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Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

nature.com

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Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#11

Post by raverbashing »

quantisan wrote: post #2

"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...

Yes

But maybe it is. You can also put people on a VR environment and have them "walk" there (see experiments by Nicolelis et. al.) and try to capture signals like that

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#12

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

biofox wrote: post #7

"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, say…

I agree. Logically, it should be more acceptable to have animals as test subjects that can benefit all mankind vs being a tasty treat for an individual. But we all have are cognitive dissonances, without exception. Thats just a quirk of being human

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#13

Post by jobigoud »

quantisan wrote: post #2

"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...

One of my fear is an extremely big generation gap in the future when we find a transhuman-level technology that can only work if done from an early age. Exocortex interface comes to mind.

Then you would have an entire generation thinking millions of times deeper, broader, and faster than the previous one, and communication mostly broken. I sort of fear this scenario because I would be on the wrong side of it.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#14

Post by kayoone »

adam12 wrote: post #10

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

Security experts have shown dangers in current medical devices like pace makes, where they literally could have killed a patient wirelessly because many of these devices have no security at all.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#15

Post by jobigoud »

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #12
biofox wrote: post #7

"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, say…

I agree. Logically, it should be more acceptable to have animals as test subjects that can benefit all mankind vs being a tasty treat for an individual. But we all have are cognitive dissonances, without exception. Thats just a quirk of being human

> we all have are cognitive dissonances

To be honest I haven't found a bigger cognitive dissonance than the love animals / eat animals one.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#16

Post by kayoone »

TeeWEE wrote: post #4

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.

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.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#19

Post by popol12 »

biofox wrote: post #7

"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, say…

We are much closer geneticaly to monkeys than to cows, I would'nt do experiments on something that has 99% genes in common with me.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#20

Post by popol12 »

kayoone wrote: post #16
TeeWEE wrote: post #4

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.

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.

Monkeys are so close to us genetically speaking. You can't compare a monkey with a cow.
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