
Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk - jaoued
http://www.nature.com/news/brain-implants-allow-paralysed-monkeys-to-walk-1.20967
======
biofox
_" For more than a decade, neuroscientist Grégoire Courtine has been flying
every few months from his lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in
Lausanne to another lab in Beijing, China, where he conducts research on
monkeys with the aim of treating spinal-cord injuries.

The commute is exhausting — on occasion he has even flown to Beijing, done
experiments, and returned the same night. But it is worth it, says Courtine,
because working with monkeys in China is less burdened by regulation than it
is in Europe and the United States"_

I personally know researchers who have to take similar measures to be able to
do their research.

When we are happy as a society to slaughter billions of animals every year for
food (usually keeping them in appalling conditions beforehand) I don't
understand how we can justify the restrictions we put on scientists.

~~~
Benjamin_Dobell
I would assume it's because monkeys are more intelligent than the animals we
tend to eat; cows, chickens, sheep & pigs.

Also, intentionally paralysing a creature, leaving it to live in that
condition, and then performing experimental surgery/procedures on it is
_significantly_ different than slaughtering it.

Whilst I appreciate the scientists mean well, and I do understand how this
could benefit humanity; this sort of research still seems unethical to me, and
at the very least makes me feel sick.

As a software developer and reverse engineer, this feels like hacking anyway.
It's not particularly scientific just to "capture and replay" data without
much understanding of how it works.

~~~
citricsquid
The intelligence argument is nonsense. Pigs are as intelligent as dogs.
Describe the treatment of livestock (pigs, chickens, cows) but frame it as
something that is happening to dogs and you'll drive hundreds of thousands of
outraged meat eaters to signing a petition. The reason is cognitive
dissonance, we're taught from the moment we can understand that it's okay to
farm animals and very few people ever really think about the consequences of
that. To be humane means "having or showing compassion or benevolence" which
is about as far from how you can describe the treatment of livestock that you
can get. To suggest that the the real problem with livestock farming is the
slaughter demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of where the real problems
lie, slaughter is one of the most humane parts of livestock farming.

Dairy cows spend more than half a decade being repeatedly raped and abused
until they're slaughtered because their bodies have been destroyed by the
milking process, and they spend that half a decade having their young snatched
away from them over and over again. If having the emotional intelligence to
mourn your stolen young isn't enough to justify ending the inhumane treatment
then it's certainly not intelligence that humans care about.

If this research is unethical then learn about gestation crates, which
immobilise pigs for months of their pregnancy.

~~~
nihonde
In that case, why not start with human subjects?

~~~
fsloth
Economic reasons? Humans are worth a lot more than monkeys. I know it's a
cruel reason and hardly the only one.

~~~
GFischer
Unfortunately not entirely true, depending on where you live.

Americans would be astounded to learn the usual settlements awarded for deaths
due to traffic accidents (as an example I'm familiar with) in South America.

Payments of 25.000 dollars aren't uncommon. Colombia and Uruguay pay around U$
150.000 per death. Heck, even first world countries like Spain can pay less
than that.

So, an expensive monkey pet can be more expensive than a human.

[http://www.therichest.com/luxury/most-expensive/10-most-
expe...](http://www.therichest.com/luxury/most-expensive/10-most-expensive-
animals-in-the-world/)

[https://www.scoopwhoop.com/Most-Expensive-
Pets/](https://www.scoopwhoop.com/Most-Expensive-Pets/)

(Spanish)
[http://sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2014/04/08/actualidad/13...](http://sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2014/04/08/actualidad/1396983870_372201.html)

------
quantisan
"The problem I see with this is that they implant monkey before paralysis and
can use machine learning to build a model of the monkey's unique
representation for walking. Then they paralyze and show the monkey's can adapt
to only using their interface in 5 days. There's no way the mapping from
neural activity to stimulation is generalizable..." [1]

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5c2ljz/brain_impla...](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5c2ljz/brain_implant_device_enables_paralyzed_monkeys/d9trzrr/)

~~~
noir_lord
I have a spinal condition called Syringomyelia, at the moment apart from
neuropathic pain it doesn't effect my ability to walk but down the line it
could (with complete paralysis been a possible outcome).

They could record the way my brain sends walk signals and if I end up
paralysed they have the data to train the model.

There are multiple spinal conditions that result in paralysis _after_ not be
been paralysed, not everyone who ends up in a wheelchair gets their by an
accident.

~~~
neurophenom
I hadn't thought of that kind of application before. Thanks.

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return0
We need to talk about animal experimentation regulation and protests here in
europe. It has gone so far that scientists have literally given up their
science: [http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/05/embattled-max-
planck-...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/05/embattled-max-planck-
neuroscientist-quits-primate-research)

------
sandworm101
We have seen many such interfaces in recent years, but as I understand these
techniques they all suffer the same problem. The body eventually coats the
electrodes in a non-conductive layer, essentially scar tissue, and the whole
thing grinds to a halt in a matter of weeks. Until that practical limitation
is surmounted, it seems very wrong to treat animals in such a manner. Watching
the paralyzed monkey (also the rat) struggle in obvious agony as the
commentators cheered was not fun. This was not the sort of thing I had
expected to see on a program clearly aimed at a general audience. This was the
very dark side of animal testing.

I saw this story on a canadian news show a couple days ago, a show that
regularly does spots on human exploration of Mars. The stories are similar.
The headline feel-good story is about the shiny new mars habitat or spacesuit
someone is testing, but they haven;t figured out how to actually get it to
mars. The result is the false impression that the dreamed future, colonizing
Mars and curing paralysis, is closer than is true.

~~~
Balgair
Gliosis is a big problem for sure, and the central nervous system's scarring
is not well understood at this time.

Typically with recording electrodes you can either 'jiggle' them to shake off
the scarring cells or pass a small amount of current between the combined
electrodes to kill off the cells. These recording electrodes are typically
only a few microns apart, so long range damage is a non-issue if the subject
is not connected to ground in another way. You can go for ~6 months like this
before the gliosis really builds up, and honestly, by that time the recording
electrode has probably broken anyway or the subject has bonked the implant and
it broke that way too, or as is typically the case with monkey subjects, it
tore out the implant and ate it, stabbed another monkey with it, or tried to
have sex with it. Monkey studies are rare and hard, not just because of
ethical issues, but because monkeys are clever little assholes.

~~~
sandworm101
The process of refreshing an electrode sounds tortuous for the subject. And
your information re monkeys clawing out devices Jurassic Park-style is equally
disturbing. This points to the conclusion that the efforts spent internalizing
the system has less to do with benefit and more to do with preventing the
animal from ending the agony.

But speaking of the electrodes, how long do they last in human subjects? Docs
have been implanting various electrodes in human nerves/brains for decades and
I assume a paralyzed person in a research study isn't going to rip them out.
With enough current can the gliosis be overcome perpetually?

(lol, spellcheck went with 'parallelized' and 'gigolos'. That might say
something about my normal writing subjects.)

~~~
Balgair
Well, there are no pain neurons inside of the central nervous system, so they
literally cannot feel anything when you record or 'clean' the tips of the
electrodes. Besides, since electricity takes the least impediant path, the
current can only flow locally, i.e. over the non-sensing scarring cells. There
is not harm to the subject, only to the scar tissue.

Human electrodes can last a lifetime if they are properly done. Look at a
pace-maker. They last decades. Granted they are not for individual neuron
recordings, but they work great. The first deep brain stimulation patients are
about 5 years old now and they seem to be doing fine as a whole, the
Parkinson's disease symptoms are significantly lessened and their quality of
life is very improved. It'll take more time and effort, but yeah, I think we
can overcome the gliosis, though it is probably gong to be a drug interaction
with the mechanical/electrical that will do it, not just electrical alone.

------
intrasight
I struggled with this while in graduate school studying neuroscience.
Fortunately, I was studying crustaceans so there were not too many ethical
issues. But there was rodent and monkey research happening in the school. I
choose to return to my first profession - software. I assume that I'll be long
dead before there are ethical issues with experimenting on AI.

Animal research is something that we as a society are going to struggle with
for many years into the future. I would like to be able to argue that it is
for the greater good of the planet, but I don't think that I could put up a
good argument that we are being proper stewards of the planet.

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bognition
This is absolutely fantastic and its a great step in the right direction but
we are still years if not decades away from being able to circumvent spinal
lesions in humans.

One of the major problems with human spinal lesions is the loss of control of
the trunk of the body (ie the core). Humans have dozens of muscle groups that
control balance and posture through minute movements. Without fine grain
control over these muscles balance is going to be extremely difficult.

~~~
tim333
>we are still years if not decades away from being able to circumvent spinal
lesions in humans.

On the other hand it's quite possible that if you implanted the same equipment
into humans right now that it could work with a bit of tweaking. It's kind of
hard to say till someone tries it.

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truth_sentinell
I'm eager for the day to come when we can map an entire animal to a computer
model -or even human-, so animals won't be necessary anymore for this kind of
procedure. How many years away do you guys think we are from that dream?

~~~
logfromblammo
That depends largely on whether you want to model mites or mammals.

We could probably make a computer model of tiny arthropods in 2017, if someone
were willing to throw piles of money at the problem. A computer model of a
human will be more difficult.

But also consider that an acceptably accurate model of the human brain would
be an AI. You would still be experimenting on a person.

~~~
truth_sentinell
I'd definitely consider a fully emulated human brain another human, because by
the premise that's fully emulated, it will also feel desires, and have
survival instincts. That'd be another moral debate -similar to slavery-,
because there will be people that would emphatize with them, and there will be
others that will think they're just "machines".

But that's talk for another topic. On this case, you'd want to emulate only
the physical functioning of our brain and body and not our minds.

~~~
logfromblammo
The emulation program becomes the mind. You cannot avoid it. The natural
consequence of the boot-up sequence for a real human brain is a human
consciousness. If you create a precise and accurate model of a human brain in
software, and emulate its physical functions, the emulation program contains
the consciousness.

If you try something clever, like disconnecting all motor controls and sensory
inputs, you now have a person who is blind, deaf, numb, anosmic, and
paralyzed. The horror of that situation is compounded if you are emulating
over a scanned copy of a cadaver's brain.

------
adam12
Another reason why we need strong, unbreakable encryption. Can you imagine
something like this getting hacked/cracked?

~~~
IpV8
Stop kicking yourself. Stop kicking yourself. Stop kicking yourself...

~~~
pvaldes
or murdering someone...

~~~
o_____________o
Is this guerrilla marketing for Ghost in the Shell?

------
TeeWEE
I cant help to feel sad for the monkey. I'm not sure this is the way research
should be done. Why not try this on a smaller scale animal first before doing
it on a monkey?

Also you don"t need to cut the spinal cord todo data analysis.

~~~
kayoone
Do you also feel sad for the millions of animals that live in miserable
conditions for months/years just to be eaten by us afterwards? This is
arguably less of a torture to a much smaller number of animals, yet it is
heavily regulated in most countries.

~~~
TeeWEE
I have a lot of friends who are farmers. Those animals dont live in miserable
conditions. And when they are killed, its in an instant. Heck i even feeded
cows and pigs.

Its something different to experiment on a living animal.

However I do understand its important for research. However its a difficult
subject.

------
wehadfun
Seems like a zombie scenario. Where dead bodies are controlled wirelessly
through implants.

~~~
Balgair
Haha, we are already there. Here's the instructions from 2014 via a 15 year
old: [http://www.instructables.com/id/Control-a-Cockroach-With-
Ard...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Control-a-Cockroach-With-Arduino-for-
Under-30/)

~~~
nojvek
Holy shit. That made me queer at the same time fascinated

~~~
Balgair
Wait, _that_ made you homosexual? I'm going to assume that was a spellcheck or
non-native speaking error...

~~~
hood_syntax
Queer can also mean strange, and indeed that was a historical meaning for
quite some time.

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middleman90
This is not going to work if you break your back more than once...

