Brain computer interfaces

[nhnifong]

I found an article today about a Cold-war technology used to produce auditory sensations with microwaves.

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

This got me thinking, how close are we to having some kind of direct-brain visual interface. Something that could produce an immersive visual experience, without actually having to wear a giant pair of goggles.

Cosmic rays can produce cherenkov radiation in the eye's vitreous humor...

Or perhaps some kind of phased array antenna in the room could precisely aim microwave photons at your retina from any direction, and they would interfere to produce light with a visible wavelength.

[Aghanim]

BCI is creepy... what happens when we get stuck at a virtual world?

Of course, if its visual only, than you could pull it off, but if it threatens you to nuke you with lethal microwave radiation dose when you pull it off? (kudos to everyone that spots the easter egg here)

Real BCI with sense integration is too creepy to use, I'm not touching it until some proper safeguard has been built

But VR goggle like rift is fine...

[nhnifong]

I'll play with it I aint afraid a nuffin!

But really, a virtual experience as immersive as Sword Art Online or Accel World is a long long way off...

Food for thought, when some of the first home applications of electricity were invented, like toasters, people said "I'm not bringing something into my home that could electrocute and kill me!"

Edited February 17, 2014 by nhnifong

[MC.STEEL]

As much as i want cool stuff like this i just have to say that us,The not so mindfull apes of the species homo sapiens are not ready for it.Why, well think of how nuclear technology was invented in the coldwar era,there was a massive treath of nuclear war but we where smart enought not to do it,while nuclear tech happened today no one would even think of aiming such a thing(save for a few extreemists).think of how many people today would use it for unpleasant things(i mean really unpleasant),i have hope that that number would drop in the near future.But alas the number will never be zero.

[Scotius]

We learn on our mistakes. Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki there were no doubts how terrible nuclear war would be. And thus we were too scared to start something we knew would end our civilisation, and probably the species. BCI do not pose such well defined threat on global scale. If it goes live one day, i have no doubts accidents, sabotages and direct attacks will happen - but probably they will be small enough (relatively) to not scare people completely off. Just like we still use cars, trains and airplanes despite numerous accidents every year.

[Idobox]

We already have it, but the resolution is crappy.

You have several options : electrodes directly on your visual cortex. You need brain surgery, resolution is really crappy (like 20 pixels), and you end up with a cable going out of your skull, which is an infection nightmare. It's the only solution if you don't have a working optic nerve.

Retinal implant. Once again, several options. The best performance is obtained by putting a CMOS light sensor in you eye that directly stimulates the retina. Works only if the eye is transparent and the retina is alive, but not photosensitive. Record was a few hundreds of pixels last time I checked.

The alternative is an electrode array on the retina, relaying info from a camera. You need a induction loops to transmit power, and an Italian team is working on a megapixel one.

In all cases, the performance is much worse than normal vision (1 vs 120 megapixels, a few levels of gray), and will damage your eyesight.

Antenna arrays cannot be used for this type of problem, they don't have enough resolution. I think some people are working on lasers shining directly into your retinas, but that wouldn't be much better that an Occulus rift.

[Aghanim]

Beaming laser directly to the retina? Isn't all lasers have safety warnings that tells you not to look at its output aperture?

But if we have a reliable and high-speed BCI link, I won't connect it to any network. Even with firewall, the prospect of someone directly hacking into my brain seems weird.

What I gonna do is to connect it to an exoskeleton and bolt it directly into my bones (another infection nightmare?) With sufficient power (is it even exists now?) probably I will get improved reaction speed and all of that cool stuff

Edited February 17, 2014 by Aghanim

[nhnifong]

I've always thought maybe it wouldn't be too crazy to genetically engineer the hair follicles to send roots down into the cortex, and then use them as sensors. The might have a conductive electrolytic core that could pick up fine signals and carry them to electronics outside the skull.

Beaming laser directly to the retina? Isn't all lasers have safety warnings that tells you not to look at its output aperture?

These are low-intensity lasers.

[Idobox]

What I gonna do is to connect it to an exoskeleton and bolt it directly into my bones (another infection nightmare?) With sufficient power (is it even exists now?) probably I will get improved reaction speed and all of that cool stuff

Having anything going through your skin for prolonged periods of time is an infection risk. Manageable, but a risk. With brain electrodes, it gets much worse because you also have to cross the blood-brain barrier, which is very efficient at protecting our brain. That's why researchers love magnetic coupling for power and RF for data: no need for cables. Alas, you are limited in both power and bandwidth, but there is room for improvement.

Exoskeletons are a real thing and don't need BCI, and with current technology, you have two big families: iron-man like, connected to the grid by a big cable, or giving more strength to handicapped people. To go full iron man, we need a small, high intensity power source, which we don't have. And it probably wouldn't change your reaction speed by much.

[Rhidian]

Rather than getting input into the brain, I think it is far more likely/feasible to go the other direction, where a BCI is used to get output from the brain to control external things. I think this is a big area of research in prosthetics. Though at the moment I think most things just use proxies to interpret brain commands, ie precursor muscle movements indicating you want to move (or eye movements to determine what you want to do).

[Thiel]

Rather than getting input into the brain, I think it is far more likely/feasible to go the other direction, where a BCI is used to get output from the brain to control external things. I think this is a big area of research in prosthetics. Though at the moment I think most things just use proxies to interpret brain commands, ie precursor muscle movements indicating you want to move (or eye movements to determine what you want to do).

Most of the research I've heard about relies on electrodes coupled to nerve endings.

[nhnifong]

Having anything going through your skin for prolonged periods of time is an infection risk. Manageable, but a risk. With brain electrodes, it gets much worse because you also have to cross the blood-brain barrier, which is very efficient at protecting our brain. That's why researchers love magnetic coupling for power and RF for data: no need for cables. Alas, you are limited in both power and bandwidth, but there is room for improvement.

Exoskeletons are a real thing and don't need BCI, and with current technology, you have two big families: iron-man like, connected to the grid by a big cable, or giving more strength to handicapped people. To go full iron man, we need a small, high intensity power source, which we don't have. And it probably wouldn't change your reaction speed by much.

There are still plenty of applications of tethered exoskeletons. DARPA has been advancing the science for about 5 or 10 years now. The are used on some ships to help people carry more stuff, and for who knows what else.