Think And Click

cecil36 writes: "Yahoo! has reported that scientists have discovered neural technology that allowed a monkey to control a mouse cursor using the brain. ... Further reading states that this technology can be used with the paralyzed or those with Lou Gehrig's Disease to allow them to use their computers."

Finally!

It's about time, because Doritos crumbs and Coke syrup are wrecking my mouse ball!

Better than an optical mouse, it's...a cognitive mouse?

All right...

...does that mean we're now going to have to design computers that are easy enough for a monkey to use?

The new distribution's name could be: Mandrill Linux 8.2 (also known as Red Butt Linux...)

Hmmm...I guess those Ximian guys have been on to this for a while...

And for some reason...

And for some reason, we kept getting all these different screenplays...something called "Hamlet", and another called "Othello"...

That and complaints about having wires jammed in its brain...

The truth about these...

Is that I will no longer be beatable in any FPS game. My mental aim is flawless. You are all dead.

Re:The truth about these...

This could happen to you: "j00 got 0wN3d by ResearchMonkey38"... how humiliating!

Operating from your subconcious?

Wouldn't it be embarrassing to find your computer downloading pr0n everytime one of those Herbal Essences commercials comes on the TV?

Good training

"Going one step further, her team then trained the monkey to simply think about a movement, without reaching out and touching the screen."

So how exactly do you train a monkey to think about doing something without doing it? I'm quite surprised that they were able to do that with the current level of communication between primates and humans.

~Eric

Re:Good training

I know I'm going to hell for this...

But its easy!

1. Teach the monkeys how to play the game using their arms.

2. Cut off their arms.

take away the mouse

Step 1: Condition monkey to point mouse cursor at picture of food, to receive food reward.

Step 2: Record neural signature before and during actions of Step 1.

Step 3: Remove mouse from monkey.

Step 4: Show picture of food along with picture of mouse cursor, at a random relative angle.

Step 5: Reward monkey if and only if detecting neural signature of monkey making correct mouse vector movement.

Step 6: Repeat steps 4 and 5.

Step 7: Publish statistics.

Frankly, I won't be satisfied until they wire the monkey's brain to the Universal Translator [ectaco.com]

the monkeys from "Project X" maybe...

...scientists have discovered neural technology that allowed a monkey to control a mouse cursor...

That's right. AOL 7.0 is all new, and easier than ever!

Telepahy

Two people with these things and radio tramsmitters could potentialy communicate "telepathicly". Awesome.

Article is very vague

The article doesn't have much detail on the actual transmition of the signal. Well other than the fact that I would hesistate to stick anything in my head these days, I wonder how precise an activity like this is. Signal could be effected by other signals in the area. Like how hearing implants can be effected by cellphones.

Oh well still seems cool.

Maybe a better application of this would be for 3D apps in the future. 3D Mice suck.

Word.

Allowing a monkey to control a mouse cursor...

Good to see Katz is taking Dubya up on his volunteerism agenda and making himself available as a research subject.

nothing new

This is really nothing new.

The Cyberlink Interface: Hands Free Brain-Body Actuated Control for Augmentation and Enhancement of Human Computer Interaction [csun.edu](produced in 1999), and their website [brainfingers.com]

And an article from last year about a similar device. [google.com]

We need this.

This will allow me to keep both hands free while I surf for porn.

The only problem remaining:

Getting the monkey to understand where you want to move the mouse.
.

FIREFOX LIVES !!!!!

Alright now all we need a plane you could fly this way :)

Seriously think of the plethora of military applications, Im sure they are. I wonder how much room for error or lingering thoughts there is .

Its esay , sometimes to think about something and not pysically execute that movement. WHAT HAPPENS when you JUST THINK and it happens, I could think of all kinds of scenarios this would be MUY bad, remember the end of the first ghostbusters movie :)

Typing in this manner or "mousing" would be pretty cool if they could come up with a completley exeternal device, having wires sewn into my brain sac dont sound like much fun. Hopefully this is a firt step in 2 way electronic to neural communication links, think about what a computer could teach a person who was say paralyzed, analyze neural paths and make calculated reccomndations for rerouting directly to the brain, that was your movement would be through EXISTING undamaged pathways, then again a glitch in the software might make you wet your pants every time you try to scratch you foot but hey its progress :)

good news!

``In fact,'' she said, ``we found that he became quite reluctant to move his arm to the reach command once the cursor was introduced into the game. Apparently it was easier just to think about reaching.''

Wow, this is good news not just for the handicapped but also for those of us who are just plain lazy. Often times I find myself _thinking_ of doing things but never actually _doing_ them.

Here comes the patents!

US Patent #5,960,412 : One-Thought-Shopping:

A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the Internet. The order is placed by a purchaser at a client brain and received by a server system. The server system receives purchaser information including identification of the purchaser, payment information, and shipment information from the client brain. The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client brain and associates the assigned client identifier with the received purchaser information. The server system sends to the client system the assigned client identifier and an HTML document identifying the item and including an order button. The client brain receives and stores the assigned client identifier and receives and displays the HTML document. In response to the selection of the order button, the client brain sends to the server system a request to purchase the identified item. The server system receives the request and combines the purchaser information associated with the client identifier of the client brain to generate an order to purchase the item in accordance with the billing and shipment information whereby the purchaser effects the ordering of the product by selection of the order button.

Integrating protheses in the neural loop

The real nifty applications will come when this neuronal interfacing technology will be used to bypass deficient nerve links (spine damage) or to supplement/replace deficient muscle (muscular dystrophy and a ton of other debilitating illnesses).

I think focusing on computers is missing the point. It's not the ability to send email that is important here. It's the possibility of having protheses and artificial capacities integrated in the neural feedback loop. Prothesic legs that 1) you can contol by thought instead of having to provide commands, and 2) send back balance information, now that would be a revolution.

We are getting closer. That's an excellent news.

-- SysKoll

Researchers urged caution, however...

As the monkey immediately used Amazon 1-Click to order 17,324 copies of "Curious George".

Conspiracy theorists! Get your tinfoil hats ready!

Keyloggers are a thing of the past now! Now the big bad men in suits can just sit outside your apartment and scan your brainwaves to detect all your pr0n and warez passwords! Just think! Or...erm...don't!

Interesting press release

This press release is kinda interesting. First, the work was presented over two months ago. Second, the work was carried out in the lab of Richard Andersen [caltech.edu]. Yet Andersen, who has spent a lot of the last decade reorganizing his lab around such efforts, was not mentioned. Instead, Meeker, a graduate student on the project [caltech.edu] was named. In addition, all this work in the Andersen lab was spearheaded by a person who is now at Stanford, Krishna Shenoy [stanford.edu] who recently left the lab. In addition, the intellectual property for the project, the patents, are co-authored by Andersen and Shenoy.

It's kinda weird when you know a bit about the work behind these press releases, and then see how it is actually presented to the "lay" public.

Personally, I think the project has a low probability of success. A neural prosthetic device should be interfaced with as peripheral part of the nervous system as possible. This group has chosen to use as abstract a part of the nervous system as possible. But maybe they'll prove me wrong.

Potential for abuse...

While I'm sure this could substantially enhance the lives of the paralyzed (for example), the widespread use of such systems in e.g. driving or piloting (particularly by healthy individuals) could be a real problem.

If there's one lesson the Internet has taught us, it's that the less separation there is between thought and action, the more people will do stupid things.

The area of the brain mentioned in the article has to do with the early "desire to act", long before many of the normal checks and balances governing our actions come into play.

Has anyone seen the episode of Red Dwarf where Lister gets the prosthetic arm and can't stop it from beating up Kryten?

Further Reading

There's quite a bit of this stuff going on - Just last week I was talking to the guy in the Engineering department here [ox.ac.uk] that has a project doing something similar. I can't seem to find his site at the moment, but the ABI project [sta.jrc.it] is another similar effort with a nice, informative site at about the same level of development.

The actual reseacrh described in the Yahoo article using implanted electrodes seems a bit strange - though the claim to have identified a few individual neurons is interesting.

Most of the other groups are working with stick-on electrodes. At the moment all they can do is move a mosue around a screen and click, but progress seems to be good - Correct recognition is around 70% after 5 one-hour sessions, which sounds impressive to me. The big obstacle to getting this into service for real people with disabilities is that the hardware is currently a bit chunky, especially the EEG machine. But we all know what happens to hardware, very, very quickly.

Oh - and, yes, the guy i talked to says the thing that secretlty drives him is eventually using it to play Quake. (Wonderful thing, altrusim)

Now wouldn't that be cool.(Unfortuantely you have to shave your head, I think!)

More information

Daniella is part of Richard Anderson's lab [caltech.edu] at Caltech. They research motor planning and spatial orientation. It is a very interesting place.

As pointed out in the article, the area from which they record makes this experiment significantly different from previous ones. Several lab have done similar work, but they were less sure of the origin of their signal. Much of the sensory and motors areas of the cortex are right next to each other. It was not clear whether the recorded signals were motor signals or sensory signals driven by stretch sensors within muscles or something similar. The area Daniella records from is fairly far away from sensory cortex. There is much less chance that they are recording feedback from the sensory side. For comparison, examine an older story [slashdot.org] from a team of competitors.

Angry monkey...

The details:

First the monkey was tricked into installing "Comet Cursor." Then, after the 17th X10 popup ad, he finally just began hurling feces at the monitor. Fortunately, Matthew Broderick came along and rescued him.

If you think popups are bad...

Just wait until someone discovers that by displaying a shocking image, they can trigger the click.

Some poor schmuck triggers the wrong thing, gets trapped in the pr0n maze and ends up in the hospital with 'schizoid forced feedback syndrome'.

After the various lawsuits work their way through the system...

Someone else will come out with 'web blinders' for the safe calm web experience. No one should surf without them, or Peace of mind is a precious thing, preserving it with Web Blinders is the easiest most effective investment toward your future sanity you can make today.