The Future of Putting Chips Inside Our Brains 106
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at the University of Florida (UF) have developed chips which someday might be inserted in the brains of people affected by epilepsy or who have lost a limb. These neuroprosthetic chips 'can interpret signals in the brain and stimulate neurons to perform correctly.' The University claims this is the future of medicine. This is maybe a little bit extreme. Just the same, the researchers are already studying these chips with rats and hope to have a prototype ready within 4 years that could be tested on humans."
Wirelsss Cybernetics (Score:3, Interesting)
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However, you are right that action without seeming effort comes at its own cost. Consider the tale of this man [youtube.com], although his powers do not come from cybernetics or even the bite of a radioactive insect. He had the ultimate remote, but found that its use was spiritually problematic.
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In all seriousness, convenience is a double edged sword. I can see some practical uses. Say, starting your car from inside on a cold winter morning. Or maybe turning on a speakerphone or flashlight in case of an emergency. But a TV remote? That's when laziness just comes in. I consider myself to be rather lazy, but I'll still at least walk across the room to get something, or even get up and LOOK for something rather th
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In that it can require zero attention.
You just say, "Body, begin exercise routine X."
Then you go and do whatever work or play you want to do on the Internet.
Come "back" an hour later, and your body has been through every piece of gym equipment in the room.
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I'm curious about what goes into 'lazy'. I travel pretty extensively, I find myself at all kinds of odd elevations at any random time, my body has long forgotten a world with 4 seasons, I hardly sleep on any regular basis an
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Monkeys have done it (Score:1)
Chips? (Score:2, Funny)
Feedback and Learning (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets hope that if people try this on a real brain with Epilepsy they read The Terminal Man [wikipedia.org] first.
As for me, I will continue rely on home brewed behaviour modification to treat my seizure disorder. Though I am pleased to see more treatment options for people with very serious conditions.
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Sure, and Johnny Mnemonic, and Jake 2.0, and of course The Matrix. Oh, and hey, what about that SG1 episode with the fat bald guy in their heads that made all the food taste really good?
There's never going to be a
MOD PARENT UP! (Score:2)
The problem is that if people only think in terms of what fiction writers write, they're getting a very inaccurate and restricted view of the possible real consequences. The few things in fiction stories probably won't happen. There are many, many more things that could, far too many and some far too complex for most fiction writers to come up with. Believe me, brain scientists don't give a rosy rat's ass for what fiction says, but most are thinking way beyond any fiction.
Indeed. And given recent comments from Michael Crichton (author of The Terminal Man) denying the science of global warming, the need to distinguish real science from science fiction becomes all that more important.
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My aunt have one of those things. You "reboot" her with a magnetic thing that looks like a round stone.
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Wait a minute... A double-blind study? So the patients in the control group got fake chips implanted? I didn't know brain surgery had become that routine. Well, great if it is, I guess...
Well, my guess would be that all of the patients in the study have real chips installed, but neither they nor the researchers know whether or not they are turned on at any particular time. One could turn them on or off externally and, over time, effectively double the sample size of the study over what it would be with half of the chips as "fakes." A good move considering, as you rightly imply, the risk of brain surgery.
But as I said, I'm just guessing this is what they're doing.
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Lets hope that if people try this on a real brain with Epilepsy they read The Terminal Man [wikipedia.org] first.
As for me, I will continue rely on home brewed behaviour modification to treat my seizure disorder. Though I am pleased to see more treatment options for people with very serious conditions.
Or how about Ghost in the Shell? [wikipedia.org] Although I'll admit, there are probably a lot of problems that could arise from brain chips that even Cyber-Punk authors haven't thought up yet.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagus_nerve_stimulat
Not quite a tasp just yet though.
I want a math coprocessor (Score:2)
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I'd love to be able to do 4096-bit RSA encryption in my head
Hmmm interesting. Because we don't have a specification for the storage structures in the brain, and rely on non-encrypted IO to reverse engineer such structures, encrypting your IO is effectively the same as encrypting your brain.
Well done. If you are Greg Egan [wikipedia.org] I suggest you write a book about your idea. If you are not then I suggest you send it to Greg.
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I'd be satisfied if I could just figure out the restaurant tip in my head.
Let me help... (Score:3, Funny)
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along comes a member of my tribe
wish I had points
great comment
Re:I want a conversation coprocessor (Score:3, Funny)
Get a Conversation Coprocessor! It handles mundane written and verbal conversations for you! Worried about missing something im
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Such as finding a purpose for doing 4096-bit RSA in your head. Unless you mean doing 4096-bit RSA encryption in your head to your head, in which case the rest of your brain had better be concentrating on the key.
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What about memory storage? (Score:2)
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If the brain can't reach its capacity within a lifetime, it's because it's so horribly slow at learning. I can copy Wikipedia onto my PocketPC in 5 minutes, how long would it take to memorize Wikipedia? There's no comparison.
Since it won't be ingrained like natural memory, I am very curious to see how we'll perceive I/O with these devices. Will we feel it, hear it,
Re:What about memory storage? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Factoring large primes (Score:1)
For any prime p,
p = 1 x p.
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For any prime p,
p = 1 x p.
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Consider this: In just one day, what is there to remember? There are people, conversations, feelings, environments, thoughts, countless objects. We don't necessarily remember all of it, but we remember quite a bit. Also consider some exceptional cases of people who can remember everything that they read (and read extremely quickly). There was a video about such a person on YouTube, but I can't seem to find it. He not only read at an incredible rate, but also could do calculations extremely quickly and reproduce entire landscapes. His brain has yet to get "full.' In addition, any autistic people have been shown to factor large primes extremely quickly.
I'm just an amateur but here's a thought I had. When we hear about these idiot savants we're quite impressed. I think I saw the guy you're talking about on Youtube, he takes a helicopter tour of a city and reproduces the entire skyline in photographic detail with a pencil on a big sheet of paper. My question is, is he tapping into an unused portion of the brain or is that portion unused because of his disability and the brain just happened to wire it up in the way he's currently using it? In other words, j
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The latter. It's a proven fact in science that most of the "super abilities" in mentally impaired people are directly related to their other mental problem.
For example we read earlier that it's critical for normal human beings to be able to drop neuron connections and make new ones which match their current requirem
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Stephen Wiltshire perhaps?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVqRT_kCOLI [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95L-zmIBGd4 [youtube.com]
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http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=5
What about a chip that (Score:2)
Sometimes I wonder if, without outside help, we are going to reach a plateau of scientific development because of our limited minds and the amount of time education takes these days (personally I think the amount learned in a 12 year p
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OK, OK, if you want the upgrade vresion, get an abacus.
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Still doesn't mean that I want to program in assembly rather than some higher level language.
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Many are, but don't be misled by the higher level programming levels so many of use on a daily basis, which are at least theoretically Turing complete.
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"cos(3pi/5)"
See? All neatly written out nad everything!
Now, if you want to do trig functions, I call the right to do them the way a typical computer program does, by keeping a lookup table around and using that to get the nearest answer, then rounding.
do schizoids dream of eclectic sheeple? (Score:1)
I want to be a cyborg when I grow up.
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Welcome to Slashdot, Mr. Cheney.
-1 Troll
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That has to be the most amazing thing I've read here today. Simply fascinating.
http://guidance.nice.org.uk/IPG108 [nice.org.uk]
got one (Score:3, Funny)
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We don't need no education (Score:1)
Seriously, today it'll be a cure for epilepsy, tomorrow it'll be a cure for individuality.
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Tinfoil hat won't help against anything programmed into the chip once it's implanted. Course, it MIGHT help keep that chip from getting hacked by the l337 5cr1p7 k1dd13zz.
Don't count on it, though...
Finally! (Score:2, Funny)
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And everyone's going to wonder why you're sitting there, squirming in your chair...
hmmmm, oh huh? (Score:2)
"Does it think for me?"
"no."
Eyes revert to TV showing cars with hard drives [technoride.com].
Yes! (Score:5, Funny)
When Do We Get Brain Internet... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Block It... (Score:1)
Surfing Reddit and
This is not the first of its kind (Score:2, Informative)
Better allocation of government $ than stem cells (Score:2)
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Normalising Brain Patterns (Score:2, Interesting)
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Upgrades (Score:4, Funny)
Long way to go (Score:1)
There have been many studies on connecting brain to machine; some using e.g.nerve growth factor to make the nerves connect to the chips. They have been promissing up to a level, but it
BSOD (Score:2)
Bipolar treatment? (Score:2)
Robert
It IS the future of Medicine! (Score:1)
However, there are experts in the field who believe that transcranial tinkering [wikipedia.org] is even bette
A good scifi novel involving "chipping in" (Score:2)
Bionic father-in-law. (Score:2)
Get ready for (Score:1)
Yeah, get back to me on that (Score:2)
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Neurotech (Score:3, Interesting)
-- General
* Irazoqui's neurotransceiver [purdue.edu] [pdf] [2003] The problem with Irazoqui's device is that it is maybe 1% power efficient, so maybe some electronicists can come around and make some suggestions to improve the coil design and so on. He did his testing on rats, not humans.
* Direct brain interface bibliography [umich.edu] from the University of Michigan
* Gleamed from an article below: wireless visual cortex implant publications [polymtl.ca]
-- EEG
* Controlling computers with EEG signals [hmc.edu]
* EEG via soundcard [sourceforge.net] from OpenEEG [sourceforge.net]
* Wireless EEG [cornell.edu]
-- Slashdot goodness
* Scientists couple nerve tissue with semiconductors [slashdot.org]
* Post re: neurosilicon junction with PDF [slashdot.org]
* Thinkware [slashdot.org]
* Good post w/ links on neurocomputation [slashdot.org]
* Brain slice experiments [slashdot.org]
* Neuroscientists at MIT doing direct neural interfaces [slashdot.org]- but this post sets things into perpsective [slashdot.org] as well as this one [slashdot.org]
* Single neuron recordings w/ ref [slashdot.org]
* Sorry to dash your hopes, but
* Autonomously adjusting electrodes? [slashdot.org] and more [slashdot.org]
* Artificial hippocampus [slashdot.org] and stimulating neuron growth / neurogenesis
* Implant a chip inside your head [slashdot.org]- though it does not discuss the specific surgery skills you would need
* Working nerve chip of silicon and snail neurons [slashdot.org]
* Re: Kevin Warwick [slashdot.org]- interview [slashdot.org]- the so-called "Captain Cyborg" since '98 or something
* BrainPort [slashdot.org]
* Fusing neurons with computers [slashdot.org]
-- More
* Artificial vision [howstuffworks.com]
* The vision quest [wired.com]
*
Obligatory... (Score:2)
Unfortunate Side Effects (Score:1)
I put chips in my brain every night (Score:2)
Trouble (Score:2)