News Transforming Thoughts Into Deeds

Brain upgrade, anyone? The future's bright, in a Matrix / William Gibson way. This from Wired:

SAN FRANCISCO -- Lots of people wish they could jack their brain directly to their computer and toss out those annoying keyboards and joysticks -- especially people who can't use keyboards or joysticks.

Five quadriplegic patients might be months away from testing a brain-computer interface created by Cyberkinetics, a privately held company in Foxboro, Massachusetts. The company's system, called BrainGate, could help patients with no mobility to control a computer, a robot or eventually their own rewired muscles, using only their thoughts. If the trials go well, a product could be on the market by 2007.

Cyberkinetics already has trained monkeys to move a cursor using only thought, and has asked the Food and Drug Administration for permission to test the device on humans. Tim Surgenor, the company's president and CEO, said he expects his researchers will be plugging five people into BrainGates by the end of 2004.

Full article here

So does that mean that in the near future you'd see Ground-Pounders poping memory sticks in and out of their heads like scaled up Aibo's?

More scarily, could you influence a persons actions and demeanor by changing code?

 

I'm thinking it's more like a bioelectric computer interfacing chip.

Luckily that won't happen for quite a while. They're basically sticking a bunch of ammeters down on specific areas of your motor cortex (or cerebral cortex) and if a small current flows then you know a signal is going through it. A crude example, but it's basically like that. Programming would require a bioelectric device that could actively interface with the brain to create new neural pathways while destroying others, in essence re-wiring (or reprogramming) the brain. But we're not too far along in bioelectronics and we don't have nearly enough information on the brains complex network of neurons.

 

yah more likely they would destroy you neuron and make you "special"
these devices have been around for yyears but where most always on your arm or hand to get the impluses, this seems like refinement of the technology, indeed the military also looked into this for air craft pilots but deemed it too unreliable

 

Yes.. I've seen a discovery channel special wherein they were testing something similar (a headset) which could read brain activity and move an object around on a screen.

And sure I'd increase my brain bandwidth. Corsair brain-sticks anyone? Bet i can OC the puppy. These meat-bags have good water cooling ;D

 

if they start marketing it, and its safe, I am SOOO in

 

Once.if it is created fo the first few years you will need to sell your soul to be able to aford it no doubt, it will cost alot.