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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

#51

Post by 234dd57d2c8db »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #37
snowwrestler wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying things and seeing what happens is the essence of science; the only way we have to try to figure things out. Scientists have to get replication of an effect before they can design further experiments to dig into its details. As to whether it's unethical--it sickens me too. It's horrifying but what if it gives us the key to solving spinal paralysis? It's a classic moral dilemma. I highly recommend this short sto…

Science starts with observation, not experimentation. Honestly, if this was software, I'd consider this sort of approach as nothing short of pathetic. When I first reverse engineered firmware flashing software for mobile phones, experimentation was the absolute last thing I did - and all that experimentation could do was damage my phone, not another living creature. Instead I recorded observations of software operati…

You can't compare the two because one was created by humans and one was not. It's ridiculous to compare these two. Here's a more accurate scenario:

You need to debug this software without a keyboard, mouse, monitor. The language is an assembly language written by aliens with no documentation that uses quantum states in protons to manage the machine. Oh by the way, it's encrypted and obfuscated into nothing but MOV instructions. And there's 100 billion MOV instructions.

That's the kind of complexity we are talking about here. So get off your highhorse and let the experts who just made a paralyzed monkey walk do their jobs.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#52

Post by stinos »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #37
snowwrestler wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying things and seeing what happens is the essence of science; the only way we have to try to figure things out. Scientists have to get replication of an effect before they can design further experiments to dig into its details. As to whether it's unethical--it sickens me too. It's horrifying but what if it gives us the key to solving spinal paralysis? It's a classic moral dilemma. I highly recommend this short sto…

Science starts with observation, not experimentation. Honestly, if this was software, I'd consider this sort of approach as nothing short of pathetic. When I first reverse engineered firmware flashing software for mobile phones, experimentation was the absolute last thing I did - and all that experimentation could do was damage my phone, not another living creature. Instead I recorded observations of software operati…

> Science starts with observation, not experimentation.

well, yes, but in a lot of neuroscience research, mainly the fundametal research, the initial observation stage led to the knowlegde that you first need controlled experimentation in order to perform any further valid/interesting observation at all

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#54

Post by sp332 »

adrianN wrote: post #22
popol12 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Chimpanzees are at ~98%, mice are at about 97% similarity [1]. Where do you draw the line? Genetic similarity is imho a poor measure. The capability of suffering is more difficult to assess, but more useful. I'm reasonably sure that the animals we eat can suffer sufficiently to make the way we raise and kill them problematic. [1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2352-just-2-5-of-dna-...

Do you have a source for that 98% number? I've been hearing it thrown around since before the human genome project was finished and long before anyone really started a chimp genome map, but I've never seen a source.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#55

Post by fermuch »

234dd57d2c8db wrote: post #51
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science starts with observation, not experimentation. Honestly, if this was software, I'd consider this sort of approach as nothing short of pathetic. When I first reverse engineered firmware flashing software for mobile phones, experimentation was the absolute last thing I did - and all that experimentation could do was damage my phone, not another living creature. Instead I recorded observations of software operati…

You can't compare the two because one was created by humans and one was not. It's ridiculous to compare these two. Here's a more accurate scenario: You need to debug this software without a keyboard, mouse, monitor. The language is an assembly language written by aliens with no documentation that uses quantum states in protons to manage the machine. Oh by the way, it's encrypted and obfuscated into nothing but MOV in…

The phrasing is a bit harsh, but the example is a nice one. It's easy to forget how complex living creatures are.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#56

Post by stinos »

TeeWEE wrote: post #3
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...

Indeed, the research is a bit unfair. Its not difficult to understand old signals and they reuse it to generate motor effects.

The other thing has been done as well though: Obama shook a robotic arm's hand, the arm was being controlled by a paralyzed man; he learned the proper 'thoughts' for generating movement himself and the researchers didn't have recordings of the man moving prior to his accident leading to paralysis

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#57

Post by mentos »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #27
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 would assume it's because monkeys are more intelligent than the animals we tend to eat; cows, chickens, sheep & pigs. Also, intentionally paralysing a creature, leaving it to live in that condition, and then performing experimental surgery/procedures on it is significantly different than slaughtering it. Whilst I appreciate the scientists mean well, and I do understand how this could benefit humanity; this sort of…

Philosophical and metaphysical question, what do we do about all of the suffering that has occurred in the past?

There is no accumulator for suffering, each state exists independent of the next.

If it already happened once, how is it any different if it happens again?

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#58

Post by Balgair »

sandworm101 wrote: post #44

We have seen many such interfaces in recent years, but as I understand these techniques they all suffer the same problem. The body eventually coats the electrodes in a non-conductive layer, essentially scar tissue, and the whole thing grinds to a halt in a matter of weeks. Until that practical limitation is surmounted, it seems very wrong to treat animals in such a manner. Watching the paralyzed monkey (also the rat)…

Gliosis is a big problem for sure, and the central nervous system's scarring is not well understood at this time.

Typically with recording electrodes you can either 'jiggle' them to shake off the scarring cells or pass a small amount of current between the combined electrodes to kill off the cells. These recording electrodes are typically only a few microns apart, so long range damage is a non-issue if the subject is not connected to ground in another way. You can go for ~6 months like this before the gliosis really builds up, and honestly, by that time the recording electrode has probably broken anyway or the subject has bonked the implant and it broke that way too, or as is typically the case with monkey subjects, it tore out the implant and ate it, stabbed another monkey with it, or tried to have sex with it. Monkey studies are rare and hard, not just because of ethical issues, but because monkeys are clever little assholes.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#59

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

234dd57d2c8db wrote: post #51
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science starts with observation, not experimentation. Honestly, if this was software, I'd consider this sort of approach as nothing short of pathetic. When I first reverse engineered firmware flashing software for mobile phones, experimentation was the absolute last thing I did - and all that experimentation could do was damage my phone, not another living creature. Instead I recorded observations of software operati…

You can't compare the two because one was created by humans and one was not. It's ridiculous to compare these two. Here's a more accurate scenario: You need to debug this software without a keyboard, mouse, monitor. The language is an assembly language written by aliens with no documentation that uses quantum states in protons to manage the machine. Oh by the way, it's encrypted and obfuscated into nothing but MOV in…

Except they didn't exactly make a paralyzed monkey walk, did they? They simply paralyzed a monkey.

There are parts of this study that seem quite legit (another poster referred to them above).

However, the paralysis, surgery, and replay of data into the nervous system, just to be the first to "claim" they made a monkey walk was not one of them.

I already mentioned software is very different to biology, my issue is with reckless experimentation that has caused a lot of harm to a creature and provides no real gain. What were they actually hoping to achieve with this part of the experiment? It's already well understood that we can interface with nervous system, this is nothing new.

P.S. concern for the well being of other creatures isn't a particularly high horse. It's called empathy.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#60

Post by stinos »

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…

>working with monkeys in China is less burdened by regulation than it is in Europe and the United States

I'd argue in cases like these the European regulations are actually a good thing, mainly considering the animals' welfare: in China rules like minimum cage size are either a fraction of European standards or non-existing/not checked. Of course there's always the argument 'I keep my monkeys healthy otherwise they won't work well for the experiments' but if experiments must be done, wouldn't we rather have the animals housed in a spacious area with daylight vs in a cage of 2m^3 in a dark basement?

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