Practical Neurotechnology

2008-01-18T09:03:00.001-08:00

uweek.org | Bionic eyes: Contact lenses with circuits, lights a possible platform for superhuman vision | University Week, Vol. 25, No. 12 | University of Washington

Contact lenses with metal connectors for electronic circuits were safely worn by rabbits in lab tests. The lenses were manufactured at the microscopic level by researchers at the UW.

Contact lenses with metal connectors for electronic circuits were safely worn by rabbits in lab tests.

Movie characters from the Terminator to the Bionic Woman use bionic eyes to zoom in on far-off scenes, have useful facts pop into their field of view, or create virtual crosshairs. Off the screen, virtual displays have been proposed for more practical purposes -- visual aids to help vision-impaired people, holographic driving control panels and even as a way to surf the Web on the go.

The device to make this happen may be familiar. Engineers at the UW have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights.

"Looking through a completed lens, you would see what the display is generating superimposed on the world outside," said Babak Parviz, a UW assistant professor of electrical engineering. "This is a very small step toward that goal, but I think it's extremely promising." The results were presented today at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' international conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems by Harvey Ho, a former graduate student of Parviz's now working at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, Calif. Other co-authors are Ehsan Saeedi and Samuel Kim in the UW's electrical engineering department and Tueng Shen in the UW Medical Center's ophthalmology department.

2008-01-16T20:33:00.001-08:00

Monkey’s Thoughts Propel Robot, a Step That May Help Humans - New York Times

More good work from the Nicoleilis group at Duke. Premotor movements of a walking monkey activate leg motions of a robot. The next step in this progression might be to balance them using the monkey's movements...

Remote "whiskers" for long-distance haptic sensing (via IR!)

2007-09-19T17:28:00.001-07:00

Quite clever; I should have come up with this myself.  I did suggest something like this for a haptic cane for the blind, but nothing as clever as 360* IR "whiskers".

New Scientist Technology Blog: Head-mounted device is the cat's whiskers

"...Check out this head-mounted haptic device developed by researchers at the University of Tokyo in Japan. It lets a wearer "feel" their surroundings from a distance, roughly as if they had several long whiskers sticking out of the head. At least, that's what the researchers say.

A series of infrared sensors positioned around the device act as invisible whisker or antenna sensors. When these detect an object, a small motor vibrates on the appropriate side of the wearer's head to alert them."

Rehab Chicago + Ambient put out subvocally-directed wheelchair

2007-09-09T11:34:00.001-07:00

Thinking of words can guide your wheelchair - tech - 06 September 2007 - New Scientist Tech

Ambient

rat neuron grid trained to pilot f22 simulator

2007-08-02T14:37:00.001-07:00

Why this brain flies on rat cunning - Science - www.theage.com.au

It sounds like science fiction: a brain nurtured in a Petri dish learns to pilot a fighter plane as scientists develop a new breed of "living" computer. But in groundbreaking experiments in a Florida laboratory that is exactly what is happening.

The "brain", grown from 25,000 neural cells extracted from a single rat embryo, has been taught to fly an F-22 jet simulator by scientists at the University of Florida.

BCI hits Nature

2007-06-05T14:44:00.001-07:00

A rather slack-jawed article from CNN Money, over-eager and misleading, points out that the latest implanted electrode array work by Brown-affiliated Cyberkinetics was just published in Nature:

"If you think that's mind-blowing, try to wrap your head around the sensational research that's been done on the brain of one Matthew Nagle by scientists at Brown University and three other institutions, in collaboration with Foxborough, Mass.-based company Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems. The research was published for the first time last week in the British science journal Nature..."

Regrettably, they don't tell us what the basis of the publication is, since everything they mention with Nagle seems to have been done already (remote control of robot arms, learning computer/TV control, etc).  Still, good to see BCI/MMI getting some prestigious and mainstream science press.

To their lack of credit, they also mention a patent by Sony on beaming data directly into the mind using ultrasonic signals.  I seem to remember that the patent was widely derided, pure patent speculation rather than something that had been designed or built.  A DARPA scientist named Stu Wolf also mentions that headband-based interfaces are likely to be popular 20 years in the future.  Doesn't sound farfetched to me, although EEG's got a way to go.

Neural systems are fluid, even when no learning is taking place

2007-06-05T14:33:00.001-07:00

Brain uses both neural 'teacher' and 'tinkerer' in learning - MIT News Office

This seems to be the first publication confirming a property of the brain that's been widely suspected by neuroscientists for years, namely, that neurons change function and behavior over time:

"In earlier work, Bizzi and colleagues measured neural activities in the motor cortex while monkeys manipulated a handle to move a cursor to targets on a screen. In control experiments, the monkeys had to move the cursor to targets in the same way they had been trained. In learning experiments, the monkeys had to adapt their movements to compensate for novel forces applied to the handle.

The scientists found that even when the monkeys were performing the familiar control task, their neural activities gradually changed over the course of the session."

Engineered memories in a petri dish

2007-06-02T12:34:00.000-07:00

Ars Technica story and paper at Physical Review E.
A team at Tel Aviv University has managed to imprint a persistent memory state lasting days into a set of neurons:
"Weshow that using local chemical stimulations it is possible toimprint persisting (days) multiple memories (collective modes of neuron firing)in the activity of cultured neural networks. Microdroplets of inhibitoryantagonist are injected at a location selected based on real-timeanalysis of the recorded activity. The neurons at the stimulatedlocations turn into a focus for initiating synchronized bursting events(the collective modes) each with its own specific spatiotemporal patternof neuron firing."

Cheap Brainwave Control

2007-04-30T09:31:00.000-07:00

Cheap EEG/EMG headsets are coming into the market, principally designed as gaming interfaces. However, they might enable interesting research as well -- such as technology mediated telepathy. You can buy off-the-shelf systems now for as little as $600 from CyberLearning, for instance.

"But the price and size of EEG hardware is shrinking. NeuroSky's "dry-active" sensors don't require gel, are the size of a thumbnail, and could be put into a headset that retails for as little as $20, said NeuroSky CEO Stanley Yang.

Yang is secretive about his company's product lineup because of a nondisclosure agreement with the manufacturer. But he said an international toy manufacturer plans to unveil an inexpensive gizmo with an embedded NeuroSky biosensor at the Japan Toy Association's trade show in late June. A U.S. version is scheduled to debut at the American International Fall Toy Show in October.

"Whatever we sell, it will work on 100 percent or almost 100 percent of people out there, no matter what the condition, temperature, indoor or outdoors," Yang said. "We aim for wearable technology that everyone can put on and go without failure, as easy as the iPod."

Researchers at NeuroSky and other startups are also building prototypes of toys that use electromyography (EMG), which records twitches and other muscular movements, and electrooculography (EOG), which measures changes in the retina."

more telerobots....

2007-04-26T06:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.terk.ri.cmu.edu/media/

Carnegie Mellon Unveils Internet-Controlled Robots That Anyone Can Build by Following the Right Recipe

Creator Says TeRK Brings Robotics to Usability Level Never Before Seen by the Public

The idea is definitely right, but they use a specialized component for the core of the robot -- laptops and other PCs should probably be the core brains of robotics. http://www.terk.ri.cmu.edu/media/

Nursing-care, rehab robots gaining practical use | The Japan Times Online

2007-04-21T14:30:00.000-07:00

Nursing-care, rehab robots gaining practical use | The Japan Times Online: A robotic exoskeleton targeted for use in nursing homes, $590/month.

Telerobot

2007-04-18T19:57:00.000-07:00

It blinks and fidgets in its seat, moving its foot up and down restlessly, its shoulders rising gently as though it were breathing. These micromovements are so convincing that it's hard to believe this is a machine -- it seems more like a man wearing a rubber mask. But a living, breathing man.

But "Geminoid HI-1," as the robot is called, has another trick up its sleeve.

"Everyone, thank you so much for coming today," it says in polite but languid Japanese at an ATR demo Thursday, its lips moving to the sound. The voice is Ishiguro's, broadcast through a speaker inside his android double.

Potential robot bodies:
http://www.etek.chalmers.se/~almir/
http://www.plen.jp/

Wired 15.04: Mixed Feelings

2007-04-03T18:09:00.000-07:00

Wired 15.04: Mixed Feelings: "See with your tongue. Navigate with your skin. Fly by the seat of your pants (literally). How researchers can tap the plasticity of the brain to hack our 5 senses — and build a few new ones"

remote-controlled pigeons

2007-02-27T23:53:00.000-08:00

Pigeonbots-- apparently not controlled via MFB stimulation, but direct motor control.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/02/cyborg_flying_r.html
http://tenementpalm.blogspot.com/2007/02/psb-buys-tiny-german-spy-copters.html
http://english.people.com.cn/200702/27/eng20070227_352761.html

Scientists with the Robot Engineering Technology Research Center of east China's Shandong University of Science and Technology say they implanted micro electrodes in the brain of a pigeon so they can command it to fly right or left or up or down.

The implants stimulated different areas of the pigeon's brain according to signals sent by the scientists via computer, and forced the bird to comply with their commands.

Building the Cortex in Silicon

2007-02-12T23:38:00.000-08:00

Technology Review: Building the Cortex in Silicon: "An ambitious project to model the cerebral cortex in silicon is under way at Stanford. The man-made brain could help scientists understand how the most recently evolved part of our brain performs its complex computational feats, allowing us to understand language, recognize faces, and schedule the day. It could also lead to new neural prosthetics."

Growing neural circuits into an 'extension cord'

2007-01-25T13:37:00.000-08:00

Neural 'extension cord' developed for brain implants 19 January 2007 - New Scientist.

Smith, at Pennsylvania. Quite a nice trick.

"A group of neurons is cultured on top of an array of 96 electrodes covered with a protein coating that causes them to attach. When placed 100 microns (about the width of a human hair) from another patch of neurons on a separate plate, the cells grow towards them, eventually joining neuron clumps together.

A motor is then used to slowly draw the two plates apart – causing the nerve fibres to continuing growing, at up to 1 cm each day. "We plan to use the free end to interface with the nervous system," Smith told New Scientist, "while the other end interfaces with a computer."

Tests have already shown that electrical signals can be transmitted in both directions along the cord. "Tests in animal models are next," says Smith. Connecting the chord to electrodes outside of the brain means the reaction of neurons to non-organic material can be controlled. In future, the cord could connect an amputee's nerves to a sophisticated prosthetic, he says, and might even offer a way to connect artificial eyes or ears to the brain."

Artificial Retinas Stimulate Neuron Growth (in cats)

2007-01-23T16:48:00.000-08:00

Scientists Optimistic on "Bionic" Eyes - Forbes.com: "The 2-millimeter-wide chips, developed by Optobionics Corp. of Naperville, Ill., are surgically implanted in the back of eye. Each chip's surface is covered with 5,000 microphotodiodes that react to light, sending electric signals along the eye's optic nerve to the brain.

'We're placing it right where the photoreceptors are and if they're lacking, this is supposed to replace what they're doing,' she said. 'At this point, its impulses of light they're seeing (as opposed to images), but the aim of the research is to get more information out of the chip.'

Besides helping slow the advance of the disease, studies suggest that the electric currents generated by the chips may be regenerating damaged photoreceptors surrounding the implants."

2007-01-22T22:47:00.000-08:00

Robot nurses could be on the wards in three years, say scientists

(with cute robot pic.)

Brains can be kept alive in isolation

2007-01-16T16:08:00.000-08:00

Keeping brains alive in vitro has been possible since the sixties. Part one of the prerequisites for "biological AI" seems to be mostly solved.

Robert J White on head transplantation.

Brain transplantation (Warning: mildly gory/sensationalist article): "... Dr White managed to keep the isolated brain alive for days, proving not only that the brain could survive away from its own body but that it was immunologically sound - meaning that, unlike a kidney, it could be transplanted without the likelihood of the new 'body' rejecting it."

Even Wikipedia has an article on head transplants.

P300-Directed Robot

2006-12-16T13:30:00.000-08:00

Human Thoughts Control New Robot

A simple control scheme for a robot at University of Washington that can pick up objects based on user P300 signal when it passes one. Interesting cross-disciplinary work, but not tremendously advanced; simply a 'proof of concept', according to Rajesh Rao, lead researcher.

Robo-sharks / sharkbots

2006-12-15T11:06:00.000-08:00

Boston University's Alumni e-Newsletter: BU Forward

Someone's replicated ratbots in the shark, using food signals as a mechanism of control.

hearwear – the future of hearing

2006-10-09T03:59:00.000-07:00

hearwear – the future of hearing

Nice article on Neurotechnology

2006-10-04T19:29:00.000-07:00

The Myth of Mind Control "Will anyone ever decode the human brain?"

An interesting question, from the computer scientist's point of view as well. I wonder if it comes to an information-theory question at the end?

Nice comments from Nicolelis and Chapin. Kudos to the author for giving Chapin credit for kickstarting this field with his work on the robo-rat! Need to go back to this.

A futurologist talks about the future

2006-09-27T12:06:00.000-07:00

Some good blue-sky thinking from BT's "futurologist", which, near as I can tell, is someone who thinks about wonderful things that will be possible in the future without worrying scientifically about how to make them happen :)

ITWALES.COM - Ian Pearson, Futurologist: The ITWales Interview: "DNA is already being used in a test tube to assemble macro electronic circuits - basically shove in a suspension of carbon nano tubes and gold particles, stir in some DNA. You can persuade the DNA to assemble the gold particles onto the end of the carbon nano tubes and make simple circuits. That was demonstrated about two years ago, and the company has gone secret since, as they are now working on developing more sophisticated circuits. The idea is that you do bottom up assembly which is the next generation of chip assembly by using DNA and protein clusters to basically grab the stuff and stick it together using clever chemistry. The key point is that you can do this with DNA.

We were thinking, one of the good ways of doing this is spending billions of pounds for a real live bacterium - e-coli, or something you find in yoghurt - and you don't modify it so much that it can't survive because you want it to replicate, but you modify it so that it creates electronic circuits within its' own cells. That's really good fun then, because you've got electronic bacteria - real live bacterium which can replicate with electronics in it. The electronics have nothing to do with the bacteria, they are just there, but they turn it into 'smart bacteria', because you can then connect those electronics together using infrared or bioluminescence and make completely scalable electronic circuits. So you start off with one bacterium, which is essentially a module, and you link billions of these together and you've got something that makes your PC look pretty primitive. You've got a 'smart yoghurt' by about 2025, and we did the calculations, and we reckon that it's possible to make a yoghurt with roughly the same processing power as the entire European population."

The great thing about this sort of open-ended imagining -- despite whatever we might say about its accuracy or realism -- is that it's full of good potential ideas for technology we might want to see someday, which leads us to new ideas for research today that will help take us there. This guy is thinking in the right direction in anticipating the importance of hybrid bioelectronic systems, and he has some very good comments on the use of bacterial computers, biologically-grown microchips assembled via DNA, and ultra-cheap, ultra-simple computers.

As scientists, we are very directly concerned with how to get from today's technology to tomorrow's, even if it requires lots of fundamental research, so the article is worth a read to provide ideas for potential research and its potential impact.

LiveScience.com - Fish Explores Land with Robotic Device

2006-09-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

LiveScience.com - Fish Explores Land with Robotic Device

Here's the question. What happens if you raise the fish in this environment from birth -- does it learn to behave differently than a fish in their usual environments? Suppose we used a rat instead of a fish, since a fish can't see much outside the bowl?

How do rats raised inside those clear hamster-balls differ from regular rats?

Bionic arms in the news again

2006-09-16T16:32:00.000-07:00

Bionic arms turn science fiction to fact

The current state-of-the-art in prostheses, by Chicago Rehab Institute.

News in Science - Woman in coma plays tennis - 08/09/2006

2006-09-08T09:01:00.000-07:00

News in Science - Woman in coma plays tennis - 08/09/2006:

"Brain scans of a woman who has been in a vegetative state for five months show her imagining playing tennis and responding to commands, researchers report..."

The big question is whether or not this is a conscious or an automatic response. Another question, coming from the comments on this article -- can this be used for binary communication with the patient by asking her to imagine different things for yes or no?

A professor in Peru once wrote me to emphasize the importance of my EEG work because he felt it could be used in communication with comatose patients. Perhaps his suggestion is actually right?

The New Atlantis - The Age of Neuroelectronics - Adam Keiper

2006-09-08T01:50:00.000-07:00

The New Atlantis - The Age of Neuroelectronics - Adam Keiper

Excellent and lengthy article on the history and future of work in this field.

fMRI used to detect single-word thought

2006-09-06T17:41:00.000-07:00

A team in Maryland was able to use fMRI to identify activity in Broca's region associated with thinking a single word. No mention of whether or not the activity was unique to the word chosen (I suspect not).

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17458&ch=biotech

Wheelchair moves at the speed of thought

2006-09-01T00:07:00.000-07:00

Wheelchair moves at the speed of thought

EEG, 8 electrodes(!), multi-state recognition. Quite good. Used for robotic control.

More on Animats

2006-08-15T22:08:00.000-07:00

Wired News: It's Alive (ish)

A lovely article on Animats with Potter at Georgia Tech. $60K is the going rate for an Animat setup these days. At $60K, he can't do the kind of multi-animat networking he'd like to do -- too bad, but maybe something similar can be done!

Novamente LLC - Artificial General Intelligence

2006-08-04T18:23:00.000-07:00

Novamente LLC - Artificial General Intelligence

Who are these guys? It looks like they rose from the ashes of Genobyte in 2001, which was working on the artifical neuron and artificial brain hardware. They had a paper in AAAI about artificial general intelligence, and (by taking the hardware approach, and a competing-agents view of cognition) it looks like they have ideas I might agree with about AI and may even be on the closest track.

But they're a bunch of non-luminaries, it seems, and they've got a profit motive behind them. Read their papers and find out their approach. What's their story???

News from the bees-finding-bombs front

2006-08-04T12:40:00.000-07:00

BillingsGazette.com :: Some convinced insects could be used to detect bombs

Apparently DARPA is convinced bees can't find bombs, but Montana teams are convinced they can. I seem to recall the DARPA experiment failing - the bees just flew away, or something? I wonder why they're using lasers and not RF-tracking?

The article's more about pork-barrel politics than functionality, so who knows.

Robotic Exoskeletons - handy at work and home

2006-08-02T10:01:00.000-07:00

Great work by Tsukuba University:

"An exoskeleton that can be worn by a human is a new type of robot under development at Tsukuba University. It's called Hybrid Assistive Limb, HAL for short, and anyone who wears it has potential to lift up to 10-times the weight they normally could."

... well done!!! And, it's got EMG at its core, taking it one step closer to being a BCI...

"HAL works by figuring out what the wearer's muscle are doing. The suit then simply reacts.

“The command signals from the brain are transmitted to the muscles through the motor neurons, and we can detect such faint bio-electrical signals on the surface of the skin, and these signals are calibrated into the computer here, and after that this computer controls these power units so he can move or upgrade his power,” says Sankai.

And believe it or not, sometimes the suit interprets those electrical signals more quickly than the wearer's muscles. In other words, it moves before the human muscle does."

biofeedback game

2006-07-21T12:03:00.000-07:00

A biofeedback arcade game.

Steve Lambert » Simmer Down Sprinter

Controlling Natural Systems for Human Purposes (1)

2006-07-21T10:33:00.000-07:00

How To Grow A Chair: An Interview with Richard Reames

Finally, something creative!

2006-07-12T12:49:00.000-07:00

I'm very happy. Finally, something creative and original in the field of BCI -- at least in the news.

Wired News: This Is a Computer on Your Brain

Paul Sajda at Columbia is using the P300 signal to create a hybrid human-computer system that processes vision faster than a computer or human alone can.

I find it especially creative to use a biological organism as a subsystem in a full system like this - it's the sort of project that's near to my heart.

Gaze detector lets you hear with your eyes - Engadget

2006-06-21T15:04:00.000-07:00

Gaze detector lets you hear with your eyes - Engadget

Conference on Human Rights for Transhumanism

2006-04-28T21:16:00.000-07:00

Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies - Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights

Enter the affordable brain-PC interface

2006-04-15T15:37:00.000-07:00

Enter the affordable brain-PC interface

Guardian Unlimited | Science | In the 70s he was a TV fantasy. Now the bionic man is real - and he even plays sax

2006-04-15T05:42:00.000-07:00

Guardian Unlimited | Science | In the 70s he was a TV fantasy. Now the bionic man is real - and he even plays sax

Artificial eyesight

2006-04-04T19:52:00.000-07:00

New device allows woman to see, even without eyes (recent local TV report)
Futuristic System Brings Vision To Blind (2002, ScienceDaily)

The visual quality seems rather low, but it's still a promising approach. A glasses-mounted camera transmits data to visual processing hardware, which is plugged into electrodes at the back or side of the skull stimulating the surface of the visual cortex. The user sees patterns of dots of light in the visual field - not exactly high-resolution stimulation, but vision is vision.

This is the same project that in 2002 enabled a formerly blind user to drive a car (slowly) around a parking lot.

Artificial vision is one of the most compelling objectives of neuroelectronics research. Not only will an adequate solution require a good physiological understanding of the visual cortex, but it will also require (or generate) a relatively sophisticated understanding of how the brain processes visual information.

On top of that, the method has some significant aesthetic advantages for the user. Just take a look at the picture.

Researcher: Kenneth Smith
Institution: St. Louis University of Medicine

Custom-engineered DNA Structures

2006-03-16T13:41:00.000-08:00

NPR : Fun with DNA

Cool.

It's not exactly neurotechnology, but custom-engineered nanoscale structures made from DNA, like those featured below, could be used as components in nanoscale machines that facilitate neural interfacing.

An impressive result nonetheless. How does it work? If my memory of molecular biology serves me correctly, certain sequences of DNA are predisposed to bond with other segments through electrostatic attraction of special embedded proteins. After deciding on a desired shape, you can take a single long piece of DNA and splice in these sequences so that it'll fold into the shape you want. A computer program helps calculate where these sequences will need to go, which may be an NP-complete problem in general.

Researcher: Paul Rothemund
Institution: Caltech

Insect control via pupal implants

2006-03-15T23:38:00.000-08:00

Pentagon plans cyber-insect army

So DARPA has requested proposals to implement a MEMS device into insects at the pupal stage which can then be used to direct the insects' behavior at an adult stage.

The linked article is from the BBC and somewhat derisive of the idea, but I believe the concept is workable, at least in principle.

Installing control systems at an early stage in an organism's development allows it to adapt to use signals coming from the implanted device - one idea I've heard thrown around involves grafting electronic components onto fetal mice in order to allow their brains to adapt to make use of additional functionality. I haven't read the DARPA proposal closely yet, so this may have no connection at all, but I'll comment further once I have time to read it.

A first post.

2004-12-17T20:12:00.000-08:00

Practical neurotechnology - where we'll discuss recent advances in the science of interfacing technology directly with neural systems.