Tuesday 23 March 2010

Reading the mind to type by thinking

In an interesting piece of news here researchers in the Netherlands, have produced a device, a skull cap, capable of reading brain potential in order to let users type by thought alone. It doesn't state if the head, needs to be shaved for the skull cap to work, but I'm presuming it would. These prototype would be life changing for extreme paralytics, and might also be modified to measure the motor regions instead of the decision make regions, to control prosthetic limbs.

Its research like this that will over next few year, give AI researchers a chance to see deeper inside that brain than ever before. For my the goal is not just to enhance the lives of the disabled, nor to improve normal human computer interaction. For me the goal is mind uploading. If Moore law continues to hold than by 2030 we will have home computers as powerful as the human brain is. These computer could then be trained to learn to copy the signals of the human brain, learning over time, to replicate in silicon, the human mind. Your now immortal soul would be effectively copied into the
computer.

Of course its very long we to go from measuring signal in the surface of the brain, to measuring all the signal in the brain, but it is a small step along the way. For me magnetic imaging is a way to go, using SQUIDs, superconducting quantum interference devices. The technique is known as magnetoencephalography. Year of improvement of the technical would be need in to for it to have resolution to measure single neuron's firing or at least clusters of neurons, Need to upload a human mind. It was very long road, so promise to stay healthy while your waiting.

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