Kudos to Neuralink engineers and doctors. We are still far away from human trials but this looks nothing short of SciFi
Not far away: https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-03-31/braingate-wireless
Monkey MindPong
81–90 of 291 posts
Re: Monkey MindPong
#82Here is the ultimate question.... What smoothing algorithms did they use to guess the 'certainty' of the 'intended' movement in a Y-Plane game vs. the X,Y grid they learned from? Having researched in this space, you don't get better results from 'training' on a X,Y space and reducing that training to a Y-grid predictor. There is a ton of smoothing going on in the video... or the metal conductor plays a huge role in t…
> or the metal conductor plays a huge role in the electrical signals they get from the implanted electrodes
I highly doubt that, you must be talking about non-invasive electrodes such as EEG. When the electrodes are inside the brain and thus in the cranium, they are effectively protected from outside EM activity since they're in an effective Faraday cage, so your signal has much higher fidelity.
Re: Monkey MindPong
#83The next step for Neuralink is write mode. No, not writing memories, but reprogramming motor function. If you can capture the signals of limb movement synapses for say, a paraplegic, you can read those signals and convert them into write signals in another part of the brain responsible for the actual motor function. Over time, that neuron pathway gets reinforced and could potentially teach a person how to walk again.
It’s exciting stuff and I’m sure there are concerns to be addressed down the line wrt altering perception, but let’s not put the cart before the horse. That would be like worrying about impending AI drones in the 70s.
Re: Monkey MindPong
#84This particular exercise could've been done with EEG. Where Neuralink excels is in having a much higher possible bitrate. Pong is the absolute POC. Neuralink will most likely be able to achieve higher differentiability and thus be able to complete tasks of higher complexity, so stay tuned for even more impressive tasks. EEG can't get past pong; it's limited by physics itself. The solution is to put the electrodes in…
When you say "this particular exercise", are you referring to the "put the pointer in the box" exercise at the beginning? The Pong part toward the end was pretty cool. I wonder how complex of games the monkey can play :)
Re: Monkey MindPong
#85It looked like the dexterity of the mind was quicker than the dexterity of the hand.
Mind cursors seems amazing but I believe it must be very quickly exhausting hence preventing useful adoption for the mainstream.
Isn't the idea that currently we already do the "mind cursor" plus the actual muscle movements?
Re: Monkey MindPong
#86This particular exercise could've been done with EEG. Where Neuralink excels is in having a much higher possible bitrate. Pong is the absolute POC. Neuralink will most likely be able to achieve higher differentiability and thus be able to complete tasks of higher complexity, so stay tuned for even more impressive tasks. EEG can't get past pong; it's limited by physics itself. The solution is to put the electrodes in…
When you say "this particular exercise", are you referring to the "put the pointer in the box" exercise at the beginning? The Pong part toward the end was pretty cool. I wonder how complex of games the monkey can play :)
I believe pong has less entropy than the initial task of putting the cursor into the box. Pong is a 1D game with one degree of freedom, where you are effectively moving the cursor along the Y-axis. The previous task involved moving the cursor on the XY-plane, which involves two degrees of freedom.
Therefore, pong is less impressive than the previous task.
Re: Monkey MindPong
#87https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPbtR4vorgY Two years ago without a brain implant.
Re: Monkey MindPong
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm confused why you'd even feel that way? Neuralink goes into a LOT of effort for animals to feel good. Animal studies happen all the time for medical testing, and from what I hear Neuralink is much better than the average. As they said in the video, the animal is doing the activity of it of it's own free will. They don't harm the animal if it refuses to participate. Are you familiar with the term "luddite"?
I initially thought GP was being overly hyperbolic, but after watching the video I can't say I fully disagree. It's not so much the animal studies aspect, but rather the fact that they used bluetooth via a mobile phone to connect to the monkey. That aspect of connecting via bluetooth from a phone is most conventionally used to interact with replaceable commodities such as wireless speakers/headphones, but here it's b…
Bluetooth is just a short-range wireless technology. People use bluetooth to control their pacemakers, is there an issue with that too?
Re: Monkey MindPong
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I'd volunteer for implant testing if I had a 6 month life expectancy due to a terminal illness. I don't think it's a good idea to allow death-row inmates to do this though; They'd likely be pressured into volunteering as the only way to delay the execution.
This sounds like the plot of a movie: death-row inmate forced to volunteer for implant testing, but he manages to connect to some kind of military robot and fights for his freedom.
Death Rowbot (2022)
Re: Monkey MindPong
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
The location of the electrodes aren't arbitrary. The region of implantation is likely the hand-motor cortex (which has thickness on the order of mm), the area associated with arm movements (check out somatotopy), so the signals acquired are actually targeted for the demo task. This relationship has been known in neuroscience for almost a century and has been validated in decades of brain-machine interface experiments…
Even outside of primary motor/somatosensory areas, 2D cursor control is a pretty standard BMI paradigm. Not exactly “Hello, World” but maybe “ToDo List App”.
I'd argue it is the "Hello, World" in any BMI lab. Assuming existing implants and electronics, and non-naive monkey, advanced undergrads should get it in a semester.