Re: Science!

1

Thanks. I feel vaguely anxious about the future and about traumatic injury.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 05-12-23 9:16 AM
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Now image that you are using a multielectrode array, like Neurolink, with penetrating electrodes. So you have better temporal and spatial resolution.

Now image that you use those electrodes for stimulation, inducing the visualization of the provided text.


Posted by: nope | Link to this comment | 05-12-23 10:26 AM
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2: I only get as far as imagining I'm dead.


Posted by: ydnew | Link to this comment | 05-12-23 2:27 PM
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4

3. A clever way to note that experimental imaging technologies like this are notoriously pretty noisy by referring to the "brain imaging" of a piece of dead salmon? I confess to not yet having read the article, maybe these folks really have gotten this to work reliably and someone other than the inventor of the technique can use it succesfully.

https://peterattiamd.com/what-a-dead-salmon-can-teach-us-about-how-we-use-machines/


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 05-12-23 2:38 PM
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I have honestly found twitter to be a great source of interesting papers. I shuld probably set up mastodon and switch there. This thoughtful set of recent genetics papers will basically be a year's reading for me, with background fill-in needed for comprehension added.
https://twitter.com/sashagusevposts/status/1614732426462515200?s=11

Annual Reviews is also consistently pretty good.


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 05-12-23 2:45 PM
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@3 I remember the first time I had patch electrodes hooked up to me. They were hooked up to my forearm. It was wild watching my fist clench absent volition. I whether visualizations induced in such a manner would be perceptibly non-volitional.


Posted by: nope | Link to this comment | 05-12-23 2:48 PM
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7

* I wonder whether ...


Posted by: nope | Link to this comment | 05-12-23 2:49 PM
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8

"brain imaging" of a piece of dead salmon?

Sex, sex, sex, bear!!!!!!!!!!!


Posted by: Opinioned Salmon | Link to this comment | 05-12-23 2:55 PM
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9

The only way I'll stop learning is if I get thoughts from a dead salmon or live koi.


Posted by: edwinEdwardsGPT | Link to this comment | 05-12-23 3:28 PM
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4: Sadly, not clever at all. A nod to how Neuralink's subjects are generally faring.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/musks-neuralink-faces-federal-probe-employee-backlash-over-animal-tests-2022-12-05/


Posted by: ydnew | Link to this comment | 05-12-23 5:24 PM
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11

Why don't they let the chimpanzees try implanting things in Musk's brain?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 05-12-23 5:36 PM
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12

Maybe they have.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-12-23 11:09 PM
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13

2: it seems difficult to imagine doing such pervasive microsurgery without harming the patient. Maybe in a century or so of medical advances, they'd figure it out, but it sure seems a hard target. You have to place wires at micrometer-resolution, and millions of them to boot. All without destroying the existing cellular matrix and linkages.

3: It's the first thing I thought of when I read the OP! Hilarious!


Posted by: Chetan Murthy | Link to this comment | 05-12-23 11:10 PM
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@13 - High-speed, robotic real-time image-guided implantation is the idea behind neuralink. The implantation of the electrode microwires is robotic and guided by real-time imaging to avoid blood vessels. The probes are 20 um in width, so they are supposedly minimally damaging to the surrounding tissue (and prevent encapsulation, which is at least as important). The robot has a cassette of probes, which it automatically draws from during implantation, making it able to implant hundreds of probes during a surgery. In all likelihood, future versions will be even faster.

And you don't need to know where the electrodes are with respect to functionally important linkages. Implant a sufficiently dense grid and you can expect an electrode will be sufficiently close to anything you want a signal from (or to provide a signal to). "Sufficiently" is doing a lot of work here, but what grid density is sufficient is fundamentally an empirical question and depends on what you want to use the BCI for.


Posted by: nope | Link to this comment | 05-13-23 7:21 AM
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15

I can practically smell the piles of dead monkeys.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 05-13-23 7:37 AM
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16

If you can't definitely smell piles of dead monkeys, you really should get a covid test.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 05-13-23 8:18 AM
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17

14: I'm with 15 on this. I mean, sure, that's a great, technical description, with all sorts of fancy high-tech-speakin'-words in it, but at the end of the day, it's a pile of dead monkeys. The missing bit is "without harming the patient". Until it's actually safe to use on humans (or heck, even monkeys) it's nothing.


Posted by: Chetan Murthy | Link to this comment | 05-13-23 8:22 PM
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18

As long as there's no way an isolated group of technical experts insulated from public scrutiny would ever commit a series of horrors out of a sense of securing a greater good for humanity at the expense of the particular humans in front of them.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 05-13-23 8:36 PM
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@17 how many dead monkeys in exchange for developing technology that allows people with locked-in syndrome to effectively communicate, now and for as long as our civilization persists?


Posted by: Nope | Link to this comment | 05-14-23 6:26 AM
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20

Isn't it nice that the one in the OP is noninvasive.


Posted by: heebie | Link to this comment | 05-14-23 6:36 AM
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21

Yes, it is.

18 to 19.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 05-14-23 6:42 AM
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22

||
Cyclone Mocha? Come on, I totally want a Cyclone Mocha now, how bad could it possibly be?
|>


Posted by: lurid keyaki | Link to this comment | 05-14-23 7:01 PM
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23

I haven't been inside a Dunkin Donuts in months.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 05-14-23 7:21 PM
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19: if what you propose were the real trade-off, of course I'd go for it. I'm a speciesist and my species is homo sapiens. But I fear the real trade-off is a bunch of dead monkeys and that a few dead humans for nothing.So until it's actually demonstrated and is really safe on monkeys,I'm not getting my hopes up.


Posted by: Chetan Murthy | Link to this comment | 05-14-23 10:35 PM
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This discourse has been reminding me of this absolute banger https://twitter.com/theserfstv/status/1624133334434738176?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 05-15-23 12:19 AM
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26

That's hysterical.


Posted by: heebie | Link to this comment | 05-15-23 6:46 AM
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