Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: I think most of our listeners probably tuned into our
Speaker 1: episode but the future Shot, so they are probably familiar
Speaker 1: with the concept. But even if they're not familiar with
Speaker 1: the concept the future shot, I think they might feel
Speaker 1: a little of it. Let's get through with this episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the toddlers in Future Shot talked about this idea
Speaker 1: of having these sort of neural prosthetics. I didn't call
Speaker 1: him that, but it's more like brain computer interfaces. And
Speaker 1: this was a wild idea in the seventies. But hey,
Speaker 1: let's let's get real here. I mean, this thing is happening.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and three, the world's first brain prosthesis
Speaker 1: was put into an animal, and then just this year
Speaker 1: there was an auditory brain implant in a toddler. So
Speaker 1: we can see that this is becoming more and more common.
Speaker 1: And I attended a panel at the World Science Festival
Speaker 1: on this very topic. It's called cells to silicon your brain.
Speaker 1: And by the way, it always seems to be like
Speaker 1: the the year that all this stuff is going to
Speaker 1: be here for real. I don't know if you've noticed that,
Speaker 1: but they talked about the steps there that they're taking
Speaker 1: right now to make this more of a reality. And
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in a second. Yeah. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: your point, those are the new two thousand's, I guess,
Speaker 1: the years we can look to and say, this is
Speaker 1: the technology we're gonna have, This is the life we're
Speaker 1: gonna have because of these advancements. And to your point,
Speaker 1: we've seen some pretty impressive steps made thus far. I mean,
Speaker 1: the uh cyborg rat with the with the brain berth
Speaker 1: thesis and cyborg Toddler. It's pretty great now not to
Speaker 1: not to to get too caught up in the idea
Speaker 1: of the cyborg, because if we've we've discussed before, technological
Speaker 1: adaptations on your body, inside your body are becoming more
Speaker 1: and more every day, you know, ranging from a pacemaker
Speaker 1: to a risk watch, and so we're just seeing the
Speaker 1: natural extrapolation of that idea. Yeah, you're augmenting your natural abilities, right.
Speaker 1: I wear glasses, so I'm augmenting my vision. Yeah. None
Speaker 1: of this makes anybody less human. All it does is
Speaker 1: either makes up for injuries or or or some sort
Speaker 1: of shortcomings in one's biology, or it is it is
Speaker 1: gaming the system a bit, or maybe gaming the system
Speaker 1: a lot, depending on what the augmentation is well. And
Speaker 1: you would need this sort of gaming of the system
Speaker 1: quite a bit if you were someone like I say,
Speaker 1: stroke patient who have lost the ability to move your limbs.
Speaker 1: And neuroscientists John Donohue was actually talking about this on
Speaker 1: the panel. Specifically, he referenced a stroke patient named Cathy,
Speaker 1: and he showed this film of her. She sustained permanent
Speaker 1: damage to her brain and as a result, the axons
Speaker 1: that run along her spine and deliver information from her
Speaker 1: motor cortex or her limbs were incapacitated, and so she
Speaker 1: was relegated to a life in a wheelchair with others
Speaker 1: helping her to move and to feed her. And then
Speaker 1: she signed on to this five year experiment with Donna
Speaker 1: Hue and others other researchers, and there was an implant
Speaker 1: inserted into her brain that interacted with robotic arms that
Speaker 1: would do some things for her, like like get the coffee,
Speaker 1: like actually bring coffee to her lips, which she hadn't
Speaker 1: done for years. Yeah, in the video footage, of this
Speaker 1: is pretty remarkable because, yeah, she has not in and
Speaker 1: over a decade, she has not raised a cup of
Speaker 1: coffee to her own lips, of her own volition, and
Speaker 1: now she's doing it. She's thinking the robot arm into action.
Speaker 1: It's there's nothing, you know, she's not moving anything with
Speaker 1: their tongue, it's nothing with their muscles. It's all inside
Speaker 1: her mind. She's thinking about the movement and it is happening,
Speaker 1: and it's amazing. It's it's it's the stuff that you
Speaker 1: would often think, even today, you tend to think of
Speaker 1: as science fiction, the idea that I'm commanding a machine
Speaker 1: with my mind, I'm moving something other than my physical
Speaker 1: body with my mind, and yet here it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is amazing. And so how do you get your
Speaker 1: thoughts externally out there to do something for you. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that what you do is you insert
Speaker 1: a wire into the r motor cortex. And what this
Speaker 1: wire is doing, it's just it's not a very big wire,
Speaker 1: so it's not like she's got things, you know, sticking
Speaker 1: out of her head. But what it's doing is it's
Speaker 1: fishing for neural spikes. Now, what are neural spikes? Okay,
Speaker 1: every time neurons fire in the brain, they're shuttling ions
Speaker 1: back and forth, and there's an electrical potential change there.
Speaker 1: So if you have a wire inserted into the brain
Speaker 1: that can detect that electrical change and when it does, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, changes in the ions when you're on stir
Speaker 1: about and meat Uh, it will actually transmit information out
Speaker 1: to a computer to say, I detect neural activity here
Speaker 1: right now, and it's measuring that. So we've talked about
Speaker 1: this before with the Jennifer anistone neurons. I think that's
Speaker 1: what we called them. That when someone is thinking about
Speaker 1: Jennifer Anderson, some people I which I should say not everybody,
Speaker 1: you will see a spike in neuronal activity because there's
Speaker 1: a whole database of information and memory they are related
Speaker 1: to Jennifer Aniston and so the signal is really very strong. Well,
Speaker 1: the same thing happens when you're thinking and you're concentrating,
Speaker 1: like I would like to move my arm right now,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to think about moving my arm. All
Speaker 1: of those neurons which sort of coalesced together to give
Speaker 1: off a strong signal, and that's what that wire could detect,
Speaker 1: identifying what that signal looks like and then feeding it
Speaker 1: out to this machine. I I often in looking at
Speaker 1: this topic, I keep thinking of it in terms of
Speaker 1: the road, like a mountain road. The early examples we
Speaker 1: talked about that the rat prosthesis that had to do
Speaker 1: with the damaged hippocampus, or the the toddler um prosthesis,
Speaker 1: which specifically was an auditory brain stem and plant. These
Speaker 1: are cases where you have point A, point B, and
Speaker 1: point C. All right, you know you have a road,
Speaker 1: imagine a road across the mountains from your house to
Speaker 1: the store. But then that middle point is is a
Speaker 1: part of the road that's washed away by by a flood.
Speaker 1: So what do you do? How do you get from
Speaker 1: A to to C? Well, you put a bridge over it, right,
Speaker 1: And that's what a lot of this technology is figuring
Speaker 1: out how to fill in that that gap, to how
Speaker 1: to bridge that gap from from one from a healthy
Speaker 1: part of the brain to another healthy part of well,
Speaker 1: let's just say, a healthy part of the chain of
Speaker 1: of of action and reaction to to bridge that gap,
Speaker 1: you know, in a way that lets you function again.
Speaker 1: And then in this we see we see a situation
Speaker 1: where we're not only bridging the gap. We're building the
Speaker 1: bridge out of the organism itself into an external system,
Speaker 1: an external robotic system. You're right, because in this case,
Speaker 1: point A is the neuronal activity. Point B would normally
Speaker 1: be those acts on in her spine, but because they
Speaker 1: can't send the signals to the body, what we're doing
Speaker 1: here are what researchers are doing is they're taking those
Speaker 1: signals out externally, out of the organism, as you say,
Speaker 1: into the computer to decode that neuronal activity, and then
Speaker 1: points C would be the robotic arms instead of her
Speaker 1: own arms. And what is so amazing, so fascinating about
Speaker 1: this is that what they're doing is that they're taking
Speaker 1: the sounds that that these neuronal spikes made and they're
Speaker 1: decoding them. So you might have like five blips that
Speaker 1: that really mean move the arm to the right. You
Speaker 1: might have seven blips that are decoded as move the
Speaker 1: arm to the left, and that is then being put
Speaker 1: into the robotic arm as a command. So the fact
Speaker 1: that they can even take the information out and decode
Speaker 1: it in a way that makes sense um and then
Speaker 1: obviously matches up to what Cathy is thinking because she
Speaker 1: can corroborate that. Yeah, you really get the sense. It's
Speaker 1: almost like listening to a conversation through a wall, and
Speaker 1: they're making sense of it through uh in sort of
Speaker 1: indirect ways, but they're getting enough information out of it.
Speaker 1: They're getting they're they're getting enough of the points they
Speaker 1: get their high highlighting those neural spikes and then figuring
Speaker 1: out what it's it's asking for and then reproducing it. Now,
Speaker 1: the crazy thing about this, it's that they are getting
Speaker 1: this neuronal activity from just a sampling of the neurons.
Speaker 1: So maybe about fifty neurons out of the billions of
Speaker 1: neurons in your brain, uh or the billions of synapsis.
Speaker 1: So that's I mean, that's tiny, that tiny bit of
Speaker 1: neural activity can be picked up and then acted upon.
Speaker 1: I believe in the in the in they talk to you
Speaker 1: you attended World Science Festial Robert crow which Um compared
Speaker 1: it to to voting, where you have like a small
Speaker 1: portion of the population that's voting and the rest are
Speaker 1: not voting, but you're you're figuring out what the public
Speaker 1: wants as a whole based on this small sample. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of what's happened here with the with this situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely check this out. You can go to RORLD Science
Speaker 1: Festival to their website and just look for cells to
Speaker 1: Silicon and you can see this talk. It's really great. Um,
Speaker 1: so there are drawbacks this of course. There's the idea
Speaker 1: that it may not be something that you could have
Speaker 1: in your brain long term. Kathy has had it for
Speaker 1: five years. She hasn't had any problems. But we know
Speaker 1: that the body doesn't like foreign objects in it. That's true. Also,
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that the robotic reach and grasp actions
Speaker 1: are not going to be as fast as or as
Speaker 1: accurate as those of the enable bodied person. I think
Speaker 1: that's that's that should be pretty obvious. We're not at
Speaker 1: the point in the technology where it's going to be
Speaker 1: a one for one, but but it's it's a step
Speaker 1: in that direction. Yeah, and uh. Donny Hue says that
Speaker 1: the neural spikes are not always the same from trial
Speaker 1: to trial. In other words, there's five blips, might be
Speaker 1: six flips the next time or seven, and so they
Speaker 1: have to figure out the pattern each time. And he
Speaker 1: said that it's very likely that those neural spikes are
Speaker 1: influenced by other conditions at the time, so it could
Speaker 1: be hunger, it could be a particularly emotional state or
Speaker 1: a physical state. UM, which is all really fascinating because
Speaker 1: we've talked about a propri reception before, and we talked
Speaker 1: about it and people who have lost the ability to
Speaker 1: move their limbs and um, and how all of this
Speaker 1: influences the body, the physical state of the body. So um.
Speaker 1: Obviously it's not something that is perfect right now, but
Speaker 1: it's the beginnings of something that could be really important,
Speaker 1: that kind of neural pixie dust of the future. And
Speaker 1: we'll get to that later. Now. Another fascinating example of
Speaker 1: this technology can be found in the work of HeLa Nuremberg,
Speaker 1: who is a neuroscientist working on technology for a prosthetic
Speaker 1: I yeah, because she says that more than ten million
Speaker 1: people in the US are blind or facing blindness because
Speaker 1: of diseases like macular degeneration, and for the vast majority
Speaker 1: of them, it's the prosthetic devices that are available right
Speaker 1: now that are their best hope, but the ones that
Speaker 1: that are common right now are not necessarily the best.
Speaker 1: And she has created a neural prosthetic device that is amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now think back again to that analogy I'm made about
Speaker 1: the road point A, point B. In point C and
Speaker 1: point B that middle point is washed out by a flood.
Speaker 1: How do you get across it? How do you build
Speaker 1: that bridge? So, when when you're looking at something just
Speaker 1: with normal vision, normal healthy vision, you have the image
Speaker 1: that's going to your eye, it's hitting your retina and
Speaker 1: then the middleman that point B that it is the
Speaker 1: retinal circuitry, and this essentially extracts information from it and
Speaker 1: converts it into a code. And these are electrical pulses
Speaker 1: that are sent to the brain. So to your point,
Speaker 1: what do you do when the photo receptors die? What
Speaker 1: do you do when one link in the chain vanishes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's what happens with macular degeneration. Those photoreceptors on
Speaker 1: the retina die off, and then over time all the
Speaker 1: other cells and the circuits that are connected to them
Speaker 1: die off to renderingly you effectively blind. So the only
Speaker 1: thing that you're left with are those put cells, and
Speaker 1: those are the ones that send the signals to the brain.
Speaker 1: But because of all that degeneration, they're not sending any
Speaker 1: signals anymore. And if you have a regular prosthetic for eyesight,
Speaker 1: um you could allow a person to see bright lights
Speaker 1: or high contrast edges, but these are shadowy with like
Speaker 1: really no real detail. And what you're using in this
Speaker 1: regular prosthetic for eyesight is an encoder that takes in light,
Speaker 1: but the firing pattern is all over the place. So
Speaker 1: what you need then is a device that can mimic
Speaker 1: the actions of that the front end circuitry of sight
Speaker 1: send signals to the retina's output cells and and and
Speaker 1: in this you're you end up mimicking the actions of
Speaker 1: that front end circuitry, so you're taking the image converting
Speaker 1: them into the retina's own code. Yeah. What Nuremberg has
Speaker 1: created is um this prosthetic device that has two parts,
Speaker 1: an encoder and a transducer. Now that encoder mimics the
Speaker 1: actions that you say, that front end circuitry, and then
Speaker 1: the transducer makes the output cells send the code to
Speaker 1: the sin and the result is this retinal prosthetic that
Speaker 1: can produce normal retinal output. And we're talking about is
Speaker 1: is a set of equations that they can implement on
Speaker 1: a chip. And so she's saying, hey, it's just math here.
Speaker 1: And that's the exciting part is that if you take
Speaker 1: these two components of the prosthetic device, then you can
Speaker 1: mimic real eyesight in a person who is blind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty, pretty phenomenal. And we're talking about that
Speaker 1: the individual would wear a sort of camera that has
Speaker 1: an encoder of a device that's taking that information from
Speaker 1: the camera and translating it into the retinas code, translating
Speaker 1: it into a version that the brain can make sense of.
Speaker 1: You're talking about a real direct link between mechanical artificial
Speaker 1: sensory and organic reasoning of that sense information. Now, to
Speaker 1: get a sense of this, you should definitely check out
Speaker 1: the talk because she shows two different examples of how
Speaker 1: this works with a regular prosthetic device and with this
Speaker 1: new one. And what she shows is sort of a
Speaker 1: readout of the neural firing activity and regular eyesight um
Speaker 1: the regular prosthetic and the new one. And you will
Speaker 1: see that in the new prosthetic and regular eyes eyesight,
Speaker 1: those patterns are almost identical. It's not perfect, but that
Speaker 1: middle part, the regular one right now that just has
Speaker 1: the encoder that just takes in light, is very imperfect.
Speaker 1: And then she gives the second example of she said,
Speaker 1: you know, we wanted to take a snapshot of what
Speaker 1: people were seeing or what these primates were seeing, because
Speaker 1: I believe they're in human trials right now, clinical trials.
Speaker 1: But what those um images that we're seeing. You see
Speaker 1: the regular eyesight, you see a baby's face. It's perfectly rendered,
Speaker 1: of course, right because you have perfect eyesight. Then you
Speaker 1: have the regular prosthetic and it's very shadowy. You can't
Speaker 1: even make out the pattern, which is amazing because you know,
Speaker 1: you and I have discussed before how humans are pattern
Speaker 1: recognition machines and yet there's no not enough data points
Speaker 1: here to really make a clear picture. And then you
Speaker 1: have this new device that she came up with, and
Speaker 1: it is plain as day that that is the baby space.
Speaker 1: It is not exact, but can you imagine being someone
Speaker 1: who has lost their sight and you all of a
Speaker 1: sudden are hooked up with this neural prosthetic device for
Speaker 1: your eye and you're able to see something is I
Speaker 1: don't know, iconic and recognizable as a tree or a
Speaker 1: baby space. Again, yeah, I mean you would have have
Speaker 1: some level of detail as well as just you know,
Speaker 1: an abstract idea of your environment just for navigational purposes.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty pretty amazing stuff. Yeah, And as you
Speaker 1: had said, this sort of washed out areas, um, you know,
Speaker 1: from points A to C. This is something that Nuremberg
Speaker 1: is is imagining for the rest of the brains, and
Speaker 1: not just eyesight, but for stroke victims. So in the
Speaker 1: cortex of trying to create this sort of communications center
Speaker 1: using the same sort of device. Yeah, figuring any any
Speaker 1: kind of situation where there's a there's a gap, where
Speaker 1: there's a missing link in the chain or a damage
Speaker 1: link in the chain, then we could conceivably go in
Speaker 1: there and build that that bridge, that neural bridge from
Speaker 1: point A to point C. All Right, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break, and when we get back, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about it. Just sort of neural dust that
Speaker 1: we may all have sprinkled into our brains in the year.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. Uh So, if you were not
Speaker 1: future shocked by the earlier information about sort of the
Speaker 1: current state in the in the depending state um of
Speaker 1: these these neural enhancements, then hold onto your bridges, because
Speaker 1: we're about to look at where this could go, where
Speaker 1: this is going, and how it could dramatically change not
Speaker 1: only our lives, but but but what it is to
Speaker 1: be human. Yeah, Okay, so think back to Kathy and
Speaker 1: think about that wire in her brain time I believe
Speaker 1: is referred to as brain gate. UM. Michael Maharbits has
Speaker 1: created a new kind of prosthetic in the form of
Speaker 1: these cubes as small as neurons. Okay, we're talking about
Speaker 1: fifty microns across. Now. The thing is is that they
Speaker 1: don't um they don't work with electromagnetic frequency because they're
Speaker 1: too small, so you can't have something like a wire
Speaker 1: detecting them. But you can use sonogram to detect these.
Speaker 1: And what they're thinking is that you could have these
Speaker 1: sprinkled throughout your brain and you would have all these
Speaker 1: different data points measuring that neuronal activity, and you could
Speaker 1: have a far more robust system that not only exports
Speaker 1: the sort of neural activity, the sort of thoughts that
Speaker 1: you're having, that maybe even imports information. So when you
Speaker 1: start to think about this, this neural dust as it's called,
Speaker 1: and you start to see how you could have these
Speaker 1: prosthetics not just external to you, but implanted in you,
Speaker 1: and you could have this this really very uh sophisticated
Speaker 1: system of information coming in and going out of your body,
Speaker 1: out of your brain. Yeah, I mean, we're talking about
Speaker 1: the ability to to have more of a hands on,
Speaker 1: real time idea of what the brain is doing just
Speaker 1: throughout the course of the day, not just when you're
Speaker 1: hooked up to some machines or or your run through
Speaker 1: an fMRI. I. This would be like a daily constant
Speaker 1: understanding of what your brain is doing. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: mean you you see this. That the fact that you
Speaker 1: could have more of this neural dust spread throughout your
Speaker 1: brain again, more data points of collection, more ability to
Speaker 1: import that data. But not only that, you could have
Speaker 1: this stuff in there maybe for the rest of your life,
Speaker 1: because as we discussed before, the brain is not like
Speaker 1: foreign objects. But if you have something as tiny as
Speaker 1: a neuron, it's very possible that it could pass in
Speaker 1: the body as something that's uh supposed to be there. Okay,
Speaker 1: so at conceivably then at even an early age, you
Speaker 1: are injected. Your brain is injected with this dust, and
Speaker 1: this dust is spread out through the brain and it's
Speaker 1: all reporting and receiving information from the outside. Well. Right,
Speaker 1: So for someone like Cathy for instance, um, she would
Speaker 1: get sort of an upgrade here because again let's assume
Speaker 1: that there's some sort of implant here or a prosthetic
Speaker 1: device that could easily allow her to to move her
Speaker 1: body around um, and maybe even she could receive directions UM.
Speaker 1: And that's where this thing gets really weird, because you
Speaker 1: could effectively use this as a brain upgrade. And we
Speaker 1: talked about this before, and I think it was in
Speaker 1: monkeys that they had their neural path at ways tinkered
Speaker 1: with when they were making decisions, and the idea was
Speaker 1: you could increase neural activity in one direction so that
Speaker 1: they made spec scific um movements or decisions about what
Speaker 1: they were about to do the right decision, right. So
Speaker 1: what if you have this neural pixie dust and it
Speaker 1: could bolster your memory, It could create stronger neural pathways
Speaker 1: to information. I mean, you wouldn't have to study so much, right.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty fascinating because we're talking about not only
Speaker 1: not only using this technology to bridge gaps and to
Speaker 1: service a bridge where an area was damaged, but just
Speaker 1: to speed up the connections, to improve the the the
Speaker 1: overall road to where you have you know, just imagine
Speaker 1: again to use the analogy of the mountain mountain roads
Speaker 1: where you have lots of bridges, not because the the
Speaker 1: road is unsafe, but because this makes the transportation, faster, smoother,
Speaker 1: uh and uh and and altogether more effective. Right, It's
Speaker 1: a kind of true all because not only would it
Speaker 1: be helpful for say, struck victims or someone with you know,
Speaker 1: immacular degeneration in this case, UM, but because conceivably it
Speaker 1: could work in the same way that nurembergers to be
Speaker 1: sing her system. But yeah, it could just give you
Speaker 1: that sort of lift that everybody has been fantasizing about
Speaker 1: and thinking about in terms of upgrading your brain in
Speaker 1: a way that it runs faster and smoother. As you say, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you could have like a daily or weekly email
Speaker 1: that you received telling you what you're almost like you
Speaker 1: would web traffic for your website, except you would have
Speaker 1: a readout saying, hey, this is how your brain is doing.
Speaker 1: This is your your neural activity for a given day,
Speaker 1: a given week. Yeah. And here's the thing again, this
Speaker 1: is that we're not just talking about um output here
Speaker 1: working with an implanted prosthetic devices, but we're also talking
Speaker 1: about input. And while this doesn't work on an electromagnetic frequency,
Speaker 1: it does work on that that sort of ultrasound. In fact,
Speaker 1: these neural pixie dusts are called tuning forks for ultrasound. Uh,
Speaker 1: the idea is that maybe you could still kind of
Speaker 1: hack into this system, and that would be a problem, right,
Speaker 1: you could hack into someone's neural circuitry and have them
Speaker 1: doing things. So, so you don't mean just in the
Speaker 1: sense of life hacking where I'm improving my brain by
Speaker 1: having the neural pixie dust. You're talking about an outsider
Speaker 1: hacking into the device that's it's it's attuned with my
Speaker 1: neural pixie dust and essentially hacking my brain, hacking my
Speaker 1: my memory, even hacking my my perception of reality or
Speaker 1: my my actual consciousness. Yeah, now, of course this is
Speaker 1: this is all predicated on the idea that we have
Speaker 1: a much better idea of how the brain works in
Speaker 1: twenty or thirty years, and we have a kind of technology,
Speaker 1: technology that's so pervasive that people would have access to
Speaker 1: these systems. But what if all of that came together
Speaker 1: and we all had neural pixie dust spread throughout our
Speaker 1: brains to help us, right, to help us remember things,
Speaker 1: to help us do things. And I could say, go
Speaker 1: and hack the system for you and say I would
Speaker 1: really love for Robert to do ten cart wheels today.
Speaker 1: And who knows that you should get that sophisticated. Um.
Speaker 1: But that's a possibility. I mean, that's that's the wonderful
Speaker 1: and the horrific thing about this kind of technology, as
Speaker 1: you can really go off the deep end, um and
Speaker 1: kind of go to the dark side and imagine all
Speaker 1: of these things. Of course, we know that science has
Speaker 1: a lot of integrity and that technology so far has
Speaker 1: been uh not used really that much for ill will.
Speaker 1: But oh no, I can't think of a single example
Speaker 1: of technology being used to hurt anyone. Um. Well there, yes,
Speaker 1: you have a point there, But I guess what I'm
Speaker 1: saying is that I so far have not been able
Speaker 1: to pick up on the black market yet an exco
Speaker 1: exo skeleton that can sort of let me U rampage
Speaker 1: through the streets of Atlanta. It's true. So you know,
Speaker 1: maybe this will be a technological advancement that society will
Speaker 1: be able to stay abreast off instead of letting it
Speaker 1: get ahead of of of society as we often do
Speaker 1: with technological advancements. That would be the hope. But here's
Speaker 1: something I want to say to any kids listening. If
Speaker 1: you guys are interested in neuros science, um, and you're
Speaker 1: also interested in engineering or even chemistry or mathematic mathematics,
Speaker 1: you might want to consider joining up with neuroscientists on
Speaker 1: this because, as they were saying on the panel, they
Speaker 1: need people who are coming from these different disciplines, even
Speaker 1: like physics, to help figure out how some of these
Speaker 1: technologies work with the brain and how best to do this.
Speaker 1: It's not just neuroscientists figuring out. They need other disciplines
Speaker 1: to really make this work. Yeah, otherwise, how are we
Speaker 1: going to get to the point where you can actually
Speaker 1: download a copy of your brain and have that stored
Speaker 1: away potentially for safe keeping, and we could reach the
Speaker 1: point where, um, I instantly think of the book Altered
Speaker 1: Carbon by writer Richard K. Morrigan, in which you have
Speaker 1: individuals who have are certainly individuals who can afford it,
Speaker 1: the super rich, for instance, who have copies of their
Speaker 1: brain backed up so that if something happens to their body,
Speaker 1: they can just have their mind re sleeved into a
Speaker 1: new body. Or you want to explore another planet, you
Speaker 1: just have you a copy of your mind sent, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, at the speed of light to to this
Speaker 1: location where it can be put into a new body
Speaker 1: or a robotic body to do whatever needs to be done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but before all this happens again, they they need to
Speaker 1: put the rubber to the road here and figure out
Speaker 1: how the brain works. Also, technology they need to upgrade
Speaker 1: here because you know, using fMRI I too to look
Speaker 1: at these neuronal spikes, it's not a perfect science because
Speaker 1: the neuronal neuronal activity is happening at something like one
Speaker 1: thousands of a second, but the imaging itself is only
Speaker 1: happening it one second, so it's not a true picture
Speaker 1: of the brain and what's happening. Right, But through this technology,
Speaker 1: well we were conceivably having much better idea of what
Speaker 1: the brain is doing. Yeah, and and Maha Ribbits said
Speaker 1: that where we are with the brain is a lot
Speaker 1: like where we were with cosmology right before the Hubble telescope,
Speaker 1: right and and just like the Hubble telescope allowed us
Speaker 1: to really peer into uh into space and get an
Speaker 1: idea of the breadth and depth of it. He suing,
Speaker 1: there are technologies coming online now that will allow us
Speaker 1: to do the same thing with a brain that middle
Speaker 1: space that we don't know much about now. You know,
Speaker 1: you're talking about hacking earlier, the idea of someone hacking
Speaker 1: into your personal thoughts in India, the inner workings your brain. Um,
Speaker 1: I can't help it, wonder So, so right now we're
Speaker 1: as we as a civilization or we as a culture anyway,
Speaker 1: are obsessed with the lives of celebrities and or not
Speaker 1: even necessarily celebrities, but sort of the the reality stars
Speaker 1: just some sort of ordinary persons thrust in the limelighte.
Speaker 1: We get to watch everything they're doing. But imagine a
Speaker 1: future where it would maybe not even be there just
Speaker 1: their lives, but their actual thoughts we could tap into.
Speaker 1: Or someone's a great thinker, perhaps their thoughts would be
Speaker 1: considered art thought art And for that matter, then is
Speaker 1: there such thing as hate thought? Could you be prosecutecuted
Speaker 1: for hate thought? Well, that's the idea, right, because all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you have would have access to neuronal
Speaker 1: activity that would point to your subconscious. And we know
Speaker 1: the subconscious is all it's down under there making all
Speaker 1: of these diabolical decisions for us, things that we aren't
Speaker 1: really aware of until it reaches the surface of consciousness.
Speaker 1: So if you were able to peer into your subconscious
Speaker 1: via this technology, would you become super aware, a really
Speaker 1: self aware of person, or would you become super paranoid
Speaker 1: that you know, someone was able to predict your movements
Speaker 1: before you could even complete that thought. Yeah, what if
Speaker 1: Google ends up selling your subconscious to advertisers in the future.
Speaker 1: What if hackers what have you turned in the news
Speaker 1: one day? Sorry, hackers got into Amazon and they stole
Speaker 1: everybody's subconscious and their credit cards. But don't worry, we'll
Speaker 1: monitor your credit card for a full year. Dark stuff,
Speaker 1: my friend. But fascinating and wonderful in the current abilities
Speaker 1: to actually help people who need that bridge from a tocy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean that's the bottom line here, looking at,
Speaker 1: especially in the near term, ways that this technology can
Speaker 1: drastically improve the lives of people who need to have
Speaker 1: uh that that gap bridge that need links in their
Speaker 1: neural chain reforged. Alright, So there you have a neural
Speaker 1: pixie dust. I'm sure everyone has some thoughts on this
Speaker 1: particular topic, be it the the near term health applications
Speaker 1: that we're talking about or the long term science fiction
Speaker 1: e stuff. Uh. Either way, we'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: you with your inside on this um. You can reach
Speaker 1: us out to us in a number of different ways.
Speaker 1: As always, go to stuff to bow your mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the mother ship. That's where you will find all
Speaker 1: of our blog post, all of our podcasts, all our videos,
Speaker 1: links out to our social media accounts, and hey be
Speaker 1: sure to go to YouTube where we are mind Stuff Show.
Speaker 1: Check out all of our video series, including this fabulous
Speaker 1: new Elevator series. It is wonderful quirky stuff. Um as I,
Speaker 1: as I think I was explained to to somebody recently
Speaker 1: our video projects, I feel like what we we're trying
Speaker 1: to do different scoops of ice cream for different viewers.
Speaker 1: So whereas the Monster Science series might be a bit
Speaker 1: to um cotton candy and gummy worms for some listeners. Uh,
Speaker 1: some viewers rather uh the the the the information Elevator,
Speaker 1: I feel like it's more what's a refined but creative
Speaker 1: ice cream flavor? M m, maybe a lemon timebet yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: Or I had this one the other day, an actual
Speaker 1: ice cream. It was dates and the salmon vinegar. Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: But now I feel like you're like, we're talking about
Speaker 1: park Avenue here. Yeah, yeah, park Avenue. We can some
Speaker 1: of our stuff is Park Avenue. Monster Science is not
Speaker 1: Park Avenu. This is sort of like I feel like
Speaker 1: Elevator information elevator might be. This is sort of like
Speaker 1: someone who might hang out in your elevator on Park
Speaker 1: Avenue and they're not really paid to be there, but
Speaker 1: they hang out there. That's that's perfect. And they stopped. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for the call. Yeah, and guys, if you haven't
Speaker 1: checked out moll the scientists got to do it because
Speaker 1: it is a wonderful like gummy worm packed full of
Speaker 1: ice cream, super normal stimuli shot of science. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's what that's what we're trying to do to all right. Uh,
Speaker 1: you guys have thoughts, We want to hear them and
Speaker 1: you can send them to blow the mind at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com