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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons . By Nathan Ahlgrim If we want to – to paraphrase the classic Six Million Dollar Man – rebuild people, rebuild them to be better, stronger, faster, we need more than fancy motors and titanium bones. Robot muscles cannot help a paralyzed person stand, and robot voices cannot restore communication to the voiceless, without some way for the person to control them. Methods of control need not be cutting-edge. The late Dr. Stephen Hawking’s instantly recognizable voice synthesizer was controlled by a single cheek movement , which seems shockingly analog in today’s world. Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) are the emerging technology that promise to bypass all external input and allow robotic devices to communicate directly with the brain. Dr. Chethan Pandarinath, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, discussed the good and bad of this technology in March’s The Future Now NEEDs seminar:  " To Be Implanted a...

by Karen Rommelfanger I recently sat on a panel discussion for an early screening of the movie Self/less . I'm quoted (mostly correctly) with my name (mostly) spelled correctly here . In Self/less , an aging business tycoon with a terminal illess (played by Ben Kingsley ) pays to "shed" his skin for a new, younger, fitter body (played by Ryan Reynolds ). See trailer above. The film, despite the futuristic theme, revisits mundane themes of the Faustian tradeoff or a deal with a devil, ultimately conveying the message that the costs, even for the rich, are too high when trying to cheat death. The title of the movie implies that for the greater good the selfless thing to do is to just die as nature intended. While the film would surely be categorized as science fiction, there are entrepreneurs quite dedicated to making such a possibility a reality. For example, the 2045 Initiative promises, for the starting price tag of $3 million, that your brain can be downloaded and that...

The first Neuroethics Journal Club of the Fall 2013 semester was a discussion led by graduate student John Trimper on the ethical implications behind brain-to-brain interface (BTBI) technologies. John introduced the topic by presenting the experimental details and results from a recent paper, published by the Nicoleis lab at Duke University (Vieira et al.), where researchers utilized a BTBI to transfer sensorimotor information between two rats. The BTBI technology allowed for a transfer of information from an “encoder” rat to a “decoder” rat, not using typical bodily interactions, but instead through intracortical microstimulation (ICMS). "Rodent Mind Meld" (Via Wired) The researchers conducted three experiments that demonstrated an artificial communication channel where cortical sensorimotor signals, coded for a specific behavioral response, were recorded in the encoder rat and transmitted to the decoder rat. Once received from the encoder rat, the decoder rat was instructed...

By John Trimper Graduate Student, Psychology Emory University This post was written as part of the Contemporary Issues in Neuroethics course Remember the precogs in Minority Report ? The ones who could sync up their brains via the pale blue goo to see into the future? The precogs from the movie Minority Report Recent findings published in Scientific Reports (Pais-Vieira et al., 2013) suggest that the ability to sync up brains is no longer purely sci-fi fodder, and instead, has moved into the realm of laboratory reality. The relevant set of experiments, conducted primarily at the Nicolelis laboratory at Duke University, demonstrated that neural activity related to performance on a discrimination task could be recorded from one rat (“the encoder”) and transferred into a second rat’s brain (“the decoder”) via electrical stimulation. This brain-to-brain transfer of task-relevant information, provided the encoder rat was performing the task correctly, significantly enhanced the decoder...

The Neuroethics Journal Club videos are now available on YouTube. Watch each discussion to learn about a variety of neuroethics issues, from treatments for pedophilia to neural plasticity in mice. For each video, one presenter introduced the journal topic and opened discussion to the audience.  Neuroethics Journal Club : The Sexed Brain The Sexed Brain: Between Science and Ideology Catherine Vidal, Neuroethics, 2012  Abstract : Despite tremendous advances in neuroscience, the topic “brain, sex and gender” remains a matter of misleading interpretations, that go well beyond the bounds of science. In the 19th century, the difference in brain sizes was a major argument to explain the hierarchy between men and women, and was supposed to reflect innate differences in mental capacity. Nowadays, our understanding of the human brain has progressed dramatically with the demonstration of cerebral plasticity. The new brain imaging techniques have revealed the role of the environme...

If there’s one thing I learned from the most recent installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, it’s this:  if you’re doing interesting research, it probably has a military application. In the interest of spoiler avoidance, let's just call this Wayne Enterprises invention "dual-use." (http://ixpower.com/2012/07/dark-knight-rises-batman-movie-does-infant-smr-industry-no-favors/) Dual Use Technology The formal name for it is “dual-use technology,” and it’s difficult to find an area of research in which it’s not a relevant concern. Innovations in renewable energy may avert catastrophic global warming, but they also promise to significantly lower military fuel costs and improve the mobility of forces newly unconstrained by the logistics of fossil fuel transportation. Research into nuclear fusion foreshadows essentially inexhaustible carbon-free energy at the same time as it provides a  technological foundation for fusion-triggered nuclear weapons that some bel...

Science often provides us with thrilling and puzzling scenarios in which our imaginations are forced to conceive the possibilities the future may bring. Life after death is an old concept that is getting a facelift. The Connectome, a very real development in neuroscience, is being used to conceptualize another very interesting piece of science-[fiction]: mind uploading . Image from http://www.mindcontrol.se/?attachment_id=3021 Fast-forward a few centuries. Bear with me, as this requires imagination. You have just died and are beginning the journey to the next stage of your life. For this trip, you won’t have to pack any bags. If all goes smoothly, you will be back home in time for the evening sitcoms. Your casket was lowered into the Earth this morning and because your driver’s license indicated ‘Continue Life’ you are scheduled for resurrection this afternoon. Suddenly, a message appears. There are three ticket options for you today. Our Elite ticket (1 million USD) and our most c...