[HN Gopher] Neural implant lets paralyzed person type by imagini...
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Neural implant lets paralyzed person type by imagining writing
Author : Engineering-MD
Score : 516 points
Date : 2021-05-12 19:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| tyingq wrote:
| Might be good to remove the ?comments=1 from the linked url so it
| doesn't scroll you past the article.
| dang wrote:
| Done. Thanks!
| pgroves wrote:
| All it needs to be able to do is page-down or scroll-down and I
| want it (I have RSI problems in my hands).
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| I think a foot pedal might be an easier solution than a neural
| implant, at least for a desktop computer
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| You can already get a gaze-tracking program to do this. (You
| can prototype one in MIT Scratch - yes, really!)
| dahart wrote:
| Even the free-form mode 75 character per minute sounds amazingly
| fast for a thought interface.
|
| I wonder what it's like to use. I know there have been many
| attempts at this, and they're steadily improving, but I watched a
| talk at EvoMusArt 2007 where researchers used a smaller array of
| cranial electrodes to have the user control a mouse. That it
| worked blew my mind. But they talked about how slow and noisy it
| was to get the cursor from one side to the other... maybe a
| minute IIRC. What I remember most distinctly was the researcher
| said it was physically draining to do, that after 5-7 minutes of
| this activity they would be sweating and exhausted, without
| moving.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Reading this, I can't help but think of this great novella, Free
| Radical, based on System Shock
| http://www.shamusyoung.com/shocked/
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Great tech for this exact use case.
|
| But I'm dreading that people will start doing it on sane persons
| that just want an upgrade.
|
| I've read enough Sci-Fy to have a list of 1000 ways it can end
| badly, and we only need one.
|
| People are dumb enough to get phished by email, gov is spying on
| any phone, pirates manage to access to nuclear plant, and you
| want to connect your brain to a network?
| techdragon wrote:
| I'll give you a positive counterpoint, my immediate thoughts
| from the headline alone were "great, finally a decent way to
| ensure I never suffer from locked in syndrome", "wonder how
| invasive it is", "I'm not in the right mood to even open this
| link", and finally a small shudder as I try to avoid thinking
| about locked in syndrome by starting to focus on other tasks.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Sure, I can see plenty of good it can do.
|
| Unfortunately, I think the wrong it has the potential to do
| to the human as a specie outbalances it by an order of
| magnitude.
|
| It's useless to worry though, we are a careless race, we will
| use it no matter what, and we will hurt yourself in the
| process. I just hope it will not be too much.
| Alupis wrote:
| Can someone explain what is new about this generation of the
| tech?
|
| People have been able to move mouse cursors and type using only
| their brain and tiny implants for decades... so far Neuralink
| seems to just be repeating these experiments, but receives a lot
| more hype.
|
| Here's an article from 2006[1] with someone moving a mouse cursor
| and clicking things with a similar tiny brain implant.
|
| Is there something new here, or just the Musk train?
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/science/13brain.html
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| From the Ars Technica article:
|
| >the participant was able to produce about 90 characters per
| minute, easily topping the previous record for implant-driven
| typing, which was about 25 characters per minute.
|
| So it appears to enable typing at > 3x the speed of previous
| efforts. At least for this one particular person.
| [deleted]
| suifbwish wrote:
| You can do that without implants and just an eeg headset. I am
| still not sure why people think it's a great idea to put things
| in the brain for non life threatening reasons
| whiddershins wrote:
| Define life-threatening.
|
| I would risk my life to be able to speak at normal speeds,
| versus incredibly slowly.
|
| I would risk my life to be able to walk, even slowly, rather
| than be in a wheelchair (I imagine.)
| Cipater wrote:
| Maybe this comment will give you some perspective.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27138124
| disabled wrote:
| Agreed. The divorce rate of married people who get these
| government regulatory approved BCI interfaces is also
| extremely high. There are also other extremely severe
| problems that such interfaces cause.
|
| EDIT: To the downvoters, it's true, and there are other
| severe issues with these implants. Have a read, since many of
| you are laymen:
|
| 1. Audio Narrated Version of New Yorker Article:
| https://share.audm.com/share/newyorker/mind-machines-
| kenneal...
|
| 2. New Yorker Article:
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/26/do-brain-
| impla...
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| The divorce rate for people who sustain life changing
| injuries is also high. I wonder how much overlap you're
| seeing here
| disabled wrote:
| It is believed that a lot of this is due to a shift in
| identity. Look at the examples of this used in people
| with epilepsy (medically stable for years, that has not
| progressed) for example. The divorce rates are similar
| with other users of regulatory approved BCIs.
| njovin wrote:
| A local publication had one of the best first person
| accounts of TBI and the resulting rehab I've ever read
| and I always think about this whenever the subject comes
| up.
|
| https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2010/apr/21/cover/
| macintux wrote:
| When I was a teenager, my mother had the court transcript
| of a bicyclist who had been in an accident without a
| helmet.
|
| Quite horrifying to read. Absolutely nothing he said made
| any sort of sense.
| nojokes wrote:
| Very nice article. I liked the ending of it
|
| _Leggett's identity changed again once the device was
| gone. Now she knew great loss, but she also knew things
| that had been impossible to understand before the device.
| Like many people with epilepsy, she had often found herself
| fuzzy for a considerable amount of time after a seizure.
| That state made it very difficult to notice the signs that
| preceded seizures which could act as a natural warning
| light. These days, when she gets a funny, flip-floppy
| feeling inside, she takes anti-seizure medication. She's
| not always sure. Sometimes she gets her husband to weigh
| in. He says, "Go with your first instinct," and usually she
| takes a pill. She is now seizure-free._
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The divorce rate of married people who get these
| government regulatory approved BCI interfaces is also
| extremely high.
|
| Divorce rates spike after diangosis of _and successful
| treatment /recovery for/from_ all kinds of chronic health
| issues, as they do for all kinds of major life changes.
| Disruption in living patterns changes the context and
| patterns of relationships.
| ktta wrote:
| The paper published says they used RNNs to decode handwriting.
| Similar research from what seems to be the same team used ReFIT
| Kalman filter around 2011, but this approach looks to produce
| better results.
| jwilber wrote:
| Ready for next year's paper to be the same but using
| transformers or some attention mechanism instead!
| disabled wrote:
| As another poster said, they used RNN to decode handwriting.
| While there was an increased character rate observed, that is
| substantial compared to other such systems, that is not
| necessarily what is groundbreaking here. You would probably
| need a very powerful desktop (or a laptop with a desktop
| processor, >$4,000) with the best imaginable specifications to
| pull this off. So, it is of extremely limited use for the
| disabled individual.
|
| With brain computer interfaces you use motor imagery [1], where
| you imagine motor movements (e.g. moving your left arm so that
| your palms face outward, and imagining the position of your
| shoulder, arm, and fingers) to control the BCI interface, such
| as in the case with prosthetics or this case handwriting. I
| imagine since this is fine motor movements (a different brain
| circuit, too) that it is much more difficult to visualize.
|
| Motor imagery is also used in stroke rehabilitation. It is also
| used for sports performance.
|
| Graded motor imagery [2] is a variant of motor imagery and
| there are apps for that. It basically rewires your brain's pain
| circuits and makes pain more manageable and more controllable.
| It works for chronic pain, of any origin.
|
| For example, in graded motor imagery, apps show you images of
| arms/legs/etc. in contorted (twisted) positions and at various
| angles in the picture, and based on the positions of the
| fingers/toes/etc. you are supposed to identify if the
| arm/leg/etc. is a "left arm" or "right arm" or "left leg" or
| "right leg" [3][4].
|
| I have tried graded motor imagery (via apps) and I have
| excellent spatial skills: it is a quite difficult exercise.
|
| There currently is no huge difference between electrode caps
| and implanted electrodes (there are multiple types) except that
| electrode caps are super dorky. The resolution (constant
| bitrate) is higher for some implanted electrodes, but not by a
| ton compared to an electrode cap. Generally, a ton of
| electrodes are not implanted, either.
|
| So, everyone drooling about Neuralink really has no idea what
| they are talking about here. They have a tremendously long way
| to go with Neuralink and Musk is making claims that may never
| even be technically possible.
|
| Also, the (marriage) divorce rate of people getting these
| neural brain computer interface implants (that are regulatory
| approved already) is extremely high. People should think about
| this and other social matters, instead of getting all excited
| about concepts (not technology) such as Neuralink.
|
| [1] Motor Imagery:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/...
|
| [2] Graded Motor Imagery: http://www.gradedmotorimagery.com/
|
| [3] Graded Motor Imagery apps [iPhone and Android]:
| https://www.noigroup.com/product/recogniseapp/
| sdenton4 wrote:
| /You would probably need a very powerful desktop (or a laptop
| with a desktop processor, >$4,000) with the best imaginable
| specifications to pull this off. So, it is of extremely
| limited use for the disabled individual./
|
| Not necessarily. They have an extremely small-dimensional
| input, and have a pretty straightforward problem. The fact
| that they can train a good model with just a few hundred
| sentences suggests that it's an easy problem...
|
| For other context, I do neural speech generation on phones
| for my day job, using an RNN that makes 4000 inferences per
| second. It works fine on a single thread with most phones
| produced in the last few years. Another helpful point of
| context might be 'swipe'-style phone keyboards, which are
| often RNN based, and turn paths into words.
|
| The focus on giant-model work I think hides how effective
| small models can be, and how much progress has been made on
| making models run faster in limited resource environments.
|
| (Do you have a reference on the divorce rate? Not sure I
| understand the causal link there...)
| disabled wrote:
| I cannot pull up studies now (on mobile), but it's believed
| to be more of an issue about change of identity than
| disability or brain injury.
|
| 1. Audio Narrated Version of New Yorker Article:
| https://share.audm.com/share/newyorker/mind-machines-
| kenneal...
|
| 2. New Yorker Article:
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/26/do-brain-
| impla...
|
| My work in AI revolves around biophysical signals. I do not
| use AI generally in this case but I use a 19 channel EEG
| (using an EEG cap) for experiments in closed-loop controls.
| It requires a lot of RAM (ideally 32 GB if not more) to
| prevent latency.
| RamRodification wrote:
| For me, having also seen the cursors and clicking type stuff in
| the past, what seems _new_ to me (although I don 't know for
| sure that it actually is new) is that they can now read minds
| on the fidelity of unique letters rather than just more simple
| "directions" like up, down, in, out.
| jozvolskyef wrote:
| People still lived largely offline in 2006. The motivation for
| BCIs is much higher today than it was 15 years ago.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Where did you live in 2006? Nowhere near me, that is for
| sure.
| [deleted]
| Ardon wrote:
| Previous efforts were more inaccurate, you may remember hearing
| jargon like "alpha waves" or "beta waves". Participants would
| learn to move cursors by learning to create the neurological
| activity that was being listened for.
|
| This, on the other hand, is watching for complex neural
| activity, in that it learns what pattern appears when a
| participant pictures drawing an A.
|
| Think of the difference like: before the input was controlled
| by turning your whole body, and now the input can take
| individual sign language letters.
| cma wrote:
| >hearing jargon like "alpha waves" or "beta waves".
| Participants would learn to move cursors by learning to
| create the neurological activity that was being listened for.
|
| Previous efforts included moving a cursor with the implanted
| Utah array, which I don't think was just based on broad brain
| waves was it?
|
| Are you thinking of non-invasive devices? Neuralink didn't
| invent implanted microelectrode arrays. Some of their press
| has been around being the first one wirelessly connected to a
| receiver, but it wasn't first there either. Mainly their
| roadmap for scaling to more and more electrodes and their
| custom chip for processing is what's new I think, but they
| aren't sure if the polymer coating they are using for will
| hold up long term.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3715131/
| mchusma wrote:
| I see the promise of Neuralink as being able to read and write
| to computers/ai directly at high bandwidth. It's a long way
| from that, but it's what its going for.
|
| Probably a good analogy is that we had letters and fax machines
| before the internet, the internet is just much faster with much
| higher bandwidth.
| beowulfey wrote:
| Just FYI: the article mentioned Neuralink as context for the
| general public (and with a bit of snark if I'm reading it
| right) but this was done by an independent academic research
| group.
|
| To answer your question, it is merely a continuation of
| research in the field.
| enchiridion wrote:
| I am not a BCI engineer (IANABCIE?), but I think the selling
| point of NeuraLink is the robot surgery aspect.
|
| Designing the full stack to be minimally intrusive seems
| unique.
| qayxc wrote:
| > Designing the full stack to be minimally intrusive seems
| unique.
|
| Using the words "minimally intrusive" in the context of open
| brain surgery is quite amusing to me.
|
| No matter who or what performs the surgical intervention, it
| still involves cracking open and replacing part of the skull
| and inserting foreign bodies into cerebral tissue.
|
| That's as intrusive as it gets.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| The basic idea of the older EEG setups is you have a net of 128
| or 256 electrodes on your head, and then the program signal
| processes all of the waves from them. Problem is your skull
| makes the waves bounce around, adding a lot of noise and making
| it hard to parse much signal from the data.
|
| Neuralink uses an implant, inside your skull, so that this
| noise isn't a problem.
| disabled wrote:
| Not true: You ideally still need as many electrodes as
| feasibly possible for a more complete BCI interface,
| implanted or not, regardless of the resolution (constant
| bitrate) of the electrodes. It is true though that certain
| implanted electrodes have higher resolution than transitional
| EEG caps. But at this point, it is not that big of a deal
| because neurosurgeons can only implant a very limited amount
| of electrodes. Even if they could implant 256 electrodes, the
| processing of this would be extremely limited. Even a
| standard 19 channel EEG cap can require a top-of-the-line
| computer (think i9 processor, 64 GB RAM, or better) for some
| use cases, due to latency issues involved especially with the
| amount of signals being used.
|
| Also: With EEG caps, we have filters that remove the noise
| from movement and muscle activity very well.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| I remember when I first learned to touch-type as a child, and for
| many years after, I would sometimes 'type' things out on my legs,
| tabletops, notebooks. At first it was to practice, but after I
| had mastered typing I kept doing it just because it was still
| novel to be able to type and feel like I knew how to use
| technology. Doing that made me realize that typing a character is
| a very specific and atomic action (compared to writing by hand),
| as well as an automatic one (once you learn how to touch-type). I
| wonder if the performance of this solution could be improved by
| training it to detect the mental impulses that occur when a
| trained typist imagines typing a character, rather than when the
| person imagines writing out a character.
| sneak wrote:
| I still do that (tap things out in qwerty when not at a
| keyboard) constantly. I type well over 100wpm, and qwerty is
| very, very deep in my brain. On occasions I am significantly
| intoxicated (pretty rare for me) I can still type accurately at
| >50wpm even if my words are slurred.
|
| There have been times I wanted to switch layouts but qwerty is
| just too far in there for too many decades.
| opan wrote:
| I don't have a good timeline for going from qwerty to dvorak
| to tell you (first change), but earlier this year I went from
| dvorak to workman and was back up to 100wpm at least after
| about two months. I was in the 140s with dvorak after a year
| and a half or so. My best with qwerty was 160. I recently hit
| 115 with workman. It doesn't cause the same right hand strain
| dvorak did, so I'll likely stick with it longer and hopefully
| hit my old speeds.
|
| If you do change layouts, research them a bit first. I liked
| dvorak, but it used the right hand more than the left by a
| fair bit, like the opposite of qwerty. My right hand didn't
| deal with the strain as well as my left hand did in qwerty.
| Workman is about 50/50 left and right hand usage, and also
| avoids putting common letters in the middle two columns,
| which reduces how often stretching is needed.
|
| Colemak seems a bit better than Dvorak on paper, but still
| has some flaws that lead to creation of a "mod DH" variant
| that moves D and H to a less straining spot since they're
| common letters.
|
| Workman solves the same issue and is a lot more efficient
| than even Colemak, plus the 50/50 hand balance seems entirely
| unique to Workman. That balance was why I chose it over the
| Carpalx QGMLWB layout or the AI-generated Halmak layout,
| which are even more efficient in some cases than Workman. I
| have a friend who uses QGMLWB, but as far as I know, he
| doesn't get any pain in his hands. He also doesn't type quite
| as fast as I have, which may be related.
|
| Lastly, I want to mention that I built an ergonomic keyboard
| and used it with dvorak for a couple months without my hand
| pain going away, which is why I bothered changing layouts
| again. The journey has been educational. I never used to care
| about stuff like the pinky being weak and overused. Now I
| have stuff like backspace and enter on thumb keys, I'm
| thinking about how much I have to stretch to certain keys,
| etc.
|
| Some of these ergo keyboards take some keys off the right
| side compared to something like a 60%, but then you realize
| your right pinky was covering a huge amount of keys, and
| maybe it's worth having an extra inner column where you move
| the = sign to. I use a Pinky4 after using a Pok3r in the
| past, and it seemed annoying at first that the top row didn't
| fit the - and = right of the 0, but I prefer it now that I'm
| used to it. I've tweaked the key layout several times in QMK
| and it's been a lot of fun. So, I'd recommend both changing
| layouts and replacing your keyboard if you have any interest
| in this stuff.
| Jenk wrote:
| You may be interested in the recently published
| https://engram.dev layout :)
| lazysheepherd wrote:
| I've been practicing touch typing for over 5 years now. I
| seem to be capped at around ~65 WPM. I sometimes wonder if it
| will stay there, or will it improve.
|
| I take this to test my speed:
| https://10fastfingers.com/advanced-typing-test/english
|
| Now I've tried to take the test again after roughly a year,
| out of curiosity, and I got around 75 several times. Maybe it
| will improve very slowly past this level?
|
| Do you perhaps remember how the improvement trend was with
| you?
| wincy wrote:
| I played Everquest and would be running from monsters while
| typing as a young teenager. So I'd have to type as fast as
| possible. I touch type around 120 wpm without ever being
| formally trained.
|
| Maybe try something that forces you to type quickly like
| the game The Typing of the Dead or The Typing of the Dead
| 2? They're silly games but might help since they add
| urgency to the typing.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| You get better over time if you intentionally practice
| improvement. If you don't, 60-70wpm is a common threshold.
|
| My gut feeling is that this is simply the speed range where
| the benefits of faster typing during composing quickly fall
| off. If you're thinking about what to say, you'll write a
| burst, think, write, think, change a bit, write some more-
| the limiting factor isn't really WPM.
|
| Transcribing, of course, is another matter, but that is a
| specialized case.
| Jenk wrote:
| > You get better over time if you intentionally practice
| improvement.
|
| Are there more effective techniques than just typing? I
| mean like measured techniques for identifying and
| improving problematic aspects of typing rather than just
| going at it repeatedly in the hopes that I'll improve
| overall?
| float4 wrote:
| Do you play an instrument? I have a feeling that I can
| type quickly (well over 100wpm) because I play the piano
| as well.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I play guitar, and I am certain that practicing the fine-
| motor sync skill of using both hands at once has helped
| my typing, and vice-versa.
|
| For reference, my typing while transcribing rate is in
| the 100-110 range. My daily-use composition is likely
| half, simply because I spend most of my time composing in
| my head.
|
| I will say that the big advantage comes from being
| completely comfortable touch-typing, without needing to
| look at the keyboard. Once you've achieved that, the
| mental load of typing fades in to the background, and you
| can spend more time considering content instead of the
| mechanics of creating it.
| lazysheepherd wrote:
| Yes, you might be on something here. Tried to reflect
| back on it after reading your comment, and I think I
| "feel" content with my current writing speed.
|
| Will try to feel less satisfied with my writing speed,
| and see if it will help. Thank you for taking time to
| share!
| taneq wrote:
| Online chatting, too. My typing speed increased
| dramatically when I started having conversations online.
| csnover wrote:
| It's also possible that your keyboard is slowing you down
| somewhat. I started using a super crappy keyboard a while
| ago with wobbly keycaps, poor actuation pressure, and
| excess key travel, and my typing speed & accuracy both
| dropped by over 5% just because the keyboard didn't work
| well. It probably won't take you from 75 to 100+, but if
| you are looking for something that might give you a modest
| improvement, you might look at the keyboard you're using
| and see if you can find one that works better with your
| hands.
| sneak wrote:
| I have been over 100wpm (on qwerty) since a teenager, and
| I'm in my late 30s now, so unfortunately no. (My scores are
| routinely 115-125 these days.)
| lazysheepherd wrote:
| This makes me suspect it might be like instrument
| playing. A lot easier to learn while young. I'm 29 right
| now and I've started practicing around 23-24. A bit too
| late for this kind of muscle memory I guess.
|
| Thank you for sharing, was useful to compare!
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Plato said the prime of life doesn't even start until
| you're 25 and Schopenhauer said something similar (can't
| recall his exact number). You can still learn and grow a
| lot way later into life than most people think. If you
| really care, just try different techniques, measure/test
| yourself, and continue the cycle. If you can't find the
| motivation, maybe it's just actually not that important
| to you, and deep down you have greater interest in other
| things than learning how to type fast.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Have you ever tried to label a blank keyboard from memory? Even
| though you _know_ where all of the letters are and use them all
| the time without thinking it's almost impossible.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I'm bilingual. My memory committed phone numbers and such are
| stored in one language only. To translate them, I need to
| write the number down and read it in the other language.
| Aerroon wrote:
| For some reason, I remember numbers like that as though I
| were typing them on a numpad. I automatically visualize a
| numpad and remember the sequence of numbers as distinct
| locations on it. Funnily enough, even phone numbers use
| this computer numpad rather than the number pad on a phone.
| temac wrote:
| You can't visualize the numbers? Or translate the "audio"
| in your mind?
| dalbasal wrote:
| I can, but it's easier to write it, if I'm at a desk.
| Audio-translating is harder than it seems that it should
| be... especially if I"m struggling to recall the number.
| I suspect that recall and translation are like lead
| guitar and vocals.
| Cerium wrote:
| For me numbers are stored in one language or the other, but
| are always recalled in the same language. For example, my
| SSN is in English but my garage door opener code is
| Chinese.
| lazysheepherd wrote:
| Indeed! It is like entering a pincode on a keypad for the
| office door every single day. Then the new guy calls and asks
| you about the pin, and you have NO idea. This happened to me
| and I had to put my hand on something flat and see myself
| typing.
|
| I suspect this is some part due to the arrangement of the
| numbers. Numbers on keypads in these kind of devices often
| has "1 2 3" on the top row. Whereas on the keybaords and
| calculators it is reverse. The top row there goes "7 8 9".
| lathiat wrote:
| In the early days of card payment terminals my mum couldn't
| remember her PIN number to pay at a shop. Had to run over
| to an ATM and do a pretend transaction and take note of
| what she entered.
| datameta wrote:
| I'm like that with my phone lock pin. I use it
| visuospacially rather than numerically.
| grishka wrote:
| I totally can do that with the Russian layout. _Probably_ can
| with Latin too, but I won 't be so sure.
| sebmellen wrote:
| I've found it's quite doable if you just "type" out different
| words on a blank keyboard and then use where your fingers
| land as the label. If you type "animal" you then know the
| position of all the constituent letters. So all you need to
| do is type a sentence with all characters, like "the quick
| brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
|
| Interesting effect though. This reminds me that it's almost
| impossible to draw a bicycle from memory.
| https://www.amusingplanet.com/2016/04/can-you-draw-
| bicycle-f...
| tempestn wrote:
| Or even just type out the alphabet. But labeling it from
| left to right, top to bottom, would indeed be tricky once
| you got past 'qwerty'.
| herval wrote:
| I had to re-key my keyboard recently and managed to get all
| keys right, EXCEPT for a swapped right alt/ctrl. I don't
| think I ever typed on those two, so maybe it's a blank in my
| muscle memory map :)
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| I realised a short while ago, that no matter which keyboard
| I'm sitting in front of, I simply do not use the right alt-
| gr, windows, menu, control or shift keys. They could just
| not be there and I wouldn't notice.
|
| I also never use the numeric keypad, but I think that's
| more to do with being left handed.
| opan wrote:
| I can do it no problem (have changed all the keycaps on a
| keyboard a few times), but it is indeed a different kind of
| memorization. I can recite the qwerty letters all in a row,
| but for dvorak and workman, I didn't spend as many years with
| them (or actually ever see keycaps arranged that way on a
| real keyboard), so I would have to imagine myself typing for
| those.
| discardable_dan wrote:
| Heck, touch-typing is so ingrained in my brain that I sometimes
| recall how to type a word to remember how to spell it. For
| longer words I don't write by hand very often, it's simply
| easier for me to remember and transliterate the muscle memory.
| superduperycomb wrote:
| I can type far more words than i can spell
| markdown wrote:
| > Heck, touch-typing is so ingrained in my brain that I
| sometimes recall how to type a word to remember how to spell
| it.
|
| I've often completely forgotten passwords and had to rely on
| this muscle memory to regain access.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| I once was so high on MDMA that I could barely speak let
| alone type something because I just could not understand
| anything. Not only could I not remember my password, I
| could not keep my eyes steady enough to see the letters on
| the keyboard.
|
| I had to unlock my laptop to play some music so I just
| tried to relax and let my fingers do the thing. I did it.
| vidarh wrote:
| I once had to leave a meeting to find a keyboard to be able
| to relay a password to someone over the phone by looking at
| what I was typing.
| ajuc wrote:
| It's the same with guitar playing. I have to do the motions
| with left hand to remember the notes and chords :)
| slver wrote:
| It's weird we call it muscle memory. It's still a brain
| memory.
| eruleman wrote:
| Neuroscientists think that motor action is primary, and all
| sensory processing is in the service of motor action. [1]
|
| Motor movements are some of deepest knowledge we have.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/I0JuMyGclr0?t=1257
| op03 wrote:
| I like watching Prank shows. For some reason its
| entertaining to see what the body does
| instantly/unconsciously in response to stimuli when there
| is no time for thought. Below some threshold its like
| people have no control over what their legs, hands, face,
| vocal chords will do...
| Lev1a wrote:
| > Motor movements are some of deepest knowledge we have.
|
| Don't know if it's is a real thing, but in some CSI type
| show years ago there was a witness with amnesia (couldn't
| remember their name etc.) whose identity they found out
| by engaging him into a conversation to distract the
| consciousness from the "I can't remember" thoughts and
| then put a form in front of him he was supposed to sign
| (IIRC it could have been a witness statement) and the
| movement of signing something was so ingrained that it
| persisted even through the amnesia.
|
| Anyone know if this is a real thing or just fiction?
| azeirah wrote:
| I can't comment on the specific example of signing a
| form, but I did read about a case like this in Robert
| Sapolsky's "Why zebra's don't get ulcers".
|
| It's a famous case in neurology, a man called "H.M."
|
| Here's what's written in the chapter "Stress and memory"
| about H.M.: "H.M." had a severe form of
| epilepsy that was entered in his hippocampus and was
| resistant to drug treatments available at that time. In a
| desperate move, a famous neurosurgeon removed a large
| part of H.M.'s hippocampus, along with much of the
| surrounding tissue. The seizures mostly abated, and in
| the aftermath, H.M. was left with a virtually complete
| inability to turn new short-term memories into long-term
| ones -- mentally utterly frozen in time.
| Zillions of studies of H.M. have been carried out since,
| and it has slowly become apparent that despite this
| profound amnesia, H.M. can still learn how to do some
| things. Give him some mechanical puzzle to master day
| after day, and he learns to put it together at the same
| speed as anyone else, while steadfastly denying each time
| that he has ever seen it before. Hippocampus and explicit
| memory are shot; the rest of the brain is intact, as is
| his ability to acquire a procedural memory.
|
| If you ask me, the CSI episode is definitely plausible if
| you consider that H.M. was real
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Another good example of this is that musicians will often
| deliberately work to get parts of pieces fully in muscle.
| For fast sequences, if your brain has to get involved,
| you've already missed a few notes.
| slver wrote:
| Just to note again, the brain is always involved in
| playing instruments.
| blobbers wrote:
| How long until this is used in interrogations of criminals...
| escapologybb wrote:
| If anybody from the project is reading this, could you tell me
| where I should send the application, entrance form, fee or even
| straight up bribes to get my brain and this technology smushed
| together please?
|
| I'm quadriplegic and since lockdown began last March I've not
| left this bed once. That's not hyperbole, I literally mean that I
| haven't left the spot in this bed I'm in right now, writing this
| comment to you all.
|
| So Yeah, connecting with the world like this is something I need
| to be a part of. I really don't have words to describe how life
| changing this would be.
| air7 wrote:
| What are you using to type now?
| wavepruner wrote:
| In addition to the options other commenters have mentioned,
| it is possible to fully control a computer with dictation,
| although it can be very arduous.
|
| The term quadriplegia does not always refer to 100%
| paralysis, and some have limited use of their hands.
| spicybright wrote:
| Likely a hired personal care assistant.
| _Qeomash_ wrote:
| Depending on if they can move their neck much they might have
| a forehead dot to track movement for a mouse cursor and a
| tongue/lip device for clicking. Then it's just onscreen
| keyboards. Other devices I've heard of are cheek movement or
| even eye tracking.
| lhjn wrote:
| Eye trackers are used as well for those who unfortunately
| cannot move anything but their eyes. That's the case in very
| bad/late ALS cases. This technology might really be life
| changing for the very advanced cases of ALS - they often lose
| the ability to vertically move their eyes, which makes it
| very very difficult to work with eye trackers.
|
| Really hope they'll make something like this available to the
| public.
| bilater wrote:
| Hope they get back to you. I am optimistic technologies like
| these will become widely available soon!
| cbsks wrote:
| Francis Willett is the lead author on the paper. Here's his
| contact info: https://profiles.stanford.edu/francis-willett
| devindotcom wrote:
| You might ask if you can test out this one - no surgery
| required.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/04/cognixions-brain-monitorin...
| danuker wrote:
| The lead author of the paper: fwillett@stanford.edu
| r0b05 wrote:
| That's not cool man. Hope you have a good quality bed at least.
| I can just imagine what an impact this would have on your life.
| As you said, no words can describe but I feel you man.
| cmndctrl wrote:
| my hands were always too slow for my brain
| citilife wrote:
| I've worked alongside a group researching similar techniques, it
| doesn't actually need to be implants -
| http://bretl.csl.illinois.edu/projects
|
| I think we were able to get up to something like 20 characters
| per minute, but it was largely UX design. You can go from 6 -> 20
| characters. I wouldn't be surprised if the implants improve the
| speed, but UX could probably play an equally large impact.
| hadsed wrote:
| i think i believe that. what is the easiest thought abstraction
| that can be captured by our sensors? well the abstraction is
| largely defined by the UI. i like to think of it like language.
| UI components (words) come together to enable complex actions
| (sentences or thoughts). it evokes questions, like what
| language does the brain speak in certain contexts for certain
| outputs? that's gonna be interesting to follow. what if we all
| think _super_ differently and that makes it hard? i can 't
| imagine why, but i don't have a background in real brains
|
| it may be that our current "AI" tools might be helpful--they're
| really good at composing "languages" for tying together
| different types of data. seems that tying noisy brain sensors
| data to our English alphabet might be an example of that.
| yosito wrote:
| 90 characters per minute is quite slow. I would expect they could
| get faster by having the user imagine moving a cursor over an
| onscreen swipe keyboard.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| I suggest you to watch the video
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Kiro wrote:
| They address this in both the article and the video. Their
| previous version was exactly that and this is twice as fast.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I wonder if this is capable of interpreting more complex
| characters? I wonder if a patient who previously was able to
| write in simplified Chinese, for example, might be able to write
| faster?
| tommi wrote:
| I love it how we can do this complex stuff. Though being a 90s
| kid, I imagine doing a T9 based brain-computer interface would be
| easier and faster.
| warent wrote:
| This is amazing! I'm assuming when they say "imagining" they mean
| visualizing it as a mind picture? I wonder how this works for
| folks with aphantasia. Do you imagine the motor action of
| writing? Can a paralyzed person still do that?
| ineedasername wrote:
| Give it ten years and Bluetooth and a consumer-grade version
| would be pretty awesome.
|
| Then again, countless potential technologies have be "10 years
| away" for a long time now.
| LASR wrote:
| > Give it ten years and Bluetooth
|
| I am still waiting for a "good" Bluetooth. It's been more than
| 10 years.
| schoen wrote:
| (Should be characters rather than words.) Very impressive; I
| wonder if future versions will eventually even exceed the speed
| of speech or typing.
| amiga-workbench wrote:
| You're reminding me of the augmented 16 fingered prosthetic
| hands from Ghost in The Shell, much safer than connecting your
| cyberbrain to a random computer system.
|
| I imagine a future version of this technology would move beyond
| converting mental keystrokes into input and instead work on
| more abstract ideas. Imagine if your IDE could auto-generate
| certain design patterns as you think about them, instead of
| forcing you to manually type them out.
| Engineering-MD wrote:
| Yes I just came to put an addendum on for characters not words.
| But as you said very very impressive. This could massively
| improve patient's quality of life by being able to communicate
| much quicker
| _Microft wrote:
| _This artifical interactive knowledge entity wants access to
| your attention and emotional state. Think "Accept" to allow
| permanent access [*]. Think "More info" to instantly know our
| privacy policy._
|
| This is fine.
|
| _[*] We will add your technological and biological
| distinctiveness to our own._
| arunkant wrote:
| Resistance Is Futile
| SamBam wrote:
| _In the same way that irreversible actions on legacy keyboard
| systems are confirmed by typing in a series of words,
| MentalKeyboard will require you to think of a complex
| thought._
|
| _Delete all funds from your bank account? To confirm, think
| of a polka-dotted elephant. Otherwise, just think of anything
| else._
| taneq wrote:
| > To confirm, think of a polka-dotted elephant.
|
| You monster! :D
| dasyatidprime wrote:
| You would want to offer a specific something else for the
| user's executive function to latch onto immediately, even
| if you continue to interpret anything other than the narrow
| confirmation pattern as "cancel", just so there isn't only
| one immediate, recent attractor for "think of something".
| SamBam wrote:
| thatwasthejoke
| newsbinator wrote:
| To confirm, think of a $thing continuously for 10 seconds
| gus_massa wrote:
| I'm not sure if you did it on purpose, but when I read:
|
| > _To confirm, think of a polka-dotted elephant._
|
| I immediately though: How does a polka-dotted elephant look
| like???
|
| I guess my bank account is blank now :( .
| jwuphysics wrote:
| This would pose a different kind of problem for people
| with aphantasia.
| xtorol wrote:
| "I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I
| loved from my childhood, something that could never, ever
| possibly destroy us: Mr. Stay-Puft."
| matz1 wrote:
| I think so and it probably will require some skills to fully
| utilize it where kids in the future will start learning to use
| it from the early age.
|
| I image this is how I probably will become 'obsolete' in
| regards of technology just like my parent can't catch up with
| todays technology.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| That is seriously creepy. And I REALLY hope if they make it into
| a product that you can turn it off when you are asleep because I
| know I'm not the only one who dreams about writing code sometimes
| and I don't want find myself debugging something I dreamed about
| the previous night with only a vague memory of having written it.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I'd quite like to get dream recordings to be honest, though not
| to the point of wanting to have an implant just for that
| purpose.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Why does this article not mention the names or institutions of
| the authors?
| _rpd wrote:
| > 200 electrodes in the participant's premotor cortex
|
| Is finding the right neurons just luck? Does the person somehow
| adapt to the interface?
| djoshea wrote:
| Not really. Lots of neurons in this part of the brain modulate
| their activity to movement in heterogeneous ways. The algorithm
| details vary, but at some level you're trying to find a 2d x/y
| velocity signal encoded in the 200d neural signals. This
| decoder is a bit more sophisticated (using deep learning style
| approaches), but a Kalman filter was state of the art for a
| long time.
|
| For the adaptation, there's a rich literature of
| neuroscientists in this field studying how the participant
| adapts to the control characteristics of the decoder, and how
| the decoding algorithm can be designed to adapt after seeing
| more data during use. Here's one paper if you're interested
| http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~liam/research/pubs/merel-fox-c...
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Neurosignal decoding was the topic of my PhD (which, to be fair,
| I quit after a year).
|
| Every time an article comes up on the topic, I read through the
| comments section and realise how full of shit we all are here at
| HN. Then I read another article and assume the commenters are all
| smart people who understand the topic at hand.
|
| I can't remember what the law that describes this is called, but
| it is absolutely real.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
| modal-soul wrote:
| Gell-Mann amnesia effect:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
|
| > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the
| multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national
| or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the
| newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the
| baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you
| know.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| It baffles me that the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect still doesn't
| have it's own Wikipedia page given how pervasive it is.
| njarboe wrote:
| Gell-Mann amnesia effect[1] by Michael Crichton.
|
| "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows.
| You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know
| well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You
| read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no
| understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the
| article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward--
| reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause
| rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with
| exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and
| then turn the page to national or international affairs, and
| read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate
| about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the
| page, and forget what you know."
|
| [1]https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-
| ge...
| Fern_Blossom wrote:
| With zero sarcasm, I truly want to know what your opinion is on
| the subject. Generally, I find this kind of stuff as
| interesting with wonderful potential of abuse. Someone more in
| the know, boots on the ground if you will, is worth infinitely
| more metric fuck tonnes over anyone else's opinion... to me at
| least.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| My honest opinion: anyone reading this will be dead by the
| time technology advances to the stage where BCI ethics and
| abuse is a topic even worth considering.
|
| These articles are designed to make it seem like the
| technology is developing rapidly, similar to the early CPU
| and memory chips. A more apt analogy is the progress of
| electrical systems in the 18th century: we can observe some
| odd effects but have no idea what it is we're actually
| looking at. This won't change until we gain a proper
| understanding of the human brain, just as electronics didn't
| take off until we understood the atom.
|
| If you want my opinion on the current state of the art (as of
| 2018), as well as a quick introduction to some of the
| technology, here is an old draft of my research proposal (You
| can skip almost all of it except Appendix 1; that's by far
| the most important argument for why I think the current
| paradigm cannot deliver significant improvement): https://doc
| s.google.com/document/d/1pmgCpDLEfHlWDu6OoHuoTOQ4...
|
| As you can probably tell, I gave up because I could identify
| gaping flaws with the current paradigm but wasn't able to
| formulate a new one out of nothing.
|
| On a side note, I suspect this is why impostor syndrome is so
| prevalent amongst PhD students. You're not actually expected
| to contribute worthwhile knowledge to society, but instead
| expand the body of knowledge in your field. In a static
| field, unless you are a hyper-genius capable of spinning a
| whole new paradigm, this means churning out papers which you
| know are bullshit but are supported well enough by the
| existing body of research to appear reasonable. In short,
| grad students feel like impostors because they are.
| [deleted]
| abrookewood wrote:
| Clearly it's not ready for commercialisation (needs weekly
| recalibration; only a single individual tested etc), but
| it's still amazing - we're decoding signals from the brain!
| Isn't that worthy of discussion?
| jarenmf wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to expect to revolutionize the
| field as a PhD student. The goal of a PhD is to prepare a
| good researcher, probably more important than producing new
| knowledge. Most papers are maybe boring and have little new
| things in them but I still think they are worthwhile
| typon wrote:
| Exact same reason why I got out of academia, and my field
| was a lot more "realistic" than yours. (Post-Silicon
| Semiconductor physics)
| dang wrote:
| Ok, but rather than posting a meta putdown, why not share some
| of what you know about the topic? That way we can all learn
| something. A comment about neurosignal decoding would be much
| more interesting than yet another complaint about people being
| wrong on the internet, which we're all in a position to supply.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| To be fair, this problem is a co-creation between comment and
| upvotes, and upvotes deserve more of the blame. But if you post
| an on-topic, substantive comment in the first place, then
| you're contributing to improving this place rather than
| worsening it. Recent comments on similar cases:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27110515
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26894739
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| Oblg. XKCD: https://xkcd.com/386/
|
| (My wife says this particular XKCD reflects me the most!)
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Hmm, perhaps there was some sort of cultural misunderstanding
| (I've always assumed you're American, and perhaps the choice
| of words on my part was quite Australian), but what I posted
| wasn't intended as an insult or flamebait - I included myself
| in the group of people who are "full of shit"!
|
| It was more intended as a gentle reminder that there are a
| lot of comments on HN posted in an authoritative tone by
| people who are not experts in the field, and perhaps we
| should all stop and think before contributing to the problem
| in search of validation.
|
| This is something I honestly care more about than BCI
| technology, and genuinely felt it was a positive contribution
| to the discussion as a whole. Based on others' reactions, it
| didn't seem to be taken negatively either.
|
| Regardless of all that, in one of my comments below I did
| actually share both a short summary of the field and my
| experience as a researcher, as well as a 20-page long
| unpublished literature review. Hopefully that can help
| enlighten people somewhat on the terminology used in the BCI
| field and point out some of the limitations and issues with
| the current state of the art.
| dang wrote:
| I hadn't seen your other comment when I wrote that. Thanks
| for the kind reply (and for teaching us about BCI
| technology!)
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Thanks for the work you put in as a moderator, and I mean
| that genuinely. Very few people seem to be able to walk
| the tightrope between freedom of expression and civility
| and HN would be a worse place without you.
| jimsimmons wrote:
| Who are you, the master of articulation _/||\\_
| elcritch wrote:
| In a matter of speaking, he is as a moderator on HN.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Add in Dunning-Kruger and you get one hell of a shitshow.
| kbenson wrote:
| Hmm, since they are having someone imagine writing a character
| our and using recognition on it, I wonder if there's gains to be
| had to switching to a simplified writing, like Palm did for their
| PDAs in the past with Graffiti.[1]
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS)
| melling wrote:
| With autocompletion and advanced prediction 90 characters a
| minute could be effectively much more.
|
| https://www.tabnine.com/
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I'd love a neural interface to Dasher, which adaptively
| learns as you use it which letter combinations are the most
| popular, and adjusts over time to make it easier and faster
| to input common text.
|
| It would be wonderful integrated with a context and language
| sensitive IDE.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher_(software)
|
| https://github.com/dasher-project
|
| http://www.inference.org.uk/dasher/
|
| >To make the interface efficient, we use the predictions of a
| language model to determine how much of the world is devoted
| to each piece of text. Probable pieces of text are given more
| space, so they are quick and easy to select. Improbable
| pieces of text (for example, text with spelling mistakes) are
| given less space, so they are harder to write. The language
| model learns all the time: if you use a novel word once, it
| is easier to write next time. [...]
|
| >Imagine a library containing all possible books, ordered
| alphabetically on a single shelf. Books in which the first
| letter is "a" are at the left hand side. Books in which the
| first letter is "z" are at the right. In picture (i) below,
| the shelf is shown vertically with "left" (a) at the top and
| "right" (z) at the bottom. The first book in the "a" section
| reads "aaaaaaaaaaaa..."; somewhere to its right are books
| that start "all good things must come to an end..."; a tiny
| bit further to the right are books that start "all good
| things must come to an enema...". [...]
|
| >.... This is exactly how Dasher works, except for one
| crucial point: we alter the SIZE of the shelf space devoted
| to each book in proportion to the probability of the
| corresponding text. For example, not very many books start
| with an "x", so we devote less space to "x..." books, and
| more to the more plausible books, thus making it easier to
| find books that contain probable text.
|
| The classic Google Tech Talk by the late David MacKay, the
| inventor of Dasher:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpOxbesRNBc&ab_channel=Googl.
| ..
|
| It's based on the concept of concept of arithmetic coding
| from information theory.
|
| http://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/dasher/
|
| Ada Majorek, who has ALS, uses it with a Headmouse to program
| (and worked on developing a new open source version of
| Dasher) and communicate in multiple languages:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvHQ83pMLQQ&ab_channel=Dashe.
| ..
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Title should be updated to 90 characters per minute. 90 wpm would
| be legitimately fast.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| What is typical writing speed in terms of characters per
| minute? Maybe the next version could use a former touch typist
| and ask them to visualize typing on a keyboard.
| grogenaut wrote:
| average english word is < 8 chars, so call it 8, and that
| gives you 10 WPM. Sent from a plane, I'm not doing more
| research than this.
| [deleted]
| etrautmann wrote:
| 90 characters per minute is still "legitimately fast" for
| someone who cannot type otherwise!
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Right, but 90 wpm would be faster than most people could ever
| do on a conventional keyboard; it's a whole other level.
| qwertox wrote:
| It would be interesting to see how people compare in speed,
| assuming that the technology itself is not a bottleneck.
|
| We could directly measure how fast a child thinks, or a CEO
| vs. a homeless.
|
| Eventually we would be able to pinpoint mental problems by
| measuring the time it takes to think about a certain topic,
| check if the mind "locks up" for a couple of seconds on a
| seemingly unrelated topic which got triggered by the
| context the mind was thinking about. We could pinpoint the
| unrelated topic and have a base for a psychotherapy which
| could be more accurate than by just talking around in order
| to get to know the patient.
|
| Let's say a group of 10 have to think out the ordering
| process at a Starbucks where every step has been provided
| by a list. An average of 20 seconds is used to do this +- 5
| seconds. If there is an outlier, one could start to dig
| deeper into what exactly is making the mind to wander off.
| Multiple tests in different scenarios could then decide if
| the outlier is a slow thinker in general, or if it is a
| certain thing which triggers this wandering off.
| lazysheepherd wrote:
| Just a trivia perhaps, but WPM is _exactly_ 5 times faster than
| CPM. "the definition of each "word" is often standardized to be
| five characters or keystrokes long in English" [1]
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| So this implant is 18 wpm, then - a bit slower than hunt-and-
| peck typing (which is ~27 wpm), but still very workable.
| dang wrote:
| The title shouldn't have added that bit in the first place ("
| _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or
| linkbait; don 't editorialize._" [1]) so we've taken it out.
| The headline is just fine without it.
|
| (Submitted title was "Neural implant lets paralyzed person type
| by imagining writing [90wpm]")
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| whimsicalism wrote:
| 90 wpm and I would be wanting to get one myself!
| buildbot wrote:
| Yeah a 90wpm interface to a computer mentally would be
| incredible. Combine that with something like GPT3, use it to
| do natural language command line processing... If anyone is
| working on this I'd pay like 5k for a non invasive solution!
| ;)
| swader999 wrote:
| If it helped me think at 90 wpm that'd be even better.
| andred14 wrote:
| Yeeeah no what's wrong with voice recognition?
|
| Lately these freemason Satanists are all about violating you
| whenever possible.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Having followed the development and trials of various types of
| brain implants, the realities and side-effects of living with
| brain implants can be more than most bargained for. Deep brain
| stimulation implants (which this isn't) in particular can be
| incredibly nasty even for those for whom implants are a last
| resort.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Like what? Infection?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Infection is one aspect. Another aspect is the battery system
| that powers the implant, they're usually implanted in the
| chest with a wire that goes up the neck to the skull. There
| was a case[1] where tension developed over that wire, leading
| to pain, immobility and destruction of the connection in
| brain tissue:
|
| > _Steve had the surgery at Stanford, in November, 2012.
| After the surgery, he had "severe cognitive decline" and a
| slew of physiological adversities. "The leads [wires] were 18
| inches longer than they needed to be, so they coiled it up in
| the chest and at the top of the head; I could feel them
| externally," he says. "And the leads were too tight. I could
| move my ear and my chest would move, too," he says of a
| condition called "bowstringing," whereby scar tissue
| encapsulates the wires (partly from the body's natural
| response to foreign material), which has been documented in
| DBS cases and can cause permanent complications. Steve also
| had many symptoms that were ultimately diagnosed as shoulder
| and jaw muscle atrophy, spinal accessory nerve palsy and
| occipital nerve palsy. He reported all adverse effects
| immediately and continuously throughout the first year of the
| study, but the trial doctors continually told him that they'd
| never heard of such symptoms with DBS, even though nerve
| damage and DBS wire-related "hardware" complications were
| among the potential risks listed on the informed consent
| document._
|
| Because they're relatively experimental, it's almost
| impossible to find a doctor/surgeon/etc that will choose to
| work on you should you run into complications. If you have
| problems with the programming of the devices themselves,
| there isn't much you can do as a patient, and even
| specialists can't help you. The only people who can help you
| are those who developed the device. That can be a problem for
| a device that's meant to remain implanted until death.
| Removal is also a huge issue, because brain tissues grow on
| and around the implants. There are people who want their
| implants removed, but can't find a doctor who is willing to
| remove them because of the potential for brain injury and the
| resulting liability.
|
| They can also cause personality changes, suicidal behavior
| and even homicidal behavior[4]. There are documented cases of
| increased impulsivity and impaired executive function, which
| have led to pathological gambling and shopping. Breakdowns of
| relationships and the ability to work are also documented[3].
|
| Here's an article on the subject[1], and there are numerous
| studies that look into such effects, like this one[2] that
| aggregates dozens of studies.
|
| [1] https://www.madinamerica.com/2015/09/adverse-effects-
| perils-...
|
| [2] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2013.0
| 011...
|
| [3] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2013.0
| 011...
|
| [4]
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12152-010-9093-1
| etrautmann wrote:
| This is somewhat off-topic for this particular work.
|
| The advances demonstrated here are in the algorithm and
| approach, not in the interface hardware (Utah array).
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Yes, neural implants are invasive, dangerous, prone to side
| effects, and undesirable. It's just the first, and currently
| the only way to get the signal.
|
| Ideally, future generations will use a non-invasive sensor.
|
| If you can invent one with high enough resolution, you will
| change the world. But first, or simultaneously, the other
| components of the system will have to be invented.
|
| TFA is about decoding the ill-gotten signal. It's an impressive
| sign that our information processing technologies, and
| neuroanatomical understanding are already at the point where
| the system is viable.
|
| If you could complete development of the non-invasive smart hat
| by this time next year, the world will be a different place by
| 2025.
| Engineering-MD wrote:
| Neural implants ideally would be non invasive, with high
| spatial resolution and fast frequency/temporal resolution.
| The reality is that you can only choose two of these three. I
| don't see non invasive options being feasible with current
| technology. There is some good research into more
| biocompatible invasive options, but problems can take years
| to be found.
| lgeorget wrote:
| I'd like to see a followup on that body of research with Chinese.
| I wonder if we'd have lower, higher or just similar accuracy.
| nhumrich wrote:
| Does this work on people with aphantasia?
| Datenstrom wrote:
| It seems Vim may finally have a challenger for the title of
| editing text at the speed of thought at some point.
| chexx wrote:
| Interestingly the constraint of only being able to use a
| simplified alphabet would let Vim "supercharge" this tech.
|
| My assumption is that translating the thought "delete the
| current line that the cursor is on" to the actual action is
| still far away. And then expanding that to something like
| "delete the current line that the cursor is on and all the
| lines above it" might be even more difficult.
|
| But the equivalent operations in normal mode are "dd" and
| "dgg", this interfaces very nicely with the implant.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Pretty awesome, pretty clear DNNs are the future for
| decoding/mapping biological signals/inputs. Tied in with
| reinforcement learning, amazing.
| ashton314 wrote:
| This is amazing. Think of how liberating implants like this will
| be to people with locked-in syndrome or with less-serious
| diseases!
|
| Personally I've struggled with some RSI. Fortunately I've figured
| out a good way to manage it, but the thought of loosing my
| ability to type terrifies me. I could see a mature version of
| this technology being safe and common enough to be an elective
| thing; then I wouldn't have to worry about hurting my hands!
| pioughd wrote:
| It's not 90 wpm it's 90 characters per minute. Big difference.
| Still awesome.
| dang wrote:
| Fixed now (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27135360).
| 5440 wrote:
| FDA approved the first BCI a few weeks ago from Neurolutions.
| Other companies like Synchron are going to beat Neuralink to
| market as well. https://newatlas.com/medical/first-fda-approved-
| brain-comput...
| ktta wrote:
| I can't comment on who'll come to market first, but invasive
| BCI (like what's posted), is much harder to justify than non-
| invasive solutions to the FDA. We have a long way to go before
| any such solutions will be available for the general public.
| cjohansson wrote:
| This sounds so cool, I wish I could try it out, usually I never
| think about letters when typing, only words and they are executed
| by my fingers instantly non-consciously, I'm curious how this
| system would work with a fast-typer like myself
| varispeed wrote:
| This is awesome, but also terrifying. The way the world is going,
| it is not hard to predict that in the future this kind of device
| will be used to tackle thought crime or "zap" you if you think of
| something government doesn't like.
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