
Turning brain signals into useful information - aficionado
https://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21733192-once-data-have-been-extracted-brain-how-can-they-be-employed-best
======
mizzao
I work at CTRL-labs, a startup focused on electromyography (EMG) based control
devices. This article has a bit more technical detail about what we do:
[https://www.wired.com/story/brain-machine-interface-isnt-
sci...](https://www.wired.com/story/brain-machine-interface-isnt-sci-fi-
anymore/)

EEG--reading signals from the brain--is pretty hard. But EMG--capturing muscle
contractions in the arm--produces relatively much cleaner data. This can then
be fed into a variety of machine learning algorithms to map high-fidelity time
series data to discrete signals or continuous gestures for which we have
appropriate training data.

Want to find more? Come visit our offices in NYC!

~~~
raizinho
Are you saying people can just show up to your office for a...tour?

~~~
bitL
In exchange for adding your EMG sensory data into their machine learning
dataset while you are walking around? ;-)

~~~
westmeal
Worth it.

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starpilot
I don't think I've ever used my brain signals in a useful way, so this is a
step in the right direction.

~~~
tempodox
It's not just you. That title implies that brain signals per se aren't “useful
information” to begin with. I wonder how any of us are able to read that
headline at all.

~~~
vt100
"Useful information" means information that someone is willing to pay for, I
think...

~~~
tempodox
I suspect you are right, given the publishing venue. But I'd still find it a
rather narrow definition of usefulness.

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frisco
If you find this topic interesting, Neuralink is hiring. We’re looking for a
lot of different backgrounds across applied physics, biomedical engineering,
software and hardware. Though Neuralink sounds cool - I know many people are
skeptical - the reality is even cooler.

Especially if you’re great at firmware, robotics control software, or computer
vision get in touch! Either through the links on the website, or there’s an
email in my HN profile.

~~~
junkcollector
Neuralink is certainly on my radar as a company to watch but I thought it was
more in an invite only Ph.D heavy theory stage than a hire and build board
stage. The idea to use an acoustic radio for transmission in a mostly water
media is very clever even if I worry about the safety margins of the power
density involved with transmitting that much data.

~~~
frisco
While a lot of people on the team have PhDs, I definitely would not describe
Neuralink as "PhD heavy theory stage"! The overwhelming emphasis is on
building things that work and testing them against reality as quickly as
possible. Anyone capable of doing that regardless of credentials is welcome
here. To get a better sense of what I mean, check out the interview advice
thread here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Neuralink/comments/70gehm/neuralink...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Neuralink/comments/70gehm/neuralink_interviews_any_tips/dn3nc9u/)

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tabeth
I'm not sure how this would work in practice. Thoughts are incredibly noisy.
Any mechanism that could filter out the noise basically can decipher intent.
I'd argue intent deciphering is the actual problem trying to be solved by
these devices (e.g. I wish I didn't have to type. I wish the computer just
knew what I wanted to type, not that I wish the computer simply typed out what
I thought). Solutions like "oh, just keep on thinking of the same thing over
and over again" is highly error prone and will definitely be slower than
typing. Say you wanted to type "[the quick brown brown quick the quick brown
quick the brown]" a strategy of repeatedly thinking of the phrase to be typed
will be error prone, regardless of any ML techniques you use, simply because
it cannot be known in advance what you wanted to type unless you knew the
intent.

Perhaps it'll pick it up as "the quick brown", or "quick brown the", and so
forth.

\---

Another problem can be illustrated below:

Say you had your brain device on now. You're ready to reply to this.

Horse poop.

Oh, I guess you read the above and now have "horse poop" typed. Well, you can
just remove that ---

"add comment"

"submit"

Too late.

~~~
omeid2
I don't disagree with your analysis but I think you're making the assumption
that brain signals.

So instead of "that is stupid", "add comment", "you're wrong on the internet",
"submit", I think we could be able to have more information about the context
of the words:

    
    
        (:commentary "that is stupid")  
        (:request-interaction "add comment) ; from which the AI figures out it is a button on the screen
        (:request-input "You're wrong on the internet")
        (:request-interaction "submit)
    

In essence, maybe it is possible to detect beyond just words and understand
the context, just from the signals too.

~~~
jaboutboul
It’s like XML for your mind!

~~~
builditand
*lisp

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tvural
I predict that BMIs are going to suffer from the same problem as AI, where the
applications that are working in the short-term get very overestimated because
they are confused with the long-term where you create a singularity. If you
had a BMI that could read/write the entire brain on neuron-level resolution,
you could create computer back-ups of people, and if hardware were fast enough
you could create superhuman intelligence. If you just have cochlear implants
and prosthetics, the best case is a world where nobody is impaired, which is
good, but still very far from a singularity. The Neuralink version is that if
you can do telepathy, that might be valuable in some situations, but it will
probably just be like faster email until the computers become smarter than us.

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anonfunction
I once met an ex-apple engineer who created a hat that would read your
thoughts and play the song you were thinking about. It only worked for certain
people and had a limited playlist to choose from but it was really cool
watching your "brainwaves" on a screen and then thinking "Daft Punk Get Lucky"
and having it play on the speakers.

~~~
lsseckman
hey do you have any more info about this? have been wanting to do something
similar.

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egocodedinsol
For a good review of the the brain learning to use BMI's, see:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095943881...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959438817301642)

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Santosh83
Are we witnessing the very first steps on the long road to complete erosion of
the privacy of our thoughts, the last remaining facet of privacy?

~~~
westmeal
Yup. I hope you're prepared to live in the woods my friend.

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pwaai
What if you could detect the vocalization somehow instead of relying on a very
noisy data source (brain signals), which I see becoming a
roadblock...subvocalization would be like being able to chat without
typing...you would still be interacting with a UI that will make sure you dont
give out your bank card number etc.

Maybe even hold up your phone and it will beam some sort of ultrasound or
laser to detect tiny movements in the larynx (I have no idea what I'm talking
about) but seems like there's patent in the works by physically attaching
sensors...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocal_recognition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocal_recognition)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyN4ViZ21N0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyN4ViZ21N0)

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stevenhuang
Back when I had to write a lot for my courses, I was wondering the same about
the usefulness of EEGs [1]. At times all I wanted was to lie on my bed, point
a projector to the ceiling, and write.

Alas the tech/understanding of neuroscience is just not here yet, but maybe it
would be in a few decades?

There's a lot more in the way of interesting discussion in the link if you
would like to read more.

[1]: [https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/9594/are-
ther...](https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/9594/are-there-any-
eeg-procedures-currently-available-in-development-that-can-formula)

~~~
hackcasual
EEGs (at least non surgical ones) provide only the highest level information
about what's going on inside of brains. It's a bit like looking at a city as
you're flying 10,000 feet above it. You can figure out when it's rush hour,
but you're not going to be able to tell what the most popular restaurant is.

The most sophisticated EEG systems actually train your brain to use the EEG,
no the other way around.

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lamename
This is one of the first broad-audience articles I've seen that actually
acknowledges neuronal firing rates as an important practical consideration.

Usually it's simplified in explanations as "binary", on or off. This isn't
wrong for any _instant_ in time (and is sometimes good enough for conceptual
models), but in reality the firing rate varies as a function of the stimulus.
Analog, if you like...

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dewiz
I hope that before the end of my career I get to write code with just my
thoughts. Add a method here, a loop there, refactor this block out with, etc.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
It wouldn't be faster: coding is not input constrained, but thinking
constrained. So just being able to connect your thoughts to the input method
wouldn't change much, instead the computer really needs to augment those
thoughts instead. The trick would be using this tech to create a much tighter
feedback loop with the computer, but just having it isn't sufficient.

~~~
justinpombrio
> It wouldn't be faster: coding is not input constrained, but thinking
> constrained.

Well, it depends on how bad your RSI is. For some people it is input
constrained.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Sure, but then this becomes niche to RSI sufferers and other people who can't
type easily like voice input.

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vadimberman
The big question for me at least is, are these signals uniform or have some
kind of similarities for specific concepts or actions from person to person?

If every brain has its own language, the effort is magnitude higher.

~~~
egocodedinsol
Some aspects of the signals are individual-dependent, some are consistent
across individuals (for some definition of individual-dependent and
consistent). I know that's vague, but it's accurate.

~~~
vadimberman
Very interesting.

Are any of these consistent aspects associated with the type of action or
thought?

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vt100
Now if we could turn useful information into brain signals...

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pokemongoaway
Ya most people's brain signals contain nothing of value ;P

