Your Brain, Upgraded: 'Cells To Silicon'

 Future of Brain Science  

Recently, neuroscientists John Donoghue and Sheila Nirenberg, computer scientist Michel Maharbiz, and psychologist Gary Marcus discussed the cutting edge of brain-machine interactions in "Cells to Silicon: Your Brain in 2050," part of the Big Ideas series at the 2014 World Science Festival.

At present, our brains are mostly dependent on all the stuff below the neck to turn thought into action. But advances in neuroscience are making it easier than ever to hook machines up to minds.

In the video above, neuroscientists John Donoghue and Sheila Nirenberg, computer scientist Michel Maharbiz, and psychologist Gary Marcus discuss the cutting edge of brain-machine interactions in "Cells to Silicon: Your Brain in 2050."

We are at the dawn of a revolution in neuroscience, with the potential to dramatically expand how the human mind interacts with the world.

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For the most part,  brains still need bodies—vocal cords, hands, eyes—to turn thought into action, but rudimentary mind-to-machine links have already been developed.

The science fiction dream of uploading new skills and memories directly to your mind, might not be far off. Drawing from neuroscience, biology, engineering, genetics, and psychology, we will explore the breakthroughs happening in brain-machine interaction today, and speculate about the enhanced human capabilities of tomorrow.

Donoghue, currently the director of the Brown Institute for Brain Science, talks about his work with Cathy Hutchinson, in bringing robotic control to her through a brain implant.

Nirenberg discusses how she is sending representations back into the brain, in her work to bring sight and hearing back to blind and deaf individuals. By recording firing patterns of normal retinas and then sending these patterns to a retinal prosthetic, Nirenberg and her team have achieved success in returning sight to animal models so far.  They have demonstrated that proper code, not resolution is the key to improving this level of neural processing.

"Why couldn't we last forever if our brain were copied and captured?"

The panel goes on to discuss enhancement of the brain.  "I think that the same way the information revolution benefited, the most educated to take a hand in it," says Maharbiz. "I think the brain is going to be like that in the next 100 to 150 years. The best thing you can do is just to educate as many people as you can." Maharbiz is one of the inventors of neural dust, a low-power solution for chronic brain-machine interfaces and untethered neural recording. He also developed the world’s first remotely radio-controlled cyborg insects (beetles), a project named one of the top ten emerging technologies of 2009 by MIT’s Technology Review.

Artificial minds and uploaded minds are also examined by the panel.  "Are you sure that you aren't already a simulation living in a vat?" quips Marcus.

Marcus goes on to explain the conundrum of how uploads may be copies, not an actual uploaded mind.  "I think you could make a copy, but it would be me at some moment in time, then I would go on learning," says Nirenberg. "Why couldn't we last forever if our brain were copied and captured?"

The recording was made at the Big Ideas series at the 2014 World Science Festival.



SOURCE  World Science Festival

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