Brain Implant Gives Monkeys Virtual Limbs

Earnest Cavalli

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Brain Implant Gives Monkeys Virtual Limbs



Monkeys with virtual arms: breakthrough in technology to help the disabled or premise for the next Planet of the Apes movie? You make the call.

Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, of Duke University Medical Center, is a man with a dream. A dream of restoring feeling and functionality to the disabled. A dream that is now a bit closer to reality thanks to some cybernetically-enhanced simians.

The monkeys have been implanted with a brain chip and a series of electrodes that allows them to feel sensations through an arm that is not their own. These primates can "feel" the texture of objects as easily as they might through their natural limbs, which is an important step toward creating artificial arms and legs capable of replicating natural human movement.

Imagine you're standing in a field of grass, barefoot. Every time you take a step forward, your foot contacts the ground and a complex series of sensations tells your brain how to react to this latest step. Is the ground smooth enough to stand on? Are there any bees hidden in the grass? This is the kind of thing we all take for granted, but is a huge hurdle in designing faux limbs, whether they be legs or arms.

Dr. Nicolelis' team hopes to one day create an exoskeleton that will restore a close analogue of natural movement to the disabled using these same kinds of brain-stimulating implants.

"The patient will be able to use their brain to control their movement, but they could also get sensations back from their legs, arms and hands," Nicolelis said.

"We are looking to have a demonstration of this in time for the World Cup in 2014. When the Brazilian team walks on to the field, we want them accompanied by two quadriplegic teenagers who will walk on to the pitch and kick the ball using this technology."

For now though, the technology is relegated to test monkeys, who seem to be growing increasingly capable at using their phantom limbs. In a series of tests described by the UK's Guardian newspaper, the monkeys learned to use their virtual arms to feel out a three-dimensional space. When they moved the prosthetic hand into a certain area (again, with only the power of their minds), they were rewarded with a bit of juice. According to researchers, this kind of simple reward system is enough for the primates to grow quite proficient at using the new limbs relatively rapidly.

That, in particular, is what gives Dr. Nicolelis hope that this tech can be applied to human patients. "The remarkable success with nonhuman primates is what makes us believe that humans could accomplish the same task much more easily in the near future," Nicolelis said. "We hope that in the next few years this technology could help to restore a more autonomous life to many patients who are currently locked in without being able to move or experience any tactile sensation of the surrounding world."

Source: Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/oct/05/monkeys-mind-control-virtual-arm]

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thiosk

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Cool. Problem is, the brain/computer interface is crude. Don't worry, I'm working on that aspect of the technology.
 

darthotaku

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this is really cool, not only because it might help the disabled, but because with this technology we could also develope awesome video games. just imagine, you lose a leg in a car accident, and within a short time you are walking normally, then go and use the exact same technology to play your favourite game. That is some awesome science fiction getting closer to science fact.
 

DRes82

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Really cool! First step on the road to deus ex style prosthetics. I'd definitely replace my biological limbs with mechanically enhanced alternatives.
 

Angel Molina

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Gentlemen, welcome to the future!!!

This actually sounds pretty incredible if I do say so myself. Fancy that... artificial limbs that act more like the real thing.
 

BrainWalker

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Earnest Cavalli said:
[/QUOTE]
Freakin' Cyber Woo. Damn that takes me back. That is quite possibly the perfect gaming-related image to accompany this story. You, sir, have earned yourselve some massive props. These are even rollover props that won't expire at the end of the year.
 

Palfreyfish

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Well that's absolutely amazing. We appear to be one step closer to Deus Ex: HR style Augmentations...
 

Venats

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So... what happens when these monkeys get an MRI/walk near a strong enough magnet/the chip starts experiencing errors over the years? Do they die? Does the chip have to be replaced, and how long of a time window do we have before the broken chip starts acting as a poison? How does this 'solid' chip affect a very 'mushy' brain?

Its great that they managed tactile detection (hasn't this been worked on already? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2104531/), but the underlying short-comings still remain as this is all dependent on external components that one could argue add more weaknesses to the whole that makes up your body.

General, external prosthetic limbs are great things that help many people with limited draw backs, but we need to know more about the limits/hazards of this before we start praising it as the next great step. A metal leg, while you can't feel through it, isn't going to possibly murder you if it gets thrown out of whack by an external effect over which you have no control. Instead of sticking chips into people's heads, wouldn't it make much more sense to use our knowledge of neurons and the nervous system to create biologically identical replacements from their own stem cells for the people who lost body parts?
 

Smooth Operator

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You know what the best part of that is, those implants can be hooked directly to a virtual world... now think about that for a second.
 

Cpu46

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Sep 21, 2009
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I wonder, could you take that same or a similar chip and instead of having it get feedback from a prosthetic limb have it get feedback from a completely virtual source? Interact with your computer with completely virtual limbs or something like that?
 

Earnest Cavalli

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BrainWalker said:
Earnest Cavalli said:
[/QUOTE]
Freakin' Cyber Woo. Damn that takes me back. That is quite possibly the perfect gaming-related image to accompany this story. You, sir, have earned yourselve some massive props. These are even rollover props that won't expire at the end of the year.[/quote]

I'm glad somebody got that reference.
 

fulano

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BrainWalker said:
Earnest Cavalli said:
[/QUOTE]
Freakin' Cyber Woo. Damn that takes me back. That is quite possibly the perfect gaming-related image to accompany this story. You, sir, have earned yourselve some massive props. These are even rollover props that won't expire at the end of the year.[/quote]

You beat me to it.

Long live Cyber Woo.
 

sinterklaas

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Mr.K. said:
You know what the best part of that is, those implants can be hooked directly to a virtual world... now think about that for a second.
Fuck yeah!

I for one would be willing to have brain implants to have the most realistic video game experience ever.