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Science

Working Nerve Chip 99

Posted by timothy from the unnerving-photo dept.
poetic writes: "Two scientists from Munich have succeeded in creating a nerve chip with silicon and snail nerves. The cells were hindered from growing away from the silicon with a plastic fence. They managed to get a signal to go from silicon through a neural circuit and back to the chip again. Cute, one step closer to a decent uplink! See the abstract at Nature's site."
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Working Nerve Chip More

Working Nerve Chip

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  • And we think were adicted to broadband!!!
    Heck right now I can't find a place to eat without the internet, and now were getting this much closer to wireing ourselves into the network.

    Can you imagine what having SlashDot on the brain will be like once this technology get's some where? (of course we'll need a better way to get rid of flame bait)

    Of course then MS will come out with Windows '84 and it will only crash your mind once in a while... "Passport for your brain! It's just not for violating your financial privacy any more!!"

    • The idea of connecting my brain to the net is fascinating, but I can't imagine it being a usable technology within my lifetime. We still don't really have much skill with artifical neural networks, let alone the knowledge it would take to figure out how to get abstract information into a human brain. . .

      In the near future, I see this technology as being more usable in fields related to bionics; I don't know a whole lot about the capabilites we could get from a microchip being linked directly to neurons, but I can imagine that it would provide a person much greater control of artifical limbs, and help a lot with artificial sensory organs. We have a rudimentary understanding of how the visual cortex works, so regrettably I have a feeling that the first widescale applications of this technology will be in attempts to link digital cameras to the brains of blind people or the like.

      Even when we finally figure out how to get abstract ideas into peoples' heads, I imagine something much greater than the Net - I am thinking of a system where all the knowledge of the world is available to a person in a similar way to that of their long-term memory, so that if I wanted to "remember" how to use some obscure API call or somesuch, a hundred years in the future, all I would have to do is think about it, and the chip would link into a network of somesuch and pump the knowledge straight into my brain, as if I had always known what it is I was trying to find out.

      • Re:Broad band Shmodband! (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        This much advancement in human to machine interfaces and the thought of connecting all the brains together to form one vast network is fairling interesting. Soon we will have a true Borg network and conquor worlds on end... Neato! =)

        Hrm.. lets see here... we won't have to deal with raceism (Everyone will be assimilated). We won't have to worry about a money system (What would zombies do with money?). We can make that neat voice of everyone talking together (Great for intimidating the enimies). And who needs privacy? *grins evily* Oh, there are many things this could bring for the sake of man kind.....

        -misspeler
    • The phenomenon known as "slashdotting" would become a crime punishable by death in Texas:

      "The governor is calling for the arrest and prosecution of some 500 people around the world for the mortal slashdotting of a Houston software engineer."

  • Amazing, yet scary (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by thesolo ( 131008 )
    This is very frightening, actually. Think about if we keep developing AI, and these chips follow. Couldn't it essentially develop to the point where computer circuits could control our OWN cells? Or am I the only one who thinks about these things?!

    Maybe the Luddites were right after all.

    • Re:Amazing, yet scary (Score:3, Interesting)

      by keesh ( 202812 )
      What I'd really like would be to have a CPU in my arm. Not for real thought -- too complicated just now -- but for the odd maths test it'd be extremely useful...

      Of course, it'd have to be something slow -- could you imagine a human with cooling fans stuck all over them?
      • What I'd really like would be to have a CPU in my arm.

        Wouldn't it be better just to have an implanted interface, and have the actual processing unit be linked by wireless? The power requirements of a wireless interface are less demanding than a whole CPU, so you'd have to plug yourself in much less often. It would also be a lot easier to upgrade the CPU if it were external.

        Tim

      • Re:Amazing, yet scary (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Jarvinho ( 236721 )
        This, ahem, "experiment" has already been attempted in Britain by the notorious Kevin Warwick [keveinwarwick.com], a professor in the Cybernetics Dept. at the Univ. of Reading [reading.ac.uk]. Basically, he implanted a silicon chip "transponder" under the skin of his forearm. When he passed by certain equipment- it recognised the transponder and performed certain actions e.g. walking up to a door in the lab would cause the door to open. The cynical amongst us might point out that having the transponder in yuor pocket would cause exactly the same action, and wouldn't require surgery...


        His next experiment was similar but involved attaching the transponder to the epineurium (sheath) of one of the nerves of the arm- the idea was that the transponder would pick up signals (eg the axonal activity caused by touch sensation, or pain) and then that these signals could be sent to a computer and encoded as "patterns" (eg one pattern for holding a pen, one pattern for being pricked by a pin). These patterns could then be analysed and even sent back to the transponder, where it could now act as an output device, and cause the sensation that was encoded! There was even talk of implanting Prof. Warwick's wife with an identical transplant and putting them in continual communcation, so that for example, when Warwick stroked a kitten, his wife would hae the sensation of kitten-stroking.


        Not surprisingly for those of us that have neurological/neuroscientific training, the results from this study have never seen the light of day. The ideas are flawed from top to bottom. Warwick's main mistake is that his second experiment has no relation to the first. The first (having a transponder that identifies individuals) is marginally interesting, if overblown (the transponder doesn't have to be surgically implanted to work) - his idea is "The chip implant technology has the capability to impact our lives in ways that have been previously thought possible in only sci-fi movies. The implant could carry all sorts of information about a person, from Access and Visa details to your National Insurance number, blood type, medical records etc., with the data being updated where necessary."


        Im sure fellow /. readers find that scary rather than necessary!


        Anyway, that "experiment" (more like a beta test) doesnt logically lead to the second nerve implant. His lack of elementary neuroscience is evident here- peripheral nerve trunks are not good places to encode data- and if he did manage to "record" patterns for himself - how could he "play" them back on his nerves? A simple magnetic transponder? It would be like trying to email a GIF to someone by holding an industrial elctromagnet next to a bundle of phone-wires! And the thought that recorded patterns could be played back on another person's CNS using such crude technology is simply unbelievable.


        Professor Warwick is regarded as something of a quack in the UK high-tech/neuro community, as this site, Kevin Warwick Watch [kevinwarwick.org.uk], testifies. His research, however, does raise one or two interesting questions. His techniques and methods, though, are nopthing more than circus sideshows, compared to the excellent work with the mollusc neurons.

    • Think about it twice :

      AI to Cell : No ! Merging right now will cause a Cancer. You are Forbidden to do that.
      BUT you can use your energy to produce this nice AntiOxidant that is needed on level 4 to unclog that nasty Arteria. Now Go !!!

      What is the problem; if we understand all the consequences ?
      Could help producing solutions faster, while better controling Fats, Adrenalin, Cholesterol...

      Then I could hack into my girlfriend, pump her Oestrogen and see a Breast Increase 8)

  • An important step up (Score:4, Informative)

    by Zergwyn ( 514693 ) on Monday September 03, 2001 @11:40AM (#2248241)
    Recently researchers successfully linked up a couple of leach neurons to silicon, but while the connections worked it was not an actual chip. This is a step up on the complexity scale.

    Leach neurons and those of other critters are useful to experiment with because they are very large, especially in comparison to most mammals. This makes it much easier to connect them to electronics. It will probably be a while before we see anything with people, because the connections must be so tiny. It seems likely though that as nanotech and neuroscience advance, this field will become one of the hottest in science.

    • Would this be similar in technique to that used on the TNG era Enterprise? With those 'Bio-Paks' or whatnot that handle the systems?
    • I'm the guy who "linked up a couple of leach (spelled leech neurons to silicon". We do use a chip, its a custom-designed analog circuit that replicates neural function. Our interface is very different, however, so maybe this is why you thought we don't use a chip. The article you are discussing is a step up in the number of neurons being used, but not the complexity. The signals recorded through extracellular recording techniques are nowhere near what you get through intracellular (what we use with our chip). Basically all that can be determined from extracellular is "a spike happened", and I believe that this is not enough to understand the nuance that makes neural processing so powerful. Additionally, extracellular stimulation is incredibly heavy-handed, and does not even begin to approximate synaptic input to a cell. Shocking a neuron into firing is not what I would call complex.
  • A group of researchers in Texas did the same thing with mouse neurons about twelve years ago.

  • Waste (Score:3, Funny)

    by Herstel ( 517116 ) on Monday September 03, 2001 @11:45AM (#2248256)
    The chip's cells will need food. Therefore the chip will produce some waste, we'll need odour eliminators. "CountryBouquet air freshener" by AMD.

  • It has to be said... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Robber Baron ( 112304 ) on Monday September 03, 2001 @11:54AM (#2248284) Homepage
    You will be assimilated...
    resistance is futile!
  • I think they word Timothy was looking for was decent, not descent.

  • It is certainly a nice start to what could be a promising field, but there are so many things to be dealt with before we could realistically use any technology like this for clinical purposes (ie: borg implants). Namely, if these were to be used in longer nerves (anything in the spine for example) they would have to come up with a way of dealing with myelinated nerve cells, not just bare cells. Myelin is a sheath that covers nerves to increase speed of signal transduction, and piercing it (with a chip interface) could lead to problems in propagating an action potential... However, this stuff looks like it has serious promise for starting research into "biological computing"

  • I saw a documentary on TLC a while ago about AI and such, and they mentioned a group of scientists who had done something similar to this. They were pretty vague about the whole thing but these people had basically taken a small clump of nerve cells (I want to say they were human brain cells, but I'm not sure...) and put them on this chip that would monitor their outputs and provide inputs. They had connected the whole thing to this computer which simulated a very simple 2D (pseudo-3d, kinda like Wolfenstein) environment, and trained the cells to move around in the virtual "world", avoiding walls and obstacles.

    It's sounded pretty far out...has anyone else heard of anything like this?

    • It was from a lamprey (Score:2, Interesting)

      by blach ( 25515 )
      I remember reading about this experement, and what they had done is taken the "brain mass" from a lamprey (a jawless fish with an incredibly simple nervous system). Pretty interesting that just a little bitty hunk of cells could navigate around in the computer. Since a lamprey has but one very simple "eye" it was probably fairly simple to feed in the visual input.

      Regards
      James
    • I saw a documentary on TLC a while ago about AI and such, and they mentioned a group of scientists who had done something similar to this. They were pretty vague about the whole thing but these people had basically taken a small clump of nerve cells (I want to say they were human brain cells, but I'm not sure...) and put them on this chip that would monitor their outputs and provide inputs. They had connected the whole thing to this computer which simulated a very simple 2D (pseudo-3d, kinda like Wolfenstein) environment, and trained the cells to move around in the virtual "world", avoiding walls and obstacles.

      You mean Steve Potter's group [caltech.edu] at Caltech. And they are rat brain cells BTW.

  • But the only problem is... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Pig Hogger ( 10379 ) <pig@hogger.gmail@com> on Monday September 03, 2001 @01:59PM (#2248607) Journal

    Two scientists from Munich have succeded in creating a nerve chip with silicon and snail nerves.

    But the only problem is the slowness of the propagation.


    Next year, they are going to try the same experiment with rabbit nerves, to see if there is a speed improvement.

  • Interesting focus.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GreyPoopon ( 411036 ) <gpoopon@gma i l .com> on Monday September 03, 2001 @02:48PM (#2248737)
    I'm actually surprised at the fact that the article focused on prosthetic implants (ie into the brain) as one of the primary benefits of this technology. Many of us on /. followed with similar thoughts. However, I see other applications to be much closer on the horizon. While we have a long way to go before we can start wet-wiring silicon to our brains, I think we could use this technology for artificial limbs much sooner. Theoretically, it should be possible to build entirely eltromechanical limbs that have the ability to transmit feeling -- hot and cold, pressure, pain, etc. Being able to connect electronic sensors in these limbs to actual nerve tissue is the missing link. In cases where a limb truly could not be attached, this would be the next best option. Any speculation on how long it will be?
    • I did my Master's thesis on exactly that, back in '96. It was possible then. (One of my professors went further: back in the '60s, she wired up a cat's audio nerves to a radio transmitter, then listened to the signals. With minimal modulation, she was able to hear what the cat heard.) It's interesting to see the work being done, but this isn't as much of a breakthrough as some people think. The breakthrough was learning that nerves carry signals that can be electrically measured and generated. Once that was done, the main requirement is someone brave enough to wire up severed neurons in a living being to a mechanical limb and sensors.

      That said, this research - and its publicity - will hopefully alert people that the tech is available, and thus maybe inspire someone to try.
  • He [cordwainersmith.com] wrote about laminating animal brains into silicon for use in robots and such.

  • hmm has anyone ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by anshil ( 302405 ) on Monday September 03, 2001 @03:01PM (#2248789) Homepage
    ... already patented the 10base-T Interface on the human body? Hmm I guess I'll immediatly rush to the patent office, and get also USB, Firewire and for the sake of it good old RS232 for direct humanoid interfacing.

    Remember you don't have to bring a proof of work to patent something, just have to wait somebody else does.

    Maybe the man-page will get a new meaning in the future?

  • Kevin Warwick (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kraft ( 253059 ) on Monday September 03, 2001 @03:02PM (#2248791) Homepage
    If this has your interest, UK professor Kevin Warwick [kevinwarwick.org] definatly will. He had a chip implanted in 1998, making him a cyborg (not the first though). He researches robotics and decided to get the implant for a week or so, which communicated with the university where he worked through a radio link (his story in Wired [wired.com]).

    THIS year, he is taking it to the next step. "Project Cyborg 2.0":
    This phase will look at how a new implant could send signals back and forth between Warwick's nervous system and a computer. If this test succeeds with no complications, a similar chip will be implanted in his wife, Irena. This will allow the investigation of how movement, thought or emotion signals could be transmitted from one person to the other, possibly via the Internet.

    I heard on BBC, where he was interviewed, that he wanted to find out, if they could transfer/share pain, he and his wife. Interesting stuff.

    What I personally find cool about Kevin (yes, he is a first name kinda guy ;) is that he is doing this on himself. There are actually health risks involved in the operation, which is why he chose to get it in his left arm, as he is right-handed. I guess someone would argue that it's unscientific experimenting on yourself, rather than a test subject, but for me it shows how much he burns for this subject, and if see an interview with him, I think you will agree.

  • this is great research. this'll go a long way in peoples understanding of the human brain and the development of neural networks. i think we can look forward to more intelligent computers now.
    Now that we can see and have a bit of control over the structure, the next step to do would be to study the response of a neuron.
  • I hear Microsoft is already working on a version of Passport to work with these :)

  • Save the snails! They don't deserve this kind of animal cruelty! Everyone, protest outside of your nearest semiconductor plant to show your dislike of the abuse of these poor, innocent creatures!

    </sarcasm>
  • I find it sad that the first thing someone thought about when they saw this story was that it brought us one step closer to a (completely unnecessary, and downright dangerous in my eyes) machine-to-brain interface.

    Hello?! Did it ever occur to such people that such a device has great possibilities for repairing or bypassing damaged nerves in, say, folks who have been paralyzed? Yeegads, people! Get a clue! If this can be made to work effectively in humans, it's just possible that the wheelchair-bound could regain their mobility!

    We've got enough info overload right now without being linked to a bunch of frelling computers. Let's think of giving someone with, say, cerebral palsy a whole new and stable degree of motor control before we start browsing the web on the insides of our retinas, hmmm?

  • As single cells once worked alone, then worked together into brainless simple multi-cellular organisms, and then developed nervous structures, we are doing the same. First we all worked individually. Then as civilization came, we split up into different specialties. Today we are specialists enough that there are critical parts of society without which we cannot do as a modern society such as doctors, road repair workers, policemen, etc. This is analogous to the simple brainless multicellular animals that developed early in this planet's history. They lacked a brain. So far, we too are pretty autonomous. With the wire-nerve connection one day we are all going to one day be parts of one or more giant organisms, just like cells are. There will certainly be individuals, but they will be to the 'magalife systems' (I can't think of a better term.) what bacteria are to us today. Just like the cells of our bodies perform to instructions from the brain, so will we 'humans' do so, listening to orders from our collective brains. Just like our cells do now, we will commit suicide when ordered to do so, to prevent that day's version of cancerous growth.

    The idea of implants similar to 'the borg' is very unrefined. When the day comes, I forsee a computer many many times greater than anything today, in every one of my cells. It will be indistinguishable from biological matter as the line between bio and digital computers will blur until there is none.

    The intelligence of such hybrid humans, if that term can be applied here, could increase with moore's law, and the intelligence of the 'megalives'would be even greater.

    I can't wait. :)

  • I really want a brain implant, too. (Yeah, and I suppose the wheelchair-bound can walk, too -- and have brain implants at the same time!).

    But then I thought about the DMCA, and how I'll get in argument with my friends, as usual. We'll see an 80 year-old Anthony Edwards, of ER fame, on the screen and we'll try to figure out what crappy '80s movie he was in, and it'll rack our brains, and then up will pop a message from AOLTimeWarnerMicrosoftDisneySonyCBS Inc. that will say, "If you'd like to remember the movie Anthony Edwards starred in in the late '80s, we can provide the answer for 25 cents. It will automatically be deducted from your credit card."

    I'll try to remember the answer, but finally, in desperation to beat my friends to the punch, I'll grudgingly pay the 25 cents to remember the answer, but just as the credit card is authorizing, my friend will yell out, "Revenge of the Nerds!"

    But it'll be too late to cancel my thought order! And meanwhile, in my brain, I'll hear, "We have noted in our records that you couldn't recall the film 'Revenge of the Nerds', which is the intellectual property of AOLTimeWarnerMicrosoftDisneySonyCBS Inc. In the future, if you think about 'Revenge of the Nerds', be advised that you will be charged 25 cents. Thank you and have a lovely day."

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