Stevie Wonder to Implant Eye Chip? 198
chocko sent us an article about Stevie Wonder's Eye Chip. Now normally a Stevie Wonder story probably wouldn't make it on Slashdot, but this is actually about him implanting a chip into his eye in order to try to gain some of his sight back. I just thought that was kinda cool. Update: 12/04 12:02 by H :Thanks to Chris Griffin for updating the story.
Re:I'm all for it but.. (Score:1)
Re:Another, fairly informative article (Score:2)
Doctor Costs Drop? (Score:1)
Re:what? (Score:1)
Re:Another, fairly informative article (Score:2)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Somebody better watch out (Score:1)
Re:Sign of things to come.. (Score:1)
Well there are some other choices
Do you have better ideas? Do they still seem better if we replace "medical technology" with "car technology", or "lawn care"?
Re: (racist joke deleted) (Score:2)
I'm not sure that's right. Feature detection (eg detection of edges, junctions etc) is done in the primary visual cortex. The cortex is composed of groups of about 100 "pyramidal" neurons wired together into narrow bundles, sometimes called minicolumns. Approximately 100 of these minicolumns are grouped together into a "macrocolumn" (in the visual cortex sometimes the term "ocular dominance column" is used).
Each macrocolumn is wired up to a specific spot on the retina, so that it might be regarded as processing a single pixel. In this way the entire visual field is mapped onto the surface of the back of the brain with relatively little distortion (feed radioactive glucose to a monkey, get him to look at a black-and-white geometric pattern while exposing the back of his head to photographic film, and you'll see the pattern he is looking at etched directly onto the surface of his brain!).
Now, within a given macrocolumn, each minicolumn is responsible for detection of a specific low-level feature at the co-ordinate "owned" by the macrocolumn to which it belongs. The features detected at this level are "edges" (sharp contrast gradients) in a complete range of different orientations, with a resolution of a couple of degrees.
Recognition of features such as vertical lines is accomplished by having the "vertical edge" minicolumns in adjacent macrocolumns connected to each other, and to specific multipolar neurons deeper in the cortex, which sum their inputs. So if the vertical edge detectors are stimulated in half a dozen macrocolumns all arranged (in terms of neural topology) in a straight line, these will all stimulate the higher-order neurons which code for a vertical line at those coordinates.
The processing that occurs in the retina owing to interconnection of rods and cones only involves smearing out the stimulus to near neighbours. I think this is part of the scanning mechanism involves in the eye's oscillation of approx. 10hz (I'm not referring to saccadic movement).
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Geordi LaForge, anyone? (Score:1)
Palm devices (specificly the Palm VII or a standard Palm coupled with some form of networking) are getting very close to this. There are also now devices that are similar in concept, just not size. Wireless color touchscreen LCDs that interface with their base (I think there was one that was an x server), allowing many fun things like browsing slashdot from the comfort of your bathroom :-) (or even better, reading slashdot at the breakfast table instead of the stadard flat, dead trees)
The thing that makes science fiction like Star Trek what it is, is the speculation and extrapolation about our future and the future of technology. We shouldn't be too surprised when someone gets it right, but it sure is cool to see a technology progress out of fiction into reality.
Sweet enola gay... (Score:1)
--
"HORSE."
Eye chip? (Score:1)
Another, fairly informative article (Score:4)
Apparently the system only has 25 pixels - presumably in a 5x5 square. While such 'vision' will be a vast improvement over nothing, it sounds like the system is still in its early stages and is nowhere near mimicing conventional sight. It's a bit like the early cochlear implants in a way.
Re:I'm all for it but.. (Score:3)
I really hope Stevie Wonder's procedure works well and that he regains some sight. Good luck and God bless dude.
Re:It'd be nice, but.. (Score:2)
Its a condition that affects the retina, the back of the eye where the optical nerves lie.
Here's [uiowa.edu] some more info and a picture of an affected retina.
"Normally a Stevie Wonder Story Wouldn't Make It" (Score:2)
Now normally I wouldn't expect any story about musicians to be regular fare for /., but every now and then we get some silly story about some yahoo DJ Shadow or some moonie from the Who or some other band, and there is no such inane put-down.
De gustibus non est disputandem and all that, but remember that it's hard to narrow down any aspect of the /. crowd, least of all musical tastes.
Sheesh!
--Uche
Re:Stevie's Too Good for Rob (Score:1)
just suggesting that there is little overlap between
Slashdot readers and Stevie Wonder fans. But he may
be wrong about this as well: I had a CS professor
who is probably in his early 50s now, who was this
total Jazz Geek. And, although I didn't get into
specifics, I imagine his tastes were closer to
Weather Report than to, say Pharoah Sanders. Stevie
Wonder's early 70s work is very fusion/modal influenced,
so there are possibly a fair number of
Re:Stevie's Too Good for Rob (Score:1)
It's not the same... (Score:2)
Re:Intestesting...(but will it work?) (Score:1)
Good luck!
-PsI®
Bionic? (Score:1)
Chip in his eye sounds like a cross of "Chip on his shoulder" and "Plank/speck in his eye."
Re:Sign of things to come.. (Score:1)
Intestesting... (Score:1)
Stevie's pretty tech friendly... (Score:2)
I'm not sure I'd want to try this, but I'm not surprised he is.
I wonder, will they be opposed by "blind culture"? (Score:2)
Re:Another, fairly informative article (Score:1)
Which brings up the larger problem, IMO: the retina has some non-trivial image processing abilities, and AFAIK none of these implants go beyond simple light sensitive plates. To restore natural vision you'd need the replicate the entire million (IIRC) retinal cells, plus take some very tiny embedded processors in behind them (or to be biologically plausible, build the processors into the light detectors). These are relatively important functions, like edge and movement detection, that I don't believe it would be wise to leave out.
I know another candidate for this. (Score:3)
I think the implant design has something to do with stimulating the optical nerve in a manner opposite of a CCD. I'm not sure about colors being visible, but I am sure for a blind person that even seeing objects in monochrome is a blessing indeed. They will still not be able to drive a car, but they may enjoy a greater standard of independent living.
--
Re:Sign of things to come.. (Score:1)
And 640K is about enough for anybody.
And the integrated circuit is useless.
And We can close down the patent office because everything has already been invented. This actually WAS argued in congress, IIRC, in the late 19th century.
Why do you think that? This research will give us a "permanent" eye replacement within 10 years or so, and "upgrades" within 6 months after that. There is also research about a neural interface that we will implement also within 10-15 years. see Neural computing discussion [slashdot.org] Granted, this research is preliminary, but the speed of these announcements is astounding.
Unless you're already eighty, you will definately see industrial, and possibly commercial, cybournetic implants within your lifetime.
_______________________________
I'm all for it but.. (Score:3)
Star Trek? (Score:2)
"Mr. Laforge to the bridge"
Nothing against him, but if he wears anything like in Star Trek, I'm going to start wearing a lead apron around town.
With Star Trek issues,
Matthew
Link to another Story on CNN about this (Score:1)
The story as I recall (Score:1)
Stevie (Score:1)
strawberry fields nothing is real
and stevie wonder and see there it is a place where you can never understand
Don't listen, it's a conspiracy! (Score:1)
This, however, is not what worries me.
After he conquers the world he'll appoint Kathy Lee Gifford as his vice dictator...
Be afraid, be very afraid....
It appears not... (Score:1)
offtopic (Score:1)
Re:Another, fairly informative article (Score:1)
good for him (Score:1)
Re:I know another candidate for this. (Score:1)
Does anybody know how much this operation cost??? If simple laser surgery is $1500/eye, this must be in the $15K/eye or something.
Re: (racist joke deleted) (Score:1)
The retina has some significant processing power of it's own--in fact, it is often used as a benchmark for measuring the brain's overall processing capabilities (wrongly, IMO, but that's not relevant). Both edge and movement detection are performed in the rear-most layer of the retina as a pre-processing step before the information is moved up the optic nerve.
The optic nerve feeds into the LGN (the expanded form of which is difficult to spell), which performs a great deal of processing in it's own right--it was, after all, the primary visual system for millions of years--including further (much more refined) edge and movement detection, some object recognition, attention, etc.
The result of that is forwarded to the cortex for the final processing we all know and love, which extends the capabilities of the retina and LGN greatly. However, by that stage the input has virtually no resemblance to the output from the retina, having been thoroughly digested by the lower visual systems. (One further interesting tidbit: the descending pathways, from the cortex to the LGN, have 10x the capacity of the ascending pathways. Make of that what you will.)
(Incidentally, there are a number of us who are trying to combat cerebral chauvinism in neuroscience, and you aren't helping
I hope it works for him. (Score:1)
ttyl
Farrell
sight back? (Score:1)
implanting a chip into his eye in
order to try to gain some of his sight back.
I thought he was always blind.
But it is kinda cool.
Re:Stevie's pretty tech friendly... (Score:1)
When Yamaha introduced the GS-1, the first all-digital keyboard in 1974, Wonder had one of only two in the US (the GS-1 was a big $100,000 beast). He's also surrounded himself with smart techies like Gary Ozlabal, and was an early-adopter of 2" analog and later DASH digital audio formats.
I wasn't suprised to see Stevie Wonder's name in the article. I was suprised that he didn't opt for the MIDI port implant instead.
k.
Too much oxygen == bad for premie baby's eyes (Score:1)
Re:Another, fairly informative article (Score:1)
this gives a angle of 0.014 degrees, and if the eye has a field of vision of 90 degrees (this looks good in quake
also note that the fov is a guess, but it probably should be quite close to that, and it gives quite a approximation at least..
Re:offtopic (Score:1)
Re:This is good (Score:1)
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. :-)
On a more serious note, while this would be good stuff for the handicapped, it has the potential to be abused. It'd kinda be like cosmetic surgery...you don't really need it, but some people aren't happy with what they're born with, or something along those lines.
It'd give BSOD a whole new meaning. :-)
Unfortunately (Score:1)
Re:The story as I recall (Score:1)
Not at all (Score:3)
Re:How could they know whether it worked? (Score:1)
The chip doesn't stay in. (Score:3)
It isn't some kind of artificial vision replacement. Rather, AFAICT, it just stimulates the nerves to the point where they remember how to see again. Then the chip is removed.
Sorry. No Star Trek story here. You can go.
(however, the Star Trek technology might be next. I seem to remember a story about constructing an image by reading the neurons in a cat, or something. It worked, but the picture was lower res.
I think it'd be awesome if I could replace or add, say, a thermal view of my surroundings, or a clock... It'd involve being able to add, replace or superimpose "images" in the stream of data from the eyes to the brain. Of course, goggles would be a *lot* easier.
---
pb Reply or e-mail rather than vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Re:Bionic Ear (Score:2)
My wife has one of these. With tiny electrodes planted in her cochlea, a woman who without it would have trouble hearing a 747 landing on her can hear at a pretty serviceable level.
The Washington Post has an interesting article [washingtonpost.com] about rich vs. poor medicine, with the rich being U.S. pharmaceutical companies and the poor being Africans with AIDS. African countries could manufacture AIDS treatment drugs for much cheaper than they could buy them from U.S. companies, but doing so would subject them to sanctions. So "closed-source" medicine lets people die who we might save. (On the other hand, without the money from sales the drugs probably not have been developed yet, so not allowing medicines to be patented might mean even more people die.)
Specs, and drawing of spectacles too. (Score:2)
Tapping optic nerve (Score:2)
I don't know how fast the processing would have to be to be realtime, but from what I know of the retina it should not be all that difficult.
You can find the cat's eye discussion right here on Slashdot. Just do a search for cat eye optic nerve.
Re:I'm all for it but.. (Score:2)
Actually, recall that during the last year or two that it has been found that new brain cells are continually wandering around and fastening themselves hither and yon in the brain. Even brains several decades old are getting new neurons which are learning stuff to do.
Re: (racist joke deleted) (Score:2)
This preprocessed information only goes directly to the old subcortical vision systems. The primary visual cortex (which is where your "conscious" vision is) gets its data directly from the retina as a raw monochrome image plus low-resolution colour data, which is mixed in at a higher level, about where groups of edges and junctions get merged into identifiable surfaces.
I believe you are referring to the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (this is off the top of my head so I can't guarantee the spelling). This has taken centre stage in subcortical processing studies lately as the old notion of the so-called "limbic system" as a complete and discrete subsystem has lost favour.
The subcortical visual processing pathways which evolved in our premammalian ancestors are an entirely separate issue from the conscious vision I was talking about in my previous post. The subcortical pathways are almost completely hardwired according to instructions in our genes, and they don't carry an awful lot of information: just very basic notification of possible threats (eg there's something moving towards you very quickly: predator!) and possible rewards (something moving away from you very quickly: prey!).
The result of that is forwarded to the cortex for the final processing we all know and love, which extends the capabilities of the retina and LGN greatly. However, by that stage the input has virtually no resemblance to the output from the retina, having been thoroughly digested by the lower visual systems.
You imply that the visual cortex gets all or most of its input from the LGN. You have it completely wrong I'm afraid. There isn't any room for doubt about this; the primary visual cortex is probably the most intensively studied region of the brain and the description I gave of cortical vision in my previous post is at least broadly correct. the data definitely comes direct from the retina.
The old subcortical sensory pathways evolved without having any substantial cortex to talk to. Their primary output is to subcortical switching centres like the thalamus, and from there on to affective systems such as motor areas in the cerebellum, autonomic systems in the brain stem regulating breathing, heart rate etc, and the adrenal response. These are relatively inflexible hardwired reflex systems - instinctive responses - originally developed for our simpler ancestors.
The way that the cortex has been overlaid on top of that is to provide a parallel (and almost completely independent) set of alternative pathways with their own (cortical) information processing. And, as we all know, these cortical pathways are the ones that make us intelligent, perceptive - and, dare I say it - conscious.
Now, there are secondary pathways swapping data between the subcortical and cortical systems, but these are very high level and, as you very conveniently pointed out:
One further interesting tidbit: the descending pathways, from the cortex to the LGN, have 10x the capacity of the ascending pathways. Make of that what you will.
In other words, these bandwidth-limited ascending pathways represent a pretty trifling quantity of information passed on to the visual cortex from the LGN. It's a highly condensed "risk analysis" passed upwards for mixing in with the detailed sensory picture provided by the cortex to give it some emotional coloration. It adds an "Aaaaargh!!" factor to the beautiful scene of that huge muscular golden lioness bounding towards you.
The descending pathways are broader because they represent the cortex's afferent output, which is the whole point of having a cortex in the first place. These pathways feed into the old reflex pathways to modulate instinctive behaviour with intelligence and experience. Some of them are used when you "steel" yourself to do something which takes courage, or whenever you exert any kind of self-control against your base animal urges. The ones coming from deep inside the visual cortex carry learned information, (in this case, patterns representing recognised elements of a scene, such as a face you know) via the LGN to various midbrain structures where it acquires an emotional context (the face of a loved one or of a hated enemy). Whereupon appropriate signals are sent out to the hypothalamus, the brain stem etc. to prepare the body for the appropriate physical response.
(Incidentally, there are a number of us who are trying to combat cerebral chauvinism in neuroscience, and you aren't helping
Well, what can I say? Cortex roolz! It's what makes us human.
Seriously, it's obvious that you're fairly well read but you have to careful not to identify too closely with certain researchers' narrow preoccupations.
Subcortical neurology explains most of the behaviour of lower animals. It also helps us to understand a lot of human behaviour; there's no doubt that it affects us deeply, we are still basically animals precisely because of it. However it cannot explain those parts of our experience and behaviour which make us different form other animals. Our conscious lives - our language, our appreciation for music, art, good food; our thirst for knowledge, our complex sexuality - these all belong in the information-rich cortex.
Please have a look at William H Calvin's web site [washington.edu], he has (I think all of) his books online there. His background is in spinal and cerebellar neurons but he has a brilliant theory of cortical processing which goes a long way to explaining how discrimination of complex stimuli, conscious and subconscious thought, memory, learning and language all work at a neuronal and cell-assembly level. I particularly recommend How Brains Think to start with.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re: (racist joke deleted) (Score:2)
The joke is funny. I laughed when I first heard it many years ago. But it is offensive and demeaning to black people (as if you didn't know).
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
stevie not mentioned in slashdot? (Score:2)
Just thought I would throw a line out there for those who don't know, and personally I don't care much for his music.
bortbox
upside down (Score:2)
--
Re:I'm all for it but.. (Score:1)
Dan
Current Use of Chip (Score:1)
Background on Stevie Wonder (Score:1)
I think this Yahoo! article gives a good overview of his background, including his blindness.
Stevie Wonder at Yahoo! [yahoo.com]
Re: (racist joke deleted) (Score:2)
I'm in the right, here. I tried to do the right thing, you're behaving like an insensitive, arrogant wanker. End of conversation. +++ATH
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Lord, stop me before I make this awful joke... (Score:2)
I wonder, did they pull the chip out of an iMac?
(That would lend an interesting new meaning to the line "you are the Apple(tm) of my eye...")
groan... sorry folks.
Re:The chip doesn't stay in. (Score:2)
One neat thing is that research hits published journals often years after the experiments were performed. I'm sure things have progressed much since the cat experiements were done.
Sign of things to come in a real long time... (Score:2)
Re:Sign of things to come.. (Score:2)
There is reason to be worried. Since our society isn't going to do away with money anytime soon, and this stuff isn't free, this could just further polarize society. Don't have those optic enhancers? Sorry, you can't be a pilot. Don't have those memory enhancers? Sorry, you can't be a scientist. We DO need very specific laws on this because the potential for misuse is so big. Our government is still clueless on the "information age", much less all the new advancements in biotech.
More importnantly, do we really want to turn ourselves in into the borg? This sounds silly now, but there isn't much discussion into the future. New tech? If it makes us money, go for it!! Damn the consequences!
Re:Sign of things to come.. (Score:2)
Re:Fascinating. (Score:2)
His brain, having almost no training in decoding visual images, didn't know how to do many things that we take for granted, such as determining the difference between a dog and a cat (without touching/hearing it, of course). I recall it being mentioned that learning colors was fairly easy for him, but shapes were difficult. He couldn't tell the difference between a circle and a square, for example. If anyone else is interested in this topic, the story is excellently written and is very thought-provoking. It's very interesting to imagine what sight would be like to a person who had no idea what he was seeing...
Specs? (Score:2)
Not that I expect this, but if anybody out there knows anything more about this story, or has another source that we can check out, perhaps with a little more detail, I'd be happy to see it.
Seems to me, that in order for it to be journalism, one should actually investigate it a little bit. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh.
...subject... (Score:2)
Re:Intestesting...(but will it work?) (Score:2)
I have several friends who are legally blind, one who has eyesight to this level can get around town with only a cane to alert him to trip hazards, and easily do things like pick up a dropped pillow without having to fumble for it.
Even just having the ability to tell darkness from light could be worthwile, as it could be used to tell which way you are orientated in a room, by detecting where the windows are.
Sign of things to come.. (Score:4)
This is great news for all of us, even the perfect sighted. I think that one of the obstacles to development in these arenas is that the people with the expertise in one field - imaging, robotics - are rarely trained in the fields of medicine. Biomedical Engineering has the potential for many great things, and I think we're just beginning to see what can be achieved when we start engineering our bodies.
Unless people start freaking out about "unnatural" modifications, of course. I am a little worried about that laws that will start to happen when this tech gets more advanced - it's very, very, very primitive right now - how about when you could get enhanced vision? Or strain-free screens to read off of? (via a direct digital connection!)
Sound far fetched? Maybe, but then again, we were all using gopher 6 years ago.
Not going to happen, you say? Icky? Maybe. Someone that's got modifications will have a _competitive advantage_ over you, and might learn better, or faster, or be able to do more.
Welcome to the borg - friendlier, happier, but definately where we're headed. I might not live to see it.. but who knows when nanotech gets off the ground to splice into nerves :).
Kudos!
Re:Fascinating possibilities (Score:2)
I can imagine extending our existing senses to ranges that they cannot currently handle, for example infrared vision, or to hear the intensity of the magnetic field, or anything similar to that, but creating a totally new sense? I can't imagine it
Re:Brief response (Score:2)
On with the show...
You are the champion of retinal processing, not me. As far as I'm concerned retinal processing is quite low-level. There may be motion detection built in but this is most likely used only by subcortical pathways since the cortex also has motion detection of its own. Apart from the that retinal processing only consists of cleaning up the signal.
Parallel pathways exist all throughout the brain. I doubt that the optic nerve contains duplicate pathways for cortical and subcortical vision but this is hardly necessary anyway since the little higher level information from the retina (eg motion data) would only need to use a small number of specialised neurons hardly amounting to a complete duplication.
Hence, your question about how unprocessed information gets to the cortex when it's already been processed before it gets there is irrelevant. Raw monochrome information is transmitted alongside colour information and possibly motion information. They all pass by the thalamus, but the former two (at least) continue all the way to the cortex.
I've nothing more to say about retinal processing because photoradiographs of suitably dosed live visual cortex show irrefutably that the visual field is passed to it largely unchanged from the retina. Hence, as I said, there is no room for doubt. If there is any retinal processing, it's not important for cortical vision. It's just a camera which has some sophisticated error correction features to partially compensate for its design flaws.
Reciting the names of your heroes, even if they are right (and many of the claims they make are pure speculation) doesn't mean that you have understood them correctly. Forgive me, but it seems as if you are trying to construct an argument about sensory perception involving a lot of different subsystems, from a partial understanding of a very limited and specific area of brain research.
Crick and the others make much of the LGN because that's what they're interested in. They're making a point about the way the thalamus modulates the conscious processing going on in the cortex. However that doesn't imply that this is the only role of the thalamus, doesn't imply that the cortical connections originating from the thalamus are more numerous or more important than those originating from the retina, and doesn't imply that that cortical vision doesn't modulate the subconscious visual processing going on in the midbrain.
As far as evolution goes, I'll work up the theory for you: simple animals with no significant cortex evolved with relatively simple behaviour patterns (instincts) encoded entirely in subcortical pathways. Some animals were born with duplicated pathways which got organized differently and became cortex. This cortex enabled more detailed processing of sensory input and more creative generation of behaviour, supplementing and modulating the subcortical machinery, thus conferring survival advantage.
What's implausible about that?
You say that cortical pathways don't make us perceptive. Since roughly half of the cortex is concerned with processing sensory input (of which we are conscious) and which disappears when the relevant bit of cortex is taken away, I can't quite understand what you mean by that.
You also said cortical pathways don't make us conscious. Then you elaborated:
consciousness is not a cortical function
I'd like to see you prove that!
I didn't claim consciousness was merely a cortical function, anyway (see closing statement below).
I did say that "conscious" vision comes from the cortex, and that's directly proven from studies of people with blindness due to neuropathy or brain injury (eg blindsight, prosopagnosia). I also said (with tongue firmly in cheek) that cortical pathways make us conscious.
Well, if you remove a human's visual cortex they report no conscious experience of vision, if you remove their auditory cortex they report no conscious experience of hearing, and if you remove their frontal lobes they exhibit no conscious mental activity at all even when their motor areas remain intact. I admit to the limitations of the behaviourist perspective but it's kind of hard to ignore the evidence all the same.
In the theoretical opposite case extrapolated from other brain damage case histories, if a human could be kept alive without most of his subcortex, he could probably still exhibit some apparently conscious behaviour but I expect he'd not have much to say about qualia which is what it's all supposed to be about. Actually this may become a real experiment sooner rather later. An Australian scientist recently announced an experiment where he was to temporarily deactivate parts of his brain using tuned oscillating electromagnetic fields.
So, in my opinion "consciousness" (the kind contemplated in the so-called "hard problem") is not a single unitary thing anyway. There's a whole spectrum of states of consciousness depending on how many parts of your brain are missing or otherwise in relative states of inactivity.
PS. I don't agree with some of Crick's work, and on the rest I don't have an opinion one way or the other because some of his conclusions go a little beyond what is warranted by the evidence. I try to keep an open mind. There's no doubt that almost all of the most exciting and revealing research right now is subcortical - there's so much structure there to be discovered. And so much of human nature is built on the same model as the rest of our animal cousins.
But the immense flexibility and power of the cortex in Calvin's model should not be discounted. It represents all of the capabilities we have that are uniquely human.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Specs? (Score:2)
http://www.cnn.com/1999/ SHOWBIZ/Music/12/03/stevie.wonder/ [cnn.com]
Re:Information (Score:2)
So this time I'm going to be brief.
Crick and Koch and hundreds of other researchers (who I have read, in refereed journals like Trends in Cognitive Science) doing subcortical stuff make reasonable claims about subcortical perception and affect. But they don't claim that the cortex is idle, they are just focusing their effort elsewhere.
There are decades of cortical studies which have laid out how visual processing occurs in Primary Visual Cortex (PVC), handling low-level feature detection, motion detection and shape recognition; and also how there are pathways which send this information to other areas of cortex for recognition of higher-order stimuli and for association with inputs from other sensory modalities.
I again refer you to the photoradiographs of monkey PVC. They prove beyond doubt that retinal inputs arrive at the PVC largely unaltered by the subcortex. Even though the pathways do come through the LGN. It must be inferred that the LGN adds information to the retinal signal rather than replacing it with something completely different.
Gotta run now, more later.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Information (Score:2)
This is what I mean about being a pretentious ass. Those were the books I happened to have in front of me at the moment. I never said I agreed with them completely, or even mostly, but simply that there statements contradict your own. To be honest, I think Crick is wrong, and Churchland is a looney, but that doesn't mean they can't report empirical results. And until you can provide some references or credentials, they're opinions far outweigh yours.
I never contested their empirical results. They are at least rigorous enough as experimentalists.
But do their opinions outweigh mine? Even if their opinions are not fully supported by their own results, and even if neither you nor I believe them, and even if *my* opinions are merely an expression of the establishment view? I think you overstate your case.
the cortex is not required for perception
It's been adequately established that cortex is required for conscious perception in humans (see below).
Animals lacking a cortex may be conscious. QED.
You're just being contentious, you can't possibly believe that because (i) QED means "that which is proven" while consciousness is not amenable to normal standards of proof even in humans; and (ii) to define consciousness broadly enough to encompass mental states in both humans and sea slugs would render the term practically useless.
The Journal of Consciousness Studies devoted an issue to the subject of blindsight, which included a few articles proposing that some (stressing some, of course) people afflicted with blindsight may be consciously perceiving, but unable to consciously report it, due to damage to their introspective abilities.
...
It could be that, for example, they are consciously seeing, in a loose sense of the term, via subcortical routes, but cannot say so since their linguistic processing is entirely encapsulated. The cortically based systems used for language are designed to accept sensory input from the cortical sensory systems, and in their absence assume there is none.
Blindsight patients don't only fail to admit verbally to blindfield visual stimuli. They also fail to react physically in any manner which requires conscious assessment or determination. In the studies I've read about, the only direct reactions that occur appear to be fully subconscious, and indirect conscious reactions only occur when the subject receives substantial prompting.
To claim that blindfield vision is conscious in such cases therefore implies a completely isolated visual consciousness incapable of affecting anything else except via the subconscious. It's plausible to speak of multiple indpendent consciousnesses in subjects with severed corpus callosum; at least each hemisphere is well-equipped enough to constitute a complete independent consciousness. But can a visual processing system be conscious all by itself? The term 'conscious' can't be meaningfully applied to a small lump of brain tissue dedicated to a single passive function.
BTW, JCS is a lot of fun and I dip into it regularly, but it's not the most serious publication. Consciousness studies are still mainly empty philosophising notwithstanding Crick's efforts.
You have made several statements along the lines of "there is no room for doubt" and "this has been proven", yet you seem utterly unable to provide any references beyond Calvin.
I don't remember who did the photoradiographs, I saw it many years ago in Colin Blakemore's The Mind Machine and I no longer have the book. I don't memorize lists of citations because I'm not a professional neurologist, I'm a dilettante who reads this stuff out of pure curiosity for my own amusement. However, I try to keep a broad view and I think I know what is what.
I certainly value my own objective (if undereducated) opinion this much: I remain sceptical about theories promoted by both narrow-minded specialists with a need to justify their next grant application, and I remain sceptical aout the work of eminent scientists practising their eminence outside of the field in which they won it.
The only current exception I make to this is Calvin, because his theory explains perfectly so much that is otherwise yet unexplained. Even if it turns out not to be completely correct, a cortex built according to his principles does look as if it would exhibit all the features of human memory, learning, cognition and yes even consciousness. The subcortical studies you are fond of are very important I agree. But I maintain that the cortex is capable of much neater stuff.
I beseech you to go back and have another look at those LGN studies, and consider: what if they just meant that the LGN added extra high-level information to an existing complete retinal map headed for the PVC? And going further, what if they were even mistaken about that, the ascending pathways remain clean and the high-level information generated in the LGN only goes to afferent subcortical destinations? Would their observations still make sense?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Every medical procedure needs a celebrity (Score:3)
Christopher Reeve has done way more for attracting attention (and $$) for research in neuron regeneration and spinal cord injuries than any number of scientists could!
Re:Sign of things to come.. (Score:2)
One has to carefully consider the ramifications of allowing these types of "artifical" modifications to the human body.
The first thing I believe that will happen is that the rich will start to get the modifications, this there will be a class distinction where the rich are covered with capability enhancing modifications while the poor get nothing.
Quickly, it will become as popular to an eye with a built-in feed to the internet as it would be to today get a new Lexus.
Eventually over time, the rich will barely be rocognizable as human.
There a great anime called I think the "Starlight Express" or something like that which predicts just such a future (great movie by the way), and it's really not that hard to imagine it actually happening.
Oh well, that said, where do I sign up for the x-ray vision eyes? Now that would come in handy!
OS? Other functions? (Score:2)
Will we be seeing warnings like:
"I'm sorry, but I've patented sight, you'll need to pay a royalty everytime you open your eyes."
"What do you want to see today?"
"MSEyes have detected a change in your field of vision. You must reboot for these changes to become visible."
"You must now install the new 'Eye patch 2.0' Service Pack. Please stare directly at your monitor while the next web page loads."
Will M/$ force a browser to be integrated?
Does BSOD become BEOD? Blue Eyes Of Death? (I've known some women who already have this capability.)
Will it be compiled by "Visual See++?"
Additional Function?:
Make the infrared receiver a transceiver with input from the muscles around the eye so that you can change the channel on your TV or turn the stereo volume up and down with a blink.
Does this mean that I can reprogram it with my Palm IIIx?
Just some points to ponder...
Russ
excess O2 causes it immediately (nt) (Score:2)
AP wire (Score:2)
Fascinating possibilities (Score:2)
For someone who has never seen, that's exactly what this would be like - you make an input device sensitive to our visible light spectrum, feed it into his brain, and it hopefully learns over time to interpret the signals until he has another sense that just feels natural.
I see no reason to believe that the human brain is not adaptive enough to add new arbitrary senses. Of course, I am no expert in such things and if any of you out there are, please correct me.
Imagine the possibilities though - anything that we currently make equipment for! We could have a new device that would help us to "sense" our global position via GPS, radiation levels in the area, supersonic or subsonic viabrations, and so on...
And of course we can't forget the obvious - an infrared sensor with that certain sony handycam kind of filter. Clothes, begone!
--
grappler
Re:This is good (Score:2)
Easy - someone like Alladvantage will come along and pay for your surgery. In return, you'll have to put up with a small bar at the bottom of your vision containing paid-for advertising. It's only off when you're asleep (maybe) or perhaps for a few user-selectable hours each day - enough so that you can get a rest or drive or something. The rest of the time, your vision is auctioned off to the highest bidder. Younger people would be more desirable, as more ad impressions would be possible.
Sound kind of sick? Well, maybe. But you know that someone will think of it, for better or for worse.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
It'd be nice, but.. (Score:2)
--
"Some people say that I proved if you get a C average, you can end up being successful in life."
Stevie's Too Good for Rob (Score:2)
Anything about The Who, on the other hand, would be immediately posted without hesitation
This is good (Score:2)
I do have a few concerns though. The biggest being that I would like to have surgery to correct my vision, but it is quite expensive. I am wondering if one would have to have Stevie Wonder's fortune to afford such an infinetely more complicated procedure such as the implant of a chip into your eye? If it is to be horribly expensive will insurance cover it?
My second concern is that we will have people with good eyesight getting chips put in to get better eyesight. I don't want to see the age where we all are computerized people. Lord knows the human body isn't an unbreakable machine, but it is far more durable than a computer, I mean what if your eye or arm shorts out for some reason, then you have what was a perfectly good eye/arm going haywire because you wanted it to be better.
Aw, well I guess I am over reacting, I don't think that we will see healthy people getting these soon, and I have always felt sorry for people with such large disabilities as blindness and paralysis. If this technology can help those people to see or walk again than it would be worth the abuse that it could potential have.
By the way, in the above paragraph I just sort of looked into the future about fixing the paralyzed people, the article from ZD was very short, does anyone know if this eye chip technology could help spinal chord injuries and such as well?
sorry (Score:2)
What resolution? Does he see the same? (Score:2)
Secondly does he see the same colors we do? The human eye distingushes color by only three components (RGB) rather then the full frequency spectrum (hence why you can differnt wavelenghts to get similar colors).
There are plenty of examples of cases this isn't true (for instance cameras expose as greenish in florescent lights. If it is still a very small resolution infared might be more useful to distingush people and so forth.
More detailed article (Score:4)
Some Related Links (Score:5)
Most Links!
Eye chips? (Score:2)
Also, I thought Stevie Wonder was born blind. Considering his age, being able to see is probably going to take a LOT of getting used to (who knows; after so many years of being blind, suddenly gaining sight could very well drive a person insane through the relative sensory overload). I wish him the best of luck, though.
Come to think of it, the only way we'll ever really be able to know if this works as well as "normal" human vision is to try it on someone who wasn't born blind, so that person can compare. It'll certainly be interesting to see (pardon the pun) how such an experiment would turn out.
Wait, one last thing. Where exactly do they plan to put this chip? Putting it physically inside the eye would probably not be a Good Thing. Unless you put it on the optic disk it'd block part of the retina, and the chip complete with neural interfaces would probably be too big to fit over the disk.
Re:Information (Score:2)
...I don't [define consciousness broadly]. Unfortunately, no one, myself included, makes their definition clear at the outset. I define consciousness as being almost synonymous with experience, that is, possessing qualia. I say "almost" because I tend to follow Whitehead in the details.
That said, I have seen no reason why lower mammals, reptiles, and birds, can't be conscious. In fact, if Panksepp and Watt are correct--expirimentally correct, not simply theoretically--then reptiles mark the emergence of consciousness.
I've probably said more about consciousness than I really intended and perhaps even more than I really meant. If you want to know my position on consciousness then have a look at my signature. If you can't be bothered to enable signatures, it's probably enough to know that I believe Daniel Dennett to be one of the very few people making any sense of the subject.
You could save a lot space if you stopping stating things we both know.
Sorry, but you seemed to imply that some blindsight symptoms may be due to having the language centres disconnected. I was merely pointing out why this cannot provide the explanation.
I said it implies a compartmentalized introspective consciousness, one that is lacking information-rich connections beyond the cortex. The blinsighted subjects may be lacking an ability to introspect consciously, while still being able to have 'external' conscious experiences.
That's fairly horrific. You mean that a chunk of rational "thinking" brain is cut off, blind and deaf, whilt the rest of the brain continues experiencing life unaware of its silent passenger? You're going to give me bad dreams mate. At least both halves of a post-surgical epileptic get an roughly equal share of effect and affect. Still, the picture you paint is only speculation isn't it? I have a hard time sometimes figuring out which of your arguments are straw men and which are real.
That's a tricky point because it can be interpreted in two ways. One interpretation is that the problem only appears under unnatural conditions of laboratory testing and so is not quite genuine. This doesn't really explain anything though. The other interpretation is that the problems in reporting experience are a direct consequence of the functional asymmetry of the brain. The experiments are intended to show how the left side doesn't know directly what the right side is doing, and sometimed in particular to show how one hemisphere is inarticulate and the other has a poor visiospatial sense. Which explains the inability to talk about what the inarticulate side is doing quite well IMO.
Speaking as a (semi)professional philosopher, and JCS subscriber, I should probably be insulted.
Don't be. I had this [slashdot.org] to say about philosophy earlier tonight.
You keep assuming that your opinion has the validity of objective fact, to the extent that you will deny any and all evidence I present.
I'm not "denying" the "evidence". I just don't place the same interpretation on these observations as you do. And I hardly regard it as uniquely "my opinion". I didn't make this stuff up myself.
This is ridiculous. Are you so unwilling to lose this argument that you would actually claim that every description of the visual system I've found (there were many I didn't include above) is wrong? Look at the last link I tossed re: the LGN (labeled "This"). That is an anatomical description of the visual paths from the retina. Not a theory, nor a proposal for research. A simple description of what connections exist, and where they go.
These are apparently college lecture notes. Not exactly authoritative. And they are brief to the point of obfuscation. For example the section "LGN->Primary Visual Cortex" doesn't make explicit on which end of that pathway the "primal sketch" is formed or if it's even known. I can see how you might have been led astray if your reading did not include certain earlier cortical research.
Skepticism is one thing, but you're bordering outright solipsism.
*sigh*. And you started out so well. I'm finding this constant hostility a bit wearing but I'll try to ignore it just one more time.
The important thing is that you don't admit to the limited scope of the descriptions to which you're referring. They omit to mention (perhaps because it's generally so well known from classic empirical studies and therefore assumed) that the visual field is also represented to the Primary Visual Cortex in its entirety and in all the available retinal detail. If you're still demanding citations, I'm sorry but this is so elementary you're only going to find them in freshman neurology textbooks, which I no longer have.
Everybody knows it goes through the Lateral Geniculate Body, so what? It does not change the fact that the Primary Visual Cortex gets *all* the retinal data in a mostly raw form. The LGN does not need to generate that information since it is already available in a suitable format at the LGN's inputs. The information that came from the retinae is simply forwarded more or less "as is". Even though modulated to some degree the full extent of which is still an open question. Even though the LGN also sends its own higher-order information to the PVC, eg maybe some depth processing information.
Nor does the presence of simple visual processing pathways in the LGN change the fact that the Primary Visual Cortex possesses much more detailed and extensive visual processing equipment better suited to processing high resolution "conscious" vision from, for want of a better term, a pixel-by-pixel basis upward.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Information (Score:2)
Ah, so when we get down to it do we actually agree on a supportive role of the LGN? And "quality" processing in the cortex? All that flameage was for nothing then. That's the problem with taking a position - one can inadvertently make a remark more extreme than was intended. I myself prefer less, er, polarised debate.
I'm still not sure about the relative importance of feature/motion detection in human retinae (which is where this thread really started). The lowest levels of processing in primate cortex are occupied with precisely what you attribute to the retina. The only animals I *know* for sure to use the retina as a primary feature and motion detection system are amphibians, which don't even have a geniculate body.
It seems to me that *if* there is any similar wiring still present in the human retina then it's probably just a relic, too much trouble to get rid of so to speak, although it might still be used in very primitive subcortical vision pathways well below the LGN (terminating at the superior colliculus). The only retinal wiring I know about for sure is the layer that groups rods with overlapping receptive fields such that a smooth picture can be generated. This is the "packaging" for transmission that you refer to.
This little war started when you said the cortex has a direct connection to the retina.
Well I meant it, but you must have misinterpreted what I meant by "direct". I didn't mean the pathway consisted of a bundle of single unbroken axons in a straight line! I meant it in the same sense that a telephone call is end-to-end even though it passes through switches in at least one telephone exchange; even if there are wiretappers on the line, the conversation itself gets through undistorted.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:I'm all for it but.. (Score:2)
i dont display scores, and my threshhold is -1. post accordingly.
The Real Story (Score:3)
It turns out Wonder has not made any public statements regarding the procedure. A tabloid reported that he told a congregation that he was planning on getting his site back, but the doctor that is running the clinic has said he has not made an apoitment. Besides, an examination would have to be done first to see if he is even a candidate. Still pretty cool even if Wonder is not planning the procedure.
Fascinating. (Score:3)
Also, hm. I really would like more information on this article. It seems to me that vision would be far too alien a sense for him; I've read cases like this. Hang on, let me find the book...
Okay. It's Oliver Sacks' book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat". It details probably about 20 cases Dr. Sacks, a noted neurologist, treated, got to know, and gained valuable insight from. (He's a heckuva writer--check out his books if you're interested in the brain and the mind that drives it.)
A man named Virgil (I believe it was--I can't find the book right now) was blind from the time he was a young child; he had an operation when he was 50 or 60 that restored his vision, and at first, he was able to see vibrantly, clearly, like a new window of existence reopened after many years.
He visited his childhood home, and even though he was like 2 or 3 when his vision went, he could see most clearly the things he remembered, such as a fence and a field, I believe. (Again, I can't find the book; please correct me if I'm wrong!;] )
However, when he returned back to his home in a city, it began to be harder and harder for him to use his sight confidently. He'd resort to closing his eyes and acting "blind" because he was the most confident this way--traffic rushing by him made him nervous and indecisive.
Eventually, due to a combination of psychological and physical factors, his vision deteriorated again. I don't know if he's still around or not, but it would be kinda cool to meet someone like that.
I dunno. It'd be interesting to find out how Stevie Wonder turns out. I'd HATE to have a chip in my eye. Contacts bother me enough.
Geordi LaForge, anyone? (Score:3)
This brings up a kind of interesting allusion to Star Trek. I always thought Geordi's visor was pretty amazing. Not only did it cure his blindness, but it was like an entire set of military-type scopes: infra-red, night vision, all sorts of odd but useful things.
Once this technology that's going into Wonder gets refined to the point where it actually has a decent resolution, I can't imagine it would be that hard to implement a bunch of different sensors/cameras for it. In fact, they might even be able to develop some sort of (waterproof, hopefully, to prevent shorts) external connector, and actually create a visor like Geordi's =)
Looks like a piece of Star Trek technology could become a reality in our lifetimes, eh?
How could they know whether it worked? (Score:3)
He might see everything upside down, or in 2d or in shades of green, and to him that would seem like complete success. Heck, all he might see is a rotating Head of Rob Malda and he would give the thumbs up "Is that what a sunset looks like? It's beautiful!"
I wish him luck. Can you imagine your world suddenly expanding to include another sense?
-konstant