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So what do people think about tapping into the senses; specifically vision and hearing? If you could implant a subdural wireless device (802.11, bluetooth, etc.) that you could use to send video and audio to a receiver using your own eyes and ears as camera and microphone, would you? This can be done by deconing signals coming off the LGN, cochlear nerve nucleus or IC, or whatever.
Beyond the simple coolness factor, what are other potentials of such devices? They would be useful for espionage, obviously. Perhaps a doctor or therapist would benefit from being able to truly see and hear what people who have vision and hearing deficits are truly experiencing.
Beyond the simple coolness factor, what are other potentials of such devices? They would be useful for espionage, obviously. Perhaps a doctor or therapist would benefit from being able to truly see and hear what people who have vision and hearing deficits are truly experiencing.
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Re: Tapping into the Senses
Sat, August 13, 2005 - 5:06 PMTapping into the senses would be akin to discovering relativity anew, which is a risky proposition....
A very noble aplication would be Memory expansion,although who knows if this would make us smarter or dumb and dependant.
A very bad aplication would be a brain scrambler I suppose, or even worse, advertisements on your mind, we might not be that dumb to allow it, but these days you never know.
For the cool aplication category, and a world with such a device, go rent or see "until the end of the world" by wim wenders....
k
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Re: Tapping into the Senses
Sat, August 13, 2005 - 9:38 PMThe problem with this, not to be a wet blanket, is that we still don't even know exactly how vision or sound is processed in the brain. If you were to tap into them, you'd have to do it at the cortical level. But where in the cortex? V1? Still too early in the pathway. Another problem is that processing is both serial and parallel. Also, we know that sound influences vision and vice versa so we'd then have to tap into the auditory cortex. But what about tactile or even cognitive influences? You'd basically need to model the entire brain to have an accurate representation of visual or auditory experience. Supplying input is easier but not by very much ;) -
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Re: Tapping into the Senses
Sat, August 13, 2005 - 10:43 PMI disagree. From experience.
I've seen video of vision reconstruction off the cat LGB. It's rough and black an white, but resolution is enough t make out form, movement, and some facial features.
As for the auditory... well we've got some damn good work going on right now... -
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Re: Tapping into the Senses
Sun, August 14, 2005 - 12:22 AMAlthough I'll agree that it's an amazing technical feat, it's still aways off from perceptual experience. It sounds like you know as well as I do that conscious experience involves a lot more than simply resolving an image of the environment. Just the feedback alone to the LGN is like ten times that of the input. The pulvinar is dedicated to cortical feedback. Still, very cool work. Are you working on that project? -
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Re: Tapping into the Senses
Sun, August 14, 2005 - 12:59 AMOh I totally agree: you're spot on. As I like to say regarding vision, "In the retina, a photon converts 11-cis-retinal to all-trans-retinal causing an AP, sending the signal from the receptor, to a BP cell, to RGCs, back through the optic nerve, half crossing the optic chiasm, to the LGN, through Meyer's loop or the internal capsule, to the primary visual cortex. And then you see."
It's that last critical "seeing" part that's a mystery, no? However, I'm talking about simply recording the input that is being transduced at the first relay where tonotopic or topographic representation is maintained. This signal can then be fairly well decoded to produce a video or sound based upon what has reached the perceiver.
So my question is, what are the actual uses for such devices?
Also, I don't work on vision (too messy, too many people working on it), but I do some work on sound. To be more precise, I work on general signal detection and computational neuroscience, so I tend to focus on sound and EEG/MEG/intracranial data of all types. Anything that can be represented as a wave/spectrogram.
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Re: Tapping into the Senses
Sun, August 14, 2005 - 1:04 AMAs for the vision recording, Yang Dan up here has an awesome video of it that she likes to show. It's from one of her ridiculous number of J Neurosci papers:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi -
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Re: Tapping into the Senses
Sun, August 14, 2005 - 7:36 PMAll this sounds very simplistic. Yes, we are able to start helping out blind people with implants at various levels of the hierarchy and yes, cochlear implants have long use of history - overall by a simple enhancing of signal-to-noise ratio.
To the risk of sounding mentalistic, perception is NOT a simple decoding mechanism -otherwise, I'd love to hear where the audience of the Cartesian theater lives -and most of all, who they are.
The essence of perception is in the comparative mechanisms allowing for the brain to interpret incoming signals (I posted that before... ONLY 20% of signals to primary sensory cortices come from transduced signals aka outside world aka what devices boot).
So we are left with the problem of the internal world aka the 80% of self-talk that the cortex does in order to intepret the world (obviously using memories for instance, emotions too etc etc...).
I am in tune with the excellent work of W. Freeman and his very insightful character who deserves much more attention than what he currently receives in the academic field. :-) [now that may be a little biased, ermm ]
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Re: Tapping into the Senses
Sun, August 14, 2005 - 11:17 PMI agree with you, Virginie. I think Semiconscious would as well. On the other hand, visual experience aside, i think we're not too far off from being able to record simple information about shape, motion and contrast from some of the lower level circuitry (ie, retina, lgn and V1). Although cool and possibly useful in diganostic work, I still don't think it tells us much about the more complex visual processing that occurs during experiential vision. Is experiential actually a word? Fuck it. I'm in science; I'm allowed to make up words :).
One of the things that draws me to BMI is that provides an excellent avenue to study visual perception (from a systems point of view) and may allow a start in understanding some of the neural mechanisms involved.
BTW, who's going to SfN this year? We need to have a little party of tribe scientists!
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Re: Tapping into the Senses
Sun, August 14, 2005 - 11:32 PMWell I can't argue with facts; you're absolutely right about the amount of corticocortical connections. However I wasn't talking about uploading information into a person, but download the information the person is receiving. No, that download won't be perfect, but science is an iterative field for the most part where knowledge and technology slowly build over time. Just because the entirety of perception can't be downloaded now doesn't mean I shouldn't continue to do what I can with the information I can record.
My question was: what applications could be made from the ability to record and then replay the incoming signals to the brain, not the perceiver's perception of those signals. -
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Re: Tapping into the Senses
Mon, August 15, 2005 - 8:29 AMAlan, experiential is a word ;-) (at least I hope since I use it too)
Semi-conscious, I agree the feeding back of neural signals is actually a great idea in the lab.... as a matter of fact, one that is also being used in clinical practice although not as recognized under the name neurofeedback. Patients (usually for anxiety, migraines, etc) treatment sit in front of their EEG signals and try to modulate power in particular frequency bands by simple....concentration/meditation/insight....
The problem I see is the interfacting since there is an machine 'interpretation'.
But neurophysilogists do use this replay idea -though strangely enough (can't help smiling at that one) some replay cat neural recordings to mice for instance....I'd say how to downgrade an interesting technique in application....
So I am blurbing with no answers. I still see this replay idea as functionally useful perhaps - somewhat similar to Parkinson treatment...but at the end it is like giving a medication that we know woks for the effect, without being explained the A to Z mechanisms. I remain unsatisfied in the explanation of how things work....Yet Alan, I see your point, such techniques allow new perspectives and new questions that make science after all.
I'll be going to SFN. But I may see you before hand - my LA move is mid-september. And semiconscious, I might have seen you around no? Ever gone to ucsf? -
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.Unsu...
Re: Tapping into the Senses
Mon, August 15, 2005 - 12:01 PMVirgine-- Neurofeedback is an awesome, totally understudied technique. You may have seen me around USCF. I don't go over there too often, but I've been around on occassion. Where else might you have seen me?
I'll be at SfN this year as well. Where's everyone staying? We (my lab) is staying at the Courtyard Marriott - Embassy Row.
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