"In Scientific First, Researchers Link Two Rats' Brains via Computer" (What's next, the paralyzed walk?)

Ya gotta love this guy. He's a showman but he publishes in open-access journals, in effect letting the whole world have at it. More after the jump.
From Slate:

It's not exactly rat telepathy. Let's call it a computer-mediated rat mind-meld. 

 

Researchers used one rat's brain waves to influence a second rat's actions.

Illustration courtesy of Duke University

In a lab in Brazil, a rat faced an opening in the wall of its enclosure, and two levers. If it detected with its whiskers that the opening was narrow, it was supposed to press one lever. If the opening was wide, it was supposed to press the other. Choose the right lever, and it would be rewarded with a sip of water.

With practice, the rat learned to press the correct lever 95 percent of the time. Then came the remarkable part.

Researchers implanted one set of electrodes in the brain of the rat in Brazil, and another set of electrodes in the brain of a second rat at Duke University. Via an Internet connection, they set it up so that a signal from the brain of the rat in Brazil would be sent, in simplified form, directly to the brain of the rat in North Carolina. The rat in North Carolina also faced two levers, but had no information to go on as to which one to press—except for the signal coming from the first rat's brain.

The test: Could the rat in North Carolina press the correct lever, based on the width of the opening in the enclosure of the rat in Brazil? Six or seven times out of 10, it did.

The study, published Thursday morning in the open-access journal Scientific Reports, appears to be the first to allow animals to communicate via a brain-to-brain computer interface. The researchers, led by neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis at Duke, say the feedback actually went both ways: When the second rat chose the correct lever, the first rat got an additional reward, which apparently encouraged it to send a clearer and stronger brain signal the next time. If that's true, it would amount to not only communication, but a form of cooperation....MORE

In "UPDATED--'A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen....'" I called Doc Nicolelis a show off (If you're into mind controlled robotic avatars here's the M.D. PhD showoff at TEDMED 2012) and he is one. The thing is, the showing off is in the service of one of the highest value projects I can think of.
Here's the backstory:

Neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis went on The Daily Show in 2011 and told Jon Stewart that he would develop a robotic body suit that would allow paralyzed people to walk again simply by thinking about it — and he’d do it in just 3 or 4 years.

And here's the rest of the story from Wired:

It was an audacious, some might say reckless, claim. But two years later, Nicolelis insists he’s on track. And he hopes to prove it in brazen fashion in front of billions of people during one of the world’s most-watched events: the World Cup.

The tournament, which will be held in his native Brazil, is less than 16 months away. If all goes according to plan, during the opening ceremony, a young paralyzed person will step onto the field in a robotic exoskeleton operated by electrodes implanted in his or her brain, walk about 20 steps, and kick a soccer ball.

This may sound incredible, but in recent years, research on using signals from the brain to operate machines has taken great strides. Scientists have developed brain-machine interfaces that allow paralyzed humans to move a computer cursor or even use a robotic arm to pick up a piece of chocolate or touch a loved one for the first time in years. Nicolelis has set his sights even higher: He wants to get paralyzed people up and walking around. If he succeeds it could be a tremendous advance. Right now he’s still developing this technology in monkeys. There’s a long way to go.

But Nicolelis was brimming with confidence in January when I visited his lab at Duke University to see how his work is progressing. “We’re getting close to making wheelchairs obsolete,” he said....MORE

Here's the Doctor, Doctor in Scientific American last August:

Coming Soon: Artificial Limbs Controlled by Thoughts

The idea that paralyzed people might one day control their limbs just by thinking is no longer a Hollywood-style fantasy

In 2014 billions of viewers worldwide may remember the opening game of the World Cup in Brazil for more than just the goals scored by the Brazilian national team and the red cards given to its adversary. On that day my laboratory at Duke University, which specializes in developing technologies that allow electrical signals from the brain to control robotic limbs, plans to mark a milestone in overcoming paralysis.
 
If we succeed in meeting still formidable challenges, the first ceremonial kick of the World Cup game may be made by a paralyzed teenager, who, flanked by the two contending soccer teams, will saunter onto the pitch clad in a robotic body suit. This suit—or exoskeleton, as we call it—will envelop the teenager's legs. His or her first steps onto the field will be controlled by motor signals originating in the kicker's brain and transmitted wirelessly to a computer unit the size of a laptop in a backpack carried by our patient. This computer will be responsible for translating electrical brain signals into digital motor commands so that the exoskeleton can first stabilize the kicker's body weight and then induce the robotic legs to begin the back-and-forth coordinated movements of a walk over the manicured grass. Then, on approaching the ball, the kicker will visualize placing a foot in contact with it. Three hundred milliseconds later brain signals will instruct the exoskeleton's robotic foot to hook under the leather sphere, Brazilian style, and boot it aloft.

This scientific demonstration of a radically new technology, undertaken with collaborators in Europe and Brazil, will convey to a global audience of billions that brain control of machines has moved from lab demos and futuristic speculation to a new era in which tools capable of bringing mobility to patients incapacitated by injury or disease may become a reality. We are on our way, perhaps by the next decade, to technology that links the brain with mechanical, electronic or virtual machines. This development will restore mobility, not only to accident and war victims but also to patients with ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease), Parkinson's and other disorders that disrupt motor behaviors that impede arm reaching, hand grasping, locomotion and speech production. Neuroprosthetic devices—or brain-machine interfaces—will also allow scientists to do much more than help the disabled. They will make it possible to explore the world in revolutionary ways by providing healthy human beings with the ability to augment their sensory and motor skills.....MORE

This stuff is pretty fresh, the Scientific Reports paper was published today, the Wired story, yesterday.
We're watching, in real time, someone win a Nobel Prize. 

Me? I'm trying to figure out why I posted "What Monkey Pornography and Celebrity Worship Tells Us About Human Nature".

Here's the Walk Again Project 

See also:
Maybe He Didn't See the Part Where the Monkey Controlled a Robot on the Other Side of the World With Its Little Monkey Brain 

Huh, The Brain/Machine Interface Biz Made Some Progress Last Month

Longtime readers know Dr. Dr. Nicolelis* plans to have a quadriplegic child kick the first ball at the 2014 FIFA World Cup, his home town São Paulo being one of the Brazilian host cities and him being a bit of a show-off.
I would not bet against him, links below

From Smithsonian Magazine's Surprising Science column:

A New Interface Lets Monkeys Control Two Virtual Arms With Their Brain Alone

A representation of a virtual monkey, whose arms can be manipulated by a real monkey in a new brain-machine interface—the first interface that allows for the control of multiple limbs. Image via Duke Center for Neuroengineering

Brain-machine interfaces were once the stuff of science fiction. But the technology—which enables direct communication between a person or animal’s brain and an external device or another brain—has come a long way in the past decade.

Scientists have developed interfaces that allow paralyzed people to type letters on a screen, let one person move another’s hand with his or her thoughts and even make it possible for two rats to trade thoughts—in this case, the knowledge of how to solve a particular task—when they’re located in labs thousands of miles apart.

Now, a team led by Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University (the scientist behind the rat thought-trading scheme, among other brain-machine interfaces) has created a new setup that allows monkeys to control two virtual arms simply by thinking about moving their real arms. They hope that the technology, revealed in a paper published today in Science Translational Medicine, could someday lead to similar interfaces that allow paralyzed humans to move robotic arms and legs.

Previously, Nicolelis’ team and others had created interfaces that allowed monkeys and humans to move a single arm in a similar fashion, but this is the first technology that lets an animal to move multiple limbs simultaneously. “Bimanual movements in our daily activities—from typing on a keyboard to opening a can—are critically important,” Nicolelis said in a press statement. “Future brain-machine interfaces aimed at restoring mobility in humans will have to incorporate multiple limbs to greatly benefit severely paralyzed patients.”

Like the group’s previous interfaces, the new technology relies upon ultra thin electrodes that are surgically embedded into the cerebral cortex of monkeys’ brains, a region of the brain that controls voluntary movements, among other functions. But unlike many other brain-machine interfaces, which use electrodes that monitor brain activity in just a handful of neurons, Nicolelis’ team recorded activity in nearly 500 brain cells distributed over a range of cortex areas in the two rhesus monkeys who were test subjects for this study....MORE

*M.D and PhD, hence the double Doc.

Previously:  

"In Scientific First, Researchers Link Two Rats' Brains via Computer" (What's next, the paralyzed walk?)

Update: Not Everyone is Impressed With Dr. Miguel Nicolelis' Latest Intercontinental Mind-Meld 

Maybe He Didn't See the Part Where the Monkey Controlled a Robot on the Other Side of the World With Its Little Monkey Brain 

UPDATED--"A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen...." 

Where In the World Is Izabella Kaminska?--"Scientist Hacks Into Another Scientist's Mind"

Or, as one VentureBeat commenter put it:

UPDATED--"A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen...."

...Instead, humans will assimilate machines.

Update below.
From MIT's Technology Review:

The Brain is Not Computable

Miguel Nicolelis, a top neuroscientist at Duke University, says computers will never replicate the human brain and that the technological Singularity is “a bunch of hot air.”

“The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,” says Nicolelis, author of several pioneering papers on brain-machine interfaces.

The Singularity, of course, is that moment when a computer super-intelligence emerges and changes the world in ways beyond our comprehension.

Among the idea’s promoters are futurist Ray Kurzweil, recently hired on at Google as a director of engineering and who has been predicting that not only will machine intelligence exceed our own but that people will be able to download their thoughts and memories into computers (see “Ray Kurzweil Plans to Create a Mind at Google—and Have It Serve You”).

Nicolelis calls that idea sheer bunk. “Downloads will never happen,” Nicolelis said during remarks made at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston on Sunday. “There are a lot of people selling the idea that you can mimic the brain with a computer.”

The debate over whether the brain is a kind of computer has been running for decades. Many scientists think it’s possible, in theory, for a computer to equal the brain given sufficient computer power and an understanding of how the brain works.

Kurzweil delves into the idea of “reverse-engineering” the brain in his latest book, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, in which he says even though the brain may be immensely complex, “the fact that it contains many billions of cells and trillions of connections does not necessarily make its primary method complex.”

But Nicolelis is in a camp that thinks that human consciousness (and if you believe in it, the soul) simply can’t be replicated in silicon. That’s because its most important features are the result of unpredictable, non-linear interactions amongst billions of cells, Nicolelis says.

“You can’t predict whether the stock market will go up or down because you can’t compute it,” he says. “You could have all the computer chips ever in the world and you won’t create a consciousness.”

The neuroscientist, originally from Brazil, instead thinks that humans will increasingly subsume machines (an idea, incidentally, that’s also part of Kurzweil’s predictions)....MORE

If you're into mind controlled robotic avatars here's the M.D. PhD showoff at TEDMED 2012:

 Update:

Maybe He Didn't See the Part Where the Monkey Controlled a Robot on the Other Side of the World With Its Little Monkey Brain

Monkey Steers Wheelchair With It's Little Monkey Mind

He's quite a show-off but the research is probably going to get him a Nobel sometime this decade.
From Gizmodo:

Researchers have developed a wireless brain interface that allows monkeys to control the movements of a robotic wheelchair using their thoughts alone. The breakthrough suggests that similar interfaces could allow severely paralyzed individuals to navigate all sorts of robotic devices with their minds.

Prior to this study, researchers used brain-machine-interfaces (BMIs) to help primates control artificial limbs. But as this new research shows, it’s also possible to take the recordings from cortical implants and use them to facilitate whole-body movement. Though the new research was geared towards the movements of a wheelchair, the findings strongly suggest that more sophisticated robotic devices could be controlled via BMIs, while requiring no physical intervention whatsoever. The details of this work can now be found in Nature’s Scientific Reports.

The new study, headed by brain interface expert Miguel Nicolelis from Duke Health, is the first to succeed at using BMIs for whole body locomotion. By implanting a wireless, high throughput multi-channel device in the brains of monkeys, the researchers demonstrated that the animals can learn to roam freely with an electronic wheelchair using about 300 neurons. The device allowed them to imagine a trajectory from moment-to-moment and navigate towards a target using the wireless connection.

 

The experiment is part of Nicolelis’s Walk Again Project, which is geared towards technologies that can read the brain waves of paralyzed people and translate them into signals that can control artificial limbs and other assistive devices....MUCH MORE

Previously on Doc Nicolelis:
Nov. 2015
Here's The Most Advanced Human Brain-to-Brain Interface
July 2015
Mind-Meld: Neuroscientists Link Three Monkey Brains Into Living Computer

March 8, 2015

Doc Nicolelis: "Brain-to-brain communication has arrived. How we did it"

Apr. 23, 2014

"World Cup Mind-Control Demo Faces Deadlines, Critics"

Nov. 6, 2013
Huh, The Brain/Machine Interface Biz Made Some Progress Last Month
September 17, 2013 
Where In the World Is Izabella Kaminska?--"Scientist Hacks Into Another Scientist's Mind"
March 2, 2013 
Update: Not Everyone is Impressed With Dr. Miguel Nicolelis' Latest Intercontinental Mind-Meld
Feb. 23, 2013 
Maybe He Didn't See the Part Where the Monkey Controlled a Robot on the Other Side of the World With Its Little Monkey Brain 
Feb. 21, 2013
UPDATED--"A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen...."
Feb. 8, 2013
"In Scientific First, Researchers Link Two Rats' Brains via Computer" (What's next, the paralyzed walk?) 

"After Neuralink, Max Hodak is building something stranger"

From TechCrunch, December 5:

Six years ago, I asked Sam Altman at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco how OpenAI, with its complicated corporate structure, would make money. He said that someday, he’d ask the AI. When everyone snickered, he added, “You can laugh. It’s all right. But it really is what I actually believe.”

He wasn’t kidding.

Sitting again in front of an audience, this time across Max Hodak, the co-founder and CEO of Science Corp., I can’t help but remember that moment with Altman. Pale-complexioned Hodak, wearing jeans and a black zip-up sweatshirt, looks more like he’s going to jump into a mosh pit than pitch a company valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. But he’s got a sly sense of humor that keeps the room engaged.

Hodak started programming when he was six, and as an undergraduate at Duke, he worked his way into the lab of Miguel Nicolelis, a pioneering neuroscientist who has since become publicly critical of commercial brain-computer interface ventures. In 2016, Hodak co-founded Neuralink with Elon Musk, serving as its president and essentially running day-to-day operations until 2021.

When I ask what he learned working alongside Musk, Hodak describes a specific pattern. “We got into lots of situations together where something would happen. In my mind, I’d have two diametrically opposed possible solutions, and I would bring them to him, and I’d be like, ‘Is it A or B?’ And he’d look at it and be like, ‘It’s definitely B,’ and the problem would never come back.”

After a few years of this, Hodak took what he’d learned and roped in three former Neuralink colleagues to launch Science Corp. about four years ago. Like Altman, Hodak describes his team’s improbable goal so placidly that I find myself believing that the limits of cognition are about to be overcome sooner than most of us realize. And that he’ll be among those who make it happen.

As I was doomscrolling… 
While I’ve been consumed with the AI data center craziness and the talent poaching wars, momentum has been building in the background.

According to World Economic Forum data, nearly 700 companies around the world have at least some ties to brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, including some tech giants. In addition to Neuralink, ​​Microsoft Research has run a dedicated BCI project for the last seven years. Apple partnered earlier this year with Synchron, backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, to create a protocol that lets BCIs control iPhones and iPads. Even Altman is reportedly helping to stand up a Neuralink rival.

And in August, China released its “Implementation Plan for Promoting Innovation and Development of the BCI Industry,” targeting core technological breakthroughs by 2027, and aiming to become the global leader by 2030.

Much of the neuroscience isn’t new. “A legitimate criticism of the BCI companies is that they aren’t doing new neuroscience,” Hodak said. “Decoding cursor control or robotic arm control from a human – people have been doing that for 30 years.”

What’s new, however, is the engineering. “The innovation at Neuralink is making [a device] small enough and low-power enough that you can fully implant it and close the skin, and have something that isn’t an infection risk. That genuinely was new."....

....MUCH MORE 

Related:

"A wave of biological privacy laws may be coming as tech gadgets capture our brain waves"
Those gadgets'll get nuthin' from me.

Musk's "Neuralink Will Offer Telepathy and then Brain Control of Teslabots"
Throw in Full Self Driving and paraplegics will recover a lot of agency/autonomy.

Watch Out Elon: China Unveils Neuralink Competitor

 "Big Tech sees neurotechnology as its next AI frontier" (ELON) 

"China's brain-computer interface technology is catching up to the US. But it envisions a very different use case: cognitive enhancement."

The Race To Put Implants In Your Head Is Heating Up 

"Folks Lining Up for Elon Musk's Brain Implants"
Now I'm as open-minded as the next guy, so to speak but...ummm...après vous, M. Musk, après vous.

And many, many more going back to 2016.

And the outro from "Brain implant startup backed by Bezos and Gates is testing mind-controlled computing on humans": 

The city of Chicago should probably keep an eye on this. There are neighborhoods, Austin, Garfield Park, Englewood, where you will see paralyzed young men out and about in their mobility chairs and you realize that even though it is the killings that make the headlines the fact is the wounds and injuries are awfully grievous and affect many more people.

If interested we have a few dozen posts on Mind- Machine interfaces including on the work of Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, M.D., PhD and his laboratory at Duke University Medical Center.

"Disruptions: Brain Computer Interfaces Inch Closer to Mainstream"

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
—Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future (revised edition, 1973)

• "Microsoft wants to patent mind control" (MSFT)
• (Quantum Computer Maker) D-Wave Founder's New Startup Combines AI, Robots, and Monkeys in Exo-Suits
• More Than You Might Want To Know About Elon Musk's Neuralink
• Musk's Mind-Machine Interface, Neuralink, Reports Progress: Monkeys Now Playing Pong
• Questions America Wants Answered: Would Elon Musk's Neuralink Solve All of Accounting’s Problems?
• DARPA: "Six Paths to the Nonsurgical Future of Brain-Machine Interfaces"

And on Professor Nicolelis: 

"In Scientific First, Researchers Link Two Rats' Brains via Computer" (What's next, the paralyzed walk?)
Ya gotta love this guy. He's a showman but he publishes in open-access journals, in effect letting the whole world have at it. More after the jump.

Oh Great, Now Our Brains Can Get Hacked
I knew this was going to happen. Knew it. Afraid to say it, sound like crazy person, but knew it. Links below.

Here's The Most Advanced Human Brain-to-Brain Interface
Monkey Steers Wheelchair With It's Little Monkey Mind
July 2015
Mind-Meld: Neuroscientists Link Three Monkey Brains Into Living Computer

March 8, 2015

Doc Nicolelis: "Brain-to-brain communication has arrived. How we did it"

Apr. 23, 2014

"World Cup Mind-Control Demo Faces Deadlines, Critics"

Nov. 6, 2013
Huh, The Brain/Machine Interface Biz Made Some Progress Last Month
March 2, 2013 
Update: Not Everyone is Impressed With Dr. Miguel Nicolelis' Latest Intercontinental Mind-Meld
Feb. 23, 2013 
Maybe He Didn't See the Part Where the Monkey Controlled a Robot on the Other Side of the World With Its Little Monkey Brain 
Feb. 21, 2013
UPDATED--"A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen...."

"World Cup Mind-Control Demo Faces Deadlines, Critics"

In previous posts I've said we're probably watching, in real time, a Nobel Prize being won but there are criticisms of what Dr. Dr. Nicolelis is planning.
From MIT's Technology Review, April 15, 2014:

A Brazilian neuroscientist says brain-controlled robotics will let the paralyzed walk again. 

In less than 60 days, Brazil will begin hosting soccer’s 2014 World Cup, even though workers are still hurrying to pour concrete at three unfinished stadiums. At a laboratory in São Paulo, a Duke University neuroscientist is in his own race with the World Cup clock. He is rushing to finish work on a mind-controlled exoskeleton that he says a paralyzed Brazilian volunteer will don, navigate across a soccer pitch using his or her thoughts, and use to make the ceremonial opening kick of the tournament on June 12.

The project, called Walk Again, is led by Miguel Nicolelis, a 53-year-old native of Brazil and one of the biggest names in neuroscience. If it goes as planned, the kick will be a highly public display of research into brain-machine interfaces, a technology that aims to help paralyzed people control machines with their thoughts and restore their ability to get around.

“It’s going to be like putting a man on the moon—it’s conquering a level of audacity and innovation that the people outside Brazil aren’t used to associating with Brazil,” Nicolelis has told audiences. The kick, he has said, “will inaugurate a new era of neuroscience, [that of] neuroengineering.”

But the Walk Again project is drawing doubters. Saying the demonstration is as much publicity stunt as science, they question whether it will illustrate any real degree of thought control. That’s because it relies on a fairly old, imprecise brain-recording technology called EEG, or electroencephalography.

At least three other research groups have recently published reports of EEG-controlled exoskeletons. Yet so far, none have managed to do much more than send a start or stop signal. They let the robotic harness do the rest of the work on a preset trajectory, with plenty of outside assistance in balancing.

That suggests that the level of brain control could be disappointingly minimal, even if it’s presented as a breakthrough on TV. “What would happen if a gust of wind moved the ball by three centimeters right before the demo began?” asks Andrew Schwartz, a neuroprosthetics researcher at the University of Pittsburgh. “Everything you’ll see in the demo will be fancy robotics, not brain control, and it will probably all be preprogrammed.”...MORE

Our April d1, 2014 post "Shortly before 5pm local time on 12 June 2014, a young paraplegic Brazilian will stand up from a wheelchair, walk over to midfield, and take the first kick of the 2014 World Cup" has links to earlier posts and begins:

Long time readers know Dr., Dr.* Nicolelis is a bit of a showman.
And probably going to win the Medicine or Physiology Nobel....

*M.D., PhD, hence the double Doc. 

Mind-Meld: Neuroscientists Link Three Monkey Brains Into Living Computer

I've said a few times that we may be watching a guy win a Medicine/Physiology Nobel, in real time.
And as a bonus we get the understated pull-quote of the week:

"In principle we could communicate information much faster [with a brainet] than with vision and language, but there's a really high bar,"...

- Jason Ritt, Ph.D., Boston University

Errrrrmmm, yes.

From New Scientist:

Animal brains connected up to make mind-melded computer

Two heads are better than one, and three monkey brains can control an avatar better than any single monkey. For the first time, a team has networked the brains of multiple animals to form a living computer that can perform tasks and solve problems.

If human brains could be similarly connected, it might give us superhuman problem-solving abilities, and allow us to communicate abstract thoughts and experiences. "It is really exciting," says Iyad Rahwan at the Masdar Institute in Dubai, UAE, who was not involved in the work. "It will change the way humans cooperate."

The work, published today, is an advance on standard brain-machine interfaces – devices that have enabled people and animals to control machines and prosthetic limbs by thought alone. These tend to work by converting the brain's electrical activity into signals that a computer can interpret.

Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, and his colleagues wanted to extend the idea by incorporating multiple brains at once. The team connected the brains of three monkeys to a computer that controlled an animated screen image representing a robotic arm, placing electrodes into brain areas involved in movement.

By synchronising their thoughts, the monkeys were able to move the arm to reach a target – at which point the team rewarded them with with juice.

Brainet

Then the team made things trickier: each monkey could only control the arm in one dimension, for example. But the monkeys still managed to make the arm reach the target by working together. "They synchronise their brains and they achieve the task by creating a superbrain – a structure that is the combination of three brains," says Nicolelis. He calls the structure a "brainet".

These monkeys were connected only to a computer, not one another, but in a second set of experiments, the team connected the brains of four rats to a computer and to each other. Each rat had two sets of electrodes implanted in regions of the brain involved in movement control – one to stimulate the brain and another to record its activity....MORE

Previously on the way-smarter-than-me channel: 

March 8, 2015

Doc Nicolelis: "Brain-to-brain communication has arrived. How we did it"

Apr. 23, 2014

"World Cup Mind-Control Demo Faces Deadlines, Critics"

Nov. 6, 2013
Huh, The Brain/Machine Interface Biz Made Some Progress Last Month
September 17, 2013 
Where In the World Is Izabella Kaminska?--"Scientist Hacks Into Another Scientist's Mind"
March 2, 2013 
Update: Not Everyone is Impressed With Dr. Miguel Nicolelis' Latest Intercontinental Mind-Meld
Feb. 23, 2013 
Maybe He Didn't See the Part Where the Monkey Controlled a Robot on the Other Side of the World With Its Little Monkey Brain 
Feb. 21, 2013
UPDATED--"A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen...."
Feb. 8, 2013
"In Scientific First, Researchers Link Two Rats' Brains via Computer" (What's next, the paralyzed walk?)

Shortly before 5pm local time on 12 June 2014, a young paraplegic Brazilian will stand up from a wheelchair, walk over to midfield, and take the first kick of the 2014 World Cup

Long time readers know Dr., Dr. Nicolelis is a bit of a showman.
And probably going to win the Medicine or Physiology Nobel.
From the Guardian:

Mind-controlled robotic suit to debut at World Cup 2014
Paraplegic Brazilian will don exoskeleton to kick off tournament in first public display of possible wheelchair replacement

Shortly before 5pm local time on 12 June at Arena Corinthians in São Paulo, a young paraplegic Brazilian will stand up from a wheelchair, walk over to midfield, and take the first kick of the 2014 World Cup.

For those hoping for miracles at football's greatest tournament, the scene may be the closest they get to witnessing one. For Miguel Nicolelis, a neuroengineer based at Duke University in North Carolina, the moment demands faith of another kind. As hundreds of millions tune in for the opening match, they will see the first public demonstration of technology he claims will turn wheelchairs into museum pieces.

The technology in question is a mind-controlled robotic exoskeleton. The complex and conspicuous robotic suit, built from lightweight alloys and powered by hydraulics, has a simple enough function. When a paraplegic person straps themselves in, the machine does the job that their leg muscles no longer can.

The exoskeleton is the culmination of years of work by an international team of scientists and engineers on the Walk Again project. The robotics work was coordinated by Gordon Cheng at the Technical University in Munich, and French researchers built the exoskeleton. Nicolelis's team focused on ways to read people's brain waves, and use those signals to control robotic limbs.

On Tuesday, the team launches a Facebook page that will document the project in the days leading up to the World Cup. A dedicated website is due to go live later this week....MORE

*M.D., PhD, hence the double Doc.

Previously:
Nov. 6, 2013
Huh, The Brain/Machine Interface Biz Made Some Progress Last Month
September 17, 2013 
Where In the World Is Izabella Kaminska?--"Scientist Hacks Into Another Scientist's Mind"
March 2, 2013 
Update: Not Everyone is Impressed With Dr. Miguel Nicolelis' Latest Intercontinental Mind-Meld
Feb. 23, 2013 
Maybe He Didn't See the Part Where the Monkey Controlled a Robot on the Other Side of the World With Its Little Monkey Brain 
Feb. 21, 2013
UPDATED--"A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen...."
Feb. 8, 2013
"In Scientific First, Researchers Link Two Rats' Brains via Computer" (What's next, the paralyzed walk?)

Update: Not Everyone is Impressed With Dr. Miguel Nicolelis' Latest Intercontinental Mind-Meld

In Thurscday's ""In Scientific First, Researchers Link Two Rats' Brains via Computer" (What's next, the paralyzed walk?)" I said we were watching in real time someone doing the work to win a Nobel Prize.
I've also said Nicolelis is a showman. In the case of this rat experiment I don't see how it furthers his work on overcoming paralysis but he's the genius not me and if he wants to hook a couple rats together just to show he can, more power to him.

From Nature:

Intercontinental mind-meld unites two rats

But critics are sceptical about predicted organic computer.

...Nicolelis says that the work, published today in Scientific Reports¹, is the first step towards constructing an organic computer that uses networks of linked animal brains to solve tasks. But other scientists who work on neural implants are sceptical. Lee Miller, a physiologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, says that Nicolelis’s team has made many important contributions to neural interfaces, but the current paper could be mistaken for a “poor Hollywood science-fiction script”. He adds, “It is not clear to what end the effort is really being made.” ...

...MORE

"Disruptions: Brain Computer Interfaces Inch Closer to Mainstream"

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

-Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future (revised edition, 1973)

Right now the most amazing unclassified stuff is probably the prosthetic limbs coming out of DARPA funding and the mind-machine interface work that Dr. Nicolelis is doing with the goal of having a paralyzed person kick the first ball at the FIFA 2014 Soccer World Cup on June 12, 2014, in São Paulo, Brazil.

From the New York Times' Bits blog:

Last week, engineers sniffing around the programming code for Google Glass found hidden examples of ways that people might interact with the wearable computers without having to say a word. Among them, a user could nod to turn the glasses on or off. A single wink might tell the glasses to take a picture.

But don’t expect these gestures to be necessary for long. Soon, we might interact with our smartphones and computers simply by using our minds. In a couple of years, we could be turning on the lights at home just by thinking about it, or sending an e-mail from our smartphone without even pulling the device from our pocket. Farther into the future, your robot assistant will appear by your side with a glass of lemonade simply because it knows you are thirsty.

Researchers in Samsung’s Emerging Technology Lab are testing tablets that can be controlled by your brain, using a cap that resembles a ski hat studded with monitoring electrodes, the MIT Technology Review, the science and technology journal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reported this month.

The technology, often called a brain computer interface, was conceived to enable people with paralysis and other disabilities to interact with computers or control robotic arms, all by simply thinking about such actions. Before long, these technologies could well be in consumer electronics, too.

Some crude brain-reading products already exist, letting people play easy games or move a mouse around a screen.

NeuroSky, a company based in San Jose, Calif., recently released a Bluetooth-enabled headset that can monitor slight changes in brain waves and allow people to play concentration-based games on computers and smartphones. These include a zombie-chasing game, archery and a game where you dodge bullets — all these apps use your mind as the joystick. Another company, Emotiv, sells a headset that looks like a large alien hand and can read brain waves associated with thoughts, feelings and expressions. The device can be used to play Tetris-like games or search through Flickr photos by thinking about an emotion the person is feeling — like happy, or excited — rather than searching by keywords....MORE

We've had a few posts on Dr. Nicolelis: 

UPDATED--"A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen...."
Maybe He Didn't See the Part Where the Monkey Controlled a Robot on the Other Side of the World With Its Little Monkey Brain
"In Scientific First, Researchers Link Two Rats' Brains via Computer" (What's next, the paralyzed walk?)
Update: Not Everyone is Impressed With Dr. Miguel Nicolelis' Latest Intercontinental Mind-Meld

And re: DARPA going back to our first year on the www we've been begging:

Here's something that got misplaced in the link-vault.
(does anyone have a program to manage a rolling inventory of 20K links, spread over a couple servers and four PC's? We're looking for some sort of Brain-Computer Interface thingy. DARPA?...

And a year later:

We've got too many feedreaders and terminals and I really need DARPA to get cracking on the mind-machine interface link/bookmark retrieval thing. All this whining is due to a misplaced link.
We've got 45,000 of the suckers in the link-vault so I can probably jury-rig a post without it....

And a couple times a year since then.
We're now up to a quarter million bookmarks in the link-vault and 1400 feed-readers and terminals and still no interface.

Doc Nicolelis: "Brain-to-brain communication has arrived. How we did it"

Actually he's a double doc, M.D., PhD.
From TED:

You may remember neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis — he built the brain-controlled exoskeleton that allowed a paralyzed man to kick the first ball of the 2014 World Cup. What’s he working on now? Building ways for two minds (rats and monkeys, for now) to send messages brain to brain. Watch to the end for an experiment that, as he says, will go to "the limit of your imagination."...MORE (video)

Interactive transcript:

0:11 On June 12, 2014, precisely at 3:33 in a balmy winter afternoon in São Paulo, Brazil, a typical South American winter afternoon, this kid, this young man that you see celebrating here like he had scored a goal, Juliano Pinto, 29 years old, accomplished a magnificent deed. Despite being paralyzed and not having any sensation from mid-chest to the tip of his toes as the result of a car crash six years ago that killed his brother and produced a complete spinal cord lesion that left Juliano in a wheelchair, Juliano rose to the occasion, and on this day did something that pretty much everybody that saw him in the six years deemed impossible. Juliano Pinto delivered the opening kick of the 2014 Brazilian World Soccer Cup here just by thinking. He could not move his body, but he could imagine the movements needed to kick a ball. He was an athlete before the lesion. He's a para-athlete right now. He's going to be in the Paralympic Games, I hope, in a couple years. But what the spinal cord lesion did not rob from Juliano was his ability to dream. And dream he did that afternoon, for a stadium of about 75,000 people and an audience of close to a billion watching on TV.

 

1:53 And that kick crowned, basically, 30 years of basic research studying how the brain, how this amazing universe that we have between our ears that is only comparable to universe that we have above our head because it has about 100 billion elements talking to each other through electrical brainstorms, what Juliano accomplished took 30 years to imagine in laboratories and about 15 years to plan....

...MORE

HT: Complexity Digest

Previously on the Smarter-than-me channel: 

Apr. 23, 2014

"World Cup Mind-Control Demo Faces Deadlines, Critics"

Nov. 6, 2013
Huh, The Brain/Machine Interface Biz Made Some Progress Last Month
September 17, 2013 
Where In the World Is Izabella Kaminska?--"Scientist Hacks Into Another Scientist's Mind"
March 2, 2013 
Update: Not Everyone is Impressed With Dr. Miguel Nicolelis' Latest Intercontinental Mind-Meld
Feb. 23, 2013 
Maybe He Didn't See the Part Where the Monkey Controlled a Robot on the Other Side of the World With Its Little Monkey Brain 
Feb. 21, 2013
UPDATED--"A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen...."
Feb. 8, 2013
"In Scientific First, Researchers Link Two Rats' Brains via Computer" (What's next, the paralyzed walk?)

(Quantum Computer Maker) D-Wave Founder's New Startup Combines AI, Robots, and Monkeys in Exo-Suits

From IEEE Spectrum:

llustration: IEEE Spectrum; images: U.S. Patent Application US20160243701A1 via Google Patents

A new startup called Kindred, founded by a group of quantum computing pioneers, 

wants to develop an advanced AI system to control and train robots.

As if quantum computing wasn’t mind-bending enough, one of D-Wave Systems’ founders is now pursuing another futuristic idea: using artificial intelligence and high-tech exoskeleton suits to allow humans—and, at least according to one description of the technology, monkeys—to control and train an army of intelligent robots.

Geordie Rose is a cofounder and chief technology officer of D-Wave, the Canadian company selling machines that it claims exploit quantum mechanical effects to solve certain problems hundreds of millions times faster than traditional computers.

Now an IEEE Spectrum investigation has discovered that Rose is also CEO of Kindred Systems (aka Kindred AI), a stealthy startup he founded with others in 2014 dedicated to delivering advanced teleoperated and autonomous robots. The goal is making programming robots faster and less costly–and possibly revolutionize the world of work.

Kindred has so far received well over US $10 million in funding, according to Data Collective, the venture capital firm that led one of the rounds. Another Silicon Valley VC firm, Eleven Two Capital, also has a stake in the company. In a blog post, Data Collective described Kindred as using “AI-driven robotics so that one human worker can do the work of four.”

Kindred has kept a very low profile, issuing no press releases and maintaining only a very basic website. However, last November, Suzanne Gildert, a former D-Wave researcher who is a cofounder and CTO of Kindred, told an audience of technologists that the company was building personal robots that use machine learning to recognize patterns and make decisions. “Quantum mechanics is cool, but humanlike intelligence in robots is cooler,” she is reported as saying.

Kindred, based in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, recently filed a U.S. patent application revealing the extent of its ambitions. The document describes a system where an operator wearing a head-mounted display and an exo-suit of sensors and actuators carries out everyday tasks. Data from the suit and from other external sensors is then analyzed by computers in the cloud and used to control distant robots. The data could also be used to train machine learning algorithms that would allow the robots to imitate the operator’s actions autonomously.

“An operator may include a non-human animal such as a monkey,” says the patent, “and the operator interface may be…re-sized to account for the differences between a human operator and a monkey operator.” (This isn’t the first device to enable monkeys to direct robots, but previous research has focused on brain-machine interfaces, not robot control and autonomy.)...

...MUCH MORE

As that last line states this is coming perilously close to Doc Nicolelis’s turf:

Where In the World Is Izabella Kaminska?--"Scientist Hacks Into Another Scientist's Mind"
Here's The Most Advanced Human Brain-to-Brain Interface
Monkey Steers Wheelchair With It's Little Monkey Mind
July 2015
Mind-Meld: Neuroscientists Link Three Monkey Brains Into Living Computer

March 8, 2015

Doc Nicolelis: "Brain-to-brain communication has arrived. How we did it"

Apr. 23, 2014

"World Cup Mind-Control Demo Faces Deadlines, Critics"

Nov. 6, 2013
Huh, The Brain/Machine Interface Biz Made Some Progress Last Month
March 2, 2013
Update: Not Everyone is Impressed With Dr. Miguel Nicolelis' Latest Intercontinental Mind-Meld
Feb. 23, 2013
Maybe He Didn't See the Part Where the Monkey Controlled a Robot on the Other Side of the World With Its Little Monkey Brain 
Feb. 21, 2013
UPDATED--"A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen...."
Feb. 8, 2013
"In Scientific First, Researchers Link Two Rats' Brains via Computer" (What's next, the paralyzed walk?) 

Oh Great, Now Our Brains Can Get Hacked

I knew this was going to happen. Knew it. Afraid to say it, sound like crazy person, but knew it. Links below.

From the Motherboard:

How Hackers Could Get Inside Your Head With 'Brain Malware'

Hackers have spyware in your mind. You’re minding your business, playing a game or scrolling through social media, and all the while they’re gathering your most private information direct from your brain signals. Your likes and dislikes. Your political preferences. Your sexuality. Your PIN.

It’s a futuristic scenario, but not that futuristic. The idea of securing our thoughts is a real concern with the introduction of brain-computer interfaces—devices that are controlled by brain signals such as EEG (electroencephalography), and which are already used in medical scenarios and, increasingly, in non-medical applications such as gaming.

Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle say that we need to act fast to implement a privacy and security framework to prevent our brain signals from being used against us before the technology really takes off.

“There’s actually very little time,” said electrical engineer Howard Chizeck over Skype. “If we don’t address this quickly, it’ll be too late.”

I first met Chizeck and fellow engineer Tamara Bonaci when I visited the University of Washington Biorobotics Lab to check out their work on hacking teleoperated surgical robots. While I was there, they showed me some other hacking research they were working on, including how they could use a brain-computer interface (BCI), coupled with subliminal messaging in a videogame, to extract private information about an individual.

Bonaci showed me how it would work. She placed a BCI on my head—which looked like a shower cap covered in electrodes—and sat me in front of a computer to play Flappy Whale, a simple platform game based on the addictive Flappy Bird. All I had to do was guide a flopping blue whale through the on-screen course using the keyboard arrow keys. But as I happily played, trying to increase my dismal top score, something unusual happened. The logos for American banks started appearing: Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo—each flickering in the top-right of the screen for just milliseconds before disappearing again. Blink and you’d miss them.

The idea is simple: Hackers could insert images like these into a dodgy game or app and record your brain’s unintentional response to them through the BCI, perhaps gaining insight into which brands you’re familiar with—in this case, say, which bank you bank with—or which images you have a strong reaction to.

Bonaci’s team have several different Flappy Whale demos, also using logos from local coffee houses and fast food chains, for instance. You might not care who knows your weak spot for Kentucky Fried Chicken, but you can see where it’s going: Imagine if these “subliminal” images showed politicians, or religious icons, or sexual images of men and women. Personal information gleaned this way could potentially be used for embarrassment, coercion, or manipulation.

“Broadly speaking, the problem with brain-computer interfaces is that, with most of the devices these days, when you’re picking up electric signals to control an application… the application is not only getting access to the useful piece of EEG needed to control that app; it’s also getting access to the whole EEG,” explained Bonaci. “And that whole EEG signal contains rich information about us as persons.”...MORE

See also:
Where In the World Is Izabella Kaminska?--"Scientist Hacks Into Another Scientist's Mind"
Here's The Most Advanced Human Brain-to-Brain Interface
Monkey Steers Wheelchair With It's Little Monkey Mind
July 2015
Mind-Meld: Neuroscientists Link Three Monkey Brains Into Living Computer

March 8, 2015

Doc Nicolelis: "Brain-to-brain communication has arrived. How we did it"

Apr. 23, 2014

"World Cup Mind-Control Demo Faces Deadlines, Critics"

Nov. 6, 2013
Huh, The Brain/Machine Interface Biz Made Some Progress Last Month
March 2, 2013 
Update: Not Everyone is Impressed With Dr. Miguel Nicolelis' Latest Intercontinental Mind-Meld
Feb. 23, 2013 
Maybe He Didn't See the Part Where the Monkey Controlled a Robot on the Other Side of the World With Its Little Monkey Brain 
Feb. 21, 2013
UPDATED--"A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen...."
Feb. 8, 2013
"In Scientific First, Researchers Link Two Rats' Brains via Computer" (What's next, the paralyzed walk?) 

Here's The Most Advanced Human Brain-to-Brain Interface

From Motherboard:

Scientists at the University of Washington have successfully completed what is believed to be the most complex human brain-to-brain communication experiment ever. It allowed two people located a mile apart to play a game of "20 Questions" using only their brainwaves, a nearly imperceptible flash of light, and an internet connection to communicate. 

Brain-to-brain interfaces have gotten much more complex over the last several years. Miguel Nicolelis, a researcher at Duke University, has even created "organic computers" by connecting the brains of several rats and chimps together.
But in humans, the technology remains pretty basic, primarily because the most advanced brain-to-brain interfaces require direct access to the brain. We're not exactly willing to saw open a person's skull in the name of performing some rudimentary tasks for science. 

Using two well-known technologies, electroencephalography EEG and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), Andrea Stocco and Chantel Prat were able to increase the complexity of a human brain to brain interface. 

The EEG was used to read one person's brain waves, while the TMS machine was used to create a "phosphene"—a ring of light perceptible only to the wearer—on the other. 

In the experiment, the EEG wearer was shown an object—a shark, for instance. The TMS wearer then used a computer mouse to ask a question of the EEG wearer—maybe "can it fly?" The EEG wearer then focused on a screen flashing either "yes" or "no." The brain waves were then read and transferred via the internet. If the answer was "yes," the TMS wearer would see a phosphene, suggesting he or she was on the right track to guessing the object. 

The whole setup looks something like this:

Image: PLOS One

In 72 percent of games, the guesser was able to eventually get to the correct object. In a control group, just 18 percent of guessers were. 

As I mentioned, both of these technology are well-known and are used in medical settings regularly. There is perhaps no totally new technological breakthrough here, but it's a clever way of hooking neurological devices to each other to complete a task. In a paper published in PLOS One, Stocco and Prat write that the task is "collaborative, potentially open-ended, operates in real-time, and requires conscious processing of incoming information."...MORE

Hey, mine too!  Collaborative, open-ended, real-time, conscious...
Never mind.
So to speak.

Previously:
Mind-Meld: Neuroscientists Link Three Monkey Brains Into Living Computer
I've said a few times that we may be watching a guy win a Medicine/Physiology Nobel, in real time.
And as a bonus we get the understated pull-quote of the week:

"In principle we could communicate information much faster [with a brainet] than with vision and language, but there's a really high bar,"...

- Jason Ritt, Ph.D., Boston University

Errrrrmmm, yes.

Huh, The Brain/Machine Interface Biz Made Some Progress Last Month
A New Interface Lets Monkeys Control Two Virtual Arms With Their Brain Alone...

Update: Not Everyone is Impressed With Dr. Miguel Nicolelis' Latest Intercontinental Mind-Meld 

Maybe He Didn't See the Part Where the Monkey Controlled a Robot on the Other Side of the World With Its Little Monkey Brain

In Scientific First, Researchers Link Two Rats' Brains via Computer (What's next, the paralyzed walk?)

UPDATED--"A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen...." 

Where In the World Is Izabella Kaminska?--"Scientist Hacks Into Another Scientist's Mind"

Or, as one VentureBeat commenter put it: