Monkeys Made Smarter With Prosthetic Device 102
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have successfully restored and, in some cases, enhanced decision-making ability in brain-damaged monkeys on cocaine by connecting a prosthetic device to their brains. 'In the study, the scientists trained five monkeys to match multiple images on a computer screen until they were correct 70 to 75 percent of the time. First, an image appeared on the screen, which the animals were trained to select using a hand-controlled cursor. The screen then went blank for up to two minutes, followed by the reappearance of two to eight images, including the initial one, on the same screen. When the monkeys correctly chose the image they were shown first, the electronic prosthetic device recorded the pattern of neural pulses associated with their decision by employing a multi-input multi-output nonlinear (MIMO) mathematical model, developed by researchers at the University of Southern California. In the next phase of the study, a drug known to disrupt cognitive activity, cocaine, was administered to the animals to simulate brain injury. When the animals repeated the image-selection task, their decision-making ability decreased 13 percent from normal. However, during these "drug sessions," the MIMO prosthesis detected when the animals were likely to choose the wrong image and played back the previously recorded "correct" neural patterns for the task. According to the study findings, the MIMO device was exceedingly effective in restoring the cocaine-impaired decision-making ability to an improved level of 10 percent above normal, even when the drug was still present and active.'"
Applications? (Score:2, Funny)
Is there a place that would benefit from smarter crackheads?
Distant memories (Score:2)
brain-damaged monkeys on cocaine
Iâ(TM)m pretty sure I saw that band back in the 80â(TM)s
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And they were all from "Da City Of Compton".
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Wall Street?
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it's not going to revive lost speech centers for example
The device is able to read neural activity, and playback neural activity. Lets say the speech center is lost, when this technology is a little more mature you could pump speech center communications to the different parts of the brain while offloading the actual processing to a device.
Looks like it we might just see cyberneticly augmented intelligence in our lifetimes after all.
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I did wonder about speech, but if you're simply playing back the neural activity that generates "hello" then you have to tell the device to do it, and giving the command "say(hello)" might as well lead to a speech synthesizer. Walking, however, is a repetitive activity that could be controlled by this for minutes or hours with one command.
Re:Applications? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well it might improve the editing on slashdot.
The implications of brain stimulation (Score:2)
This thing is replaying back some kind of message to affect what your brain is going to do.
So when is it going to be turned into a brainwashing device to make sure you love the Dear Leader?
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"I'll dial for both of us, Rick said, and led her back into the bedroom. There, at her console, he dialed 594: pleased acknowledgment of husband's superior wisdom in all matters. On his own console he dialed for a creative and fresh attitude toward his job, although this he hardly needed; such was his habitual, innate approach without recourse to Penfield artificial brain stimulation.
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For some reason I was expecting there to be something about galloping abs at the end.
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So when is it going to be turned into a brainwashing device to make sure you love the Dear Leader?
Right after it is used on the criminally insane and pedophiles to make them productive members of society.
That is unnecessarily cruel (Score:3, Funny)
Just let them wear a suit and go to business school. It's what they really want.
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Until they drop out and write Hamlet.
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Guenter: They can't. It's all the hat.
yessss (Score:5, Funny)
Fuck sharks, I want hyper intelligent, semi retarded cocaine monkeys with lasers on their heads!
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I don't know, but it sounds that being paid to be a to do stuff like this would be pretty awesome too. Maybe I can make a career change and become a researcher too.
Reading Flowers for Algernon [wikipedia.org] or watching the movie Charlie [imdb.com] could be considered research too.
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So next can we simulate brain damage in these researchers by feeding them cocaine?
Yea! That will teach them, force them to snort cocaine.
Smarter or just less impaired? (Score:2)
The feed back device didn't improve the monkey's intelligence, it simply undid some of the damage the crack did to them.
At best its a retraining aid, and its not clear if it had any long term effect after discontinuing the feedback.
Since each feedback profile was learned from the monkey itself, there's no indication that you could apply that pattern to
other monkeys, or the undamaged monkeys to make them learn quicker.
But hey, good on those researchers to induce brain damage with cocaine so that no physical
Re:Smarter or just less impaired? (Score:4, Informative)
The feed back device didn't improve the monkey's intelligence, it simply undid some of the damage the crack did to them.
Really? Not even going to RTFS?
According to the study findings, the MIMO device was exceedingly effective in restoring the cocaine-impaired decision-making ability to an improved level of 10 percent above normal, even when the drug was still present and active.'"
Emphasis mine. Your other points may be valid, but this technique certainly did more than just undo the effects of the drug.
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Except that "normal" here means what the control group did, after receiving the cocaine.
It looks more like a mind backup (or control) tech than a mand amplifying one.
Great News (Score:2, Funny)
"Scientists have successfully restored and, in some cases, enhanced decision-making ability in brain-damaged monkeys on cocaine
So there may be hope for the Occupy movement after all!
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http://media.talkingpointsmemo.com/slideshow/mitt-romney-taxes [talkingpointsmemo.com]
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So, its news that Republicans voted to repeal the ACA for the 33rd time (and it makes them retarded), but none of that applies to the Democrats voting to overturn that repeal bill for the 33rd time?
I like the double standard, its the sort of thing that keeps one on their toes.
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Maybe you don't know how Congress works? No one has to "vote to overturn" the repeal bill - it dies automatically when it's never taken up by the Senate, the same as the last 32 times.
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The Democrat's action in that case is actually working. It isn't retarded to apply a successful strategy successfully multiple times.
Unintentional humor? (Score:5, Funny)
There's just something about the phrase "decision-making ability in brain-damaged monkeys on cocaine"....
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three words came to my mind, George Bush, Jr.
Planet of the Apes (Score:3, Funny)
George Taylor said, "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"
Let me get this straight (Score:1)
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Sounds like most of the people who show up in PUGs.
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Brain damaged monkeys, high on cocaine, playing MMOs, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!
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I thought the brain damaged cocaine monkeys played FPS's, not MMO's?
If Only... (Score:1)
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Don't worry. They'll make something for you soon. Be patient.
this is your brain (Score:5, Funny)
(holds up egg)
this is your brain on drugs
(cracks egg in frying pan)
this is your brain on drugs on cybernetics
(hundreds of little robots swarm and deftly fuse the egg back together)
any questions?
this is your life (Score:2)
(grey blank sheet)
this is your life with bacon
(scenes from rio carnival)
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And then the egg hatches into grey goo which swarms up his arm.
Does this "prosthetic" look like a bowler hat? (Score:2)
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I smell a patent infringement lawsuit from Professor Farnsworth!
I hope that Smelloscope is appropriately licensed. Since the Sonny Bono Head Act, patents from 3012 are indefinitely retrospective.
WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Am I the only one that finds it disturbing that a scientific study gives a dangerous drug to primates in 2012?
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
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After the study those monkeys had a party like it was 1999.
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Am I the only one that finds it disturbing that a scientific study gives a dangerous drug to primates in 2012?
It's like feeding caviare to pigs! What a terrible waste.
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Research grants (Score:3)
Just goes to prove that a sufficiently talented grant application writer can get a research grant for just about anything...
BTW, what happens when they give the monkeys THC and then turn on the device? Do they stop craving pop-tarts & crappy comedy movies or something?
So the moral is... (Score:1)
Bowler hat (Score:1)
Let Me Be The First To Welcome Our New ... (Score:2)
prosthetically-enhanced cocaine-addicted monkey overlords!
Strictly speaking (Score:1)
Strictly speaking, a strap-on is also a prosthetic device. I wonder if anyone ever put one on a monkey?
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Personally, I find that idea pretty disgusting.
But, as long as the monkey is willing to do it and you are not forcing him, I do not care what you are doing in the privacy of your own home.
great name for a band (Score:2)
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Hasn't anyone ever used Cocaine?
Two or three times, yes... but I decided it's really not for me. I find the "high" doesn't last long; and there was significant impairment in my ability to rationalise decisions (especially those relating to social behaviour - similar problem to alcohol but without the messiness and stumbling all over the place)
Those monkeys must have been damn near overdose, or given the drug at high doses over a long period of time to result in loss of cognitive functionality at that base level.
I don't think they actually CAUSED brain damage using cocaine. They simulated it using cocaine. See the bit I wrote above about impairment in my ability to rationalise.
That said, fuck the cocaine. Where's the damn control group where the regular monkeys used the prosthetic device to help them remember more quickly which decision to make? When you miss a control group that big, the study is hogwash.
I generally agree with you h
Rise of the Planet of the Apes - Journal (Score:1)
The end is near...We are dying...Crack-head monkeys have just broken into my office....Goo
Obligatory (Score:2)
I, for one, welcome a Beowulf cluster of our retarded cyborg crackhead monkey overlords! Hot grits! Natalie Portman! etc.
Do they run Linux?
They didn't become smarter (Score:2)
Reading the article this device sounds more like a memory extension than an intelligence booster. It just recorded the correct answers and played them back later. Still awesome, just not in a Planet of the apes kind of way.
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If you are proposing that the scientists should use humans instead, because humans can consent, and animals cannot, then by all means! Drive yourself down there and fill in the forms before the public notary, and get into the hospital gown.
If, however, you are just creaming out your ass because scientists are doing science, and it makes you feel 'ow swo bwad fwor de widdle monkwies', and would rather that humans live in the stone age than experiment on other lieforms to larn how living things work, and in s
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If you are proposing that the scientists should use humans instead, because humans can consent, and animals cannot, then by all means! Drive yourself down there and fill in the forms before the public notary, and get into the hospital gown.
If, however, you are just creaming out your ass because scientists are doing science, and it makes you feel 'ow swo bwad fwor de widdle monkwies', and would rather that humans live in the stone age than experiment on other lieforms to larn how living things work, and in so doing, push the boundries of scentific knowledge and medical technologies, then kind find a fire, pour gasoline all over yourself, and step into it.
Great post! ...is always:
The thought that always crosses my mind when I read a label that says: NOT TESTED ON ANIMALS
"Great. They're testing this stuff on ME."
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Unless you're a Buddhist, there are probably billions of 'animals' that you couldn't care less about.
Most of us realize that drawing the line somewhere between amphibians and mammals and/or based on the ease of anthropomorphization is irrational.
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This is more scientific FRAUD, committed by sociopaths who enjoy torturing animals.
What makes you assume the monkeys didn't thoroughly enjoy the experience?
I can say from experience that taking cocaine is not entirely unpleasant (I wouldn't do it again; but the two or three times I tried it, it was a lot of fun for a short period of time; followed by disappointment that the feelings go away so quickly)
And besides, even if it WAS committed by sociopaths who enjoy torturing animals, that doesn't make it scientific fraud (as long as they correctly recorded results and didn't distort anything