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Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

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Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#121

Post by Shorel »

otikik wrote: post #102
Geee wrote: post #92

If I understand correctly, this allows nerve-to-digital and digital-to-nerve conversions. This means that we're soon able to replace our bodies with robotic ones. The remaining problem is to figure out how to keep a brain alive in a vat, and making the life-support devices small enough to fit inside the body. It's probably not too difficult; you need to circulate blood, remove carbon dioxide, add oxygen, add glucose.…

My hopes are smaller in scope. I hope this helps people with severed nerve damage, or perhaps to implement better prosthetics for people with missing limbs (perhaps with motion and tactile sensors?) One that I would personally be very interested in would be improving human-computer interactions. Preferably with no quirurgical procedures, or something extremely non-invasive and quick.

Your hopes are realistic and the actual use of such technology.

I also want some kind of biological USB, that we need years of training to be able to use fast xD

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#122

Post by sumeno »

Geee wrote: post #92

If I understand correctly, this allows nerve-to-digital and digital-to-nerve conversions. This means that we're soon able to replace our bodies with robotic ones. The remaining problem is to figure out how to keep a brain alive in a vat, and making the life-support devices small enough to fit inside the body. It's probably not too difficult; you need to circulate blood, remove carbon dioxide, add oxygen, add glucose.…

> If I understand correctly

This always seems to be followed by something that demonstrates that the poster did not understand correctly

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#123

Post by ellu »

Geee wrote: post #105
otikik wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My hopes are smaller in scope. I hope this helps people with severed nerve damage, or perhaps to implement better prosthetics for people with missing limbs (perhaps with motion and tactile sensors?) One that I would personally be very interested in would be improving human-computer interactions. Preferably with no quirurgical procedures, or something extremely non-invasive and quick.

Helping disabled people is probably the most important near-term application of this. I just like to ponder about long-term "sci-fi" implications, in terms of how and when these kinds of ideas will become actually plausible. Some applications, like digital eyes, which connect directly to the optic nerve, would be first used to cure blindness, but soon people would start replacing their functioning eyes too, if it all…

As these technologies become reality, funny to think that we may see a class of disabled people leapfrog the rest of society and become hyper-enabled. Becoming essentially superhuman, with heightened abilities in things like vision or prosthetics due to being the first to adopt bio augmentation

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#124

Post by Savely »

momento wrote: post #97
Geee wrote: post #92

If I understand correctly, this allows nerve-to-digital and digital-to-nerve conversions. This means that we're soon able to replace our bodies with robotic ones. The remaining problem is to figure out how to keep a brain alive in a vat, and making the life-support devices small enough to fit inside the body. It's probably not too difficult; you need to circulate blood, remove carbon dioxide, add oxygen, add glucose.…

> This means that we're soon able to replace our bodies with robotic ones. Talk about jumping to conclusions.

Robotic body replacement is some 20 years away!

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#125

Post by lm28469 »

Geee wrote: post #92

If I understand correctly, this allows nerve-to-digital and digital-to-nerve conversions. This means that we're soon able to replace our bodies with robotic ones. The remaining problem is to figure out how to keep a brain alive in a vat, and making the life-support devices small enough to fit inside the body. It's probably not too difficult; you need to circulate blood, remove carbon dioxide, add oxygen, add glucose.…

> This means that we're soon able to replace our bodies with robotic ones.

"We have a computer that can play chess, which means we'll soon be able to replace humans by AIs" - someone in 1970

> You could probably keep the brain alive indefinitely.

> It's probably not too difficult

Why do 1/3rd to half of people above 85 have Alzheimer's/Parkinson's/Dementia then ?

Software developers have very simplistic and optimistic views about these things, we're very far away from anything remotely close to have you're talking about. The human body is infinitely more complex than what your comment hints

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#126

Post by lm28469 »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #6

I've always found it incongruous that we can move a person's body around the globe at 900 kilometers per hour for 25 hours for under $1500 but for 1000x that price and even with 1000x that time we can't bridge the distance between a brain and a foot.

On this forum people very often take computers as an analogy to the brain/body but it's like comparing a wooden spear and a heat seeker missile.

I think we're just blind to how insane nature is compared to our mere half assed copies of organic processes

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#127

Post by make3 »

Geee wrote: post #92

If I understand correctly, this allows nerve-to-digital and digital-to-nerve conversions. This means that we're soon able to replace our bodies with robotic ones. The remaining problem is to figure out how to keep a brain alive in a vat, and making the life-support devices small enough to fit inside the body. It's probably not too difficult; you need to circulate blood, remove carbon dioxide, add oxygen, add glucose.…

"This means that we're soon able to replace our bodies with robotic ones."

Come on man, I can't believe people do these wild extrapolations out of nothing like this, when every two days an article on HN and a hundred on reddit claim to definitely cure cancer and aids and whatnot

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#128

Post by BurningFrog »

rbanffy wrote: post #117
BurningFrog wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A radio link would simplify this enormously. You could link nerves "wirelessly"from a leg to near the brain without any surgery in between. I don't see why it's fundamentally impossible?

I'm not sure it'd be a brilliant idea from an infosec point-of-view - the links themselves would need to be hardened in such way interfering with them would be impossible, or someone would be able to just blast the proper messages to the receivers to take over someone's body. In fact, the conductor was half-joking. I'd probably go for fiber, even if it adds latency at the endpoints.

Radio would be awesome because you don't have to force some cable through half the body, which must be real major surgery.

Some pretty basic encryption scheme should handle infosec angle.

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#129

Post by ElFitz »

imp0cat wrote: post #100
maxerickson wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of yet, most people with brain implants have them to try to improve profound problems. Cochlear implants are controversial in the deaf community, but they also have a relatively clear purpose and effect (vs being "arbitrary").

Controversial? Please do tell.

Not the parent, but I vaguely recall our ethics teacher mentioning some associations advocating for hearing impaired people have, at least in some European countries, advocated against cochlear implants in young children, mostly on ethical grounds.

His whole point being that ethics is not about what some majority might instinctively believe is best for everyone, and that other perspectives must be considered.

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#130

Post by codeisawesome »

adrianN wrote: post #86
jmprspret wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't nerve signals already travel at electric current speeds?

No they are much slower, on the order of a few dozen meters per second.

Ah, thanks for clarifying… I assumed nerve signals travel at the speed of light and the person responding to me was being sarcastic!
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