Source: Wired

Mind control. Using everyday objects requires using your brain, mostly to control your arms and legs to manipulate them. Lately though, there have been some major breakthroughs in interfacing directly to your head, including a thought-controlled wheelchair and mind-reading machines, which have stirred up some controversy of its own. William Gibson’s vision of a computer that you can “jack” into your head is ever so closer.

And that has some security people concerned…

“Neural devices are innovating at an extremely rapid rate and hold tremendous promise for the future,” said computer security expert Tadayoshi Kohno of the University of Washington. “But if we don’t start paying attention to security, we’re worried that we might find ourselves in five or 10 years saying we’ve made a big mistake.”

Hackers tap into personal computers all the time — but what would happen if they focused their nefarious energy on neural devices, such as the deep-brain stimulators currently used to treat Parkinson’s and depression, or electrode systems for controlling prosthetic limbs? According to Kohno and his colleagues, who published their concerns July 1 in Neurosurgical Focus, most current devices carry few security risks. But as neural engineering becomes more complex and more widespread, the potential for security breaches will mushroom.

Can’t happen… can it? It would seem that trying to upload malware into your cortex would be difficult at best, if you consider that most BCI are read-only (that is, they can only read your brainwaves). Then again, if the “sex chip” proves viable, that connection will become read-write which can be “influenced,” and not by outside hackers alone:

In some cases, patients might even want to hack into their own neural device. Unlike devices to control prosthetic limbs, which still use wires, many deep brain stimulators already rely on wireless signals. Hacking into these devices could enable patients to “self-prescribe” elevated moods or pain relief by increasing the activity of the brain’s reward centers.

They’re already hacking brains. If the attacks on Epilepsy support sites are any indication, brain hacking is already occurring if not directly. Having a hacker hijack your brainstem is not possible just yet, but on the day when neural interfaces and neuron reprogramming come together, you can bet that meatbots will abound and we will be facing a real zombie apocalypse…

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, now all over the nets.

Here comes (!) the ORGASMATRON! Oxford University researchers have announced that they are currently developing a chip that will be implantable in the brain and can stimulate certain areas like the orbitofrontal cortex, which has been shown to produce sensations of pleasure from eating… and SEX.

Guess which pleasure sensation they’re aiming for…

(Neurosurgery professor Tipu Aziz, said) … current technology, which requires surgery to connect a wire from a heart pacemaker into the brain, can cause bleeding and is “intrusive and crude”.

He continued: “When the technology is improved, we can use deep brain stimulation in many new areas. It will be more subtle, with more control over the power so you may be able to turn the chip on and off when needed.

Sex is just one possible use of the chip. They’re looking at other possible brain-stimulation therapies within ten years.

Meanwhile, in a secret lab in North Carolina, USA… Another “orgasmatron” has been developed for women (click the pic above to read the full article on io9):

Women who have used the device say they feel as if their clitoris and vagina are actually being stimulated, to quite realistic effect. (”One woman asked me, ‘Would it be considered adultery if I gave the remote control to someone other than my husband?’ ” Meloy says.)

Some volunteers also report fleeting episodes of clenched foot muscles, Meloy says, probably a result of electrical pulses leaving the spine and stimulating nearby motor nerves. (He wonders if the phenomenon might somehow be related to a common orgasm description: “My toes curled.”)

And when the device’s pulse intensity is cranked up to maximum, Meloy says, some women find their vaginal and rectal muscles squeezing rhythmically in time with the pulses, even before the orgasmic finale.

MERRY XXX-MAS ALL!

Sources: Wired, PLoS One

In what has to be major proof of science fiction becoming science reality, neuroscientists at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institutet have shown that a person’s ‘conscious’ can be moved between bodies by using virtual reality headgear. The people reported feeling like they were in the new body as if it was their own. The full report can be read and downloaded from the Public Library of Science One (PLoS One).

“The present findings could have groundbreaking industrial and clinical applications” write neuroscientists Valeria I. Petkova and H. Henrik Ehrsson of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. “Experiencing ‘becoming’ a humanoid robot in tele-robotics and feeling ownership of simulated bodies in virtual reality applications would probably enhance user control, realism, and the feeling of ‘presence.’”

Freaky Friday… Any day of the week. While tele-robotics may be the most immediate application of the body-swap phenomenon, it’s possible to apply this to some more fun uses:

Imagine surfing the nets Tron-like, or engaging in online deathmatches or quests using tele-presence: Would you alter your tactics if you felt like you could actually die online? How would Deus Ex or System Shock feel playing inside the games? Would you feel the G-forces of a flight or driving simulation?

Of course, cyberspace would only be the beginning. How does a meatbot sound to you? A Remote controlled human fresh from the clone vats and piloted by tele-presence to do your bidding. Or maybe a “backup” clone of yourself that you can send into dangerous areas to throw would-be assassins and religious trash off. Or maybe “masquerading” as Osama bin Laden or George W. Bush (to undo the harm they’ve done), or as Ron Jeremy or Sarah Palin or… Your meatbot doesn’t even need to be the same sex as you!

In conclusion, these experiments have demonstrated how remarkably easy it is to ‘move’ a human centre of awareness from one body to another. This speaks directly to the classical question of the relationship between human consciousness and the body, which has been discussed by philosophers, psychologists, and theologians for centuries. The continuous integration of multisensory and motor signals in ego-centric reference frames thus maintains the co-alignment between the experienced self and the physical body.

Source: ZDNet, from AlphaGalileo.org

In what has to be a ground-breaking event, the University of Reading’s (UK) Cybernetic Intelligence Research Group (CIRG) have constructed a robot that has an organic “brain” made of cultured neurons. Control of the robot is done completly from the brain, WITHOUT HUMAN INPUT.

The project is, surprisingly, not about creating a race of cyborgs:

This cutting edge research is the first step to examine how memories manifest themselves in the brain, and how a brain stores specific pieces of data. The key aim is that eventually this will lead to a better understanding of development and of diseases and disorders which affect the brain such as Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, stoke and brain injury.

So, no robot/cyborg overlords. Not just yet… The main goal of the brain-bot is to study how the brain works in terms of memory storage. Of course, that doesn’t mean other applications are not possible:

(From Roland Piquepaille, ZDNet) The area of focus is notably the use of electrode technology, where a connection is made directly with the cerebral cortex and/or nervous system. The presentation will consider the future in which robots have biological, or part-biological, brains and in which neural implants link the human nervous system bi-directionally with technology and the internet.

There’s also this video (a 95MB video) about the bot and a couple of its creators (I’ll be checking it out when I have some time).

UPDATE: It looks like the video link above has “expired,” so here’s a video from New Scientist showing the bot in action: