Brain Interface Lets Monkeys Control Prosthetic Limbs 208
himicos was one of many readers to point out one recent success of scientists working to develop working brain-machine interfaces, writing "A team at the university of Pittsburgh has finally advanced a 2002 technology enough for use in prosthetic limbs, the targeted application all along. Training computer models to the firing patterns of the neurons in the parts of the brain that control motion, they are able to project the intentions of a monkey to a robotic arm, which follows the will of the animal.
The sad thing about the articles is that the beauty of the mathematics used to create and train the models is totally ignored." Reader phpmysqldev adds a link to coverage at the BBC, and writes "This of course brings significant hope to amputees and other other people with physical disabilities." (Note that this research has been going on for quite some time.)
And just like that... (Score:5, Funny)
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I'll call Bruce Campbell!
Add Glen Campbell and make it 'Monkey Robot Overlords: The Musical!'
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If this technology ever makes it to humans, it will only be after HUMAN experiments are done. Of course, the frauds who call themselves vivisectionists will say that "We couldn't have achieved the human version without first torturing - sorry - 'experimenting' on monkeys", but the first human version will fail, guaranteed. They will be EXPERIMENTING on humans, until they f
Re:And just like that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course some experimentation will be needed when they move to human subjects, but a monkey's brain is similar enough to ours that they can get a starting point to experiment around, rather than working blind on a human subject.
One other thing to note, there are no touch/pain receptors within the brain itself - people have brain surgery done while awake so the doctors can keep them talking and know they aren't accidentally removing something important. Once you've got an opening into the skull (which would be done under anaesthetic) you can poke and prod at the brain all you want without the subject feeling a thing.
Oh, and its on the news because its interesting and something of a step forward scientifically. Quit it with the conspiracy theories please.
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Now, as a strict materialist, I see no reason to think that this baboon does--or should--feel any remorse for its actions. They were clearly the result of mindless evolutionary processes, just like your own feelings about animal experiments. You feel bad because your species' biological evolution compels you to feel bad. With any luck, it will also compel you to feel bet
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"Animal
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"When did I ever say I didn't want experiments on humans, or "because they might die"? I don't remember saying either of those things."
You said "If this technology ever makes it to humans, it will only be after HUMAN experiments are done. Of course, the frauds who call themselves vivisectionists will say that "We couldn't have achieved the human version without f
At least it'll be better than the alternative.... (Score:2)
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And just like that, a SciFi channel original movie is conceived.
sci-fi pondering (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:sci-fi pondering (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:sci-fi pondering (Score:4, Funny)
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Fine. I admit it; I've always wanted a lightsabre.
Explain the beauty? (Score:1)
Re:Explain the beauty? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Explain the beauty? (Score:5, Informative)
Any good data communications textbook would have some nice examples in it, and actually that wikipedia article posted is very readable and informative.
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Monkeys with bionic limbs is another story entirely.
Re:Explain the beauty? (Score:5, Funny)
- I for one welcome our very hard mathematics doing overlords
- I for one welcome our new bionic monkey overlords
In Soviet Russia the same league isn't even in THEM!!!!Re: (Score:2)
Then you're doing it wrong.
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The Nasa channel had a rather good show that covered a lot of highschool math it explained it well and really let people visualize the math... However If I had to choose that or watch Monkeys with robotic arms... Ill choose the monkeys.
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Heck I have a Math Minor and the symbols require me to look them up...
Yikes, that must have been a math minor program with light requirements, because all I see are summation and integral symbols, a few log's and ln's (apologies to the apostrophe Nazis), a trace and a "for all." I looks like a lot of the domain-specific stuff either has a link to a relevant article or is explained in the article itself.
:)
Of course, for the general public, I agree that including any math at all causes eyes to glaze over and back buttons to be clicked or channels to be changed.
Re:Explain the beauty? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the topic, I am not entirely sure about the exact math used in the said experiment but based on the fact that the link points to the notion of "information content", here is my guess how it should work (at least in principle). I will try just because no one else seems to. Feel free to correct me.
The state of the neurons of the relevant area of the brain (relevant for the goal in the experiment - say pick marshmallows or open the door) could be modeled as a random variable. The first problem when trying to figure out what a certain electrical activity in brain represents would be to figure out whether you are looking at a random electrical activity (brain doing lots of background work maybe) or some order (brain trying to focus and activate the subroutine for "move hand and open door"). This difference between order and chaos is captured in a neat formula describing the entropy or the information content of the random variable. Naturally, the less the entropy the more the order. I have no idea what possibly goes on after this step.
In any case, now coming to the "beauty" part. Of course you need an eye to appreciate beauty for the notion is quite subjective. The remarkable thing is that a simple formula captures the vague notion of "order" that we all have. The formula might not be the most beautiful thing because as I understood from the article, the log term is somewhat forced to make sure different things add up nicely. But then, one could think of this very fact (the extra log term) as a neat mathematical representation of the notion that disorder should be able to be combined with another disorder to create something bigger.
I hope my response is better than "drop whatever you are doing and go do a PhD in math before you can understand the beauty of math".
The Next Step? (Score:2)
I don't know what would go after this step either, but the one after that would be Profit!!!
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Reminds me of a guy doing PhD is Chemistry about effects of certain chiral isomer of nicotine on cancer. His first response when I asked what he worked on was "You won't get it". I am a PhD student in computational geometry and I frequently have to explain my work to relatives who have no idea about geometry. When I pestered the guy that whether or not he can explain his work to a layman reflects his understanding about his work, he agreed to try.
"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't really understand it." -- Richard Feynman*
* Maybe, it seems this quote sometimes gets attributed to Einstein as well.
The math is totally unimportant here (Score:2)
But we're talking about a technology that could give millions of kids back something akin to the legs they had blown off from landmines. People who are blind and crippled after suffering years of diabetes being able to walk again. Mothers being able to lift their kids again.
Forget Replacement Limbs... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Forget Replacement Limbs... (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking from experience, it is because the grant money is better. If you say you need money to research brain/machine interfaces for prothetic limbs to help disabled people, you are more likely to get it than when you say you need the research to give yourself/your_cyborg_army superhuman appendages to be used for world domination.
Re:Forget Replacement Limbs... (Score:4, Funny)
Fair enough, but can't this research be directly applied to my one-man-cyborg-army-of-the-apocalypse idea, even though that's not the PR angle they're going for?
Once this technology advances to the stage where we can get genuine Darth Vader(tm) brand prosthetics after our various lightsaber mishaps, I'm just hoping that some entrepreneurial young Doctor will implant the control chips in perfectly healthy people for a fee, which you could then hook to the hardware of your choice. Of course, this may have to take place in a third world country where the FDA doesn't hold back novel ideas just because they aren't "medically necessary", or because it's an "abomination before God", or some such drivel.
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Speaking from experience, it is because the grant money is better. If you say you need money to research brain/machine interfaces for prothetic limbs to help disabled people, you are more likely to get it than when you say you need the research to give yourself/your_cyborg_army superhuman appendages to be used for world domination.
You have GOT to be kidding! Getting government grants to find military applications for otherwise harmless things is a staple of the defense program. If you have an answer to "How many Commies/Terrorists can it kill", you've got grant money.
So go ahead and build your cybernetic superhumans to do your bidding, but you might have to sign a contract that says you'll do the bidding of the US government, too.
Re:Forget Replacement Limbs... (Score:4, Funny)
Sure, go ahead and sign the contract.
Just remember that when all's said and done, you're the one with the army of cyborg supersoldiers.
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Re:Forget Replacement Limbs... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, because of the "abomination before God" factor, nobody in the medical establishment will ask this question officially for years, if ever. But I'm sure some geek amputee will start playing around with modding his new arm/leg/ear, and if he doesn't turn into a bloodthirsty cyborg, or get lynched by fundamentalists, he'll become very rich and famous by enabling us to reach way beyond what we thought our full potential was.
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But maybe I'm just being cynical about red tape in research.
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Re:Forget Replacement Limbs... (Score:5, Insightful)
An alternative might be the use muscles in the face to control extra limbs. Frowning would perform one action with the prosthetics, smiling another, etc. But this would be considerably more clumsy than the intended use- replacing a limb that doesn't exist on the physical body, but does have a designated place in the brain that controls it.
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Re:Forget Replacement Limbs... (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I see this problem as more the case that we've only been conditioned to handle that many limbs over years of experience versus any sort of hard limit being imposed. (Not to mention it kind of runs across the grain of that whole "evolution" thing being needlessly debated...)
There have been numerous examples demonstrating that our brains are not only highly adaptive to new situations (such as the brain redistributing certain functions to different areas to overcome damaged areas), but are also highly receptive to new forms of input from external sources (such as invasive probing of the brain to create crude brain-to-computer interfaces to control simple devices, such as an on-screen cursor.)
The larger issue is really more of a case of creating a proper and convenient interface for cyborg-like add-ons. For example, do we necessarily have to invade the brain directly, or can we simply use existing connections by connecting jumper cables to the nerves running down the spine. And if that isn't an option, can we create or add extra, custom nerve sets to the spine and create connections to the brain that way?
Considering all that, a "third arm", or similar contraption is probably within the realm of possibility, but it may take time to adapt to and fine tune the system before it becomes effortless (or closer to that) to use. It's actually not all that dissimilar to the steps you have to go through for setting up a decent voice recognition system.
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Come to think of it, a tail would be kind of useful every once in a while.
Re:Forget Replacement Limbs... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure that's wrong.
We extend our mental maps to include vehicles, devices and tools that we operate on a regular basis. Believe me, some of us even feel pain when we ding our car on something. Some even feel pain if they get shot in a video game.
The fact that many people can be trained to see with their _tongue_ means the brain is very adaptable.
The Seeing Tongue:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_9_160/ai_78681631
Just because you start seeing with your tongue does not mean you lose sight in your eyes. So I do not believe that we are limited to controlling 4 limbs. When people use a tool they are skilled in, that tool becomes an extension of their body - and it does not even have to be physically connected to their body - ask people who do stunts with RC helicopters, or play FPS/RTS games.
Once you practice enough, it becomes learnt and integrated into your brain, you no longer think "Ah I must press this to do X", you just think "I need to go here" and you do whatever it takes to get it done.
A skilled typist does not think of each key stroke independently, the typist just thinks of the phrase (or sees stuff to type) and all the 8 fingers and 2 thumbs get it done. So controlling more than 4 limbs shouldn't be a huge problem.
However, just like when you concentrate on something a lot, say drawing an intricate design, you may lose awareness of what's going on with your little toe (until something significant happens to it, or even is about to happen to it - incoming object via peripheral vision - in which case the rest of your brain brings it to your attention).
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One step closer to being able to shed this shitty world and move
Adapting the technology (Score:5, Funny)
Specifically, I'm thinking of adapting a laser prosthetic arm, to be used by the poor, armless sharks
It's just an idea
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The poor, armless sharks are also poor, arm-controlling-neuron-less sharks.
They will just have to make do with traditional head-mounted lasers.
Justin.
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Meh.
2 hands - 26 fingers: http://biphome.spray.se/masterlink/pics/scrsh/handy.jpg [spray.se]
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I can't begin to imagine the shock if someone says they are typing with just one then.
Other other... (Score:2, Funny)
PLEASE tell me it makes them type faster (Score:4, Funny)
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http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=567543&cid=23585235 [slashdot.org]
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Other X-creatures (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Other X-creatures (Score:4, Funny)
hope to amputees (Score:5, Funny)
As long as they don't mind carrying a monkey to control their prosthetic arm...
So will that mean (Score:2)
No typing required! (Score:4, Funny)
No, we just need less monkeys (Score:2)
OnTopic? (Score:2)
-- just what is this doing on Slashdot?
Monkey's opinion (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Monkey's opinion (Score:5, Funny)
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Almost (Score:3, Interesting)
I knew a guy in college who was working in this field. He went on to do master's work at Cornell. Incidentally he had no arms.
This will be great to improve the standard of living for many of the returning soldiers.
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This will be great to improve the standard of living for many of the returning soldiers.
You would be surprised how people adapt. For many amputees this is a non-issue, and they move on. The key is time and the correct mental attitude.
I have a prostetic leg, but I like my crutches. I'm agile on my crutches. I can do interesting things on my crutches I can't with a real leg. If I had to choose between my artificial leg and crutches, there is a good chance I would choose my crutches.
If you look at a person who has an amputated arm, if they go for a prosthesis it is often "the hook." I
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Out of curiosity, apart from the obvious medical complications such as rejection, what would be the problem with grafting a limb if someone wants it?
Unlike an internal organ, it's something that's outwardly obvious that it isn't part of your own body. It'll have different skin color, hair texture, size, shape, and smell than that of your own body. Plus you'll be in constant fear of your body rejecting it, meaning you would have to get used to another person's arm. I also can't help but think having random arms grafted to your body would have to have some kind of strange psychological effects. If you're growing, I can't help but think some strange
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The stem cells move around. Depending on what happens it could be more of a merger than an acquisition.
So if they are prone to cancer you might get cancer too.
Some people suspect that you might even get some personality changes. I won't be surprised if some of it is true - since the stomach and other organs are likely to have some influence over what you like to eat (after millions of years, animals should be more likely to eat what t
When servicing the equipment... (Score:3, Funny)
what about the monkeys? (Score:2)
Not impressed. (Score:5, Funny)
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On a separate note, when can I get my cyborg-enhanced trunkmonkey> [youtube.com]?
OMG Old! (Score:2, Interesting)
How long until.... ? (Score:2)
Re:How long until.... ? (Score:4, Funny)
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Whatever happened to.. (Score:2, Interesting)
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That's a difficult engineering problem because it's a complicated chemical process. Nerves talk along their length by depolarization, which is essentially an electrochemical process. A nerve pumps sodium and potassium ions in opposite directions across its cell membrane to form a gradient -- think potential energy, like an anvil sitting on a table -- and when t
Still a long way to go (Score:2)
This is only phase one complete... (Score:2)
Is this what people want? (Score:2)
Best use (Score:2)
This is "old" news (Score:2, Interesting)
Prosthetics Don't Have to be Replacements (Score:3, Insightful)
The really cool thing that they're totally missing is that prosthetic limbs aren't limited to replacements.
Research has shown that the brain has the ability to handle additional limbs and/or senses. So if an amputee can learn to control a replacement arm, then a normal person could also learn to control an extra pair of arms. The neat thing is that the brain would just adapt to it and it would seem natural.
Coming soon... (Score:2)
The Real Sad Thing (Score:4, Informative)
The sadder thing is that the discovery of response patterns of amputated limbs being mapped to other parts of the body is totally ignored.
A man had his arm removed. A psychiatrist attending happened to note that the man claimed to "feel" things in his missing hand when other parts of his body were touched. After careful mapping, three different response maps were found -- one each on his arm, chest and back. Each was so sensitive that individual fingers could be stimulated and he could correctly tell which.
This major discovery in neural plasticity makes it totally unnecessary to try to decode signals from electrode either drilled through the skull, or else placed on the surface and reading signals though the scalp, skull and dura mater, which reduces the signal by 3 orders of magnitude. Either way, these signals require some massive processing because a significant command/response signal (ie. an electrical response representing a single Hebbian cellular assembly that can be clearly decoded to an intent as stated in the article) comes from 0.3% to 3% of the neurons in the region being detected, the vast majority of the signal needing rejection as false positive or noise. Using the mapped response regions allows for signal analysis based on EMG patterns that are not expected at all in the area under the electrodes, making detection and analysis trivial.
TFA and most such research is not about giving amputees mobility. It is about decoding and using neural signals. If it were about the former, easier ways would have been used and the job already accomplished. It is about the latter because such things make more news, get more recognition, and therefore result in more grant application success.
The resulting technology will only be applied to prosthetics as a secondary result. Its primary use will be in such as hands-off controls for fighter pilots (see Clint Eastwood's "Firefox" for your obligatory Slashdot sci-fi/movie reference), tank crews and mobile missile launchers. Maybe this is the saddest part of all, but ignoring a more certain path to success as far as prosthetics is a sad piece.
Also sad, with a touch of irony, is the fact that the weaponry applications will be untenable because of the heuristic nature of neural processing -- getting it close but error prone will be fast, getting it right will be no faster or require less effort than hand operated controls. The slow speed and so the ability to use real-time perceptual feedback with prosthetics will make that far more successful. It remains to be seen whether after the war applications fail the research continues (ie. there is adequate funding offered) with respect to prosthetics. If someone like the US Veterans Administration picks it up when DARPA drops it, it might. I'm not hopeful.
The portion of the above that's assertion or opinion is based on the same professional experience as the portion that's not. That experience includes development of some of the "beautiful" maths decried as being ignored. Having been prosthetic-wrist deep in the research and from both directions, I find that a minor point to consider as "sad".
Uh... sad? (Score:2)
"The sad thing about the articles is that the beauty of the mathematics used to create and train the models is totally ignored."
I would have thought the sad part of the article is that we're still experimenting on live animals, presumably with some sort of horrible animal torture going on. Yes, there are tremendous benefits from this research. Yes, there is also a cost. And
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In some sense, it almost enters Ghost in the Shell territory.