Synthetic telepathy
Researcher are developing technology to translate thought into messages that can be wirelessly delivered. Funded by the US military ('natch), the aim is "synthetic telepathy," using EEG signals monitored non-invasively to communicate by brainpower alone. Apparently, this research goes back to the 1960s when a scientist used EEG to communicate in Morse code. Now though, the scientist are using brain scans to better understand how to detect and identify the brain signals. From MSNBC:
The Army grant to researchers at University of California, Irvine, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland has two objectives. The first is to compose a message using, as (UC Irvine professor Mike) D'Zmura puts it, "that little voice in your head."Synthetic telepathy
The second part is to send that message to a particular individual or object (like a radio), also just with the power of thought. Once the message reaches the recipient, it could be read as text or as a voice mail...
Mapping the brain's response to most of the English language is a large task, and D'Zmura says that it will be 15-20 years before thought-based communication is reality.
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Synthetic? We're just continuing to evolve. Evolutionary pressure at work!
I'm pretty sure that they have three objectives. The third is to buy new condos in the Galapagos with the dirty government money.
I know enough about EEG to know that "Mapping the brain's response to most of the English language" is not going to happen. Ever. (I work with ERP folks at the UO Brain Development Lab.)
EEG has the temporal resolution to disambiguate some aspects of language and other brain processes. But with 64 (or 256, or any number) of sampling points on the scalp, there is no way to monitor fine spatially distinct and overlapping processes. A lot more neurons than that are involved in the simplest thought about language.
"I'm hungry" maybe. "I want a Big Mac" never.
I don't really understand why they chose to modify the word "telepathy" with the word "synthetic". I guess it is synthetic in that it is made by humans, but people typically only use "synthetic" when a "natural" alternative actually exists.
Great. This sort of technology couldn't possibly be abused, could it?
MARK_DOW @3, Thanks for that info. What about using EEG to pick from a group of phrases? As in, maybe EEG wouldn't translate directly from a thought into message but you could train your brain to think the right thoughts to trigger particular commands or phrases.
Why are they trying to use the unbelievably noisy medium of EEG for this "synthentic telepathy" task instead of the much cleaner and well-understood medium of subvocalization?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization
Sounds like the Halfnium bomb, AKA nuclear hand grenade. Makes for a great episode of "Fringe", but not so much for real science.
Brains use chemicals as well as electricity. There's not really any way to map the chemical transmissions. What we could get is the ability to modulate out EEG output a bit, and use something like Morse Code to send out a message. But the receiving is still going to have to be in something we can understand.
We'd be better off trying to understand input into the brain - taste, sound, touch, sight, and decode that. Once we know what goes in, we might be able to splice something into the nervous system that can replicate it.
And, of course the technology that we'd use to splice something is has yet to be developed as well. Once we get that, we'll be able to cure damage to the nervous system, repair lost or damaged senses, and probably more that I can't even think of.
But of course, the military wants rocket ships and laser beam science fiction toys, and any slick talking sales-type is going to convince the people with money that it's possible.
Dr. Xavier was unavailable to comment on this story.
Ohhhhhh. . . the tinfoil-hat-crowd is going to have a field day with this one!
Back when I worked on radio we got a letter from some nutcase detailing how the Reagan administration was "using satellites to steal my thoughts (via brainwaves)." That's great-- "via brainwaves."
Now I'm scared.
NEat! Thanks or the technical expertise. IF you are correct though, this seems like something more meaningful if universally translated versus a region specific lingual translation. When I use the little voice in my head, am I really speaking in english? When I create an image in my minds eye, am I really seeing? No!
David Pescovitz @4. Yes, EEG (and skin galvanic response, and eye motion) can and has been used for selection responses. For example moving a cursor on a screen and selecting from a list. Stephen Hawking is proficient at this technique for communicating deep and subtle ideas in physics.
But this is a serial process, or at most a few simultaneous serial processes. Language is inherently an associative (and parallel) process. In principle, if there are enough channels with independent information, many or all parts of language responses could be decoded and recoded. In practice EEG is limited to
Field, or single cell, recording with implanted electrodes can do better. For example, monkeys can learn to roughly control a robot arm with ~100 implanted electrodes at motor planning/output cortical sites.
MARK_DOW @11, Thanks for that info. Yes, clearly implanted electrodes would be a far more effective solution. But getting people who don't "need" it (i.e. folks who are locked in, quadreplegic, etc.) to sign up for a brain jack may be a challenge.
Supposedly our thoughts can alter other people's DNA. They did studies on this. The true power of the mind is still a mystery.
So Mark, is there an upcoming tech that could potential resolve individual neuronal activity?
Mapping the whole vocabulary with EEG is unnecessary. If you have enough control just to move a single dot around, you can use a scheme like Dasher to compose English text at 40 WPM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher
The Google Tech Talk is very cool:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5078334075080674416
Really moving your jaw left or right, a finger on a trackpoint, or flexing your toes would be enough for this purpose.
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit!
Step 6: Electric Dreams!
Step 7: Skynet!
Will that stuff work through a tinfoil hat?
jeremedia@14 "is there an upcoming tech that could potential resolve individual neuronal...?"
The short answer is no, nothing that is not invasive.
There are new clever tools that get closer in some ways. You can shine infrared light through skulls (particularly thin baby skulls) and count scattered photons. Neuronal activity modulates blood flow which effects the scattered light. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroimaging#Event_Related_Optical_Signal
Why do we need synthetic telepathy. We have cell phones...
All I can say is, if people can learn to use non-invasive EEG-detectable signals to land a plane with MicroSoft Flight Simulator, learning to text message shouldn't be a problem. Actual thoughts, not so easy. Actual brain-to-brain language transmission, no way.
David 12: But getting people who don't "need" it...to sign up for a brain jack may be a challenge.
I agree, but I don't think the problem is people's willingness to have brain implant surgery. You'd definitely get some people willing to do that for all kinds of reasons, nefarious to geeky.
No, the problem is the upgrades. Having brain surgery once isn't such a big deal (well, it is, but not to the kind of people I'm thinking of). Having brain surgery every time a newer, better implant package comes along is a huge pain and a lot of expense. And of course, once you have a certain kind of implant you may not be able to convert to a new protocol.
Imagine still being stuck with the first cellphone you ever had, forever.
This was the first example I ever heard of where the pace of technological change per se made a particular technology* impractical.
(Non-invasive technology has no such problems, of course.)
*I mean brain-implant tech generally...the voluntary kind, anyway.
The litmus test of synthetic telepathy: find out who really farted.
J.
Be glad : that is my last one.
Ciao BB
Mind Wars might be of interest.
I'm wondering if real mind-to-computer communication is going to require a foot long metal spike inserted into the back of the head.
Brain hacks may not be necessary. A year or more ago, I read about a group of (presumably Army, though possibly just plain ol' government) scientists who'd developed a "thought microphone" which they purported was able to read microvibrations from the trachea. The gist of it was that, as a person thinks, he or she tends to think in his or her own language. And when he / she is deep in thought, the voicebox flexes in the same way that it would were the thinker speaking aloud. That was my reading of the article, as a lay interpreter, and as mentioned it's been a while.
But combined with "silent" audio technologies such as the Audio Spotlight, I don't see why some kind of telepathy helmet couldn't be constructed in far less than 15-20 years. I thought so at the time, and I still believe so now. Even without the use of extra-sensitive tracheal microphones, other methods could be employed.
@ Xopher:
"All I can say is, if people can learn to use non-invasive EEG-detectable signals to land a plane with MicroSoft Flight Simulator, learning to text message shouldn't be a problem. Actual thoughts, not so easy."
This is certainly viable. Yes, controlling objects remotely is possible with EEG (synthetic telekinesis?), so why not texting? Braille cells are comprised of only six possible positions, making it a very attractive blueprint for this sort of endeavor. I disagree that "text messaging" and "actual thoughts" are mutually exclusive, however. I would suggest that texting is a capturing of thought, albeit VERY slowly, and with too much shorthand.
"using EEG signals monitored non-invasively to communicate by brainpower alone"
Apparently, I've spent too much time on 4chan. I first read EFG signals and thought, "Uh-oh, that's not going to end well."
I'm not afraid of the tech that tells them what your are thinking so much as the tech that tells you what to think.
Maybe it won't be read as text, but heard as music.
"Musicians may soon be able to play instruments using just the power of the mind."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7446552.stm
For everyone that hasn't figured it out yet you are all telepaths. The whole freaking planet. Yu just haven't realised it yet. I have known that it exist within me for at least 25 years. I had to suppress it within myself so that I wasn't walking around sending signals to every person and probably making them think that they are nuts. Lately I have tried this. Speaking to somebody telepathically only to have their thought processes come back to me saying "wow I'm losing it. They literally think their having an argument of sorts with themselves and no matter how I try to forcefully communicate to them that they are in a telepathic conversation with me they just don't get it. I generally have found that telepathy is most easily accomplished in one of two situations. Extreme negative emotion (anger) triggers it but if you can't control it you could be putting off some pretty intensive vibes that could go out to a great many people at the same time without even knowing it. The other is extreme relaxation or meditation. I don't get very much sleep. The way I see it when I'm at that level of restness... near sleep, I go into telepahy very highly and I'm conversing with a great many people at the same time. I've also discovered that I seem to be a sort of telepathic conduit acting as a sort of router for those who have not fully developed their abilities I often hear coversations between two people or even groups of people and sometimes it can get both interesting... as well as annoying. When I interject they wonder what's going on. They have obviously figured out that they can do it but they haven't learned to block, or more precisely to direct specifically to only one person. You've probably heard stories of family members having known that someone has either been involved in an accident or even killed. They knew something was wrong through an uncontrolled telepathy. I apologise if this is a little long and maybe a little off topic but I think more people need to know. As for the topic of speaking to animals. I have had conversation with birds, dogs, cats, even insects believe it or not. I once watched a neighbour playing throw the ball with her dog. After observing for a few minutes that the dog brought the ball back to her every time. So I decided to try an experiment. I called on the power of the mind and continuously told the dog "don't bring her the ball." He stoped and did not go to it's master he just looked at his master. She called again and I repeated don't take it to her. She then tried to approach the dog at which time I told the dog to run away from her and he did. I played this game a couple more times than thought it best to just let the two play without my intervention. Another quick thing before I end. When youre in a coversation with a friend and just as you say something your frien interjects and says "I was just gonna say that, chances are that you gave it off telepatically without even knowing it and the other person recieved that telepathic communique. Thank for putting up with my post and good luck to you all in developing.
P.S.
I'm no nutcase I have proven to a number of friends and family that I can do this although they still don't truly get it. They only know that I have... They just can't figure out how.
Gringo