Arming the Monkey
July 30th, 2007 by deanDays ago (”a couple,” broadly speaking) I mentioned that I’d try to hypelessly interpret a recent report.
Our Heroes surgically implanted multiple electrodes in monkey brains and muscles in carefully chosen areas. They recorded from the electrodes while a monkey operated a lever, moving it and gripping it more or less tightly (there was a juice reward when the monkey positioned the cursor correctly and squeezed just right). Using a simple linear model, they predicted muscle activity (and thus lever activity) based on brain activity. When they removed the lever, the model was able to make the cursor behave correctly from just the monkey’s thoughts, in real time. After replacing the screen with an actual manipulator arm, the monkeys were able to mind-control it as well.
There’s been plenty of news about bionic arms recently (which you can ogle for yourself) - this report is simply an incremental step on the road to non-invasive, direct brain control (that is, without brain surgery, or wiring the arm into pectoral muscles for the control signal) of prosthetics, or even waldoes or other teleoperational gear.
July 31st, 2007 at 3:31 pm
I hope that by tricking you into reading this comment, I will not be reviled if I entreat you to enter an articulate critique of the main entry, supposing you are registered or want to register.
Personally, I feel it is too long, though I couldn’t shorten it enough to get it posted in a timely fashion (it started out about twice as long).
What I want to do is develop a blogging style, or literary form, according to the criteria: 1) Can fit in less than half a screen; 2) Describes the finding and how it was made; 3) Interprets the finding in its own scientific, and also a cultural, context.
Such a literary form can be spun in many ways. For example, if I wanted to hype a finding I could try to match the breathless style of many of the science linkblogfeedsitethings, or even go beyond into megalomaniac raving (which I do, privately, anyway).