According to Computerworld:

Scientists at Intel's research lab in Pittsburgh are working to find ways to read and harness human brain waves so they can be used to operate computers, television sets and cell phones. The brain waves would be harnessed with Intel-developed sensors implanted in people's brains . . . "We're trying to prove you can do interesting things with brain waves," said [Intel research scientist Dean] Pomerleau. "Eventually people may be willing to be more committed ... to brain implants. Imagine being able to surf the Web with the power of your thoughts."

Pomerleau is working with university researchers to "decode" human thoughts, which so far has consisted mostly of doing fMRI studies to see which parts of the brain become active when people think of certain words. Their goal is to figure out how to "read" cognitive activity so people can type with their brains instead of their fingers. I can't wait to have Intel inside my cerebral cortex, especially when I have to upgrade every 6 months. Of course eventually I'll just stop upgrading, thus consigning myself to an old age of trying to get Ubuntu running on the ancient chipset in my brain.

via Computerworld

In their study, the University of Zurich team hooked pigeons up with in-flight electroencephalographs (EEG) and GPS trackers. The result was data on how pigeons think while they are trying to navigate their migratory path.

Not only does the study confirm that pigeons keep an eye on landmarks while migrating, it also shows that pigeons perk up and pay more attention when they are in changing terrain, like flying through cities or over highways. Brain activity lulls a bit when they are flying over featureless ocean, for example.

The study produced a few at-first-unexplained blips: the pigeons seemed to perk up over two nondescript sites in their migratory path. On further inspection, the science team found that these sites were home to other pigeon colonies, and the birds were responding to the presence of other birds in these areas. This might be the pigeon equivalent of a human navigator perking up when she sees a Starbucks in the distance, noticing a human presence in an otherwise solitary trip.

The team is moving on to other animals next, to see what is going through their minds when they go about their daily business. They could be thinking of anything from where to find breakfast to "why am I wearing this stupid EEG helmet?" Or maybe they are plotting their escape from our oppressive animal experiments...

Pigeon 'black box' offers clues to navigation [via New Scientist]

(Image: Empire State Pigeon, from ZeroOne)

Though it is often difficult to tell when somebody with locked in syndrome is fully conscious, a team of doctors led by Frank Guenther of Boston University strongly suspected that the man was aware and longed to speak. They put their patient in an fMRI brain scanner and asked him to attempt to make vowel sounds. His brain showed the exact same patterns as an uninjured person making those sounds aloud.

So they knew his brain's speech centers were still functioning. They just needed a way to connect those speech centers to a speech synthesizer - an artificial mouth if you will. Researchers implanted a special kind of electrode in his brain, one that's "impregnated with neurotrophic factors" that encourage brain neurons to grow into and around the electrode. Essentially this electrode forms a very strong connection with brain neurons, which results in a strong signal that reliably comes from the same part of the patient's brain over time.

Over a period of weeks, Guenther and his team worked to decode the signals coming from the man's brain. Eventually, he was able "to produce three vowel sounds with good accuracy," said Guenther. The man produces these sounds as quickly as he would normal speech, and Guenther added, "The long-term goal within five years is to have him use the speech brain–computer interface to produce words directly."

According to Nature:

Their efforts are appreciated by the patient too. "When we first arrived to install this system he was obviously very excited — you can tell from his involuntary movements, and he was trying to look at us the whole time," Guenther says. As the man's father told the team, "he really has a new lease on life".

The team's next step is to train their computer decoder to recognize consonants so that patients can form whole words, and even sentences. They also hope that with developments in technology, they can implant more electrodes in their next patient to transmit a more detailed signal.

Other researchers are working on less-invasive techniques to achieve the same goal for other paralyzed patients. Their brain-computer interfaces sit on the outside of the skull, so there's no need to put an electrode into the brain itself.

Brain Implant Allows Mute Man to Speak [via Nature]

Image via Getty.

People who have lost their ability to speak still have active speech centers in their brain. Seeking to tap into the neurons firing in those centers, researchers at Boston University implanted a series of electrodes into the brain of Erik Ramsey, a man who has been in a locked in state since a brain stem injury when he was 16.

Of course, the electrodes are only there to pick up neuronal activity, so the researchers have had to come up with complex software to decode the raw signals into speech — in other words, to translate Ramsey's thoughts about speaking into actual sounds:

The software is designed to translate neural activity into what are known as formant frequencies, the resonant frequencies of the vocal tract. For example, if your mouth is open wide and your tongue is pressed to the base of the mouth, a certain sound frequency is created as air flows through, based on the position of the vocal musculature. Different muscle positioning creates a different frequency. Guenther trained the computer to recognize patterns of neural signals linked to specific movements of the mouth, jaw, and lips. He then translated these signals into the correlating sound frequencies and programmed a sound synthesizer to project these frequencies back out through a speaker in audio form.

So far, the technique's worked, albeit slowly. With a lot of concentration, Ramsey has been able to get the system to make all of the vowel sounds in the English language. But there are only a handful of those — the next stop is the hundreds of consonants, which could take years and a new, more sophisticated implant that can better understand what it is Ramsey is trying to say.

Source: Technology Review

Image, University of Pennsylvania

From therapy to drug addiction, humans try just about anything to beat depression, so it figures that the first hardware hack for the brain would try to put smiles on our faces. But instead of piping in porn, the pacemaker uses electrode to fire low-voltage juice into the mood and anxiety centers in your brain, rewiring your neurons to take you to happy land.

The method used is called deep-brain stimulation, and it's been around for a few years, but it's still an experimental technology. So yeah, statements like this one from Dr. Ali Rezai chief of the Cleveland Clinic's Center for Neurologic Restoration are pretty exciting: "We're rewiring the brain in many ways," he says.

But the researchers admit they're still working out the kinks in things like which brain areas are best to stimulate, and how much electrical prodding those areas need. So if you're not debilitated with depression, you might wait a few years before lining up for surgery for your very own happiness implant.

Source: Associated Press

Neuroscientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany conducted the study, and appear concerned that people will feel robbed of their free will. Interesting, but the real question is: Once brain-computer interfaces are developed for the masses, are we going to need the plodding "consciousness" part of our brains at all?

Source: Nature Neuroscience, via Science Blog

Says Rogers:

We'd like to have an electric circuit that could wrap around part of the brain and detect signal patterns to predict the onset of seizure before it happens . . . You can't take a sheet of plastic and wrap a brain, you really need stretchability.

A google brain implant could work in lots of ways. With technology we have right now, people could wear a brain-computer interface helmet like the one sold by Emotiv, and use that to control the cursor on a wearable computer with a tiny monitor that's attached to your classes. So the thing wouldn't be implanted in your brain, but it would be responding to electrical signals from your brain. More sophisticated wearables like those described in Vernor Vinge's novel Rainbows End might allow you to google via subtle movements of your body, and then display results in special contact lenses.

A more far-future implant might actually have a direct neural linkup to your brain, allowing you to see google results on your retina. No matter how the instant, subtle, brain-controlled access to google works, the same benefits and problems are likely to exist.

PRO:

Ability to "remember" many details about a person or issue in the middle of a conversation, so that you can marshal facts quickly and check the accuracy of what other people are saying.

CON:

The person you're talking to could much more easily pretend to be somebody they are not by googling information and feigning expertise.

PRO:

You will never get lost because you've got maps at your synapse tips, and you'll always know what's playing at your local theaters. You'll also get the latest news headlines and stock quotes at the twitch of an eyelid.

CON:

You'll spend so much time in your head reading google news and watching YouTube that you'll zone out during conversations and forget to pay attention to what your best friends are telling you (unless they're telling you in the form of a google news alert).

PRO:

Instant access to infinite data storage allows you to quickly store your every interesting thought, and search through them instantly. More innovative ideas result.

CON:

Over reliance on "offloaded" memory means people make less of an effort to remember important things and therefore brain flexibility actually erodes. Ideas become boring repetitions of what you've thought up before, or what other people have thought up and posted on the Web.

PRO:

You can cheat on tests.

CON:

You can cheat on tests.

PRO: Need something desperately and can't get to the computer to order it? Just buy it through Froogle.

CON: Google ads are constantly running in your head, perhaps designed to respond to thought patterns.

PRO: Every time Google ads a cool new service, like Gmail or Picasa, you've got instant access to it in your brain.

CON: Google is famous for its "silent update" system, which occasionally results in pretty buggy services. Imagine what it will be like when Google silently updates your brain.