/ News
A New Study Explores the Brain's Built-In Clock
A computer keeps time thanks to an oscillator crystal. A bit of quartz with an applied electric field exhibits natural resonance, a fundamental frequency. This is exploited as a means to synchronize activity within a circuit, like the baton of an orchestra conductor.
The human brain doesn't feature an oscillator crystal, yet it's capable of keeping impeccable or at least pretty good time. The precise mechanisms have largely remained a mystery, but a group of neuroscientists from MIT and Columbia University may have the beginning of an answer. In a paper published this week inCurrent Biology, they describe how the lateral intraparietal cortex (LIC) region of the brain helps it to both interpret and reproduce time intervals, e.g. keep the beat, as it were.
The LIC likely isn't the singular source of the brain's timing signals, the authors note, but it seems to be a critical part of the process of interval measurement. They tested this out using rhesus monkeys, observing brain activity as the primates interpreted interval-based sensory information and then converted that information in motor activity (movement).
The primate experiment was an adapted version of a game used with human subjects called "ready, set, go." The subject observes a "ready" signal followed by a "set" signal, and they're asked to provide a "go" signal at the same time interval from "set" and they observed between "ready" and "set."
"In many natural settings, sensory and motor aspects of timing are heavily intertwined," the study explains. "For example, in sports, music, and imitation, humans continuously measure time intervals and use those measurements to control the timing of their actions. To investigate the mechanisms that flexibly link sensory and motor timing capacities, we developed a time reproduction task for rhesus monkeys in which the animals measured an interval demarcated by two time markers and reproduced it by a proactive saccade [a type of eye movement]."
In previous, human versions of this experiment conducted by Mehrdad Jazayeri, the current paper's lead author, it had been shown that subjects did not simply attempt to reproduce the given interval, but they combined their own imperfect measurement of that interval with prior knowledge of what the interval could have been. As more and more intervals are observed, and this prior knowledge accumulates, the subjects were able to more accurately reproduce new intervals. The result is observation modulated by or fact-checked against prior experience.
“When people reproduce time, they don’t seem to use a timer.”
“When people reproduce time, they don’t seem to use a timer,” Jazayeri offered in a statement. “It’s an active act of probabilistic inference that goes on.”
So, the next step was to repeat the experiment while monitoring neural activity directly. What the researchers found is that neural activity in the measurement phase of the experiment (as the monkey observes the interval between "ready" and "set") increases on a sharp curve before leveling off until the "set" signal is received. A bolt of anticipation and then a wait. The longer the interval between the first two signals, the flatter the slope winds up being at the end (at "set").
The slope at the end of the observation interval predicts the overall slope of increasing neural activity during the reproduction phase of the experiment (between "set" and "go"). This makes sense. A fast increase in activity correlates to a fast interval. If the gap is longer, the brain has more time to reach the required neural activity threshold to generate a response.
Jazayeri's research winds up asking more questions than it answers. One of these has to do with an unexplained dip in neural activity observed following the "set" signal. This dip seems to mask information about the interval being reproduced and how that information reappears is a mystery.
A follow-up experiment that's currently underway adds a second measurement interval, another opportunity for observation and refinement by the subject. Early results suggest that, as expected, subjects are able to use this additional information to further refine their estimate of the first timing interval. This is still just the beginning of understanding timing in the brain.
Source: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-new-study-begins-to-explain-how-the-brain-keeps-time
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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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