Researchers at Brown University have developed an extraordinary new device: an implant that is the first wireless, implantable, rechargeable, long-term brain-computer interface. You can now be your own Johnny Mnemonic. Having tried out the implant on pigs and monkeys, the researchers are ready to use it in willing human subjects. For those of us who are fans of the cult classic “The President’s Analyst,” the Brown implant seems vaguely familiar.
The device is a hermetically sealed titanium object about the size and shape of a pacemaker. It is connected to a small chip with 100 electrodes protruding from it that is embedded in the somatosensory cortex or motor cortex. The result is that you will never again lose your iPad or phone . . . as long as you do not lose your head or overload like Johnny Mnemonic.
The question is who is really behind this research. The answer is obvious . . .
Source: ExtremeTech
This would bring something new to the concept of ‘virus’.
Seriously – who would consider shrinking their desktop PC and implanting it in their brain?
We would all end up thinking in Chinese or NSAese.
We would get irrestible urges to send money to Nigeria, or buy ‘stuff’.
Presumably it would be illegal to unlock or jail-break such a thing.
This is on every level of disturbing that there is..
How does this not scare the piss out of people?
There is a great book titled “Medical Apartheid” by Harriet A. Washington where the CIA hired former Nazi scientists/doctors to perform lethal experiments (murder) on African-Americans without their consent or knowledge. Published in 2006 ISBN# 978-0-7679-1547-2. What’s the danger of excessive secrecy? These experiments were forbidden under the Nuremberg Code of 1947.
Whose behind this…. Could it be the CIA…
From a constitutional point of view one could argue that the CIA and DOD agencies (like DARPA) must operate within the U.S. Constitution/ Bill of Rights. Constitutional law is based on chronology (Ninth Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, Article VI, etc.) in the 18 th Century and that these 20th Century agencies’ activities have always been bound by the Rule of Law. Even though this hasn’t been the reality, shouldn’t it be the goal? How do we know it’s not happening today at Guantanamo or some prison? There is no national standard for secrecy designations or a watchdog.
This experiment would be helpful if it treated a brain or muscle disease, such as Alheimers (misspelled), MS, or parkinson’s.
Ross,
‘Medical Apartheid?’ Sounds interesting. I will definitely check it out.
Re: RWL
It may be helpful but generally speaking the “laws” governing new technology haven’t caught up to the technology – and with excessive secrecy that could be potentially dangerous. Keep in mind in the post-World War Two experiments those doctors/scientists perceived themselves as good people serving the greater good – they perceived themselves as the good guys while committing premeditated murder! My only point is maximum transparency and only using CONSENTING
Guinea Pigs.
RWL,
If I were paralysed/disabled due to a stroke or whatever, I would definitely welcome anything that might allow me to communicate of function better.
Outside of that, it would be a definite RUN AWAY!!
If it works, it could have great medical benefits.
This is the device that we put in the red beanies which the Catolic Cardinals wear so that we can dictate all that they say or learn about all whom they dick. The information goes back to Remulak. If only Cardinals had coneheads. Then we could transmit without the beanies.
What could possibly go wrong??
X-rays are a life-saving technology that saves many lives but it could have been perfected legally and faithful to a doctor’s Hippocratic Oath (to do no harm). While attempting to find the “safe-zone” some (not all) doctors gave white people a safe dose but gave African-Americans double or triple the radiation. When these Guinea Pigs got sick, the doctors gave them sugar pills and basically wanted to see how long they lived. The doctors didn’t receive life in prison or the death penalty but were advanced to the top of their profession for their breakthroughs. Maybe that is consistent with the morality of 1930′s Germany but is it consistent with Judeo-Christian values and James Madison?
OMG!
Identity theft just got a whole lot easier.
After this is implemented, kids today aren’t going to get any exercise. No more thumb workouts from text messaging.
This is not so far fetched. I have a sensory cortical implant in the right side of my brain, attached to the dura, that send signals to help disrupt pain signal trajectory. I am only the 13th in the world with it, and they have done no more, and there are many folks with motor cortical stimulator implants, for pain, movement disorders.
I always wondered at what point it would be used for other things, like mnemonics or ultimately something more nefarious.
Anyone know what happened to Idealist707?
leejcarroll, I am continually impressed on your efforts and attitude w/ fighting chronic pain. But it’s your attitude that is key. “Those who say they can, and those who say they can’t, are both correct.” John Wooden.
What I want more than anything would be a way to eliminate residual unnecessary memories (I still remember the phone number from my childhood home) and defragment & compact my brain. That would be worth a fortune!
Dredd,
I’m sure she, he is here in some form or another….maybe posting…. May not be…. Think of what else is absent….
Dredd, Didn’t he say he was having surgery?
Nick Spinelle. Thanks ((*_*)) I like that quote, new one for me.
Everybody hates the phone company.
frankly:
just do it your self. go through your file folders and organize everything.
If it can make boobs bigger when I am having a lap dance or two, then it is fine with me.
Ross, Leejcaroll, & Mike S et al:
In America (or even around the globe), Is it still legal to use electric impulses, shocks, via electrodes or some other method for ‘dangerous to others and themselves’ pyschiatric patients? Or is it all done with drugs?
Or maybe I need to stop watching “A Beautiful Mind” (Russell Crowe) or “Shutter Island” (Leo Decraprio)?
A college roommate turned me on to “The President’s Analyst”. Interesting film.
As for those of you wondering where id707 is, Smom is right. He said he was having some kind of surgery middle of last week.
RWL, I just heard from one person with chronic pain that they give her small amount of ECT every so often (forget how often) and she says it helps her immensely. Aetna says it is potentially beneficial for CRPS, complex regional pain syndrome.
They do still use it for major depression and some other psychiatric disorders. It is not used only in the matter of dangerous to self or other.
(I know 2 people who had it for depression but they were not dangerous to either.)
Frankly:
I am guessing that you have experience of life to the extent that you might be (chronologically at least) youth-challenged.
I understand it will get worse. In time, you will remember the name of the midwife who assisted in your delivery – and what she said as you appeared. You might even recall overhearing *her* number. You will ring that number in an effort to discover who the hell you are.
Compressing those early memories will only leave more space for stuff that you have completely forgotten and have no hope of ever getting back.
What you need …..Stop! ….Too late!
What you needed was a brain implant that would record your life and store it someplace like
- “In the cloud” – which would be a diskdrive in a hut in India powered by cow dung (with traces of horse poop)
- “Securely” – which would be someplace like
– In a marketing database sold by Google to advertisers
– In a big building like http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/03/16/new-details-on-nsas-new-spy-center-and-secrets-from-domestic-eavesdropping-operation-stellar-wind/
.
And the good news is:
When you try to access your memories, you could well get the memories of someone who has had a way more interesting life (in the positive sense of this) than you actually had.
If you get bad memories, then it’s someone else’s fault, and you can sue.
So it’s all good.
RWL: Not my area of expertise. My issue is totally out of control intel agencies that essentially use regular citizens – like you or your family or neighbors for testing – without consent or even knowledge. That is my concern and area of expertise: constitutional violations by constitutionally sworn officers.
Thanks Gene and Swarthmore and Dredd for the reminder on ID. I hope the surgery was successful!
Ross. I went to a neurosurgeon once, a guy who was a major name. He told me he wanted to do one kind of surgery on me but when I got to MGH it turned out he wanted to do a ‘mini frontal lobotomy” He did not want to do it to help my pain but apparently so I would not be able to make a credible witness in a separate medical malpractice case.
This doctor testified before congress a number of years before that (this was in 1980 or 81) that black populations rioted in places like Watts because they had neurological problems and if they had surgery that would be the way to curtail their ‘violence’ and anti-social tendencies. http://books.google.com/books?id=RtcDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA62&lpg=PA62&dq=Dr.+william+Sweet,+neurosurgeon,+civil+rights&source=bl&ots=lgk9fGabTY&sig=IRovHBvdx5trACmZ8Oj-u9VEQKA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zX02UcKBN–40gGF0YCADw&sqi=2&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false pg 62
“As the controversy heated up, a physician who asked for anonymity directed me to published remarks made by the three doctors concerning the use of brain surgery to suppress black urban rioters. Soon after, in 1973, I received a brown envelope from an unidentified source in the Department of Justice (DOJ). It contained an in-house memo documenting that Mark and Ervin were receiving funds from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for experiments in psychosurgery for violence control. Meanwhile, Ervin was also receiving money from the Department of Justice for research on genetic factors in violent crime. Sweet was involved as a supporter, co-author, and a member of the private foundation that funneled the government funds to Mark and Ervin.
In a 1967 letter entitled “Role of Brain Disease in Riots and Urban Violence” in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Mark, Sweet and Ervin, much like current violence-initiative advocates, focused on individual vulnerability rather than upon larger social, economic or political factors. They asked, “if slum conditions alone determined and initiated riots, why are the vast majority of slum dwellers able to resist the temptations of unrestrained violence? Is there something peculiar about the violent slum dweller that differentiates him from his peaceful neighbor?”
Mark, Sweet and Ervin went on to suggest that this “peculiarity” was “brain dysfunction.” They called for large-scale studies of the inner city to “pinpoint, diagnose, and treat those people with low violence thresholds before they contribute to further tragedies.” In a supportive “Medical News” report a few weeks later, JAMA lauded Mark and Ervin’s psychosurgery as a “public health” measure.
http://www.breggin.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=53
here is one more, like the syphilis “studies” conducted on the unknowing.
Boston Biomed Inst. *
Human Radiation Experiments
The Boston Project in the early 1950s included the use of radioactive strontium, polonium, radium, and uranium. Between 1953 and 1957, 11 terminally ill patients at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston were injected with uranium as part of an experimental program sponsored by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. All the patients received high doses of uranium. As a result their physical conditions worsened and most of them died. The experiments were conducted by Dr. William Sweet, a neurosurgeon who had received his degree from Harvard Medical School. The objective of the program was two-fold. First, it was an opportunity to learn about the effects of uranium on human subjects, so that information could be used in improving safety standards among workers engaged in projects involving nuclear energy. Second, the experiments were conducted to determine if uranium would localize in the brain, allowing it to be used to treat cancer. As a result, Sweet received the prestigious Harvey Cushing Medal from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.
http://coldwar-ma.com/Boston_Biomed.html
Hopefully this remains a thing of the past and not the present or the future.
I love chips.
Leejcaroll,
Electronic Brain Stimulation (EBS) a form of electrotherapy is more common than I thought! Great articles!
give one to stephen hawking. i want spaceflight.
My brother recently sent this article – very interesting. I gave a copy to the local police chief as there’s a convicted felon and serial child molester in our area. Subsequently I observed the child molester testifying in court and studied his skull with this article in mind. He fits the profile.
Interestingly, this can be detected in kindergarten.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2273857/Neurologist-discovers-dark-patch-inside-brains-killers-rapists.html#axzz2K4M5FIPW
Streetwise, the article allows for people like Dr Sweet that I wrote about above to get government $$$ to “study” these people and “treat” them, with or without their knowledge. (Forget whether his ‘work’ can be replicated or is based in reality.)
If you dont believe me about the Cardinals and their Beanies then get on the short wave radio and go to the big fat voice of America station out of Central Europe. Just past that one, listen to the little beeps. Morse code. The beeps are beamed up to a satellite of sorts that sends it back to Remulak. You will notice a lot of agitation when they elect the Pope. Oddsmakers in Vegas will tune in and the guy in favor will be the one the Oddsmakers have identified. Place your bets.
If you are a catolic, never give Confession to a Priest with a beanie on. A red beanie on a Cardinal is a sure thing for a listening and dictation device.
We are from France.