Real World Cyborgs - Part Two
Real World Cyborgs - Part Two
Dateline: 06/20/00
Last week we started to learn about research projects and commercial products utilizing technology that merges electronic components with organic tissue. Our overview of "real world cyborgs" couldn't be complete without mentioning "cyborg professor", Kevin Warwick, from the Cybernetics Department at the University of Reading, UK. In August 1998, he begun a research experiment by inserting a glass capsule about 23 millimeters long and 3 millimeters wide containing an electromagnetic coil and a silicon chip into his upper left arm. He claimed to be the first person in the world to have a computer chip surgically implanted into his body. Implant allowed for a computer to monitor professor Warwick as he moved through the halls and offices of his department by communicating via radio waves with a network of antennas. "It is quite appropriate for a professor of Cybernetics to become a true cyborg", Warwick said, while the news about his research efforts moved around the world in a matter of hours. Some called it a shameless self-promotion, other said it would marked a beginning of a new scientific era. Either way, real world cyborgs couldn't get much more realistic than this...
There was a danger of infection or breaking the glass capsule inside the body, so it was removed after 10 days. The experiment undoubtedly succeeded, proving that information could be transmitted to and from an implant. But it is not the end of the story: next year professor Warwick will conduct a much more ambitious follow-up experiment. A new implant, placed at the approximately same place, will send signals back and forth between his nervous system and a computer. It will connect to the tissue through a tiny band that wraps around the nerve fibers, transmitting and receiving signals from the computer without any "real" onboard processing. The experiment will start with recording and playing back simple movement signals, continuing with more complex trials with emotional signals. Dr. Warwick hopes that it could open up a whole new range of "artificial" senses. There are many doubts on how much the brain can adapt to the unfamiliar information, but the potential benefits are overwhelming: imagine a blind person navigating around using sonar or something similar. If these experiments prove successful, a similar device will be implanted in Warwick's wife, Irena. It will be possible to send movement and emotion signals between them, possibly using the Internet. How about real thought-to-thought communication? We'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, see this excellent article published by Wired magazine that describes future Warwick's experiments in detail. I was particularly fascinated by a passage that talks about the feelings of attachment which he developed for the computer - strong enough that his wife started worrying about it...
There are quite a few emerging research paradigms working on effective, reliable and robust communication between neurons and electronic systems. Much is known experimentally about the properties of single neurons, but little progress has been made in understanding the connectivity of neural networks and the mechanisms of synaptic change in higher animals. Professor Jerome Pine and his collaborators at Caltech have developed a number of new noninvasive technologies for studying neural systems. Examples include an X-ray microscope for living cells, multi-electrode cell culture chambers, fiber-optic photodiode arrays and high-speed CCD cameras for imaging of neural activity, and silicon probes for long-term interfacing of neural tissue with external electronics. One of such devices is designed to hold neurons dissociated from embryonic rat brain tissue and placed in the silicon substrate, forming Neurochips with 16 wells in a 4 x 4 array. It will provide an unprecedented ability to monitor and influence the synaptic activity of a small network of neurons, and to discover the effects of neural activity on synaptic plasticity. More similar resources can be found at Silicon and Neurobiology list of links.
Another step forward gets us closer to the to the future process of "mind uploading", defined as copying one's mind from the natural substrate of the brain into an artificial one, manufactured by humans. Although the problems associated with such processes are far from trivial, scientists are beginning to think seriously about similar concepts. The whole notion assumes that the mind arises from activity in the brain, requiring a very particular arrangement of neural circuits. Further advancements in nanotechnology and similar areas are required in order to successfully scan the brain, analyze the scan to extract relevant features and make an equivalent representation of the "target" mind. More info on technological and ethical implications of mind uploading can be found at Whole Brain Emulation Research Home Page and Mind Uploading Homepage.