/ News
Researchers Give Lab Rats Terminator-Like Infrared Vision
Researchers at Duke university have developed a neuroprosthesis that gives rats the ability to detect infrared light, a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to which mammals are normally blind.
After training a group of lab rats to visit "reward ports" inside a test chamber whenever LEDs at the ports lit up, the researchers implanted an array of tiny stimulating electrodes into the touch-sensing part of each rat's brain. The electrodes were wired to to an infrared sensor, which the researchers surgically affixed to the rats' foreheads.
After reintroducing the rat cyborgs to the test chamber, the researchers began swapping out the LEDs at the reward ports for infrared light sources. At first, when they switched those lights on, the rats would stop and scratch their faces--an indication that their tactile neurons were doing their job as usual and interpreting the electrical signals to mean that something was touching the rats' whiskers.
But over the course of about a month, the animals began responding to the infrared lights the same way they responded to the LEDs before--by scurrying toward the port with the active light source:
Other experiments, like the light-smelling fruit flies researchers made a couple years ago, have focused on re-programming a single type of neuron to give it a new function. But this experiment seems to indicate that lots of different cell types can work together to take on new jobs without the need for optogenetic interventions: the broad electrical stimulation supplied by the micro-electrodes allowed each rat's cortex to adapt to performing a new job without losing any of its normal functioning. In other words, the rats could still feel their whiskers, but now they have Terminator vision too.
In a university-prepared press release about the new study, the researchers said that, in the future, cortical neuroprostheses like this could be developed to give animals or humans the ability to see any part of the electromagnetic spectrum or, for that matter, even magnetic fields. "We could create devices sensitive to any physical energy," principal investigator Miguel Nicolelis is quoted saying. "It could be magnetic fields, radio waves, or ultrasound."
For this experiment, Nicolelis said he and his colleagues chose infrared radiation "because it didn't interfere with our electrophysiological recordings" (and not, apparently, because cyborgs in scifi movies always have infrared vision).
The experiment marks another advance in the realm of Brain Machine Interfaces, which could someday be used to restore motion to the paralyzed and sight to the blind, in addition to augmenting human perception in all kinds of weird new ways.
Source: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-02/researchers-give-lab-rats-terminator-infrared-vision
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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