Major Breakthrough in Direct Neural Interface 308
jd writes "In a major breakthrough, neurologists are reporting that they can decypher neurological impulses into speech with an 80% accuracy. A paralyzed man who is incapable of speech has electrodes implanted in his brain which detect the electrical pulses in the brain relating to speech. These signals are then fed into computers which covert these pulses into signals suitable for speech synthesis. As a biotech marvel, this is astonishing. Depending on the rate of development it is possible to imagine Professor Hawking migrating to this, as it would be immune to any further loss of body movement and would vastly accelerate his ability to talk. On the flip-side, direct brain I/O is also a major step towards William Gibson's Neuromancer and other cyberpunk dark futures."
Make sure that... (Score:2, Funny)
what if (Score:5, Funny)
OI! [redacted] will you [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] make me a [redacted][redacted][redacted] cup of [redacted] coffee?
Brain obscenity filters for teh wins....
Sadly more likely... (Score:5, Interesting)
As it happened, she was sufficiently beaten up at the time that she had no concept of how bad her injuries were. She got out of the wheelchair simply because it frustrated her. She went back to working part time simply because she didn't realize she wasn't supposed to be able to. By the time she comprehended what had happened, she'd improved enough that setting impossible goals like "become a personal trainer" weren't quite so impossible. We taught her to read again (yes, even that got messed up) and even managed to get her back in to school - initially only able to pull a 2.0 average but improved each semester.
In her case, she had an amazing recovery. Yet she, herself, says, "If I'm ever like that again, turn me off." She didn't realize how hurt she was and got lucky with recovering before she did. Understanding now, she has absolutely no desire to try that fight again. She'd rather just call it a day.
So, sadly, there's a real likelihood that his first words, upon realizing he can finally communicate, after years of being unable to and stuck in a totally paralyzed body, will be, "Kill me." Probably not ideal to have the family in the room for.
And yes, that entire story was just so I could "drop" that I have a wife in a slashdot post. Cunning, huh?
Re:Sadly more likely... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your wife's recovery and you staying with her, through all of that, is the most poignant thing I have read on Slashdot, ever.
A story like yours deserves to be told, and demands that we listen.
May the winds always be at your back.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll second that (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Misty eyed? Me too. And this sort of thing that we agree on is really what's most important. All the other stuff, well, is just that, other stuff.
Have a great weekend! I'm sure we'll argue over something 'ere too long!
and to add a dash of levity (Score:2)
Cunning. (Score:2)
Please forgive parent for utter inappropriateness (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hey that was my joke!
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1926591/posts [freerepublic.com]
"A military jury had found that he beat or otherwise denigrated 23 men in his charge last winter at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego."
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
More info (Score:5, Informative)
They have hooked up to 41 neurons and:
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well, he can already do a voice over part of the Flying Monkey Chorus if they ever remake the Wizard of Oz.
This tech is so cool it's not funny.
As Fleet Captain Pike said.. (Score:5, Funny)
Just wate until SP2... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What drives modern science? (Score:5, Funny)
Two desires:
1. To restore Stephen Hawking's physical body to its former fully-functional form.
2. To turn Stephen Hawking into a mobile, indestructible cyborg of incomprehensible power.
Re: (Score:2)
Be fearful!
Been done! (Score:4, Funny)
"With the new exoskeleton, Stephen will be able to safely handle radioactive isotopes in the high-radiation area of the new supercollider particle accelerator. And his new robo-arms are capable of ripping open enemy tanks like they were nutshells,"
Why was this not a Futurama Episode? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Two desires:
1. To restore Stephen Hawking's physical body to its former fully-functional form.
2. To turn Stephen Hawking into a mobile, indestructible cyborg of incomprehensible power.
It was the movie RoboCop that's driving it all. No one really cares about that one disabled genius. The public just thinks most geniuses are mad scientists anyway and are just waiting for an evil one to "invent" or experiment with making RoboCop.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Some still haven't given up on Reeve.
Umm... Christopher Reeve? [wikipedia.org] As in, "The late Christopher Reeve, who died in October of 2004?"
What it would take to help him now doesn't involve brain transplants; it involves necromancy.
That said, the foundation [christopherreeve.org] he and his late wife Dana founded isstill hard at work to find a solution to spinal cord injuries.
Re: (Score:2)
Christopher Reeve's first words (Score:2)
Wait-- they haven't actually done this yet (Score:5, Insightful)
In the next few weeks, a computer will start the task of translating his thoughts into sounds.
"We hope it will be a breakthrough," says Joe Wright of Neural Signals, which has helped develop the technology.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
It's a little unclear from the BBC article, but going from their research posters [speechprosthesis.org], they have in fact tested the translation already, using a data set compiled from neural recordings made while having the subject try to produce different phoneme sounds. However, this analysis was done "offline," not in real-time. I think what they're referring to doing in the "next few weeks" is getting the
What? (Score:4, Interesting)
What do you do for eight years as a locked in? Wouldn't that drive a normal person insane or dull the mind beyond all recognition? Does anyone know about the mental state of these people?
-Grey [silverclipboard.com]
can still communicate (Score:5, Informative)
he could blink. that's it. yes or no. and with that ability, letter by letter, he wrote a book (with the help of some very patient nurses/ assistants)
it's coming out as a movie soon too i think
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Really? I hope so, but that just seems like too much of a coincidence -- like something the caregivers tell themselves so they don't have to deal with the horror of the situation.
-Grey [luminiferous-aether.net]
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I think something similar is happening in the US.
Mr. Gibson's dark future is a human failure ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Mmmmyeeaaah, but ... (Score:3, Insightful)
What I want to say is technology and politics/economics are all a creature of humans. It's just as misleading blaming "economics" and "politics" instead of the people misusing the system (who are basically all of us), as it is to blame a particular technology for
I'll raise the BS flag on that (Score:4, Insightful)
Vinge, not Gibson (Score:4, Informative)
If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. Read True Names to get a notion of the profound visionary Vernor Vinge is. (Remember it was published in 1981).
Then read Rainbows End with your newfound respect for Vinge's powers of prognostication, and recognize that you're seeing into the near future.
Lots of major breakthroughs (Score:2)
I'm skeptical at best. (Score:2)
Re:I'm skeptical at best. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not be be callous, but I'm pretty sure they can find time in their busy eating, sleeping, and bedpan changing schedules in order to regain the ability to communicate with the world.
This could be really embarrasing for users (Score:4, Funny)
Dear sir,
I am writing wow nice tits and she has a great ass too uh oh wedding ring in order to ask if you would be interested in our new product line of neural-input word processors.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"covert" operation (Score:2)
80% accuracy... (Score:3, Informative)
What do you want to decipher today?
If this works (Score:2)
As always.. (Score:2)
My mother is becoming blind, too, and it's breaking my heart to see her like that. I hope an affordable implantable camera, interfaced to the vision centers, will come in the near future. Nothing fancy, just B&W at low resolution with no greyscale, would do miracles.
Re: (Score:2)
there's a couple prototypes for this sort of thing out already. I was reading about one a few months ago in some online version of a mainstream mag.
Re: (Score:2)
The issue with treating blindness is the occipital lobe of the brain(and other areas) needs appropriate input at certain ages in order to develop typically. If your friends have acquired blindess in adolescence or adulthood, then it would be fairly simple(the preceeding is a lie) to hook up a camera to their optic nerve, much like we do with cochlear implants. The neurons have learned how to deal with visual input earlier, and now are just kicking around relaxing and w
That extra 20% probably wasn't important anyway... (Score:5, Funny)
Just make sure the interface.... (Score:3, Funny)
I don't always want my "first throught" to be the one that gets verbalized, know what I mean?
Hi Mrs. Johnson, nice tits!....buts a little big though
Oh shit....did I say that out loud?
Research posters (Score:5, Informative)
http://migrate.speechprosthesis.org/DNN2/SpeechProsthesisHome/tabid/52/Default.aspx [speechprosthesis.org]
There's also a nice blog entry on this over at Neurophilosophy:
http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2007/11/speech_prosthesis.php [scienceblogs.com]
Obligatory (Score:3, Funny)
And yet... (Score:3, Insightful)
Those are 2 basic advanced tasks I would expect to be perfected at some point, and until they are I take all these great human-machine interface "breakthroughs" with huge grains of salt.
Who's doing the work (Score:4, Insightful)
One has to wonder who is doing the work. Is the paralyzed man adapting to the computer or is the computer learning the brain signals. Either way, it's good work, but I would bet that the way to perfect this type of technology is to "teach" the human to control his neurological impulses. I doubt the technology is directly eavesdropping on his speech.
Re:Really accurate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Really accurate? (Score:5, Funny)
Remember, it's only 80% accurate. It may be more like "rigm!" or "prong!"
Re:Really accurate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Right Wrong = 10 letters.
P in Prong = 1
M in rigm = 1 (+1 letter missing)
1 missing = 1/2
So, (10 - 2.5)/10 = 0.75 ~ 80%
Your post above not only meets funny standards, but accolades for careful thought in using relevant and accurate choice of words. Well done, sir, well done!
Re:Really accurate? (Score:5, Funny)
"Frist wrods!!"
First words? (Score:3, Funny)
No, it was "Hello, World" of course...
Re:Really accurate? (Score:5, Informative)
Sensitivity = percentage number of correct identifications
Specificity = corresponding percentage of incorrect identifications at each measured sensitivity.
Probably they can get up to 90%, but from experience I would say the rate of false positives at this sensitivity likely is moving towards exponential increase. It's better to stop at 80%, at least when something is in the early stages.
This is just guessing of course, I have no understanding of their research, but going from my own work on non linearly separable sets, I'd say this is what's happening.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Really accurate? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Really accurate? (Score:4, Funny)
This is great. Now all we have to do is reverse the fucker so it figures out 80% garbage and 20% signal. Then we attach it to congress critters, lawyers, and RIAA stoges. Now we don't have to listen to their shit at all anymore.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah it's a short article, what's your point? You want the exact methodology they used to get that number (which if we took literally only has one significant digit), you'd have to read whatever paper they publish. "Ask them to say X, compare to what the computer says" seems a pretty reasonable assumption of how they did it though.
Re:Really accurate? (Score:4, Funny)
I can see it going something like this...
Researcher: "The machine translates his electrical pulses as 'I'd really enjoy a blowjob from your assistant, Ms. Jenkins.' Ms. Jenkins, do you mind?"
Ms. Jenkins: "Anything in the name of science!!"
Researcher: "Well, that ear-to-ear smile is conclusive proof that he is in fact enjoying it. Eureka, it works!!!"
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Really accurate? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Hence the 80%.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That was the easy part... they were able to start with the assumption that he just kept repeating "kill me" over and over again.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Really accurate? (Score:4, Interesting)
There was an article recently in New Scientist about this. One problem doctors studying this field have is that since it is an experimental treatment, they need consent of the patient, and how can they get consent if the patient can't communicate?
With some locked-in patients, they are able to respond based on the acidity of their saliva. They are told to either imagine eating lemons (for yes) or eating milk (for no), and their saliva sympathetically adjusts to their thoughts. Then their saliva is measured. See more here: http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2007/08/locked_in_with_the_b.html [mindhacks.com]
Sad to say it, but I suspect the first thing the patient will say is "kill me".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And, amazingly enough, he can somehow still get his mojo on if you beam him down to the right planet.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"Wait, what?"
Well, there's my extra marks for funny. Now for the serious part:
I've taught a few people who couldn't speak how to work their voice. In one case, she would talk a little like Boomhauer from King of the Hiil. "Daddy, mumble mumble me mumble mumble juice mumble mumble counter?" Once she got used to the feedback and the system, she would fill in the mumbled parts with the correct conjunctions. Perhaps that's how the 80% is getting in there. The gene
Re: (Score:2)
So... you don't watch television, then?
Re: (Score:2)
Still I like high error rate.
I wonder where the error would come in when someone orders "A hot duck" for dinner?
Re: (Score:2)
No they weren't. I hope you are not spreading that tired old, and completly disproved, myth that the US was founded Christians? or on "Christian Values"?
Re: (Score:2)
Huh? The founding fathers were predominantly Christians in their private and public lives. Judeo-Christian values were at the core and often demonstrated at "federal" and state levels of government. What they did disprove of was government favoring any particular church or religion. Therefore they wrote in a very neutral manner, such as "... the separat
Re:Slashdot. (Score:5, Insightful)
The majority of Western values do not trace their roots to any of the Middle Eastern religions. They come from other places, such as Greek philosophers.
In fact, the philosophical foundations of the US are in many ways opposite to the so-called Christian values. Cruel and unusual punishment, for example, is condoned--actually commanded--by the Christian god. Slavery, and the belief that all men are NOT created equal, is a common theme in the Bible.
The statesmen/philosophers who founded this country may have been Christian, but the documents they wrote to found this country were quite the opposite.
Re:Slashdot. (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, most of the founding fathers were Deist [wikipedia.org], not Christian.
Re: (Score:2)
As we move toward a better understanding of the brain as a biochemical machine, we are better able to manipulate it through various methods. As we do that, we run into the ethical delima of doing so. But if we accept that we are only a complex machine, then is there really any concept of "human rights", or is it just a social construct that may be revoked at any time.
Reading a lot o
You need no Creator to believe in rights (Score:3, Interesting)
Eastern religions have a better word for it: suchness. That is just so, as it is. The idea of spirit relates more to the idea that things are more than the sum of their parts (due to the i
Re:80% accurracy? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
"ow our ewe"
that makes no sense when reading it, but people hearing it can make it out.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Since it has to wire into the nervous system, it's more like a babel fish.
Re:What about the babies?? (Score:4, Interesting)
The answer is "Yes" (but not the way you intended) and "No."
It would work for a non-English speaker IFF that speaker was trying to speak his native language; what they've detected is the brain's intention to produce a SOUND; so, by extension, the interpretation is producing a phonetic representation of the sounds in the person's head.
It isn't interpreting the concept of the sound (someone isn't thinking of a cat and the word "cat" is produced). It should be possible for someone speaking any language (including a made-up one) to use this system.
For a baby (who has no word associated with the object), it wouldn't provide any use... unless your conjecture is that a baby doesn't speak because the muscles in her throat aren't strong enough to form words, but her brain knows what sounds would be made. Then... sure, it would work. 8)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes it certainly would. The device works by directly picking up the intent of the subject in a global individual-neutral format. That intent is then translated into English by dictionary lookup and standard text-to-speech software. It would be a trivial matter to subsitiute any other langua
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, think of the progression:
- Improve detection to the point it can accurately detect thought-sounds
- Instead of translating the sounds into audible sounds, trasmit them wirelessly (transmitting)
- Implant wireless receiver that injects sound-signals into brain for receiving
- AI spontaneously emerges and takes over subject's brain, becoming the first of our neural-implant overlords!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I guess they've possibly discovered how the "bad guy" in the movie Slither operates