
Scientists 'Inject' Information into Monkeys’ Brains - flinner
https://nytimes.com/2017/12/07/science/brain-information-monkeys.html
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allenz
Summary: Two monkeys were able to learn to perform specific movements in
response to microelectrode stimulation at corresponding (arbitrarily chosen)
loci in the premotor cortex. The stimulation was too low to directly drive
muscle movements.

The brain can learn to recognize signals from cochlear implants and other
neuroprosthetics, and this study shows that monkeys can also learn to
recognize signals from deeper implants. Note that previous studies have
suggested that the premotor cortex has a role in associating stimuli and
movements:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premotor_cortex#PMDr(F7)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premotor_cortex#PMDr\(F7\))

The researchers speculate that the stimulation "may have evoked somatosensory
and/or visual percepts, desires to move particular body parts, or other
internal urges or thoughts, any of which the monkeys could have used as
instructions".

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Balgair
How long did the experiment last for? Were they able to replicate the results
in the same monkeys at a later date, or was this only for a month or so?

~~~
allenz
They only say that they performed nearly 200 sessions per monkey, where each
session involves multiple movement task trials. You would have to contact the
author for details: mschiebe@ur.rochester.edu

They don't report testing whether the learned associations persist, although
that would certainly be interesting.

~~~
Balgair
I was more interested in the 'decay' of the electrodes over months, i.e. can
these be chronic implants that work. Still, thanks for the info!

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luk32
I think the title is misleading. Quite highly. They didn't inject information.

They injected stimuli for some sensation, and monkeys learned how to interpret
it.

So, what they did is they gave monkeys spidey senses, which they could
trigger. And would make equally catchy title.

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notsgnik
it seams that the brain game is starting, computer/brain interaction here we
go :d

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matte_black
Pretty soon companies will only want to hire developers augmented with brain
interfaces. And why wouldn’t they? Such developers could build entire systems
at the speed of thought.

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nnq
> could build entire systems at the speed of thought

That's kind of of the problem, you;re _limited by the speed of though_ when
coding. For most things I can type waaaay faster than I can think (a faster
keyboard wouldn't help, just as neural output interface wouldn't help much
either), and information can be displayed on a computer screen waaay faster
than I can read it (so a higher bandwith neural input interface wouldn't help
either).

What _would truly help_ would need to be much more complex than that, like
something that takes input from something, processes it, then spits the output
to other part of the brain, hopefully in a way synced with current visual
perception. Or takes input from one part of the brain, processes it through
some algorithm, then spits output to another one.

My point is that there's a lot to be gained... but _I don 't think that
trivial implementations of BCIs would bring much gain to highly thinking-
limited tasks,_ so the first generation of them would not be of much use to
philosophers, software engineers or mathematicians. Probably the first
iterations will help most people _fighter /drone-pilots or surgeons_, who are
truly limited by interfaces-bottlenecks, not thinking bottlenecks.

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bryanrasmussen
I don't think at the speed of thought means you need to verbalize in your head
each bit of your code. You can perhaps visualize it. I can think of a snippet
of a for loop a lot quicker than I can make the individual declarations of
that loop.

~~~
Ygg2
You need to write code, to be read possibly by people without brain implants.

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nnq
Hmm. That actually opens up a solution: remove the requirement you mention,
and we might have sizeable benefits from 1st gen implants in jobs like coding
too, we'd just need to switch/translate to languages specifically designed to
the make the bes of the implant's particular characteristic.

Though that would soon turn into the mother of all "technical" debt issues...

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dep_b
Oh what don't they invent to make me watch ads!

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Klasiaster
Science should foremost follow a moral and ethical attitude instead of just
trying out what seems to be possible. Who gives them the right to destroy the
brain of an ape for dubious activities. More empathy please if science should
take us somewhere better.

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fsloth
Science is not supposed to make anyone better. Science is a tool that can be
wielded for any task, dubious or divine. Just like a knife.

Turn to philosophy or religion for morals.

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dwaltrip
People were "moral" before those words existed. Morals are simply emergent
normative behavior.

Science is a human endeavor, and thus is affected by understood norms, like
any other human endeavor.

~~~
ben_w
Perhaps.

If a morality fails in the forest and nobody has language to describe it… is
morality the equivalent of “sound is a pressure wave”, or the equivalent of
“sounds is an auditory experience”?

Moral codes have changed wildly over the years (and by place in any year).
Slavery was “fine”, until it wasn’t. The death penalty is a thing in some
places today, but seen as repugnant in others. Shellfish were forbidden, until
someone had a vision of god berating them for turning it down. Bestiality was
legal in half of Europe twenty years ago, but not today. Weed and gay marriage
were unbelievable twenty years ago, but are increasingly acceptable today.

I’m vegetarian (trying to be vegan) _just in case_ animals have that hard to
describe thing commonly called consciousness or self-awareness or personhood,
but I don’t have enough certainty to condemn anyone who thinks I’m being silly
by worrying about that. Heck, I don’t even have a concrete definition of the
thing I worry animals might have in order to test against.

What _is_ morality? _Really?_

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TeMPOraL
Assuming no supernatural things, all thinking a human does happens in their
brain. Therefore, a very reductive approach: morality is our high-level
generalization of what makes us feel bad or good. Things like:

\- murder is wrong, because any given human wants to live (self-preservation
drive), and also usually wants people they care about to live (them dying
causes feelings of hurt)

\- theft is wrong, because if you take something from me that I need, or feel
connection to, I feel hurt

\- etc.

Our social drive ensures that if you generalize things like these into more
abstract code and enforce it, less of those bad things happen.

This - both dislike for things that tend to be a part of pretty much all moral
codes, and the tendency to create those codes - seems to be built into our
brain's firmware. Under this reductive view, the only actual claim morality
has to universality is that all of us have pretty much the same
hardware/firmware, and thus share the same basic moral principles. That is,
hypothetical sentient aliens from outer space would likely have a different
moral code due to the different process through which their brain-equivalent
appeared.

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ben_w
Mm.

Counter point: Different people mean different things by the word “murder”.
Does abortion count? I’d say no, but plenty of people disagree with me,
violently. Does the death penalty count? I’d say yes, but again, plenty
disagree violently. Does it count if you kill foreigners after invading their
land? Does it count if you kill a chimp? If you euthanise a dog? A hamster? If
you kill a prawn for dinner? People disagree on all of these.

Or “theft”: is taxation theft? Or is _avoiding_ taxation theft?

~~~
dwaltrip
There are differences, but that is too be expected if one views morality as
just another human abstraction. There are different human cultures, and people
are raised with different influences in varying environments.

I find changes in morality as somewhat analogous to changes in language. They
are both messy, ambiguous, chaotic, emergent processes that don't result in a
single output.

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tabtab
Can this be used to make lazy and clueless politicians smarter?

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dang
Please don't post like this here. We're trying for at least a little higher
quality than internet-standard.

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jakeogh
"Now, imagine that you had a device implanted in your brain that could
shortcut the pathway and “inject” information straight into your premotor
cortex."

"you" just "imagine"

Like "you" made it and had top-to-bottom control if it's makeup. Does it come
with encrypted microcode updates? The NYT keeps writing better distillations
of itself; clinging the idea that they [frame] tomorrow.

[https://i.imgur.com/VUdcIou.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/VUdcIou.jpg)

I should stop, it's just for stroke patients and people who need it anyway.
Why worry? Litho masks are a trade secret. Only technophobes want disabled
people to have outdated chips.

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musage
This is the only worthwhile comment IMO. This is where discussion that isn't a
joke would _begin_.

We can't even hold people who start wars of aggression accountable, we'd
rather destroy food to keep prices up than feed the world, but brain/machine
interfaces? That's all for _helping_ people. Yeah, right. People who believe
that have lost the plot on such a fundamental level that you don't even have
to criticize them for them to be offended; you just have to not fall for it to
have their insecurity come gushing.

