Neuroengineering

Neuroengineering to challenge what it means to be human
Posted by Chris Jablonski Published on 09-13-2009

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=1759
In a recent interview published on H+ Magazine, a new publication (online and print) that covers technologies that both “promise and threaten to radically alter our lives and our view of the world and ourselves,” AI expert Dr. Bruce Katz lays out a lofty vision for the emerging field of neuroengineering (a.k.a. neural engineering).

Katz, a lecturer, adjunct professor, and author of Neuroengineering the Future, and Digital Design, believes that, “We are on the cusp of a broad neuro-revolution, one that will radically reshape our views of perception, cognition, emotion and even personal identity.” He says that advancement in the study of neural systems and intersecting technologies is rapidly moving from perceptual aids such as cochlear implants to devices that will enhance and speed up thought. It may ultimately “free the mind from its bound state in the body to a platform independent existence,” he claims.
Technology that one day will allow for uploading of the human mind is highly controversial, helping to fuel the great singularity debate among pundits and skeptics.
Regardless of where you stand on the issue, both technically or ethically, Bruce Katz raises some good points. Armed with a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from University of Illinois, his ideas appear firmly rooted in the scientific method. And it comes through in the preface of his book, Neuroengineering the Future:

I am not the first, and certainly will not be the last, to stress the importance of coming developments in neural engineering. This field has all the hallmarks of a broad technological revolution, but larger in scope and with deeper tentacles than those accompanying both computers and the Internet…
To modify the brain is to modify not only how we perceive but what we are, our consciousnesses and our identities. The power to be able to do so cannot be over-stated, and the consequences can scarcely be imagined, especially with our current unmodified evolutionarily provided mental apparatuses…
Here are just a few topics that we will cover…
1. Brain-machine interfaces to control computers, exoskeletons, robots, and other devices with thought alone;
2. Mind-reading devices that will project the conscious contents of one’s brain onto a screen as if it was a movie;
3. Devices to enhance intellectual ability and to increase concentration;
4. Devices to enhance creativity and insight;
5. Mechanisms to upload the mind to a machine, thus preserving it from bodily decay and bodily death.

Returning to the H+ interview, Katz speaks about cognitive enhancement therapies (there’s another article devoted entirely to the subject) and the legal, societal, and ethical issues surrounding neuroengineering. He then points out the “kludgy design” characteristics of the human brain that he hopes we’ll overcome in the next 20 years:

* Short-term memory limitations (typically seven plus or minus 2 items),
* Significant long-term memory limitations (the brain can only hold about as much as a PC hard disk circa 1990),
* Strong limitations on processing speed (although the brain is a highly parallel system, each neuron is a very slow processor),
* Bounds on rationality (we are less than fully impartial processors, sometimes significantly so),
* Bounds on creativity (most people go through their entire lives without making a significant creative contribution to humanity), and perhaps most significantly…
* Bounds on the number of concepts that can be entertained in consciousness at once (some estimate that the bottleneck of consciousness restricts us to one plus or minus zero items!).

“Freeing the mind from this limited, albeit remarkable, organ will allow us to manipulate thought directly, and this will produce the most gains in intelligence, creativity, and in achieving harmony with other sentient beings and the universe as a whole,” Katz told H+.
What do you think? Are you satisfied with the cutting edge of evolution sitting behind your eyes and think we should limit performance gain to caffeine, sudoku puzzles and omega-3 pills, or do you agree with more invasive means of brain improvement like the kind neuroengineering promises? Speak your mind in Talkback.

 

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  • http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/hist.html

    The following dates and events were gathered from several sources. These events are certainly not all of the important events to take place in neuroscience

    4000BC to now

    http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/hist.html

    After 1950

    1950 - Karl Lashley publishes In Search of the Engram

    1950 - Eugene Roberts and J. Awapara independently identify GABA in the brain

    1950 - The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke established (it has gone through several name changes)

    1951 - MAO-inhibitors introduced to treat psychotics

    1951 - B.F. Skinner describes shaping in a paper titled How to Teach Animals

    1952 - Alan Lloyd Hodgkin and Andrew Fielding Huxley first describe the voltage clamp

    1952 - The Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) was published by the American Psychiatric Association

    1953 - Brenda Milner discusses patient HM who suffers from memory loss of hippocampal surgery

    1953 - Eugene Aserinski and Nathaniel Kleitman describe rapid eye movements (REM) during sleep

    1953 - H. Kluver and E. Barrera introduce Luxol fast blue MBS stain

    1953 - Stephen Kuffler publishes work on center-surround, on-off organization of retinal ganglion cell receptive fields

    1954 - James Olds describes rewarding effects of hypothalamic stimulation

    1954 - John Lilly invents the "isolation tank"

    1954 - Chlorpromazine was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

    1956 - L. Leksell uses ultrasound to examine the brain

    1956 - National Library of Medicine named (was the Army Medical Library)

    1956 - Rita Levi-Montalcini and Stanley Cohen isolate and purify nerve growth factor

    1957 - W. Penfield and T. Rasmussen devise motor and sensory homunculus

    1957 - The American Medical Association recognizes alcoholism as a disease

    1958 - Haloperidol introduced as a neuroleptic drug

    1959 - P. Karlson and M. Lusher coin the term "pheromone"

     1960 - Oleh Hornykiewicz shows that brain dopamine is lower than normal in Parkinson's disease patients

    1961 - Georg Von Bekesy awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on the function of the cochlea

    1961 - Levadopa successfully treats parkinsonism

    1962 - Eldon Foltz performs the first cingulotomy to treat chronic pain

    1963 - John Carew Eccles, Alan Lloyd Hodgkin and Andrew Fielding Huxley share Nobel Prize for work on the mechanisms of the neuron cell membrane

    1965 - Ronald Melzack and Patrick D. Wall publish gate control theory of pain

    1965 - Drug Abuse Control Act

    1967 - Ragnar Arthur Granit, Halden Keffer Hartline and George Wald share Nobel Prize for work on the mechanisms of vision

    1968 - Alexander Romanovich Luria publishes The Mind of a Mnemonist; A Little Book About a Vast Memory

    1968 - National Eye Institute is established

    1969 - D.V. Reynolds describes the analgesic effect of electrical stimulation of the periaqueductal gray

    1969 - The Society for Neuroscience is formed

    1970 - Julius Axelrod, Bernard Katz and Ulf Svante von Euler share Nobel Prize for work on neurotransmitters 1972 - Godfrey N. Hounsfield develops x-ray computed tomography

    1973 - Candace Pert and Solomon Snyder demonstrate opioid receptors in brain

    1973 - Sinemet is introduced as a treatment for Parkinson's disease

    1973 - Konrad Z. Lorenz, Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch share Nobel Prize for work on ethology

    1973 - Timothy Bliss and Terje Lomo describe long-term potentiation

    1974 - National Institute on Drug Abuse established

    1974 - International Association for the Study of Pain founded

    1974 - John Hughes and Hans Kosterlitz discover enkephalin

    1974 - M.E.Phelps, E.J.Hoffman and M.M.Ter Pogossian develop first PET scanner

    1974 - First NMR image (a mouse) is taken

    1975 - John Hughes and Hans Kosterlitz publish work on enkephalins

    1976 - Choh Hao Li and David Chung publish work on beta-endorphin

    1976 - Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann develop the patch-clamp technique

    1977 - Roger Guillemin and Andrew Victor Schally share Nobel Prize for work on peptides in the brain

    1981 - David Hunter Hubel and Torsten N. Wiesel-Nobel Prize-visual system

    1981 - Roger Wolcott Sperry awarded Nobel Prize-functions brain hemispheres

    1982 - Bengt Ingemar Bergstrom, John Robert Vane and Sune K. Bergstrom awarded Nobel Prize for the discovery of prostaglandins

    1986 - Stanley Cohen and Rita Levi-Montalcini awarded Nobel prize for their work on the control of nerve cell growth

    1987 - Fluoxetine (Prozac) introduced as treatment for depression

    1990 - U.S. President George Bush declares the decade starting in

    1990 the "Decade of the Brain"

    1991 - Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann share the Nobel Prize for their work on the function of single ion channels

    1992 - National Institute on Drug Abuse becomes part of the National Institutes of Health

    1992 - Giacomo Rizzolatti describes mirror neurons in area F5 of the monkey premotor cortex

    1993 - The gene responsible for Huntington's disease is identified

    1994 - Alfred G. Gilman and Martin Rodbell share the Nobel Prize for their discovery of G-protein coupled receptors and their role in signal transduction

    1997 - Stanley B. Prusiner awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of prions; a new biological principle of infection

    2000 - Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard and Eric Kandel share the Nobel Prize for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system

    2004 - Linda B. Buck and Richard Axel share the Nobel Prize for their discoveries about odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system

  • http://tinyurl.com/3k6rrep    

    Neural Engineering (Book)

     

    http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004JZX5JU/ref=rdr_ext_sb_pi_sims_2#reader...

    Toward Replacement Parts for the Brain - (Book)

     

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioelectromagnetism

    Bioelectromagnetism

     

    http://www.isbem.org/

    International Society of Bioelectromagnetism

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