From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Oct 15 1998 - 10:08:08 MDT
http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/ns-arnwfd.html
No, not just neuroimaging. There's an actual implant, and the brain adapts to
it, with information coming out. As far as I know, this is the first
neurosilicate interface. (There have been siliconeural stimulators, but that
hasn't involved any information transfer.) I believe this is the first device
to get information directly from the brain.
[...]
So far, two incapacitated people have received the
implants. This gave them the power to control a cursor
on a computer screen by thinking about moving parts
of their body. By pointing the cursor at different
icons, the patients could make the computer voice
phrases such as "I'm thirsty" or "Please turn off the
light". "If you can run a computer, you can talk to the
world," says Roy Bakay of Emory University in Atlanta,
Georgia, whose team developed the implants.
The implants consist of two hollow glass cones, no
bigger than the tip of a ballpoint pen, placed into the
brain's motor cortex, which controls body movements.
The glass cones are laced with neurotrophic chemicals
extracted from the patients' own knees. These
-> chemicals encourage nerve growth so, over several
-> months, neurons in the cortex grow pathways into the
-> cones and attach themselves to tiny electrodes
-> mounted inside.
[...]
Vingean, isn't it? As far as I can tell nothing is being "decoded", so there
isn't any complex information tranfer, or two-way transfer. It is a long way
from here to semantic telepathy. Still, this is an astonishing proof-of-concept.
Crude. Blunt. Unthinking. But we are now officially living in the age of
implants and computer telepathy.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/AI_design.temp.html
http://pobox.com/~sentience/sing_analysis.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.
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