Brain-Machine Interfaces  

Tech investor Elon Musk has elaborated on plans for his recently launched Neuralink venture – a company he founded to link the human brain with machine interfaces – which, if successful, raises some fascinating questions about the way we understand  and use language.

Elon Musk has in the past made little attempt to disguise his worries over super-intelligent AI , claiming it could either wipe out humanity or relegate humans to mere pets, and now, kicking against the threat of a Terminator- style future, he has detailed plans to make "micron-sized " human-machine interfaces as a step to "counter for Skynet".

With these interfaces, Musk aims to allow humans to communicate their thoughts directly with each other, a process he claims would essentially allow humans to “engage in consensual telepathy”. This may sound very sci-fi but brain interfaces already exist in the medical realm and in an in-depth interview with website Wait But Why Musk outlines some of the thinking behind setting up Neuralink.

"You wouldn't need to verbalize unless you want to add a little flair to the conversation or something … But the conversation would be conceptual interaction on a level that's difficult to conceive of right now," Musk said.

Whether this is possible technically is one question but the concept of this sort of direct brain-to-brain transmission raises some very interesting issues for our very understanding of language.

Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.

J. G. Ballard

First words

The field of direct brain-to-brain transmission has developed rapidly in recent years following the first successful experiments between animals in 2013, as reported in the journal Scientific Report. That experiment, which involved sending signals between a rat’s brain in Brazil and a partner in the US, heralded a new age where the concept of sending brain data between individuals became a concrete reality.

Described at the time as an ‘international mind-meld’ the experiment itself is far from what Musk hopes to achieve but points to a future where technology can enable cooperation. In the experiment, the Brazilian rat – the encoder – was trained to press one of two levers to gain a reward, dependant on whether or not an LED in its enclosure was lit. A neural interface recorded the activity in the rat’s motor cortex and then transmitted this to the US rat – the decoder – which was also faced with two levers.

The neural input the US rat received helped it choose which lever to press and, every time it chose the same as the Brazilian rat, gain a reward. Provided they cooperated they could improve their rewards and overall they achieved a 64% parity, far better than even odds and what the researchers describe as “a new central nervous system made of two brains”.

The team conducting the research at Duke University in North Carolina was led by Dr Miguel Nicolelis who believes that this research paved the way to define “an organic computer capable of solving heuristic problems that would be deemed non-computable by a general Turing-machine”

Creating collaboration or multiplying fictions?

As impressive as the hyperbole surrounding mind interfaces is the interesting questions are not so much in the concept of a borg like superbrain but in the ways that humans could ultimately relate to this technology.

While rats are able to react to stimuli and adjust their behaviour in order to gain rewards they do not have a developed sense of self and hence their collaboration is fairly straight forward.

In many respects, there is little difference between a rat responding to an LED light or responding to an electrochemical signal. If instead of a neural interface the rat in the US simply watched a video transmission of the Brazilian rat’s LED we might expect it to do better than a 64% correspondence.

Humans on the other hand have developed a highly complex sense of self through centuries of using both spoken and written language. What is remarkable is the potential that neural transmission offers for both language and deception.

It is the ability to manipulate words that first allowed us to cooperate in the plains of Africa and allowed us to generate complicated senses of self and reward/gratification strategies.

Would an implant give us any more idea if someone were lying, for example? Would we not simply learn to game the output for our own purposes?

Our first reaction might be that a link such as this would create - as Elon Musk hopes - an almost telepathic connection, a connected mind that would lead to a utopia of collaborative thought but is this likely? Does the history of natural language evolution suggest this is all that will develop?

What forms of fiction might we see if neural interfaces could send intracortical data between us?

Related articles

• How Brain-to-Brain Communication Is Here, and Will Change Our Lives 
• Miguel Nicolelis Says The Singularity Is Hot Air 
• Elon Musk Launches Start-Up to Accelerate Neural Lace Development 

A bridge to new language

The rats in the Duke experiment already exhibited some signs of emergent behaviour. Since both rats got a reward each time the decoder chose correctly, the encoder rat started to try and aid its partner in the US by adjusting its movements to create a clearer signal. Over the course of the experiment the Brazilian rat refined its movements making clearer, smoother presses on the lever. In this case, the system was set up to favour collaboration but what would the result be if only one rat could receive a reward each time? Would the Brazilian rat try to obfuscate its mental signal?

When it comes to human social interactions there are of course a far wider range of options than simply ‘left’ or ‘right’ lever. Some people will blurt out whatever is in their head while others show icy restraint, some people speak plainly while others always rely on irony, some people invariably tell the truth while others lie incessantly.

"It begs the question - what forms of language will this lead us to?"

Would intracortical microstimulation make these variations less pronounced or more? Would an additional sensory input lead to fewer lies or more?

Before the first written language, human cooperation was limited but so too was organised religion or nationwide warfare. Certainly written language has done little to reduce the amount of fiction in the world.

It begs the question - what forms of language will this lead us to? 

Greeks Bearing Gifts

These questions all come before we even consider the software and hardware architectures used to transmit any ‘thoughts’. The researchers in the Duke University experiment used software to try and ‘clean’ the signal.

With a choice of just two levers the desired result was fairly obvious so they were able to boost the signal-to-noise ratio but what implications are there for the interference of software in transmission when the moral or ethical outcome is less clear cut?

Will Elon Musk develop algorithms to ‘clean’ the transmission between two humans? Should he? What level of trust would we have with a sensory input from such a transmission if we felt that it had been manipulated or ‘cleaned’ by software?

Whatever Elon Musk’s intentions it is undoubtedly many years before anything approaching a neural bridge can be developed for humans but it seems certain that the language with which we, as a society, construct our thoughts in the present day is never more important – as this will be the language upon which these first prototypes will be built.

By  Lochlan Bloom	Embed
Lochlan Bloom is a British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer. He is the author of the novel the The Wave as well as the novella Trade and The Open Cage. He has written for BBC Radio, Litro Magazine, Porcelain Film, IronBox Films, EIU, H+ Magazine and Calliope, the official publication of the Writers’ Special Interest Group (SIG) of American Mensa, amongst others.

Neural Lace  

The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has a firm goal to implant tiny electrodes in human brains, and now has launched a start-up to tackle the problem. Neuralink, it will work on what Musk calls the 'neural lace' technology, implanting tiny brain electrodes that may one day upload and download thoughts.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Tesla, OpenAI and SpaceX founder Elon Musk is behind a new startup called Neuralink. While the details so far are scarce, the Internet is abuzz with excitement over Musk's latest venture into Singularity technology.

It has been reported that Neuralink is a biotech company registered in California, and it’s working to develop neural lace technology into something that could actually hit the market for consumers. The reports are that the technology has already been tested in mice.

Neuralink has already hired a number of top experts in the fields of flexible electrodes and brain physiology, though at this early stage the company is still taking its funding entirely from Musk himself.

Related articles

• Elon Musk Says Governments Must Monitor Development of AI 
• Elon Musk On How to Build the Future 
• Elon Musk Says It Is A One in A Billion Chance We Are Not Living In A Computer Simulation 

Neural lace is a concept first coined in Iain M. Banks Culture Series, where humans living on another planet install genetically engineered glands in their brains that can secrete stimulants, psychedelics and sedatives any time they like.

An approach to a neural lace system was published two years ago. The “syringe-injectable electronics” concept was invented by researchers in Charles Lieber’s lab at Harvard University and the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology in Beijing. It would involve injecting a biocompatible polymer scaffold mesh with attached microelectronic devices into the brain via syringe.

Lieber’s team of researchers has shown this in live mice and verified continuous monitoring and recordings of brain signals. “We have shown that mesh electronics with widths more than 30 times the needle ID can be injected and maintain a high yield of active electronic devices … little chronic immunoreactivity,” the researchers reported in their paper in Nature Nanotechnology. 

“In the future, our new approach and results could be extended in several directions, including the incorporation of multifunctional electronic devices and/or wireless interfaces to further increase the complexity of the injected electronics,” they wrote.

"We're trying to blur the distinction between electronic circuits and neural circuits."

According to Lieber, "We're trying to blur the distinction between electronic circuits and neural circuits."

Musk’s eventual aims for this technology are clear: The control of AI and robots with mental commands, for increases in both the speed and usefulness of interactions with artificial intelligence.

Musk first described neural lace as a brain-computer system that would link human brains with a computer interface. It would allow humans to achieve "symbiosis with machines" so they could communicate directly with computers without going through a physical interface.

Musk has said a neural lace will help prevent people from becoming "house cats" to artificial intelligence. If successful, neural lace may not only help cast the technology in a positive light, but present ethics boards with a real early reason to push past the risks of initial human testing. 

Once we’ve had human beings walking around for years with neural lace implants, regardless of why they got those implants in the first place, it will be much easier to pitch expansion of the procedure for other purposes.  This could be the beginning of the first true human internet, or Global Brain, where brain-to-brain interfaces are possible via injectable electronics that pass your mental traffic through the cloud.

Musk has promised more details soon through the site Wait But Why on Twitter:

Long Neuralink piece coming out on @waitbutwhy in about a week. Difficult to dedicate the time, but existential risk is too high not to.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 28, 2017

SOURCE  Wall Street Journal (paywall), Top Image Lieber Research Group, Harvard University

By  33rd Square	Embed

Brain-Machine Interfaces  

In the past, we could only communicate with robots by giving them very specific instructions. New deep learning technologies have recently allowed robots to teach themselves. Now, researchers have devised a way for people to communicate with robots using just their brains. 

Computer scientists from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Boston University created a system that monitors a person’s brain waves with an electroencephalography (EEG), which it then uses to determine if the human agrees with the robot’s decision. It can classify brain waves in just 10 to 30 milliseconds.

If the system detects "error-related potentials" (ErrPs), brain signals that the brain creates whenever it notices a mistake, the robot will become aware that it made or was about to make the wrong choice.

The researchers are also working on enabling the robot to identify secondary errors, such as those that occur when the system doesn’t notice the human’s signal that it made a mistake. Once it can do that in real time, the team suspects its accuracy will improve by up to 90%.

At the moment, the system can decide between only two options, but because ErrPs are stronger when more serious errors occur, robots may be able to interpret the brain waves to help them make more complex decisions that incorporate more choices.

The potential uses for this technology are tremendous. Being able to better communicate with robotic systems could improve their effectiveness and lead to improvements in technologies across various industries.

Related articles

• Neural Dust May Provide Brain-Machine Interface Solution 
• Miguel Nicolelis Explains How Brain-to-Brain Communication Is Here, and Will Change Our Lives 
• Baxter's New Software Doubles Robot's Speed 

Healthcare

Brain-wave communication may be especially promising for the healthcare field. Healthcare professionals currently use robots for surgical procedures, patient care and even companionship for patients. Improving communication with these systems could make them much more useful.

Robots may be programmed to perform tasks or communicate for people who are nonverbal. With this new technology, even if someone can not speak and is also physically incapacitated, they could still communicate with the robot using just their brain.

Surgeons often use robots to assist with medical procedures. They sometimes employ tiny microbots to repair injuries, deliver medications and locate tumors inside the body. This type of procedure is extremely non-invasive, cuts down on the possibility of human error and could potentially even makes surgeries easier for doctors by avoiding the poor visibility caused by surgical smoke.

The researchers’ system also has the potential to greatly improve prosthetics. Controlling a robotic prosthetic limb with just one’s mind would make it much easier to control and may feel more natural to those who depend on prosthetics.

Transportation

Driverless vehicle technologies have advanced significantly in recent years, but they’re still susceptible to errors. Human drivers can take over in these situations, but drivers often have just a few seconds to react.

Being able to correct a mistake made by an autonomous vehicle using only brain waves would increase the speed of correcting the mistake because it would require the human driver to take minimal action. Even if an improvement of only a few seconds was achieved, it could make the difference between avoiding an incident and experiencing a crash.

The technology could also allow someone in an autonomous vehicle to more quickly and conveniently customize their experience. They could, for example, tell the computer to alter their route, speed up or slow down and perhaps even change the radio station.

Manufacturing

Robots in manufacturing have become increasingly common and more advanced. The robots of yesteryear were large, could only complete one or two specific tasks, couldn’t be used for detailed work and could injure a person if they got too close.

Today’s bots are multi-talented, can work even with minuscule parts and are designed to work collaboratively with humans. Communicating with robots usually requires thinking in a certain way because the robots’ understanding of human interaction was limited. For example, you might have to look at a specific and different light display for each task you wanted the machine to complete.

Communicating through brain waves allows for more much more natural, quick and nuanced communication that’s less tiring and allows for greater control.


Robotics is becoming progressively more integrated into our way of life and increasingly advanced, as is the way we communicate with these machines. This discovery represents an exciting development in the way we communicate with robots that could make them much more effective and lead to innovations in a variety of industries.

TOP IMAGE SOURCE  Pixabay

By  Kayla Matthews	Embed
Author Bio - Kayla Matthew is a technology writer and the owner of ProductivityBytes.com. She is also a regular contributor to VentureBeat, MakeUseOf and Motherboard.

Brain-Machine Interface  

Biomedical scientists have successfully demonstrated a robotic prosthetic brain-machine interface that allowed a subject to move the individual fingers of a prosthetic hand with their thoughts.

Johns Hopkins physicians and biomedical engineers have reported what they believe is the first successful effort to wiggle fingers individually and independently of each other on a mind-controlled robotic arm without a large amount of training.

"We believe this is the first time a person using a mind-controlled prosthesis has immediately performed individual digit movements without extensive training."

The results of the study which are, published in the Journal of Neural Engineering, represents a potential advance in technologies to restore refined hand function to those who have lost arms to injury or disease. The subject of the experiment, which can be seen in a video below, was  not missing an arm or hand, but he was outfitted with a device that essentially took advantage of a brain-mapping procedure to bypass control of his own arm and hand.

“We believe this is the first time a person using a mind-controlled prosthesis has immediately performed individual digit movements without extensive training,” says senior author Nathan Crone, M.D., professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “This technology goes beyond available prostheses, in which the artificial digits, or fingers, moved as a single unit to make a grabbing motion, like one used to grip a tennis ball.

During the experiment, the research team enlisted a young man with epilepsy already scheduled to undergo brain mapping at The Johns Hopkins Hospital’s Epilepsy Monitoring Unit to pinpoint the origin of his seizures.

While brain recordings were made using electrodes surgically implanted for clinical reasons, the signals also control a modular prosthetic limb. Before connecting the prosthesis, the researchers mapped and tracked the specific parts of the subject’s brain responsible for moving each finger, then programmed the prosthesis to move the corresponding finger.

Related articles

• Researchers Examine Augmenting the Body With Musical Prosthetics 
• Prosthetics Becoming More Advanced With Control and Direct Sensory Feedback 
• The Bionic Revolution 

For the procedure, the patient’s neurosurgeon placed an array of 128 electrode sensors — all on a single rectangular sheet of film the size of a credit card — on the part of the man’s brain that normally controls hand and arm movements. Each sensor measured a circle of brain tissue 1 millimeter in diameter.

A computer program then had the man move individual fingers on command and recorded which parts of the brain the “lit up” when each sensor detected an electric signal.

The researchers also measured electrical brain activity involved in the patient's sense of touch. The subject was outfitted with a glove with small, vibrating buzzers in the fingertips, which went off in each finger. The researchers then measured the resulting electrical activity in the brain for each finger connection.

Using this data, the researchers programmed the robotic arm to move corresponding fingers based on which part of the brain was active. Turning on the prosthetic arm, which was wired to the patient through the brain electrodes, they then asked the subject to “think” about individually moving thumb, index, middle, ring and pinkie fingers. The electrical activity generated in the brain moved the fingers.

The researchers claim there was no pre-training required for the subject to gain this level of control, and the entire experiment took less than two hours.

At first, the brain-machine interface had an accuracy of 76 percent, but once the researchers coupled the ring and pinkie fingers together, the accuracy increased to 88 percent.

“The part of the brain that controls the pinkie and ring fingers overlaps, and most people move the two fingers together,” says Crone. “It makes sense that coupling these two fingers improved the accuracy.”

Crone cautions that application of this technology to those actually missing limbs is still some years off and will be costly, requiring extensive neural mapping and computer programming. Despite the work needed, the research is impressive.

SOURCE  Johns Hopkins Medicine

By 33rd Square

Embed

Brain Implants  

In a development being called the "holy grail of bionics," researchers have made a brain-machine interface device that does not require invasive brain surgery.  The stent-based electrode or, stentrode, is implanted within a blood vessel next to the brain, and records neural activity directly.

Medical researchers have created a new minimally invasive brain-machine interface, giving people with spinal cord injuries new hope to walk again with the power of thought. The DARPA funded device consists of a stent-based electrode, or stentrode, which is implanted within a blood vessel next to the brain, and records the type of neural activity that has been shown in pre-clinical trials to move limbs through an exoskeleton or to control bionic limbs.

The new device is the size of a small paperclip and will be implanted in the first in-human trial at The Royal Melbourne Hospital next year.

Traditional electrode arrays are implanted into the brain through a surgical procedure that requires opening the skull, but the stentrode is delivered via catheter angiography, a much lower-risk procedure.

To implant the device a catheter is inserted into a blood vessel in the neck. Researchers then use real-time imaging to guide the stentrode to a precise location in the brain, where the stentrode then expands and attaches to the walls of the blood vessel to read the activity of nearby neurons.

The stentrode technology leverages well-established techniques from the field of endovascular surgery, which uses blood vessels as portals for accessing deep structures while greatly reducing trauma associated with open surgery. Endovascular techniques are routinely used for surgical repair of damaged blood vessels and for installation of devices such as stents and stimulation electrodes for cardiac pacemakers.

The results published in Nature Biotechnology show the device is capable of recording high-quality signals emitted from the brain’s motor cortex, without the need for open brain surgery.

"We have been able to create the world’s only minimally invasive device that is implanted into a blood vessel in the brain via a simple day procedure, avoiding the need for high risk open brain surgery."

Principal author and Neurologist at The Royal Melbourne Hospital and Research Fellow at The Florey Institute of Neurosciences and the University of Melbourne, Dr Thomas Oxley, said the stentrode was revolutionary.

“The development of the stentrode has brought together leaders in medical research from The Royal Melbourne Hospital, The University of Melbourne and the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health. In total 39 academic scientists from 16 departments were involved in its development,” Dr Oxley said.

“We have been able to create the world’s only minimally invasive device that is implanted into a blood vessel in the brain via a simple day procedure, avoiding the need for high risk open brain surgery.

“Our vision, through this device, is to return function and mobility to patients with complete paralysis by recording brain activity and converting the acquired signals into electrical commands, which in turn would lead to movement of the limbs through a mobility assist device like an exoskeleton. In essence this a bionic spinal cord.”

Co-principal investigator and biomedical engineer at the University of Melbourne, Dr Nicholas Opie, said the concept was similar to an implantable cardiac pacemaker – electrical interaction with tissue using sensors inserted into a vein, but inside the brain.

Related articles

• New Dye Helps Show Brain Structures In Incredible Detail 
• Researchers Fly Robot Drone With Their Thoughts 
• Nano 3D Printing Electrodes May Be Used For Brain-Machine Interfaces 

“Utilizing stent technology, our electrode array self-expands to stick to the inside wall of a vein, enabling us to record local brain activity. By extracting the recorded neural signals, we can use these as commands to control wheelchairs, exoskeletons, prosthetic limbs or computers,” Dr Opie said.

“In our first-in-human trial, that we anticipate will begin within two years, we are hoping to achieve direct brain control of an exoskeleton for three people with paralysis.”

“Currently, exoskeletons are controlled by manual manipulation of a joystick to switch between the various elements of walking – stand, start, stop, turn. The stentrode will be the first device that enables direct thought control of these devices”

Professor Terry O’Brien, Head of Medicine at Departments of Medicine and Neurology, The Royal Melbourne Hospital and University of Melbourne said the development of the stentrode has been the “holy grail” for research in bionics.

“To be able to create a device that can record brainwave activity over long periods of time, without damaging the brain is an amazing development in modern medicine,” Professor O’Brien said.

“It can also be potentially used in people with a range of diseases aside from spinal cord injury, including epilepsy, Parkinsons and other neurological disorders.”

The study results demonstrate measurement of brain signals with the stentrode that are quantitatively similar to measurements made by commercially available surface electrocorticography arrays implanted during open-brain surgery. Additionally, the study achieved chronic recordings in freely moving sheep for up to 190 days, indicating that implantation of the device could be safe for long-term use.

SOURCE  The University of Melbourne

By 33rd Square

Embed

Brain-Machine Interfaces  

Researchers have developed a brain-computer control interface for a lower limb exoskeleton by decoding specific signals from within the user's brain.

Scientists working at Korea University, Korea, and TU Berlin, Germany have developed a brain-computer control interface for a lower limb exoskeleton by decoding specific signals from within the user's brain.

The study has been published in the Journal of Neural Engineering.

Using an electroencephalogram (EEG) cap, the system allows users to move forwards, turn left and right, sit and stand simply by staring at one of five flickering light emitting diodes (LEDs).

Each of the five LEDs flickers at a different frequency, and when the user focuses their attention on a specific LED this frequency is reflected within the EEG readout. This signal is identified and used to control the exoskeleton.

A key problem has been separating these precise brain signals from those associated with other brain activity, and the highly artificial signals generated by the exoskeleton.

"Exoskeletons create lots of electrical 'noise'" explains Klaus Muller, an author on the paper. "The EEG signal gets buried under all this noise -- but our system is able to separate not only the EEG signal, but the frequency of the flickering LED within this signal."

"People with high spinal cord injuries face difficulties communicating or using their limbs. Decoding what they intend from their brain signals could offer means to communicate and walk again."

Although the paper reports tests on healthy individuals, the system has the potential to aid sick or disabled people.

Related articles Scientists Develop Tiny Implantable LED For Optogenetics Research  Researchers Fly Robot Drone With Their Thoughts  Researchers Use Human Brain-Computer Interface To Control The Movements of Mouse

"People with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) [motor neuron disease], or high spinal cord injuries face difficulties communicating or using their limbs" continues Muller. "Decoding what they intend from their brain signals could offer means to communicate and walk again."

The control system could serve as a technically simple and feasible add-on to other devices, with EEG caps and hardware now emerging on the consumer market.

It only took volunteers a few minutes to be training how to operate the system. Because of the flickering LEDs they were carefully screened for epilepsy prior to taking part in the research. The researchers are now working to reduce the 'visual fatigue' associated with longer-term users of such systems.

Future work will target improving the system and investigate possible uses in the context of medical rehabilitation.

"We were driven to assist disabled people, and our study shows that this brain control interface can easily and intuitively control an exoskeleton system -- despite the highly challenging artefacts from the exoskeleton itself" concludes Muller.

SOURCE  IOP

By 33rd Square

Embed

 Neuroscience  

Speaking at TED recently, neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis discussed how he helped a paraplegic man kick the first ball at the World Cup, and how his work on brain-machine interfaces and brain-brain interfaces may impact the world.

Miguel Nicolelis helped build the brain-controlled exoskeleton that helped Juliano Pinto, a paraplegic man, kick the first ball at the 2014 World Cup.

Nicolelis is best known for pioneering studies in neuronal population coding, Brain Machine Interfaces (BMI) and neuroprosthetics in human patients and non-human primates. But his lab is thinking even bigger. They've developed an integrative approach to studying neurological disorders, including Parkinsons disease and epilepsy. The approach, they hope, will allow the integration of molecular, cellular, systems and behavioral data in the same animal, producing a more complete understanding of the nature of the neurophysiological alterations associated with these disorders.

What’s he working on now? Building ways for two minds (rats and monkeys, for now) to send messages brain to brain. Watch to the end for an experiment that, as he says, will go to "the limit of your imagination."

Related articles Miguel Nicolelis Says The Singularity Is Hot Air Deep Brain Stimulation's Dramatic Effect On Parkinson's Patient Demonstrated  Wireless Brain Sensor Developed At Brown University

Nicolelis explores the potential of connecting brains with machines and other brains in his recent book, Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines---and How It Will Change Our Lives.

Nicolelis sees a world where people use their computers, drive their cars, and communicate with one another simply by thinking.

"Brain actuating technology is here."

"Brain actuating technology is here," says Nicolelis in the TED Talk above. "This is the latest: we just published this a year ago, the first brain-to-brain interface that allows two animals to exchange mental messages so that one animal that sees something coming from the environment can send a mental SMS, a torpedo, a neurophysiological torpedo, to the second animal, and the second animal performs the act that he needed to perform without ever knowing what the environment was sending as a message, because the message came from the first animal's brain."

"Where is this going? We have no idea. We're just scientists," says Nicolelis. "We are paid to be children, to basically go to the edge and discover what is out there. But one thing I know: one day, in a few decades, when our grandchildren surf the net just by thinking, or a mother donates her eyesight to an autistic kid who cannot see, or somebody speaks because of a brain-to-brain bypass, some of you will remember that it all started on a winter afternoon in a Brazilian soccer field with an impossible kick."

SOURCE  TED

By 33rd Square

Embed

 Medicine  

Medical technology saves countless lives every single day, yet it normally does not receive the same amount of attention and glamour as other electronics. Here is a closer look at five of the most amazing innovations that are revolutionizing healthcare today.

Medical tech innovations are changing the world that we live in for the better. The innovations in health care are astounding. They are allowing doctors to deliver more efficient healthcare and treat a wider variety of symptoms. Knowing that we are advancing, here are five medical tech innovations that have and can change the world that we live in today.

MelaFind Optical Scanner

There's a new FDA-approved way to help with diagnosis of cancer. The hand held tool is used to analyze the tissue captured from the biopsy. The reason it's so popular is because it reduces the number of scars left from biopsy procedures. MelaFind technology originated from the Department of Defenses' missile navigation technology. The suspected lesions are scanned with 10 electromagnetic wavelengths and compared against a registry of 10,000 digital images to determine if it's cancerous or not.

Electronic Aspirin

People who suffer from migraines, sphenopalatine ganglion (SPG), or other types of headaches should try a nerve stimulating device to alleviate the pain. The device can be placed in the upper gum and on the side of the head affected by the headache. The signals will stimulate the SPG nerves, which will alleviate the pain. Stimulation usually blocks the neurotransmitters that cause the pain.

Robotic Check-Ups with RP-VITA

Related articles Prosthetics Becoming More Advanced With Control and Direct Sensory Feedback  Natasha Vita-More Talks About the Whole Body Prosthetic  Molecular Robots Can Help Researchers Build Targeted Therapeutics

Health reform is designed to help people improve their health in a cost-effective way. Telemedicine and robotic check-ups are the new way to make rounds. In some places, medical robots will patrol the hospital hallways and make routine rounds without direct contact with the patients. RP-VITA Remote Presence Robot is offered by iRobot Corporation and InTouch Health. The device has a two-way video screen and also medical monitoring equipment to help make the assessment easier.

Echo Therapeutics' Needle-Free Diabetes Care

Diabetes self-care is moving in the pain-free direction. A transdermal biosensor from Echo Theraputics will read the blood's analytes through the skin. Thus, there's no need to prick the skin. The device resembles a toothbrush and will remove the top layer of skin to register the patient's blood chemistry. The data will be sent wirelessly to a remote monitoring location. When the levels venture outside of the patient's optimal range, audible alarms will be delivered.

Sapien's Transcatheter Aortic Valve

This device from Edwards is offered to patients who need a new heart valve but cannot endure surgery. The new valve can be guided via a catheter through the femoral artery. This procedure is conducted via a small incision near the rib cage. This surgery yields shorter hospitalizations and can revolutionize heart surgery as we know it.

Brain-Machine Interfaces Help Prosthetics Move With Thoughts

Just the thought of any prosthetic limbs, like those provided by Lubbock Artificial Limb & Brace, is remarkable. Bio-engineers have developed a new type of prostheticthat can be connected to the nerves of the area and can be controlled with thought. They speculate that this could mean amputees being able to control computers and other machinery with their thoughts and hope that home trials will be available in about 5 years.

With new technology comes dramatic and diverse changes in everyday life. The future holds many more advances that will help further the medical industry and better our lives.

By Meghan Belnap

Subscribe to 33rd Square

 Ethics  

Medical implants, complex interfaces between brain and machine or remotely controlled insects  —recent developments combining machines and organisms have great potentials, but also give rise to major ethical concerns.

They are known from science fiction novels and films – technically modified organisms with extraordinary skills, so-called cyborgs. This name originates from the English term “cybernetic organism”. In fact, cyborgs that combine technical systems with living organisms are already reality.

As Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) researchers Professor Christof M. Niemeyer and Dr. Stefan Giselbrecht of the Institute for Biological Interfaces 1 (IBG 1) and Dr. Bastian E. Rapp, Institute of Microstructure Technology (IMT), point out that this especially applies to medical implants.

In their review entitled "The Chemistry of Cyborgs -- Interfacing Technical Devices with Organisms," KIT scientists discuss the state of the art of research, opportunities, and risks. The review is published now by the renowned journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

In recent years, medical implants based on smart materials that automatically react to changing conditions, computer-supported design and fabrication based on magnetic resonance tomography datasets or surface modifications for improved tissue integration allowed major progress to be achieved. For successful tissue integration and the prevention of inflammation reactions, special surface coatings were developed also by the KIT under e.g. the multidisciplinary Helmholtz program “BioInterfaces”.

Progress in microelectronics and semiconductor technology has been the basis of electronic implants controlling, restoring or improving the functions of the human body, such as cardiac pacemakers, retina implants, hearing implants, or implants for deep brain stimulation in pain or Parkinson therapies. Currently, bioelectronic developments are being combined with robotics systems to design highly complex neuroprostheses.

Cathy Hutchinson has been unable to move her own arms or legs for 15 years. But using the most advanced brain-machine interface ever developed, she can steer a robotic arm towards a bottle, pick it up, and drink her morning coffee.

Related articles Human Memory Implants May Soon Be Tested  Researchers Create Cyborg Flesh That's Half Man, Half Machine  Miguel Nicolelis Explains Brain-to-Brain Interfaces

Scientists are working on brain-machine interfaces (BMI) for the direct physical contacting of the brain. BMI are used among others to control prostheses and complex movements, such as gripping. Moreover, they are important tools in neurosciences, as they provide insight into the functioning of the brain. Apart from electric signals, substances released by implanted micro- and nanofluidic systems in a spatially or temporarily controlled manner can be used for communication between technical devices and organisms.

BMI are often considered data suppliers. However, they can also be used to feed signals into the brain, which is a highly controversial issue from the ethical point of view. “Implanted BMI that feed signals into nerves, muscles or directly into the brain are already used on a routine basis, e.g. in cardiac pacemakers or implants for deep brain stimulation,” Professor Christof M. Niemeyer, KIT, explains. “But these signals are neither planned to be used nor suited to control the entire organism – brains of most living organisms are far too complex.”

Brains of lower organisms, such as insects, are less complex. As soon as a signal is coupled in, a certain movement program, such as running or flying, is started. So-called biobots, i.e. large insects with implanted electronic and microfluidic control units, are used in a new generation of tools, such as small flying objects for monitoring and rescue missions. In addition, they are applied as model systems in neurosciences in order to understand basic relationships.

Electrically active medical implants that are used for longer terms depend on reliable power supply. Presently, scientists are working on methods to use the patient body’s own thermal, kinetic, electric or chemical energy.

In their review the KIT researchers sum up that developments combining technical devices with organisms have a fascinating potential. They may considerably improve the quality of life of many people in the medical sector in particular. However, ethical and social aspects always have to be taken into account.


SOURCE  KIT

By 33rd Square

Subscribe to 33rd Square

 Brain Implants  

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University and University of Kansas Medical Center have restored behavior using a neural prosthesis in a brain-injured rat. This study provides strong evidence that brain-machine interfaces can be used to bridge damaged neural pathways functionally and promote recovery after brain injury.

R esearchers from Case Western Reserve University and University of Kansas Medical Center have restored behavior—in this case, the ability to reach through a narrow opening and grasp food—using a neural prosthesis in a rat model of brain injury.

The team's ultimate goal is to develop a device that rapidly and substantially improves function after brain injury in humans. There is no such commercial treatment for the 1.5 million Americans, including soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, who suffer traumatic brain injuries (TBI), or the nearly 800,000 stroke victims who suffer weakness or paralysis in the United States, annually.

The prosthesis, called a brain-machine-brain interface, is a closed-loop microelectronic system that records signals from one part of the brain, processes them in real time, and then bridges the injury by stimulating a second part of the brain that had lost connectivity.

Their work is published online this week in the science journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“If you use the device to couple activity from one part of the brain to another, is it possible to induce recovery from TBI? That’s the core of this investigation,” said Pedram Mohseni, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Case Western Reserve, who built the brain prosthesis.

Related articles Researchers Rewire Paralyzed Monkey To Control Arm Directly From The Brain  Miguel Nicolelis Explains Brain-to-Brain Interfaces  Prosthetics Becoming More Advanced With Control and Direct Sensory Feedback

“We found that, yes, it is possible to use a closed-loop neural prosthesis to facilitate repair of a brain injury,” he said.

The researchers tested the prosthesis in a rat model of brain injury in the laboratory of Randolph J. Nudo, professor of molecular and integrative physiology at the University of Kansas. Nudo mapped the rat’s brain and developed the model in which anterior and posterior parts of the brain that control the rat’s forelimbs are disconnected.

Atop each animal’s head, the brain-machine-brain interface is a microchip on a circuit board smaller than a quarter connected to microelectrodes implanted in the two brain regions.

The device amplifies signals, which are called neural action potentials and produced by the neurons in the anterior of the brain. An algorithm separates these signals, recorded as brain spike activity, from noise and other artifacts. With each spike detected, the microchip sends a pulse of electric current to stimulate neurons in the posterior part of the brain, artificially connecting the two brain regions.

Two weeks after the prosthesis had been implanted and run continuously, the rat models using the full closed-loop system had recovered nearly all function lost due to injury, successfully retrieving a food pellet close to 70 percent of the time, or as well as normal, uninjured rats. Rat models that received random stimuli from the device retrieved less than half the pellets and those that received no stimuli retrieved about a quarter of them.

“A question still to be answered is must the implant be left in place for life?” Mohseni said. “Or can it be removed after two months or six months, if and when new connections have been formed in the brain?”

Brain studies have shown that, during periods of growth, neurons that regularly communicate with each other develop and solidify connections.

Mohseni and Nudo said they need more systematic studies to determine what happens in the brain that leads to restoration of function. They also want to determine if there is an optimal time window after injury in which they must implant the device in order to restore function.

“This technology could have direct clinical application for restoring neural communication in the brain, and thus, for restoring function,” Nudo explained to KurzweilAI in an email interview. “Initial clinical targets will include focal stroke or traumatic brain injury (TBI) for motor impairments.

Presumably if functions can be restored with such a neural prosthetic, in the future functionality may also be augmented with an implant.

SOURCE  Case Western Reserve University

By 33rd Square

Subscribe to 33rd Square