, trying to fine-tune the system so he can do more tasks. He can move a cursor around a screen. If he leaves the cursor on a spot and dwells on it, that works like a mouse click.

Once he can control a computer, the possibilities get interesting. A computer could drive a motorized wheelchair, allowing him to go where he thinks about going. It could control his environment - lights, heat, locking or unlocking doors. And he could tap out e-mails, albeit slowly.

At this point, though, the equipment is unwieldy. The computer, two screens and other parts of the system are stacked on a tall cart. The processor and software can't do all the computations quite fast enough to move the cursor in real time - not instantly, the way your hand moves when you tell it to move. And because the sensors tap no more than 100 neurons, the cursor doesn't always move precisely. That's why a one-time athlete can play Pong at only 70% accuracy.

Though implanting a chip in the brain might seem alarming, devices are already regularly implanted in brains to help people who have severe epilepsy, Parkinson's disease (news - web sites) or other neurological disorders. "We put drugs in our brains to improve them, even caffeine," says Arthur Caplan, head of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "I don't think the brain is some sacrosanct organ you can't touch."

Not everyone is a fan of Cyberkinetics' human trials. "I am very skeptical," says Miguel Nicolelis, co-director of the Duke center doing similar research. "They seem to want to simply push their views and make a buck without much consideration of what is appropriate and safe to suggest to different patients."

At the moment, though, "The patient is very, very happy," says Mukand, who is also functioning as the FDA's investigator on the case.

Help with prosthetic limbs?

One way or another, neuroscience and technology are crashing together.

The Duke team has not implanted a permanent device in a human, but it has implanted sensors in monkeys who then move a robot arm by thought. Duke's results, published in July in the journal Neuroscience, show that the idea of using neurons to guide a prosthetic device can work.

To really be useful, the technology will have to get smaller, cheaper and wireless - perhaps a computer worn behind the ear. Down the road, it will have to tap many more neurons, and then the challenge will be building software to analyze more complicated patterns from so many more neurons.

"Brains are incredibly complex organs," author Hawkins says. "There are 100,000 neurons in a square millimeter of cortex. There are very precise codes in the neurons. The details matter."

A yet bigger challenge - the one DARPA faces - will be reading neural signals without drilling holes in people's skulls. Over the past decade, researchers have used the electroencephalogram (EEG) to pick up brain waves through electrodes attached to the head. After months of training, users can learn to play simple video games - such as making a wheel turn faster - with their thoughts. But EEG readings are too broad and weak to drive more specific tasks.

In June, researchers at Washington University, St. Louis, reported using a different external device - an electrocorticographic (ECoG) - to get more precise readings from outside the head. With a few hours of training, users could track targets on a screen.

But researchers at Duke, Brown and Cyberkinetics believe that the only way to get signals that can operate a robot arm, do e-mail or move a wheelchair is to touch the brain directly.

As with most technological developments, the devices will get smaller and better and the software will be made smarter, until some of what now seems bizarre becomes real. Society will be forced to debate the questions the technology raises.

"There are those who say this is slippery slope stuff - that this technology is opening the door to dangerous technologies that could enhance, improve and optimize someone," says bioethicist Caplan. "But I'm unwilling to hold hostage this kind of exciting medical research for those kinds of fears."
No doubt there will be Luddites, but I for one am thrilled reading about advances such as this.
The ability to impove the quality of life of a quadriplegic is just wonderful. And it's only going to get better. I know that many people read science-fiction in the same way as they would fantasy: pure escapism with no real importance, but as this article shows 'cybernetics', Brain Machine Interfacing or whatever you wish to call it is something very real. And it is going to get even 'realer' as time goes by.
Agreed, it is currently in a very primitive state. But just think of how far we have come with computers in the last fifty years.

What are your thoughts?
__________________
CSflim is offline  
Old 10-12-2004, 03:38 PM   #2 (permalink)
Crazy
 
NeoRete's Avatar
 
Location: Cape Cod
I think it's wonderful that this technology which has such potential for improving quality of life is being researched. Though I question how much effort and how many growing pains will be needed to see something of this scope come to fruition. The brain is a complicated organ which is far from being understood, to shoot for something this large will require many new discoveries of the intricacies in the human brain and how it is "wired". This isn't to say that I don't think that this is a worthwhile project, I just wonder if due to the biological factor in the development of this technology, if there might be many more issues that arise when compared to many other technological innovations thus far.
__________________
Charlie was a chemist but Charlie is nomore, what Charlie thought was H2O was H2SO4
NeoRete is offline  
Old 10-12-2004, 04:22 PM   #3 (permalink)
Upright
 
Check out the sort of projects going on at DARPA. They regularly work on science fiction projects like super soldier suits and mechs.

Hey, when "The Land Ironclads" was published, tanks were science fiction. My parent's generation is probably somewhat disappointed that those flying cars never came through.
Zubon is offline  
Old 10-12-2004, 08:41 PM   #4 (permalink)
Crazy
 
Ramega's Avatar
 
I think it's entirely likely that within our lifetimes (I'm 32) the Internet will become completely wireless and receivers will be implanted in our brains for it. Just look at how far information technology has come since the 60's. Give it 40 more years and who knows what we'll see.

My question is: when that time comes, will there be any true learning any more? You already have people who don't know anything but can look it up fast on Google and act like they know what they are talking about (which is why I generally steer clear of the politics board). Imagine if you had access to the information on the Internet at all times within your own head.

The porn ramifications alone are staggering.
Ramega is offline  
Old 10-12-2004, 09:38 PM   #5 (permalink)
Insane
 
Location: California
I can't wait for them to reverse engineer this, so the motor section of your brain can be controlled by computer. That'll make a great movie in the next decade or so.
__________________
It's not getting what you want, it's wanting what you've got.
mo42 is offline  
Old 10-13-2004, 04:24 AM   #6 (permalink)
zen_tom
Guest
 
The Brain Machine Interface as a control device is exciting indeed, however, until there is an equally direct method of feeding information back to the brain (sorry Ramega, you may have to wait some time longer for this) we're stuck with screens and other traditional devices to relay information back to us.
And until the direct feedback (Machine Brain Interface)is achieved, it's not going to be much different than moving a mouse, or a joystick, or turning a wheel to achieve some effect.
 
Old 10-13-2004, 07:42 AM   #7 (permalink)
MSD
The sky calls to us ...
 
MSD's Avatar
 
Super Moderator
Location: CT
One they get this adapted to first person shooters, sign me up for surgery
MSD is offline  
Old 10-13-2004, 08:02 AM   #8 (permalink)
Insane
 
Phage's Avatar
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mo42
I can't wait for them to reverse engineer this, so the motor section of your brain can be controlled by computer. That'll make a great movie in the next decade or so.
It is called "Ghost in the Shell".
Phage is offline  
 

Tags
nearer, sciencefiction, stuff

Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On



All times are GMT -8. The time now is 11:46 PM.

Tilted Forum Project

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Search Engine Optimization by vBSEO 3.6.0 PL2
© 2002-2012 Tilted Forum Project

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360