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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

#71

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

citricsquid wrote: post #67
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The intelligence argument is nonsense. Pigs are as intelligent as dogs. Describe the treatment of livestock (pigs, chickens, cows) but frame it as something that is happening to dogs and you'll drive hundreds of thousands of outraged meat eaters to signing a petition. The reason is cognitive dissonance, we're taught from the moment we can understand that it's okay to farm animals and very few people ever really think…

Just to be clear, I haven't at all expressed that I think the treatment of livestock for slaughter is acceptable/ethical.

The intelligence remark I made was with regard to why society might perceive these differently. I'm not suggesting that logic is necessarily valid.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#72

Post by 234dd57d2c8db »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #59
234dd57d2c8db wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wit…

It's not "reckless experimentation" for "no gain" at all.

Here's a practical application for this research. Someone with a disease will eventually suffer from paralysis due to the degen. nature of the disease. Applying the technique from the research, we could record their body movements before they become paralyzed and then restore their ability to walk later.

I think that's a pretty real gain. Just because it's in a fledgling stage of research doesn't mean it's worthless. Medical research is a much longer timeline than even complex software. You make incredibly small baby steps precisely because you don't have tools like a debugger, logic analyzer, etc, etc.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#73

Post by pvaldes »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #41
biofox wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientists are not sadists, and welfare is taken extremely seriously. What people don't see are the efforts to enrich living environments, provide sedation and analgesia, or the reams of protocols on monitoring and rapidly terminating experiments if the animal is distressed. None of this exists in livestock farming. Also, for me intelligence is besides the point. If someone is suffering, I don't factor their IQ into…

The point is that intelligence is sentience. The more aware you are of your own condition the more capable you are of suffering. A jellyfish does not suffer the same as a human, at least not in the way we'd typically measure suffering.

and sentience is the new soul

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#74

Post by adityab »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #59
234dd57d2c8db wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wit…

> It's already well understood that we can interface with nervous system, this is nothing new.

Ok, let's not do anything then because actually putting this understanding to use involves touching actual brain matter and seeing what works.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#75

Post by snowwrestler »

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…

This is going to seem personally harsh--that's not my intention. But you're flatly wrong. Fundamentally, collecting observations is an active pursuit.

An example: We didn't start to learn about electricity until we started messing with it. That's because there was very little to observe passively. Touching electric fish, rubbing amber to make static electricity, flying a kite into a thunderstorm--these sorts of actions produced the early observations that started us down the path toward the knowledge we have today.

Your example was observing USB traces. In order to do that, you had to plug a well-understood sensor into a well-understood interface. You did something, and observed the results. You just think of it as passive observation because you're taking for granted the enormous amount of prior knowledge that made it possible.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#76

Post by biofox »

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)…

A huge amount of progress has been made in this area. The most promising report I've seen was in Nat Methods a few weeks ago:

"we demonstrated stable multiplexed local field potentials and single-unit recordings in mouse brains for at least 8 months without probe repositioning"

http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v13/n10/full/nmeth.3969....

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#77

Post by mtw »

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"

It reminds of the skeptics about China achieving fusion for one minute, as well as China's new rocket capable of landing taikonauts on the moon.

It seems to me China is doubling down on scientific research. Their methods or ethics might be frowned on the West, but it is clear from recent news that pace of scientific discovery is accelerating in China.

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#78

Post by adityab »

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…

How do you suggest one should observe neural activity?

Re: Brain implants allow paralysed monkeys to walk

#80

Post by nihonde »

citricsquid wrote: post #67
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The intelligence argument is nonsense. Pigs are as intelligent as dogs. Describe the treatment of livestock (pigs, chickens, cows) but frame it as something that is happening to dogs and you'll drive hundreds of thousands of outraged meat eaters to signing a petition. The reason is cognitive dissonance, we're taught from the moment we can understand that it's okay to farm animals and very few people ever really think…

In that case, why not start with human subjects?
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