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Single Neuron Wired To Muscle Un-Paralyzes Monkeys
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Oct 15, 2008 08:55 PM
from the gentlemen-we-can-rebuild-him dept.
from the gentlemen-we-can-rebuild-him dept.
GalaticGrub writes "A pair of paralyzed monkeys regained the ability to move their arms after researchers wired individual neurons to the monkeys' arm muscles. A team of researchers at the University of Washington temporarily paralyzed each monkey's arm, then rerouted brain signals from a single neuron in the motor cortex around the blocked nerve pathway via a computer. When the neuron fired above a certain rate, the computer translated the signal into a jolt of electricity to the arm muscle, causing it to contract. The monkeys practiced moving their arms by playing a video game."
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Submission: Single Neuron Wired to Muscle Un-Paralyzes Monkeys by Anonymous Coward
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Sucky job (Score:5, Funny)
Who's the grad student who had to break those monkeys spines?
Re:Sucky job (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Wow.
Second post and you already invoked Godwin's law, and even on a party totally unrelated to the post.
My hat is off to you.
Re:Sucky job (Score:5, Insightful)
"Who's the grad student who had to break those monkeys spines?"
The subjects were actually grad students costumed as monkeys.
Lab monkeys are too valuable to use.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, they used members of a Congressional committee tasked with investigating executive branch wrongdoing...
So, spines weren't an issue.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sucky job (Score:5, Insightful)
No one broke the monkeys' spines. The article [nature.com] states that the spinal neurons innervating the wrist muscles were temporarily blocked using a local anesthetic. What's particularly amazing about this study is that the monkeys were able to quickly learn to control their wrists using the cortical neurons that the computer was monitoring, even if those neurons were not involved in control of the wrist before paralysis.
I'm a friend of the paper's author and am certain that neither the researchers nor any sane review board would have allowed monkeys to be permanently injured to perform this study; it just wouldn't be necessary.
Parent
Re:Sucky job (Score:4, Funny)
Oooh ooh ooh I finally get to say it!
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!
Parent
Re:Sucky job (Score:5, Funny)
"ooh ooh ooh" ?
- Did one of the monkeys escape and start posting on slashdot?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It was less "oooh oooh" banana and more "ooh ooh" -flails hand wildly- "teacher teacher I know I KNOW!" d:
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's hard to tell in the sea of infinite monkeys that were already here.
After a while, the monkey all start to blend together and become indistinct. :-P
Cheers
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'd bet that depends on your view of "cruel" now doesn't it.
PETA would like to thank you for your post.
so would the CLIT commander.
Yes (Score:5, Funny)
But can you teach them to type??
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
But can you teach them to type??
Of course; that's how they expect their thesis to be written.
Parent
Ob. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. I offer Wikipedia as proof.
Parent
Dear God, free us from religion... (Score:4, Funny)
That site is real, isn't it? For the first few minutes of reading I convinced myself that it was just a funny hoax site, but the deeper I went into it the more scared I became...
Would it be irony if I prayed to God to free us from religion? I still don't have that whole irony thing down yet.
Parent
Re:Dear God, free us from religion... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is irony:
God, please protect me from your followers.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Since I'm going to be working on my Master's thesis soon methinks paying the university for the monkeys might not be a bad idea. But, I want to finish ASAP. I am willing to pay for a Beowulf-cluster of typing monkeys. And I want a guarantee that the monkeys will not screw-up. I do no want my thesis to be cluster-fucked!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I've heard rumor that a million of them can reproduce the works of Shakespeare. Oh, and fling poo. I almost forgot that part.
Re:oo oo oo oooo snort (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Odd note, but monkeys seem to have a preference for holding down the s key on american keyboard layouts.
Apparently, grad students will write a thesis about anything...
Better title would be.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Better title would be.... (Score:5, Funny)
That gold won't farm itself...
Parent
Re:Better title would be.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed, while that neuron surgery thing sounds amazing, I was more shocked at the fact that monkeys actually play videogames.
Then I realized... Are the monkeys smarter than we thought or are we just dumberer than we think we aren't not, now what I meen?
Parent
Re:Better title would be.... (Score:4, Funny)
I bet they've already learned how to get around DRM.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Better title would be.... (Score:5, Funny)
You were killed by b33st13b0y.
b33st13b0y: lol pwned
b33st13b0y: ur mom is ghey
b33st13b0y: suk it
I think we've known this for quite some time.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
1 = i
(My apologies to anyone that works with complex numbers.)
Re:Better title would be.... (Score:4, Informative)
no one works with complex numbers, for complex numbers don't exist: they're all imaginary.
Except the part of them that's real...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Playing video games is the standard way to teach monkeys tasks such as this. After all, we're monkeys and we don't seem to have any trouble plopping down in front of a video game for thousands of hours.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Amazing (Score:5, Funny)
Amazing! This is truly a wonderful time to be a monkey.
Well, I just hope (Score:2, Funny)
they mounted a scratch monkey first.
Re: (Score:2)
Entirely predictable and yet still laugh-out-loud funny. Well played, sir.
Correlation != Causation (Score:4, Funny)
The researchers who published this should have 'Correlation is not causation' written in giant billboards in front of their houses.
Just 2 monkeys regained movement after the experiment does not mean that rerouting brain signals past blocked nerve pathways using a single neuron controlled by a computer did anything at all. They should have waited until they had ruled out other possibilities, like divine intervention, before publishing results. For shame!
Seems ripe for exploitation (Score:5, Funny)
Seems ripe for exploitation...
"...Quit hitting yourself! Quit hitting yourself..."
Sooo... What if they connected a human's brain (Score:5, Interesting)
If so, can we control its entire body?
If so, can we do it remotely, through a wire to a cell phone.
If so, how long until someone decides to use monkeys as freedom fighters?
Yes, science should never go down this path, but hey, it is still possible to look down the paths
Re:Sooo... What if they connected a human's brain (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I hope you're not serious. It would be far easier and quicker to use robots or human suicide-bombers or just about anything else, really.
Yeah, but watching monkeys blow themselves up would be way more fun.
Shock the Monkey (Score:5, Funny)
Whoever tagged this article "shockthemonkey" is awesome.
where's the video (Score:3, Interesting)
Where's the video of the mokeys playing video games with the bionic nerves?
sweet!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one who's more interested in the medical significance of this, instead of the silly aspect of monkey-gaming? Holy crap guys, use your brains.
This means that we have the potential to repair neural damage, potentially severe damage as well!
I see particular use with pacemakers. Rather than just pulse the heart at a given frequency, read what the brain wants the heart to do, and do that! You could do the same thing for the lungs as well, although I'm not sure how often someone who damages that nerve makes it to the hospital in time.
Other use could be with amputation victims. Helping restore function to reattached appendages/digits, or controlling prosthesis...
I wonder if, further down the line, it would be possible to do this to sensory nerves as well, not just motor control/response...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> This means that we have the potential to repair neural damage, potentially severe damage as well!
And paraplegics will get to walk again.... no stem cells required. Ok, that is an offtopic troll, but it just needed sayin.
If this story turns out to be the real deal it is going to be major world changing stuff. Imagine the possibilities! Implant a few sensors or better yet refine our ability to pick up on these signals without poking wires into brains and remotely control all sorts of things.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Hopefully the diaphragm is able to be connected like this, I believe it would as it behaves as a skeletal muscle?
Yes, it does. However, the question is whether you can get the respiratory center of the brain to recognize the "bypass" - else you could breathe voluntarily, but would stop as soon as you stop thinking about it (or fall asleep, for example).
The fun part about those is that, while binary signals may work for them, I would really prefer no sensation to the choice of "OK" and "OMG MY HAND IS ON F
Re:hallelujah (Score:5, Interesting)
Certainly they may be jumping for joy. Though there is more to it than just wiring an electrode to a muscle before the fat lady can sing again.
A functional limb without any sense of its location in relation to the body is a problem, one without feeling is also a problem. Did they think about electrodes for everything else the nervous system is responsible for too?
Parent
Re:hallelujah (Score:4, Funny)
They have their specialization and you have yours.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now we can reuse stuff that's already built in.
Re:hallelujah (Score:5, Informative)
It's certainly true that proprioception (the ability to sense joint location) and sensation of muscle tension are useful feedback systems in coordinating limb movements. It's well known in the field (I'm a neuroscientist), however, that several neurological conditions rob patients of these sensations and they're still able to move their limbs effectively (though not perfectly). I'd guess that a patient who was paralyzed wouldn't mind being able to move their arms again, even if they couldn't feel where they were without looking.
Parent
Re:hallelujah (Score:4, Informative)
I wouldn't be too sure. This is just the latest in a long string of research findings that point toward an astounding degree of neural plasticity in adults. At this point, if I had to guess, I'd say that wiring one sensory nerve from the general area back to a single neuron would end up restoring a noticeable degree of "feeling".
'Cause you know, neurons that fire together wire together.
Parent