WSJ.com – Prosthetics Operated by Brain Activity Move Closer to Reality reports the latest cybermonkey news:
In a significant advance for mind-reading machines, Caltech’s Richard Andersen and his colleagues have bypassed the motor cortex and its detailed step-by-step instructions, and eavesdropped instead on higher-level thoughts. They placed scores of tiny electrodes into a region of [rhesus monkeys] Chewy’s, Oscar’s and Simon’s brains that generates signals more along the lines of, ‘Hey, look what’s over there; I think I’ll reach for it.’ It’s the difference between thinking about a goal, such as reaching a book lying on a table or a target on a computer screen, and figuring out the precise pathway to it.
How do you know you’re measuring the intention to reach for something and not the detailed instruction for how to reach for it?
Reading the thoughts from the monkeys’ “parietal reach region,” whose human counterpart sits just above the ear, required ingenious training. The Caltech scientists taught Chewy, Oscar and Simon to watch a video screen and wait for a green spot to appear. When it did, the monkeys were trained to reach for it. If they did, they earned a sip of orange juice.Then, rather than let the monkeys reach for the target immediately — this is the clever part — the scientists trained them to wait a moment. Since rhesus monkeys might as well carry signs saying “will work for juice,” they quickly learned that if these crazy scientists wanted them to wait before reaching, they’d wait before reaching.
While waiting, the reach-planning region of the monkeys’ brains was blasting signals that translate into, “I’m going to reach for that spot in a sec.” It was these abstract signals of intended reaching, not actual reaching, that the electrodes picked up.
Wait until they put those monkeys in giant robots.