When Elon Musk announced his first implant recipient late last month, a broad public first learned that many people with disabilities use implants now.
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Bob and Sue were on their way to church one morning. On their way they ran into their friend Fred. Fred was very wealthy, a billionaire in fact. Fred waved hi. Bob and Sue waved back. They asked Fred to come with them to church. Fred said no, he had more important things to do. “What is so important,” asked Sue. “I’m off to the real deal,” beamed Fred. Bob looked confused. “Real deal about what?” “You have a fake promise of eternal life. I’m about to get the real thing.” “You can’t be serious. Start talking some sense.” “Seriously. Here’s my voucher, see it right here.” Sue grabbed the piece of paper from Fred and read it aloud. “Good for one digital immortalization Read More ›
How does excessive social media use affect our perceptions of the real world? Writers Mark Miller and Ben White wrote a piece at Aeon on social media through the perspective of “predictive processing,” a term used in neuroscience and cognition. Predictive processing involves the brain’s capacity to predict error, danger, or some future event, and urge us to act accordingly. (That’s my basic, layman’s understanding of it, full disclosure!) White and Miller use temperature as an example, noting how the body may respond to a change of the environment by closing a window or grabbing a blanket to keep warm. Being able to respond appropriately to our surroundings depends on the accuracy of our mental model of the real world. Read More ›
The singularity refers to the future point when the human and the machine will merge––when the personal and technological distinction breaks down entirely. It sounds dystopian and far off. But, two experts in the tech field warn that the singularity, as we’ve come to imagine it, is right upon us. Writing for The Conversation, John Kendall Hawkins and Sandy Boucher comment, To understand why this isn’t the stuff of fairy tales, we need only look as far as recent developments in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). BCIs are a natural beginning to the singularity in the eyes of many futurists, because they meld mind and machine in a way no other technology so far can. Elon Musk’s company Neuralink is seeking permission from the US Food Read More ›
Brain computer interface (BCI) shows promise in treating paralysis or enabling prosthetics to work almost naturally. But BCI for treating depression sounds like hype: Say goodbye to pills, therapy, and all that. With such gloomy prospects, it was only a matter of time scientists realized there must be better ways to treat depression rather than pills. After all, drugs only work because they act on certain brain regions to modulate the concentration of certain neurotransmitters, like serotonin or dopamine. Therefore, in the end, the regulation of mood depends on stimulating brain signals in certain parts of the brain — that is, neurons firing — and this can be done more accurately by just zapping the neurons directly with electricity. Diego Read More ›
“The Final Moments of Karl Brant” at DUST by Neil Ellice and Matthew Wilson (June 10, 2021 at DUST, 15:46 min) “Set in the near future where experimental technology allows two detectives to bring a murder victim back to life in a digital state in order to question him about his final moments.” Review: This is an “oldie” from 2013, recently uploaded to DUST. Entrepreneur Karl Brant and academic neuroscientist Bennett Ferryman were partners in a promising new high tech venture in which Brant suddenly perishes, leaving Ferryman now the sole owner — and under interrogation down at the local cop shop: “Am I a suspect?” “Not if you give us a good reason why you shouldn’t be.” Not too Read More ›
The science media has been abuzz these last few days with news of man paralyzed from the neck down who was able to type using only his thoughts — communicating via a brain implant: A 65-year-old man had two grids of tiny electrodes implanted on the surface of his brain. The electrodes read electrical activity in the part of the brain that controls hand and finger movements. Although the man was paralyzed from the neck down, he imagined writing letters softly with his hand. With an algorithm, researchers then figured out the neural patterns that went with each imagined letter and transformed those patterns into text on a screen. Anushree Dave, “Brain implants turn imagined handwriting into text on a Read More ›
In last week’s podcast, “The Chaitin Interview III: The Changing Landscape for Mathematics,” Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviewed mathematician and computer scientist Gregory Chaitin on many things mathematical, including why great books on math, advancing new theorems, aren’t written much any more. This week, we look at why geniuses like Musk (whose proposed Mars Orbiter is our featured image above) simply can’t just follow the rules, for better or worse: https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Mind-Matters-126-Gregory-Chaitin.mp3 This portion begins at 7:57 min. A partial transcript, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow. Gregory Chaitin: Look at Elon Musk (pictured). He’s my great hero. He’s a wonderful engineer and he’s a wonderful entrepreneur and he doesn’t follow the rules. Robert J. Marks: He doesn’t, Read More ›
Talk about a scary headline from an impressive research group!: “The Brain-Computer Interface is coming — and we are just so not ready for it” from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Okay, what’s going on? Both more and less than we think, depending on what we focus on. The Bulletin, published since 1947, is best known for a Doomsday Clock which expresses how close the editors think we are to nuclear war and climate apocalypse. An article in the current edition of the Bulletin covers the remarkable advances in prosthetics in recent years, in hooking up neurons (which use electrical signals) to electronic limbs, enabling much better control of prostheses. But the startling thing to realize is where researchers Read More ›
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, have enabled a participant who is paralyzed in all four limbs to control a computer cursor, using only brain activity, by tapping into the brain’s own natural learning system. Without tapping into that system, brain-computer interface (BCI) needs extensive daily retraining in order to work. “It’s like asking someone to learn to ride a bike over and over again from scratch,” said study senior author Karunesh Ganguly, MD, PhD, an associate professor of in the UC San Francisco Department of Neurology. “Adapting an artificial learning system to work smoothly with the brain’s sophisticated long-term learning schemas is something that’s never been shown before in a paralyzed person.” Nicholas Weiler, “First ‘Plug and Read More ›