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Energy, Frequency and Vibration

Posted by Magnus Olsson on May 2, 2013

Posted in: Mind Control, Scientists Warns. Tagged: energy, frequency, internet, mind control, Nano, resonance frequency, SYNTHETIC TELEPATHY, vibration, wi-fi. Leave a Comment

BRAIN Initiative Challenges Researchers to Unlock Mysteries of Human Mind

Posted by Magnus Olsson on April 8, 2013

Posted in: Artificial Intelligence, Tech News. Tagged: biological studies, brain implant, brain initiative, brain research, human behavior, human mind, mind control, Nano, nanotechnology, neurotechnologies, new technologies, research institutions. Leave a Comment

BRAIN Initiative Challenges Researchers to Unlock Mysteries of Human Mind

Today at the White House, President Obama unveiled the “BRAIN” Initiative—a bold new research effort to revolutionize our understanding of the human mind and uncover new ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders like Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury.

The BRAIN Initiative — short for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies — builds on the President’s State of the Union call for historic investments in research and development to fuel the innovation, job creation, and economic growth that together create a thriving middle class.

The Initiative promises to accelerate the invention of new technologies that will help researchers produce real-time pictures of complex neural circuits and visualize the rapid-fire interactions of cells that occur at the speed of thought. Such cutting-edge capabilities, applied to both simple and complex systems, will open new doors to understanding how brain function is linked to human behavior and learning, and the mechanisms of brain disease.

President Barack Obama is introduced by Dr. Francis Collins

President Barack Obama is introduced by Dr. Francis Collins, Director, National Institutes of Health, at the BRAIN Initiative event in the East Room of the White House, April 2, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

In his remarks this morning, the President highlighted the BRAIN Initiative as one of the Administration’s “Grand Challenges” – ambitious but achievable goals that require advances in science and technology to accomplish. The President called on companies, research universities, foundations, and philanthropies to join with him in identifying and pursuing additional Grand Challenges of the 21st century—challenges that can create the jobs and industries of the future while improving lives.

In addition to fueling invaluable advances that improve lives, the pursuit of Grand Challenges can create the jobs and industries of the future.

That’s what happened when the Nation took on the Grand Challenge of the Human Genome Project. As a result of that daunting but focused endeavor, the cost of sequencing a single human genome has declined from $100 million to $7,000, opening the door to personalized medicine.

Like sequencing the human genome, President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative provides an opportunity to rally innovative capacities in every corner of the Nation and leverage the diverse skills, tools, and resources from a variety of sectors to have a lasting positive impact on lives, the economy, and our national security.

That’s why we’re so excited that critical partners from within and outside government are already stepping up to the President’s BRAIN Initiative Grand Challenge.

The BRAIN Initiative is launching with approximately $100 million in funding for research supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the President’s Fiscal Year 2014 budget.

Foundations and private research institutions are also investing in the neuroscience that will advance the BRAIN Initiative. The Allen Institute for Brain Science, for example, will spend at least $60 million annually to support projects related to this initiative. The Kavli Foundation plans to support BRAIN Initiative-related activities with approximately $4 million dollars per year over the next ten years. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies will also dedicate research funding for projects that support the BRAIN Initiative.

This is just the beginning. We hope many more foundations, Federal agencies, philanthropists, non-profits, companies, and others will step up to the President’s call to action.

Learn more about the BRAIN Initiative here and here.

White House: View the full-size infographic

The Human Brain Project

Brain Probes: development of new nano, micro, genetic, optical, and electrical technologies making it possible to study an ever broader range of brain structures and functions in greater depth, and more rapidly than is currently possible.

Ethical, legal and social issues: The HBP (The Human Brain Project) will raise important ethical, legal, social, political and philosophical issues both about the research itself and its potential applications. At the same time, its contributions to knowledge of the brain, cognition and behavior will have important philosophical and conceptual implications touching on basic concepts of what makes us human Against this background, the HBP will include a major program of activities dedicated to ethical, legal and social issues. The program will bring together scholars in the brain sciences, social sciences, and the humani ties to study and discuss relevant issues and will use all available channels to en courage open, well-informed debate, to dissipate potential public concerns and to enhance appreciation of the potential beneﬁts of the project’s work.

Read article here

Ethical issues involved in hybrid bionicsystems research

“What kind of privacy safeguards are needed if a machine can read your thoughts”?

“Invasive research on humans could involve inhuman or degrading procedures”
“Invasive research on humans could lead to new torture or inhumane punishment techniques”

Will cognition enhancers exacerbate differences between rich and poor? Or, instead, will they relegate social diversity to the status of historical artifact?

What happens if we deduce through neuroimagingthe physiological basis for morality?
Or, and by the way, what happens to free will?” (Scientific American (Editorial), September 2003)

Autonomous behavior of robots: what degree of autonomy should we give to the robot…if uncontrolled robot actions can be dangerous to humans (assistance robotics)
If we wish to deal with cases when the user’s will is “ethically”unacceptable (robots used for military purposes) Are Asimov’s Laws adequate?
Is realistically threatening the possibility of auto-replicating artificial entities?
Ontological status of “cyborgs”and A.I. creatures:
What is machine and what is human?
Who may be re-programmed?
Can we have dissidents in a world of replicants?

Read article here

Scientists Warn of Ethical Battle Concerning Military Mind Control

Advances in neuroscience are closer than ever to becoming a reality, but scientists are warning the military – along with their peers – that with great power comes great responsibility

By JASON KOEBLER

A future of brain-controlled tanks, automated attack drones and mind-reading interrogation techniques may arrive sooner than later, but advances in neuroscience that will usher in a new era of combat come with tough ethical implications for both the military and scientists responsible for the technology, according to one of the country’s leading bioethicists.

“Everybody agrees that conflict will be changed as new technologies are coming on,” says Jonathan Moreno, author ofMind Wars: Brain Science and the Military in the 21st Century. “But nobody knows where that technology is going.”

Moreno warns in an essay published in the science journal PLoS Biology Tuesday that the military’s interest in neuroscience advancements “generates a tension in its relationship with science.”

“The goals of national security and the goals of science may conflict. The latter employs rigorous standards of validation in the expansion of knowledge, while the former depends on the most promising deployable solutions for the defense of the nation,” he writes.

Much of neuroscience focuses on returning function to people with traumatic brain injuries, he says. Just as Albert Einstein didn’t know his special theory of relativity could one day be used to create a nuclear weapon, neuroscience researchintended to heal could soon be used to harm.

“Neuroscientists may not consider how their work contributes to warfare,” he adds.

Moreno says there is a fine line between using neuroscience devices to allow an injured person to regain baseline functions and enhancing someone’s body to perform better than their natural body ever could.

“Where one draws that line is not obvious, and how one decides to cross that line is not easy. People will say ‘Why would we want to deny warfighters these advantages?’” he says.

[Mind Control, Biometrics Could Change the World]

Moreno isn’t the only one thinking about this. The Brookings Institution’s Peter Singer writes in his book, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, that “‘the Pentagon’s real-world record with things like the aboveground testing of atomic bombs, Agent Orange, and Gulf War syndrome certainly doesn’t inspire the greatest confidence among the first generation of soldiers involved [in brain enhancementresearch.]”

The military, scientists and ethicists are increasingly wondering how neuroscience technology changes the battlefield. The staggering possibilities are further along than many think. There is already development on automated drones that are programmed to make their own decisions about who to kill within the rules of war. Other ideas that are closer-than-you-think to becoming a military reality: Tanks controlled from half a world away, memory erasures that could prevent PTSD, and “brain fingerprinting” that could be used to extract secrets from enemies.Moreno foretold some of these developments when he first published Mind Wars in 2006, but not without trepidation.

“I was afraid I’d be dismissed as a paranoid schizophrenic when I first published the book,” he says. But then a funny thing happened—the Department of Defense and other military groups began holding panels on neurotechnology to determine how and when it should be used. I was surprised how quickly the policy questions moved forward. Questions like: ‘Can we use autonomous attack drones?’ ‘Must there be a human being in the vehicle?’ ‘How much of a payload can it have?’. There are real questions coming up in the international legal community.”

All of those questions will have to be answered sooner than later, Moreno says, along with a host of others. Should soldiers have the right to refuse “experimental” brain implants? Will the military want to use some of this technology before science deems it safe?

“There’s a tremendous tension about this,” he says. “There’s a great feeling of responsibility that we push this stuff out so we’re ahead of our adversaries.

Read article here.

Hitler would have loved The Singularity: Mind-blowing benefits of merging human brains and computers

By Ian Morris, Professor Of Classics And History At Stanford University 11:24 GMT, 6 February 2012

Of all the tall tales in the science-fiction TV series Star Trek, what impressed me most when I was a little boy was the Vulcan mind meld.

Laying his hands on the head of a human (or, in one of the films, a humpback whale), Mr Spock could, for a moment, dissolve the distance between two living things.

Each experienced everything the other felt, thought, knew and saw.

Now it seems scientists are about to make the Vulcan mind meld a reality – and go far beyond it.

Ten years ago, the US National Science Foundation predicted ‘network-enhanced telepathy’ – sending thoughts over the internet – would be practical by the 2020s.

Man and machine: Computers could soon be hardwired into the human brain and unlock amazing power.

And thanks to neuroscientists at the University of California, we seem to be on schedule.

Last September, they asked volunteers to watch Hollywood film trailers and then reconstructed the clips by scanning their subjects’ brain activity.

‘We’re opening a window into the movies in our minds,’ Professor Jack Gallant announced.

Last week, the scientists boldly went further still. They charted the electrical activity in the brains of volunteers who were listening to human speech and then they fed the results into computers which translated the signals back into language.

The technique remains crude, and has so far made out only five distinct words, but humanity has crossed a threshold.

We can now read people’s minds. On Star Trek, the Vulcan mind meld had medical benefits, curing a nasty imaginary infection called Pa’nar syndrome.

Science fact soon?: The Vulcan mind meld

Science fact?: Harnessing the power of the mind was a favourite of science fiction, including Star Trek’s Vulcan mind meld

But the new breakthroughs promise to deliver much greater – and real – benefits.

No longer need strokes and neurodegenerative diseases rob people of speech because we can turn their brainwaves directly into words.

But this is only the beginning. Neuroscientists are going to make the mind meld look like child’s play. Mankind is merging with its machines.

The process began centuries ago with simple devices such as eyeglasses and ear trumpets that could dramatically improve human lives.

Then came better machines, such as hearing aids; and then machines that could save lives, including pacemakers and dialysis machines.

By the second decade of the 21st Century, we have become used to organs grown in laboratories, genetic surgery and designer babies.

In 2002, medical researchers used enzymes and DNA to build the first molecular computers, and in 2004 improved versions were being injected into people’s veins to fight cancer.

By 2020 we may be able to put even cleverer nanocomputers into our brains to speed up synaptic links, give ourselves perfect memory and perhaps cure dementia.

But inserting technology into human brains is not the only thing going on. Some scientists also want to insert human brains into technology.

Since the Sixties, computer chips have been doubling their speed and halving their cost every 18 months or so.

If the trend continues, the inventor and predictor Ray Kurzweil has pointed out that by 2029 we will have computers powerful enough to run programs reproducing the 10,000 trillion electrical signals that flash around your skull every second.

They will also have enough memory to store the ten trillion recollections that make you who you are.

Dangerous technology: The huge potential unlocked by the technology raises frightening prospects if it were to be used by evil dictators like Adolf Hitler

And they will also be powerful enough to scan, neuron by neuron, every contour and wrinkle of your brain.

What this means is that if the trends of the past 50 years continue, in 17 years’ time we will be able to upload an electronic replica of your mind on to a machine.

There will be two of you – one a flesh-and-blood animal, the other inside a computer’s circuits.

And if the trends hold fast beyond that, Kurzweil adds, by 2045 we will have a computer that is powerful enough to host every one of the eight billion minds on Earth.

Carbon and silicon-based intelligence will merge to form a single global consciousness.

Kurzweil calls this ‘The Singularity’, a moment when ‘the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep . . . that technology appears to be expanding at infinite speed’.

At that point, we will have left the Vulcan mind meld far behind. But even this may not be the end of the story.

Much of the research behind last week’s breakthrough in brain science was funded not by universities but by DARPA, the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency.

It was DARPA that brought us the internet (then called the Arpanet) in the Seventies, and DARPA’s Brain Interface Project was a pioneer in molecular computing.

More recently, DARPA’s Silent Talk programme has been exploring mind-reading technology with devices that can pick up the electrical signals inside soldiers’ brains and send them over the internet.

With these implants, entire armies will be able to talk without radios. Orders will leap instantly into soldiers’ heads and commanders’ wishes will become the wishes of their men. Hitler would have loved it.

Thing of the past: Advances in technology could revolutionise the way armies communicate

Cyborg-soldier: The defence industry could soon try implanting computer technology into the brain of soldiers

Some of the clearest thinking about the new technologies has been done in the world’s departments of defence, and the conclusions the soldiers draw are alarming.

For example, US Army Colonel Thomas Adams thinks that military technology is already moving beyond what he calls ‘human space’, as robotic weapons become ‘too fast, too small, too numerous, and . . . create an environment too complex for humans to direct’.

Technology, Col Adams suspects, is ‘rapidly taking us to a place where we may not want to go, but probably are unable to avoid’.

As goes war, so, perhaps, goes everything else. The merging of mankind and its machines that Kurzweil predicts for the mid-21st Century may, in fact, turn out just to be a lay-by on the way to a very different destination.

Later in the century, what we condescendingly call ‘artificial’ intelligence might replace us humans just as thoroughly as we humans once replaced all our evolutionary ancestors.

All this will come to pass . . . unless, of course, it doesn’t. Maybe the trends Kurzweil and Col Adams identify will slow down, or even stall altogether.

And maybe the critics who mockingly call the Singularity ‘the Rapture for Nerds’ will be proved right.

But on the other hand, maybe the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Richard Smalley is closer to the truth when he points out: ‘When a scientist says something is possible, they’re probably underestimating how long it will take.

But if they say it’s impossible, they’re probably wrong.’

The University of California’s neuroscientists have taken us one more step towards a final frontier far beyond anything dreamed of in Star Trek.

Futurizon Avatar 0.0

Posted by Magnus Olsson on May 1, 2012

Posted in: Mindcomputers, Tech News. Tagged: darpa project, depopulation, electromagnetic field, EMR, Health and nutrition, hubble space telescope, medicine, medium resolution imaging, Military, mind control, msnbc, Nano, nano implant, right brains, science, Technology, Technology Tags: Microchip. 1 comment

Tag Archives: brain link

Avatar 0.0

There has been some activity in recent weeks on the development of avatars, as in the film, or at least some agreement on feasibility and intention to develop, with real actual funding.

The concept is that you could inhabit another body and feel it is yours. I have written many times about direct brain links, superhuman AIs, shared consciousness and so on, since 1992, and considered a variety of ways of connecting. It has been fun exploring the possibilities and some of the obvious applications and dangers. For a few years it seemed to be just Kurzweil and me, but gradually a number of people joined in, often labelling themselves transhumanists. Now that it is more obvious how the technology might spin out, the ideas are becoming quite mainstream and no longer considered the realm of cranks. Many quite respectable scientists are now involved.

Google DARPA and avatar and you’ll see a lot of recent commentary on the DARPA project to create surrogate soldiers, just like we see them in the film. Not tomorrow, but by around 2045. Why then? Well, 2045 is the date when some of us expect to be able to do a full direct brain link, at least in prototype. I think with a lot of funding and the right brains involved, it is entirely achievable then.

But DARPA won’t have it all to themselves. The Russians are also looking at it, and hosted a recent conference. Dmitry Itskov, founder of Russia 2045, has been given permission to develop his own avatar program. Check this out:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44938297/ns/technology_and_science-innovation/t/does-future-hold-avatar-like-bodies-us/#.T0YoIPFmKom

From their conference press release:

The first Global Future Congress 2045 (GF2045) was held on Feb.17-20 in Moscow, where 56 world leading physicists, biologists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists and philosophers met to discuss breakthroughs in life extension technologies and draft a resolution to the United Nations setting the radical lengthening of human lifespan and the creation of Avatars as a priority for preservation of humankind.

About 500 people attended the three-day event featuring presentations by over 50 scientists including inventor Ray Kurzweil, Microsoft Research Director Rane Johnson-Stempson, and Astronaut Sergey Krichevskiy. The event was focused on breakthrough technologies that could create a synthetic body-vessel for the mind, offering humans unlimited prolongation of life to the point of immortality…..

Among the featured life-extension projects is “2045” a Russia-based Avatar project consisting of three phases. First, to create a humanoid robot named “Avatar”, and a state-of-the-art brain-computer interface system. Next, to create a life support system between the “Avatar” and the human brain. The final step is creating an artificial brain in which to transfer the original individual consciousness.

Development of a cybernetic body. This is about as advanced as it gets currently. You can link to nerves, and transmit signals to and from them to capture and relay sensations. But this will progress quickly over coming years as we start seeing strong positive feedback among the nano-bio-info-cogno disciplines. I’m just annoyed that I am not just starting my career about now, it would be an excellent time to do so. But at least I’ll get pleasure from saying ‘I told you so’ a few times.

I won’t repeat all the exciting possibilities for the military, sex and games industries, or electronic immortality, I’ve blogged enough on these. For now, it’s just great to see the field moving another important step further from sci-fi into the realms of reality

Computers that read minds are being developed by Intel

New technology could allow people to dictate letters and search the internet simply by thinking, according to researchers at Intel who are behind the project.

Computer with 3D-analysis of a human brain, computer, mind

Computers that can read minds are being developed by Intel. Photo: ALAMY

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent

7:50AM BST 22 Aug 2010

Unlike current brain-controlled computers, which require users to imagine making physical movements to control a cursor on a screen, the new technology will be capable of directly interpreting words as they are thought.

Intel’s scientists are creating detailed maps of the activity in the brain for individual words which can then be matched against the brain activity of someone using the computer, allowing the machine to determine the word they are thinking.

Preliminary tests of the system have shown that the computer can work out words by looking at similar brain patterns and looking for key differences that suggest what the word might be.

Dean Pomerleau, a senior researcher at Intel Laboratories, said that currently, the devices required to get sufficient detail of brain activity were bulky, expensive magnetic resonance scanners, like those used in hospitals.

But he said work was under way to produce smaller pieces of equipment that can be worn as headsets and that can produce the same level of detail.

He said: “The computer uses a form of 20 questions to narrow down what the word is.

“So a noun with a physical property such as spade, which you dig with, produces activity in the motor cortex of the brain, as this is the area that controls physical movements.

“A food related word like apple, however, produces activity in those parts of the brain related to hunger. So the computer can infer attributes to each word being thought about and this lets the computer zero down on what the word is pretty quickly.

“We are currently mapping out the activity that an average brain produces when thinking about different words. It means you’ll be able to write letters, open emails or do Google searches just by thinking”.

Intel already have a working prototype that can detect words such as “screwdriver”, “house” and “barn”, by measuring around 20,000 points in the brain.

But as brain scanning technology becomes more sophisticated the computer’s ability to distinguish thoughts will improve.

Justin Ratner, director of Intel Laboratories and the company’s chief technology officer, said: “Mind reading is the ultimate user interface. There will be concerns about privacy with this sort of thing and we will have to overcome them.

“What is clear though is that humans are not restricted any more to just using keyboards and mice”.

Scientists Successfully Implant Chip That Controls The Brain

Scientists working at the University of Southern California, home of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events, have created an artificial memory system that allows thoughts, memories and learned behavior to be transferred from one brain to another.

In a scene right out of a George Orwell novel, a team of scientists working in the fields of “neural engineering” and “Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems” have successfully created a chip that controls the brain and can be used as a storage device for long-term memories. In studies the scientists have been able to record, download and transfer memories into other hosts with the same chip implanted. The advancement in technology brings the world one step closer to a global police state and the reality of absolute mind control.

More terrifying is the potential for implementation of what was only a science fiction fantasy – the “Thought Police” – where the government reads people’s memories and thoughts and can then rehabilitate them through torture before they ever even commit a crime based on a statistical computer analysis showing people with certain types of thoughts are likely to commit a certain type of crime in the future.

We already pre-emptively invade nations and torture alleged terrorist suspects with absolutely no due process of law, so the idea of pre-emptively torturing a terrorist suspect beforehand to prevent them from committing an act of terrorism in the future really isn’t that far fetched of an idea.Perhaps a less sensational example than those I just depicted from Orwell’s famous dystopian novels would be using the technology as it is depicted the modern dayMatrix movies, in which computer programs are uploaded into people’s brains allowing them to instantly learn how to perform a wide variety of tasks.That is exactly the example that Smart Planet uses in their write-up on the USC press release.

The Matrix reality: Scientists successfully implant artificial memory system

It seems the sci-fi industry has done it again. Predictions made in novels like Johnny Mnemonic and Neuromancer back in the 1980s of neural implants linking our brains to machines have become a reality.

Back then it seemed unthinkable that we’d ever have megabytes stashed in our brain as Keanu Reeves’ character Johnny Mnemonic did in the movie based on William Gibson’s novel. Or that The Matrix character Neo could have martial arts abilities uploaded to his brain, making famous the line, “I know Kung Fu.” (Why Keanu Reeves became the poster boy of sci-fi movies, I’ll never know.) But today we have macaque monkeys that can control a robotic arm with thoughts alone. We have paraplegics given the ability to control computer cursors and wheelchairs with their brain waves. Of course this is about the brain controlling a device. But what about the other direction where we might have a device amplifying the brain? While the cochlear implant might be the best known device of this sort, scientists have been working on brain implants with the goal to enhance memory. This sort of breakthrough could lead to building a neural prosthesis to help stroke victims or those with Alzheimer’s. Or at the extreme, think uploading Kung Fu talent into our brains.

Decade-long work led by Theodore Berger at University of Southern California, in collaboration with teams from Wake Forest University, has provided a big step in the direction of artificial working memory. Their study is finally published today in theJournal of Neural Engineering. A microchip implanted into a rat’s brain can take on the role of the hippocampus—the area responsible for long-term memories—encoding memory brain wave patterns and then sending that same electrical pattern of signals through the brain. Back in 2008, Berger told Scientific American, that if the brain patterns for the sentence, “See Spot Run,” or even an entire book could be deciphered, then we might make uploading instructions to the brain a reality. “The kinds of examples [the U.S. Department of Defense] likes to typically use are coded information for flying an F-15,” Berger is quoted in the article as saying.
[...]
In this current study the scientists had rats learn a task, pressing one of two levers to receive a sip of water. Scientists inserted a microchip into the rat’s brain, with wires threaded into their hippocampus. Here the chip recorded electrical patterns from two specific areas labeled CA1 and CA3 that work together to learn and store the new information of which lever to press to get water. Scientists then shut down CA1 with a drug. And built an artificial hippocampal part that could duplicate such electrical patterns between CA1 and CA3, and inserted it into the rat’s brain. With this artificial part, rats whose CA1 had been pharmacologically blocked, could still encode long-term memories. And in those rats who had normally functioning CA1, the new implant extended the length of time a memory could be held.
[...]
Source: Smart Planet

The Smart Planet article goes on to point out that the next phase in testing will be done on and is tested on humans.From the USC press release:

USC: Restoring Memory, Repairing Damaged Brains

Biomedical engineers analyze—and duplicate—the neural mechanism of learning in rats

LOS ANGELES, June 17, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/

Scientists have developed a way to turn memories on and off—literally with the flip of a switch.

(Image Information)For stroke or Alzheimer’s victims, the promise of Dr. Theodore Berger’s recent breakthrough is enormous: imagine a prosthetic chip inserted in the brain that imitates the function of a brain’s damaged hippocampus (the region associated with long term memory). The current successful laboratory tests on rats, restoring long term memory at the flick of a switch, will next be duplicated in primates (monkeys) and eventually humans. (PRNewsFoto/USC Viterbi School of Engineering)

Using an electronic system that duplicates the neural signals associated with memory, they managed to replicate the brain function in rats associated with long-term learned behavior, even when the rats had been drugged to forget.

“Flip the switch on, and the rats remember. Flip it off, and the rats forget,” said Theodore Berger of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Berger is the lead author of an article that will be published in the Journal of Neural Engineering. His team worked with scientists from Wake Forest University in the study, building on recent advances in our understanding of the brain area known as the hippocampus and its role in learning.

In the experiment, the researchers had rats learn a task, pressing one lever rather than another to receive a reward. Using embedded electrical probes, the experimental research team, led by Sam A. Deadwyler of the Wake Forest Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, recorded changes in the rat’s brain activity between the two major internal divisions of the hippocampus, known as subregions CA3 and CA1. During the learning process, the hippocampus converts short-term memory into long-term memory, the researchers prior work has shown.

“No hippocampus,” says Berger, “no long-term memory, but still short-term memory.” CA3 and CA1 interact to create long-term memory, prior research has shown.

In a dramatic demonstration, the experimenters blocked the normal neural interactions between the two areas using pharmacological agents. The previously trained rats then no longer displayed the long-term learned behavior.

“The rats still showed that they knew ‘when you press left first, then press right next time, and vice-versa,’” Berger said. “And they still knew in general to press levers for water, but they could only remember whether they had pressed left or right for 5-10 seconds.”

Using a model created by the prosthetics research team led by Berger, the teams then went further and developed an artificial hippocampal system that could duplicate the pattern of interaction between CA3-CA1 interactions.

Long-term memory capability returned to the pharmacologically blocked rats when the team activated the electronic device programmed to duplicate the memory-encoding function.

In addition, the researchers went on to show that if a prosthetic device and its associated electrodes were implanted in animals with a normal, functioning hippocampus, the device could actually strengthen the memory being generated internally in the brain and enhance the memory capability of normal rats.

“These integrated experimental modeling studies show for the first time that with sufficient information about the neural coding of memories, a neural prosthesis capable of real-time identification and manipulation of the encoding process can restore and even enhance cognitive mnemonic processes,” says the paper.

Next steps, according to Berger and Deadwyler, will be attempts to duplicate the rat results in primates (monkeys), with the aim of eventually creating prostheses that might help the human victims of Alzheimer’s disease, stroke or injury recover function.

The paper is entitled “A Cortical Neural Prosthesis for Restoring and Enhancing Memory.” Besides Deadwyler and Berger, the other authors are, from USC, BME Professor Vasilis Z. Marmarelis and Research Assistant Professor Dong Song, and from Wake Forest, Associate Professor Robert E. Hampson and Post-Doctoral Fellow Anushka Goonawardena.

Berger, who holds the David Packard Chair in Engineering, is the Director of the USC Center for Neural Engineering, Associate Director of the National Science Foundation Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems Engineering Research Center, and a Fellow of the IEEE, the AAAS, and the AIMBE.

SOURCE USC Viterbi School of Engineering
RELATED LINKS
http://www.viterbi.usc.edu

Following the link to the University website we find the following research centers and programs associated with the school.

Programs
» Aviation Safety and Security Program
» Distance Education Network
» Masters and Professional Programs
» Globalization and International Programs

National Research Centers
» Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems
» Center for Energy Nanoscience
» Integrated Media Systems Center
» DHS Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events
» The National Center for Metropolitan Transportation Research
» Listing of Viterbi School Research Centers and Labs

This technology has potential for a wide array of applications. It could even be the breakthrough needed to create the the first long-imagined artificial intelligence network.

However, given the association between the University and the Federal Government’s Department of Homeland Security, and related studies on terrorism, which is constantly being used as an excuse to chip away at the civil liberties and constitutional rights of US citizens, my bets are the Feds will use this in the war on terror before they try using it for good.

That means the potential for misuse to enact a true Orwellian-style “thought police” and even the ability to implement complete mind control among hosts.

Scientists Warn of Ethical Battle Concerning Military Mind Control

Advances in neuroscience are closer than ever to becoming a reality, but scientists are warning the military – along with their peers – that with great power comes great responsibility

By JASON KOEBLER

March 20, 2012

[See pictures of Navy SEALs]

“Neuroscientists may not consider how their work contributes to warfare,” he adds.

“Where one draws that line is not obvious, and how one decides to cross that line is not easy. People will say ‘Why would we want to deny warfighters these advantages?’” he says.

[Mind Control, Biometrics Could Change the World]

“There’s a tremendous tension about this,” he says. “There’s a great feeling of responsibility that we push this stuff out so we’re ahead of our adversaries.”

The government is obliged to inform the public about the new digital communication system “telepathy”.

We want this website to create a general awareness and attention that these technologies are developed in many years, including EUROPE.

Do you know someone who is a multimedia online but do not dare talk about it?

It is easy not to be believed for a person who alleges that a paradigm shift in computer-brain integration and multimedia technology is already here.

We are aware that part of the information here may sound like science fiction, but there is already a real reality.

Read more about the future under the various tabs!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/11/08/us-summit-novartis-proteus-idUSTRE6A754720101108

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Brain Implants for MIND CONTROL!

There could be conflict between the personal freedom to use one‘s economic resources to get an implant that will enhance one‘s physical capabilities and what society at large considers desirable or ethically acceptable.“

Think your thoughts are private?
Ever told a lie and been caught red-handed? Using brain-scanning by implants technology scientists are beginning to probe our minds and tell if we’re lying. Other scientists are decoding our desires and exploring the difference between our conscious and unconscious mind. But can you really trust the technology?

How threatening for mankind is an Artificial Brain ?

First let me state that at this moment the biggest threat for mankind is the human specie ! ABC-weapons in wrong hands can result in extreme damaging behavior.

25-04-2010. MINDTECH seeks to establish a network of laymen and media. This group will be dealing with the social and ethical sides to research, development and the implementation of emerging technologies in our society.

Meanwhile, philosophers working alongside the researchers say it’s time to find out more about how the public feels about such bionic research, which in some cases is being used to enhance human memory, physical abilities and perception.“

Not yet published research materials in interdisciplinary brain research and development of computer-brain interface must therefore be attributed to an unknown number of defenseless experimental subjects, many with families whose lives are destroyed in a wild orgy of computer abuse.This is to copy the cognitive behaviors and human perception in the development of quantum physics.Try The items have no options or informed consent, served as on-line research materials on aging.

MindUploading.org addresses the specific issues that may arise when neural prostheses are customized to a specific patient, and when large scale neural prostheses lead to whole brain emulation: the emulation of a patient’s complete brain function in a prosthetic substrate. Site content is focused on neuroscience and computational research that is involved in an eventual progression from neural prostheses to the applied science of whole brain emulation, including the concept of “mind-transfer”.

The natural conclusion is that the perpetrators have something to gain by doing this to us. We are victims of experimentation done on humans without consent. Two areas of research are Artificial Intelligence and Non-Lethal Weapons.

It is inevitable. In the near future, someone will decide to record every moment of a human life from birth to death in digital storage. This will be more than an extreme reality TV stunt. It will mark the era of personal memory offloading, an adaptive memory technology that records and indexes every single moment of your life. Offloading personal memory begins with a personal memory device, or a PMD. The basic PMD would be no more complex than a nano chip implant in the brain that captures your every experience. A PMD could be easily fitted shortly after birth; the least invasive option would be like a Bluetooth headset worn over the ear connected wirelessly to a local device no larger than a cell phone. Once installed, the PMD would capture and upload all first-person memories to a centralized database for indexing, search, and recall.

Would the PMD remember where you parked? Always. Will it warn you when you are about to walk away and leave your hat and sunglasses on the bench behind you? Totally. Will it send you birthday reminders, schedule your meetings, remind you to pick up your dry-cleaning and let you program your DVR with voice commands? Yes. Will it find your car keys and remote control for you? Maybe. Will it record your innermost thoughts? Probably not. It won’t always be perfect, but it will greatly extend your normal range of memory, and over time it will become like an indispensable part of your brain.

External data is easy to record and index, but internal memory such as feelings, thoughts, ideas, and dreams present some engineering challenges. The PMD could be fitted with an invasive brain implant to extend functionality, but to keep things simple, let’s consider some cheap, non-invasive solutions. Biometric data such as temperature, galvanic skin response, brainwave activity, pulse, respiration rates, and perspiration levels can monitor mood, arousal, activity levels, and so on. This biometric data, no matter how spotty, can be used to generate a dynamic emotional profile for any individual as they move through their day. Speech and behavioral analysis can also track levels of focus and activity to indicate mood and engagement in reality. Facial gestures and voice pitch can be tracked to sense subtle emotional reactions to stimulus. There could be a service that monitors your diet and daily routines to see if you are acting in healthy or unhealthy ways. If environmental data capture is complete, filling in emotional data from biometric analysis would be a simple software task.

With your PMD you would be able to say, “Remember the time I did (activity) with (person) at (location)?” and your PMD would search your memory database and stream the audio, video, and emotional rendering of the experience to your cell phone. Or you could ask, “Remember that book I read on chimpanzees? Who was the author?” Multiple memories may fit your query and be returned as a basic search list with text, video, and audio links. Similar memories with substituted variables might be offered up as tangents. Your request may provide you with “links” to other activities at that same location or to other books you have read by the same author. Beyond that, you could watch yourself relive important memories, or if friends and family members had similar devices, you could share personal events and watch group memories through multiple perspectives. Human memory integrity need no longer rely on lossy neural compression and the unreliable he-said/she-said narratives that compose written history. It would all be a matter of public record stored in time-stamped relational database tables for all of history. At the very least, it may save a few arguments between married couples.

The PMD sounds like science fiction, but the technology for creating it exists today. It could be an iPhone app. The engineering hurdles would be the physical disk space and CPU cycles needed for daily storage, compression, and indexing of video and audio data for every person with a PMD. Let’s assume storage and CPU cycles are solvable problems and that indexing and compression of video and speech data will only get better and faster over time. So pretty soon, for a moderate monthly fee, you could get a PMD system bundled with your cable, cell-phone, or internet bill. With a pocket or desktop unit, your daily memory will be locally stored and indexed. The relevant data points would then be uploaded to a central server for global storage and cross-indexing with other personal memories and digital records over the course of your lifetime. Like a Tivo, your PMD would be able to predict which memories you want to save, which memories your friends and family will like, and which memories are private, redundant, or expendable. It would be easy to customize these features for each individual, making indexing personal memory an intuitive task that would involve automatically setting user preferences based on daily routines; mirroring actual learning and memory networking in the brain.

A user’s guide to nanotechnology

Posted by Magnus Olsson on April 20, 2012

Posted in: Tech News. Tagged: .PDF, environment, Health and nutrition, Nano, nanofabrication, nanoproducts, nanotechnology, science, silicon wires, Technology. Leave a Comment

A user’s guide to nanotechnology

Posted: 4th April 2012 by KiPnews in Health & Nutrition, Technology
Tags: .PDF, Health and nutrition, Nano, nanofabrication, nanoproducts, nanotechnology,science, Technology

From cosmetics to cars, many products we use on a daily basis already utilise nanotechnology – but are you aware of the implications? Penny Sarchet and David Adam explain all you need to know

the user’s guide to nanotechnology (PDF)

What is nanotechnology?

Nanotechnology is technology that operates on the nanoscale, about one billionth of a metre. If a living cell were a large city, then a nanometre would be about the size of a car. Nanotechnology is the art of engineering down at this hard-to-fathom scale.

The idea started in 1959 when famous physicist Richard Feynman suggested we could manipulate individual atoms and use them to build tiny machines. However, the term “nanotechnology” was not coined until the 1980s and lumps together different and varied ideas.

All that unites these different technologies is that they use nano-sized building blocks. While other technologies make machines out of bulk materials – microchips out of silicon, wires out of copper, cars out of steel – nanotechnology makes machines out of large, complex molecules. Because nanotechnology works at such an extreme and unexplored scale, it opens up a world of new possibilities. Many nanomaterials possess special properties, such as great strength or high ability to conduct electricity.

Scientists working in the field of nanotechnology often look to nature to provide ideas for “smart” ways to solve complex problems. For example, spider silk and lotus leaves have both been studied in order to replicate their special properties, ie their tensile strength or ability to repel water, in engineered materials.

Why should I care about nanotechnology?

Nano | Care illustration

Nanotechnology is not just one technology, it is a whole new toolkit. It has the potential to change almost everything, from unimaginably small computer chips to tiny machines that find and fix damaged arteries inside our bodies. Nanotechnology could make our energy cleaner, our lives longer, and all of our existing technologies better.

This is not just a distant, science fiction-like dream – nanomaterials are already present in more than 1,000 consumer products, from cosmetics to cars. However, because nanotechnology works on such a new scale, it can be difficult to assess its dangers.

Everyday examples
Nanotechnology is a powerful tool for answering some of our most difficult questions. Scientists say we cannot afford to ignore the new medical, agricultural and environmental technologies it could provide as we search for solutions to an expanding global population.

Potential risks
Consumers will face different risks than the workers who manufacture these products, as they are the ones exposed to high doses. Various agencies are involved in making sure protection measures are adequate for both groups.

Where is nanotechnology used?

Nano | Nanowear

Nanotechnology is used in every sector you can think of, from the cars we drive to the clothes we wear.

It is easy to see why ultra-lightweight materials with special electrical properties are useful, in electronics and computing for example, but nanomaterials are also present in scratch-resistant car bumpers, self-cleaning glass and anti-odour socks. Nanotech materials are being added to health and fitness products, from anti-ageing creams to skis.

Silver is a powerful anti-microbial agent and more than 300 products use nanoscale silver to make anti-bacterial surfaces, clothing and even condoms.

Nanotechnology can also address environmental concerns. Nanotech catalytic converters and water filters remove environmental pollutants from our exhaust fumes and waste water. Wind turbines with nanomaterials are more efficient and cheaper, nanocrystal solar panels are just around the corner. Nanotechnology is already providing fresh solutions wherever it is applied.

Everyday example
The first use of nanomedicine was approved back in 1995 to treat cancer; since then researchers have continued to find new ways for nanotechnology to combat diseases.

Potential risks
Nanosilver, if over-used in consumer products that have a short lifespan, might cause harm to the environment.

How could it be used in the future?

Nano | Nanocar

Today, many of our products are improved by nanomaterials. In the future, however, nanotechnology aims to use these nanomaterials to construct tiny nano-engineered machines, computers and medicines.

In energy research, we may see a shift from using nanomaterials to improve existing technologies to using nanotechnology to develop entirely new ways of harnessing energy and, in the future, cars might be powered cleanly by hydrogen, stored safely in a solid form thanks to nanotechnology.

One day, nanotechnology may allow us to build any kind of structure we want from atomic building blocks to construct powerful computers, capable of processing as much information as a DNA molecule.

Everyday example
Researchers are already developing nanomedicines that target the proteins that accumulate in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, and nanoparticles that bind to tumour cells and treat them with antibodies. The big step will be using them to treat human diseases.

Potential risks
As with the adoption of all technologies, it is important to understand the motivation for doing so (eg money, public benefit) and its impacts, particularly risks.

Should nanoproducts be labelled?

Nano | Nano products

In November 2009, the European Union passed a law that will soon force manufacturers of cosmetics to state on the label if their products contain nanoparticles.

Will more products follow? The issue of labelling has divided campaigners and politicians, just as it has with whether foods should be labelled as containing genetically modified ingredients.

Supporters of labels on nanotech say they will encourage consumer choice. Opponents say they will be meaningless without extra information on whether the nano-ingredients pose any risk. Without context, such labels could be misinterpreted as warnings, they say.

Everyday examples
Lipsticks and face creams that contain nanoparticles will soon be labelled as such. Perhaps “nano-free” could then start to appear on products too?

Potential risks
Labels might be a shortcut for industry to appear “transparent” without really informing the public.

Is the use of nanomaterials in food safe?

Nano | Nanofood

The food industry has been slow to exploit nanotechnology, perhaps because of public attitudes towards “non-natural” foods. But there are numerous ways the technology could be used, from stronger plastic films to keep sandwiches fresh for longer, to adding flavours to foods.

In most cases, the development of such techniques has proceeded faster than the safety checks that are needed to make sure they are safe – could nanoparticles escape from plastic wrapping to enter a ham baguette? Would that packaging need to be disposed of differently and could it be recycled?

The European Food Standards Authority is keeping a close watch on developments.

Everyday examples
Nanoparticles could indicate the presence of harmful bacteria in foods.

Potential risks
The safety of nanomaterials used in food and food packaging must be fully assessed to avoid unwanted side effects.

What is the real added value of nanotech?

Nano | nanosales

Nanotechnology is such a broad term that it is difficult to generalise about the value it could bring.

There will be clear social value, in the form of cleaner energy and improved medicines; and individual value in that nanotechnology used in sporting equipment, for example, would improve an individual’s performance. On the other hand, having hundreds of products that are anti-bacterial most likely will not bring many additional benefits to society.

Value, to a certain extent, is in the eye of the user of the technology. A patient who can benefit from one type of tiny particle injected into their bloodstream to test for heart disease and so avoid surgery, for example, would probably see more added value than an average tennis player who started playing with a racket made and improved by using nanomaterials. A mis-hit still goes into the net after all, nanotech racket or not.

Everyday examples
Nanotechnology is being used as a marketing tag to sell everything from socks and t-shirts to sports equipment. The true benefit comes from the way it is used by the consumer.

Do nanoproducts require special disposal?

One of the concerns over the widespread use of nanotechnology is that tiny particles could escape from where they are intended to be used and end up polluting the wider environment.

This is not a problem confined to nanotechnology of course, and a number of chemicals that we know to be toxic are used in everyday products such as light bulbs and batteries. Consumers are asked to dispose of these products carefully, but there is no way to be sure that they will do so. And some escapes are impossible to prevent – for example, much of the mercury in the atmosphere comes from the cremation of dead people with dental fillings.

The effects of nanoparticles on the wider environment are largely unknown, so perhaps a cautious approach is the best one?

Everyday examples
Factories and research laboratories could release nanoparticles in their waste streams. Many international bodies are looking at ways in which accidental release of nanoparticles can be monitored and prevented.

Potential risks
Toxic particles could pollute the natural environment and kill wildlife.

source; http://www.guardian.co.uk/

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