Message no. 1

From:	pgrosse@********.com (Paul Grosse)
Subject:	We're that much closer to Rigging and Datajacks
Date:	Mon, 13 Oct 2003 10:22:30 -0500

Kewl :)

<snip of NY Times>
In Pioneering Study, Monkey Think, Robot Do
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
New York Times
October 13, 2003


Monkeys that can move a robot arm with thoughts alone have brought the
merger of mind and machine one step closer.

In experiments at Duke University, implants in the monkeys' brains
picked up brain signals and sent them to a robotic arm, which carried
out reaching and grasping movements on a computer screen driven only
by the monkeys' thoughts.

The achievement is a significant advance in the continuing effort to
devise thought-controlled machines that could be a great benefit for
people who are paralyzed, or have lost control over their physical
movements.

In previous experiments, some in the same laboratory at Duke, both
humans and monkeys have had their brains wired so they could move
cursors on computer screens just by thinking about it. And wired
monkeys have moved robot arms by making a motion with their own arms.
The new research, however, involves thought-controlled robotic action
that does not depend on physical movement by the monkey and that
involves the complex muscular activities of reaching and grasping.

The study is being published today in the inaugural issue of The
Public Library of Science, a peer-reviewed scientific journal that
makes articles available free of charge. The research team was led by
Dr. Miguel A. L. Nicolelis, a neurobiology professor and co-director
of the Center for Neuroengineering at Duke, in North Carolina. Dr.
Nicolelis also did the earlier research on monkeys and robot arms at
Duke.

While other laboratories have helped monkeys use thoughts to move
robots, using different experimental designs, the Duke findings go
furthest in the sense that their robots were mentally assimilated into
the animals' brains.

"For nearly completely paralyzed people, this promises to be a
fantastic boon," said Dr. Jon Kaas, a psychology professor at
Vanderbilt University in Nashville, who is familiar with Dr.
Nicolelis's research. "A person could control a computer or robot to
do anything in real time, as fast as they can think."

While experts agree that thought-controlled personal robots are many
years off, the Duke University team recently showed that humans
produce brain signals like those of the experimental monkeys.

"Monkeys not only use their brain activity to control a robot," said
Dr. John Chapin, a professor of physiology and pharmacology at the
State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn.
"They improve their performance with time. The stunning thing is that
we can now see how this occurs, how neurons change their tuning as the
monkey does different tasks."

Dr. Nicolelis implanted tiny probes called microwires into several
brain regions of two rhesus monkeys. At first, each monkey learned to
move a joystick that controlled a cursor on a computer screen. When a
ball appeared, the animal had to move the cursor to the target to earn
a drink of juice. Researchers collected electrical patterns from the
monkey's brain as it performed the tasks.

After the monkey became skilled at the exercise, the scientists
disconnected the joystick. At first, the monkey jiggled the stick and
stared at the screen, Dr. Nicolelis said. Even though the joystick was
not working, the monkey's reaching and grasping motor plans were being
sent to a computer, which translated those signals into movements on
screen.

There was an "incredible moment" when the monkey realized that it
could guide the cursor and grasp an object on the screen just by
thinking it, Dr. Nicolelis said. The arm dropped. Muscles no longer
contracted.

The final step was to divert brain signals to a computer model that
controlled the movements of a robot. The monkey continued to think the
movements but in doing so it now moved the robot arm directly, without
a joystick, which in turn directed movements of the cursor.

Controlling a shaky, jerky robot with thought is not easy, Dr.
Nicolelis said. When the robot is first added, the monkey's
performance degrades. It takes two days for the animal to learn the
mechanical properties of the arm and to incorporate its delays into
motor planning areas.

"By the end of training, I would say that these monkeys sensed they
were reaching and grasping with their own arms instead of the robot
arm," Dr. Nicolelis said. "Every time we use a tool to interact with
our environment, such as a computer mouse, car or glasses, our brain
assimilates properties of the tool into neuronal space. Tools are
appendages which are incorporated into our body schema. As we develop
new tools, we reshape our brains," he said.
</snip of NY Times>