Science restores amputee's ability to jerk it: The cyborg thread

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The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Science restores amputee's ability to jerk it: The cyborg thread

FRINGE: May 23, 2003

roomforthetuna posted:

Whereas wheels or tank tracks versus legs is probably more the comparison we should be making.

Not at all. Without the ability to jump/climb/squat/crawl we (or any other critter) would not have lasted long in the evolution game. Wheel fetish only works when you live in a flat (probably asphalted) area.

# ? Feb 24, 2013 06:46

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# ? May 19, 2013 08:50

roomforthetuna: Mar 22, 2005; I don't need to know anything about virii! My CUSTOM PROGRAM keeps me protected! It's not like they'll try to come in through the Internet or something!

FRINGE posted:

Not at all. Without the ability to jump/climb/squat/crawl we (or any other critter) would not have lasted long in the evolution game. Wheel fetish only works when you live in a flat (probably asphalted) area.

What? I'm not saying wheels are better. I'm saying that the guy who thinks we can improve on nature because we can improve on our own work is being silly. We can probably make a hand that's better at fine precision, or a hand that's better at crushing things, or a hand that's better at typing by plugging directly into a keyboard port, but we're just not good at making a hand that's better at being a hand. And that maybe this is okay and should be explored more - wheels are good, and more efficient in their preferred environment, even though, in nature, they're maybe not as good as legs.

I'm not saying it's the comparison we should be making because it makes us look good, I'm saying it's the comparison we should be making because it's a meaningful comparison that we can extrapolate "in some ways we can outdo nature" from (unlike "now hard drives are better than they used to be, but not at all comparable to brains or DNA" which is completely without meaning in the context of whether we can do better than nature.)

Also wheels don't preclude the ability to do any of those things anyway. You can put wheels on feet and ta-da, a jumping/climbing/squatting/crawling/rolling creature. If you put big, bio-powered meatwheels on an elephant who's to say it wouldn't outcompete an actual elephant? You can't say wheels wouldn't have lasted long in evolution because they've never tried, and good luck guessing without hindsight which creatures/features would have survived to today!

# ? Feb 24, 2013 07:06

FRINGE: May 23, 2003

roomforthetuna posted:

What? I'm not saying wheels are better. I'm saying that the guy who thinks we can improve on nature because we can improve on our own work is being silly.

I misunderstood, sorry.

roomforthetuna posted:

Also wheels don't preclude the ability to do any of those things anyway. You can put wheels on feet and ta-da, a jumping/climbing/squatting/crawling/rolling creature. If you put big, bio-powered meatwheels on an elephant who's to say it wouldn't outcompete an actual elephant? You can't say wheels wouldn't have lasted long in evolution because they've never tried, and good luck guessing without hindsight which creatures/features would have survived to today!

Unless the wheels were retractable (or some kind of Diamond Age style nano-magic) they would preclude some of the amazing properties that feet have. Feet are incredibly complex in their ability to sense and shape to the surface that they are in contact with so that friction can be increased/decreased.

# ? Feb 24, 2013 08:52

Angela Christine: Oct 4, 2008; LIL CUTIES

FRINGE posted:

Unless the wheels were retractable (or some kind of Diamond Age style nano-magic) they would preclude some of the amazing properties that feet have. Feet are incredibly complex in their ability to sense and shape to the surface that they are in contact with so that friction can be increased/decreased.

Just add a bunch more limbs. Some with feet at the end, some with wheels on the end. Maybe some with hard spikes on the end, for walking on ice or climbing cliffs. Some covered with suction cups and sticky goo for climbing walls and ceilings. Dozens of limbs sprouting in all directions. Just fold up the ones you don't need, and use the ones that are best for the current job.
That's waaay better than anything nature came up with.

# ? Feb 24, 2013 09:52

Bistromatic: Oct 3, 2004; And turn the inner eye
To see its path...

We aren't really using those capabilities to their full extent though. As long as a wheel assembly is as good as a shoe it'll be fine for pretty much everything.
If your cyberfoot had two wheels and both locked their axles that might already be a reasonable approximation to a clunky boot.

# ? Feb 24, 2013 09:54

Angela Christine: Oct 4, 2008; LIL CUTIES

Bistromatic posted:

We aren't really using those capabilities to their full extent though. As long as a wheel assembly is as good as a shoe it'll be fine for pretty much everything.
If your cyberfoot had two wheels and both locked their axles that might already be a reasonable approximation to a clunky boot.

It wouldn't work for every species, but for humans you could just have heel wheels. When you want to walk or run you use the ball of your foot. When you want to roll you lock your knees and point your toes, and away you go on on your heel wheels. While we're at it grow out the toe nails into hard, sharp talons for climbing and icy surfaces.

Aww yeah, that's way better than the poo poo we're stuck with now.

# ? Feb 24, 2013 10:30

SirDan3k: Jan 6, 2001; Trust me, you are taking this a lot more seriously then I am.

Angela Christine posted:

It wouldn't work for every species, but for humans you could just have heel wheels. When you want to walk or run you use the ball of your foot. When you want to roll you lock your knees and point your toes, and away you go on on your heel wheels. While we're at it grow out the toe nails into hard, sharp talons for climbing and icy surfaces.

Aww yeah, that's way better than the poo poo we're stuck with now.

Why does that woman have talons? Did you pull that picture from some bizarre fetish website?

# ? Feb 24, 2013 10:47

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011

SirDan3k posted:

Why does that woman have talons? Did you pull that picture from some bizarre fetish website?

For climbing and and icy surfaces, duh, it's right there in the text! (I think Angela Christine drew that part as well.)

# ? Feb 24, 2013 10:57

SirDan3k: Jan 6, 2001; Trust me, you are taking this a lot more seriously then I am.

A Buttery Pastry posted:

For climbing and and icy surfaces, duh, it's right there in the text! (I think Angela Christine drew that part as well.)

Oh, the nails are just pixelated enough for me to blame compression and I've actually seen fake press on toenail talons on someone before. For the curious, yeah it was a furry and no his gams weren't that nice.

# ? Feb 24, 2013 11:28

Angela Christine: Oct 4, 2008; LIL CUTIES

A Buttery Pastry posted:

For climbing and and icy surfaces, duh, it's right there in the text! (I think Angela Christine drew that part as well.)

Yep, I did both the talons and the meat wheels. If you're going to gently caress with mother nature, go all the way.

# ? Feb 24, 2013 12:16

Bistromatic: Oct 3, 2004; And turn the inner eye
To see its path...

Give me sleek, dishwasher safe metal and plastic. Purge the flesh.

# ? Feb 24, 2013 12:22

RabbitWizard: Oct 21, 2008

Angela Christine posted:

If that amputee lost his leg above the knee, things get much more complex.

For now, because we are still stuck with wiring nerves. Someday a chip get's put in your brain and connected with the inputs/outputs directly there, controlling your leg. Put in wifi and you can control and feel your leg lying in the closet, no connected nerves needed.

roomforthetuna posted:

Also the example of 64GB fingernail sized hard drives, while a good example of us making progress, is still a terrible example of us matching nature, since DNA and brains can both store way more data in a way smaller space.

Well, we are "only" at something like 20-30nm for the wiring. There is still a ton of space left to the width of one atom.

I have no way to be sure it will happen, maybe we all die of old age before we see a humanlike robotic hand....but i just can't imagine it will NEVER happen.

# ? Feb 24, 2013 14:59

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; CARDIOVORAX BELIVES A POLICEMAN WHO GROPES A WOMAN SHOULD LOSE HIS JOB, AND DO A HUNDRED HOURS OF COMUNITY SERVICE UNDER THE PAIN OF GOING TO PRISON IF HE BREAKS HIS PAROLE

Also DNA is base 4, which kind of makes it about twice as space-efficient as any binary medium pretty much no matter what you do.

The thing with comparing the natural capabilities of living creatures and technology and saying that the one is better than the other is that it's pretty much always a false equivalence. Brains store more data than the best similarly-sized storage medium we currently have, yes, but they do it in a different way and for a different purpose. A digitally stored image will be 100% perfect and identical 30 years from now to how it is today. You show me one human brain that can do the same.

RabbitWizard posted:

I have no way to be sure it will happen, maybe we all die of old age before we see a humanlike robotic hand....but i just can't imagine it will NEVER happen.

It's eventually happen, period. We know that a machine with the mobility, strength and endurance of a human hand can be made because we have two of them on the ends of our arms. It is clearly possible to do. There is no theoretical limitation here, it's just a problem of engineering.

# ? Feb 24, 2013 15:12

pixaal: Jan 8, 2004; God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title

Cardiovorax posted:

Also DNA is base 4, which kind of makes it about twice as space-efficient as any binary medium pretty much no matter what you do.

The thing with comparing the natural capabilities of living creatures and technology and saying that the one is better than the other is that it's pretty much always a false equivalence. Brains store more data than the best similarly-sized storage medium we currently have, yes, but they do it in a different way and for a different purpose. A digitally stored image will be 100% perfect and identical 30 years from now to how it is today. You show me one human brain that can do the same.

It's eventually happen, period. We know that a machine with the mobility, strength and endurance of a human hand can be made because we have two of them on the ends of our arms. It is clearly possible to do. There is no theoretical limitation here, it's just a problem of engineering.

Hard Drives lose data if they aren't used. For that digital image to survive it would have to be transferred to a different drive every year or so. A RAID might compensate for this since has redundancy but RAIDs fail and have catastrophic failure. I'm sure an image in a human brain would still be perfect if you copied the brain over to a new brain focusing on keeping that image the same every year or so.

# ? Feb 24, 2013 16:12

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011

pixaal posted:

Hard Drives lose data if they aren't used. For that digital image to survive it would have to be transferred to a different drive every year or so. A RAID might compensate for this since has redundancy but RAIDs fail and have catastrophic failure. I'm sure an image in a human brain would still be perfect if you copied the brain over to a new brain focusing on keeping that image the same every year or so.

The brain is really bad at actually remembering stuff/details though, it just compensates by telling your conscious that what it remembers is totally what happened.

# ? Feb 24, 2013 16:19

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; CARDIOVORAX BELIVES A POLICEMAN WHO GROPES A WOMAN SHOULD LOSE HIS JOB, AND DO A HUNDRED HOURS OF COMUNITY SERVICE UNDER THE PAIN OF GOING TO PRISON IF HE BREAKS HIS PAROLE

pixaal posted:

Hard Drives lose data if they aren't used.

Hard drive storage is reliable for ten to thirty years when used for archiving. Hard drives in active usage might fail sooner, but that's usually because of mechanical problems, not the actual magnetic charges on the platter decaying. If you look at a picture today, on the other hand, you won't be able to remember the fine details the moment you look away. Whole sections will be gone by tomorrow. In ten years, you probably won't remember that you ever looked at the picture at all. There's just no comparison.

# ? Feb 24, 2013 16:59

Boldor: Sep 4, 2004; King of the Yeeks

This has already been commented on, but I want to add something else:

Kommienzuspadt posted:

Well strictly speaking, the problem is that nature has spent BILLIONS of years figuring this out and we've been at it like maybe a couple decades. Also thermodynamically speaking most biological machines like the mitochodrial ATP synthase that generates "energy" for your cells operates at like 50% efficiency. Human engines might get up to 15% efficiency. We just aren't that good at doing thing yet.

You probably learned the ATP efficiency in a college textbook of some kind. The argument it probably uses relies on the same sort of idealized argument like the ones in physics textbooks, which often assume (usually explicitly) things like friction and air resistance don't exist. This argument about the efficiency of ATP production assumes (often not explicitly) certain cellular processes are 100% efficient, which is impossible both ideally and practically.

This is being compared to the measured efficiency of a real-life physical engine. And a rather low-efficiency one, at that. You cannot compare idealized to real-physical-world this way without a massive warning that there are serious caveats involved.

(There are discussions of this on Wikipedia, in more than one place.)

In any case, "efficiency" is a sketchy metric to base things on. It specifically refers to the conversion of potential energy into work, where "work" is as defined in your physics textbook. For one thing, your body actually makes use of the "inefficient" waste heat produced. (Your body can just directly convert ATP into heat, but it generally doesn't rely on that if you are an adult.) The same thing applies to a car, actually: turn on the heater, and suddenly all that "waste" heat is being put to use! There are even useful human inventions that both do work and are 0% efficient. If you have a good physics textbook, this is explained.

Additionally, your body also sacrifices efficiency for other things. For instance, the oxidative stages of ATP production are confined to mitochondria; as a more advanced textbook will explain, this carries a specific and rather high energy cost to transport molecules across the mitochondrial membranes. (Such a textbook will take this into account when calculating idealized efficiency, as it's straightforward to do so.) This is done because the oxidative reactions in mitochondria are dangerous and best sequestered from the rest of the cell.

(Other common assumptions in biology textbooks: "genetics does not exist" and the related "evolution does not exist". This can happen even when the subject is one or the other! It's not that the writers don't believe in them; it's that they're often useful pedagogical simplifications. The problem is that this is rarely made clear; on the other hand, even a bad physics textbook does take the trouble to warn you that air resistance is being ignored.)

tl;dr: Your introductory college biology textbook sucks.

# ? Feb 24, 2013 18:05

Saint Sputnik: Mar 31, 2007; yeah swing low, sweet
jewel-encrusted chariot
make me young again
make me well

While looking up something to say on the topic of brains and memory I found a case that predates the bionic hand in the OP by five years

quote:

In June, surgeons implanted a sensor under the skull and directly into the brain of a 25-year-old Rhode Island quadriplegic named Matthew Nagle. That allowed him to control a computer and other machines using pure thought.

Plugged into a computer with a fiber-optic cable attached to a node on his skull, Nagle can operate a computer by thinking. Not long ago, researchers also hooked up his brain to a prosthetic arm. With practice, he was able to open and close the artificial hand. "Not bad, man, not bad," he said. When he moved the arms up and down, he said: "Holy s -- !"

With that, the age of neuro-cybernetics began -- that is, the science of using machines to carry out commands of the human brain to move parts of the body.

Nagle is a long way from rising up out of his wheelchair, but he is responding so well to this new world at the edge of science that researchers don't rule out the possibility that he may one day walk using mechanical legs controlled by thought.
...
The sensor in Nagle's brain is the size of a baby aspirin, with 100 thin, hair-like electrodes on one side. The surgeon drilled a small hole in Nagle's head and implanted the Braingate device above a specific region of the brain between the top of the skull and the ears, long known to control motor activity.

Donoghue explains that the electrodes pick up on electric signals that spike when a cell is activated by thought -- a "beep, beep, beep, beep" he says, speeding up the beeps to simulate what happens when a brain cell gets excited. "With motor cells, thought drives activity."

The implant is attached to a computer that translates the beep signals into commands -- to move a cursor, or to open and close an artificial hand.

Nagle is responding so well, he says, that the software lagging behind his ability to use the device. "It's like riding a bicycle. At first, it's wobbly. He over-steers and that sort of thing. Then he's suddenly riding. Now he's cruising along without thinking too hard. He talks to us while he's on the computer."

# ? Feb 24, 2013 23:29

Young Freud: Nov 25, 2006; My old avatar sucked anyway.

RabbitWizard posted:

For now, because we are still stuck with wiring nerves. Someday a chip get's put in your brain and connected with the inputs/outputs directly there, controlling your leg. Put in wifi and you can control and feel your leg lying in the closet, no connected nerves needed.

Wireless nervous system is plain loving scary when you start think about it. Human nerve impulses move about 80 to 120 m/s or about 270 miles per hour. It takes about 15 milliseconds for a nerve impulse from your brain to move your foot. Meanwhile, a wireless signal is pretty much the speed of light, slowed only by atmospheric conditions and biological density.

# ? Feb 25, 2013 04:15

Phobophilia: Apr 26, 2008; Suffer this Terrible curse!

Kommienzuspadt posted:

I'd probably use the generation of reactive oxygen species by macrophages if I had to pick some source of endogenous power source for an artificial whatever.

Ugh dude you really want a shitload of ROS in the bloodstream just to power something? That's like trying to combust with chlorine.

Just use glucose like absolutely everything else in the body.

Also, car engines and mitochondria are fundamentally similar things, they are heat engines. Car engines transfer energy from a high heat reservoir to a low heat one, and in the process some of it gets temporarily turned into mechanical work (and eventually heat). We transfer protons across an electrochemical gradient and in the process turn molecules from a low energy state to a high energy state. So we've had a few billions years of evolution to compile a shitload of enzymes to improve the efficiency of the process. Fair enough, let's use biologically inspired design to rip off this intellectual property and make it our own.

But you also have to remember that bodies also consume a ton of power just to maintain itself. I can't remember the numbers, but we spend a shitload of ATP just to power the ion pumps a cell's osmolarity. And it's continually leaking, so the process never ends. If we could apply some real engineering, instead of the adhoc design of mother nature, then yes, we could definitely improve on ourselves. Not enough to surpass nature for this generation or even the next half dozen, but eventually.

Also, another thing, are there any actual wheels in biology? Not simply ball and sockets, but wheels where the axle and joint are not actually attached. The only examples I can think of are ATP synthases and bacterial flagella, but at the nanoscale, the difference between attached and unattached is hazy.

(Regarding Angela Christine's picture, if those stupid wheel shoes were around when I was a kid, I'd have totally used them).

# ? Feb 25, 2013 05:08

Saint Sputnik: Mar 31, 2007; yeah swing low, sweet
jewel-encrusted chariot
make me young again
make me well

Google opened applications for early copies of Google Glasses; all taken now, I wonder how many and how quickly. They're getting some trendy eyewear company to design them.

Meanwhile tongues are not being left behind

quote:

Wicab, a Middleton (Wis.)-based company, has designed a small, square array of electrodes for the blind. When placed on the tongue like a lollipop, it turns the feed from a video camera into a pointillist pattern of tactile stimulation. The sensation is like sparkling water, or Pop Rocks candy, but after time and practice, blind users report the paradoxical sensation of seeing with their tongues.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student Gershon Dublon is trying to broaden Wicab�s idea. He�s made a cheap ($10 to $40, he estimates), bare-bones version of the device that can be connected to any set of sensors. He encourages fellow engineers to hook their tongues up to other inputs�microphones, pressure sensors, even a magnetometer, which would give a person a migratory bird�s unerring sense of direction. The device, which Dublon calls the Tongueduino, wouldn�t be just for the blind, or the deaf, but for anyone looking to augment his senses. �It would be useful,� he says, �for anyone who wants a better sense of direction.�

# ? Feb 28, 2013 18:22

Mr. Jive: May 10, 2007; Yes, that was indubitably sweet!

Abandon All Hope posted:

It's been shown in studies that the brain, when provided accurate feedback, will integrate a robotic limb as part of its natural body.

Here's a really great video that's relevant to this thread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR_LBcZg_84

Yeah! This monkey pioneer is the coolest. His brain rig was driving a robotic hand in another room, picking up the signals his real arm received while reaching for treats. So the scientists put him and the arm in the same room and his brain quickly realized it didn't have to move the real hand anymore. Boom, we now have a "closed feedback" brain-controlled interface, and the monkey's brain has no problem with the idea of having three arms. In fact it's quite pleased with not having to expend the energy.

This wasn't a conscious thing either, his monkey brain quietly figured out the wiring and allocated new pathways for driving the robot arm.

# ? Feb 28, 2013 22:17

FRINGE: May 23, 2003

Somewhat related:

Brain-to-brain interface allows transmission of tactile and motor information between rats
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-...tile-motor.html

# ? Feb 28, 2013 22:31

Young Freud: Nov 25, 2006; My old avatar sucked anyway.

Saint Sputnik posted:

Meanwhile tongues are not being left behind

I remember hearing something that DARPA or another government military research lab was working on during the Iraq War that involved using a strip of electrodes attached to the tongue that would allow for 360 degree night-vision and sonar.

# ? Feb 28, 2013 23:35

Kommienzuspadt: Apr 28, 2004; This bear is tops blooby

Boldor posted:

tl;dr: Your introductory college biology textbook sucks.

Uhhh I've taken graduate level courses on biochemistry, immunology, cell biology, have published research at a top 5 medical school.... I hope you're not talking about me...

Phobophilia posted:

Ugh dude you really want a shitload of ROS in the bloodstream just to power something? That's like trying to combust with chlorine.

Just use glucose like absolutely everything else in the body.

Also, car engines and mitochondria are fundamentally similar things, they are heat engines. Car engines transfer energy from a high heat reservoir to a low heat one, and in the process some of it gets temporarily turned into mechanical work (and eventually heat). We transfer protons across an electrochemical gradient and in the process turn molecules from a low energy state to a high energy state. So we've had a few billions years of evolution to compile a shitload of enzymes to improve the efficiency of the process. Fair enough, let's use biologically inspired design to rip off this intellectual property and make it our own.

But you also have to remember that bodies also consume a ton of power just to maintain itself. I can't remember the numbers, but we spend a shitload of ATP just to power the ion pumps a cell's osmolarity. And it's continually leaking, so the process never ends. If we could apply some real engineering, instead of the adhoc design of mother nature, then yes, we could definitely improve on ourselves. Not enough to surpass nature for this generation or even the next half dozen, but eventually.

Also, another thing, are there any actual wheels in biology? Not simply ball and sockets, but wheels where the axle and joint are not actually attached. The only examples I can think of are ATP synthases and bacterial flagella, but at the nanoscale, the difference between attached and unattached is hazy.

(Regarding Angela Christine's picture, if those stupid wheel shoes were around when I was a kid, I'd have totally used them).

Nah, ROS can be made tissue specific through macrophage chemoattractants and are secreted in a paracrine fashion anyway. It doesn't get just dumped into serum like that. they are far too unstable to get very far anyway.

and re: the Na/K/ATPase it's tissue specific but on the order of 25-50% for tissues that experience osmotic stress.

Mitochondrial ATP synthase is wheel like in the way in which it moves, yes.

If people here want to get excited about the future, take a look at this video. It's great. Dr. Deisseiroth is a great speaker too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8bPbHuOZXg

Kommienzuspadt fucked around with this message at Mar 1, 2013 around 00:03

# ? Feb 28, 2013 23:45

GruntyThrst: Oct 9, 2007; *clang*

Was sort of hoping the thread was about a robotic penis. Still really cool reading, though.

# ? Mar 1, 2013 04:25

Saint Sputnik: Mar 31, 2007; yeah swing low, sweet
jewel-encrusted chariot
make me young again
make me well

GruntyThrst posted:

Was sort of hoping the thread was about a robotic penis. Still really cool reading, though.

Just for you, I dug up a little reading on the history of the cyborg penis.

quote:

The next great advance in prosthetic penile technology was a vacuum penis that users could inflate by squeezing a small pump hidden in the scrotum

# ? Mar 1, 2013 04:45

Young Freud: Nov 25, 2006; My old avatar sucked anyway.

Saint Sputnik posted:

Just for you, I dug up a little reading on the history of the cyborg penis.

In the field of cultured organs, doctors have already culturing functional rabbit penises.

And as more 3D printing comes about, you're going to hear more about 3D bio-printers, which print out cell latices that can then be cultured in a bioreactor or, in the case of bone printing, even straight implanted into a person. MIT uncovered how to print circulatory systems last year, which they'll use to start printing out functional kidneys (being one of the more complex organs). Since a penis is basically blood vessels, flesh, and urinary muscle (which have already been cultured-grown in bladders), it's not unbelievable that penis replacement and extension surgeries will become commonplace within the next decade.

# ? Mar 1, 2013 05:07

Kommienzuspadt: Apr 28, 2004; This bear is tops blooby

Young Freud posted:

In the field of cultured organs, doctors have already culturing functional rabbit penises.

And as more 3D printing comes about, you're going to hear more about 3D bio-printers, which print out cell latices that can then be cultured in a bioreactor or, in the case of bone printing, even straight implanted into a person. MIT uncovered how to print circulatory systems last year, which they'll use to start printing out functional kidneys (being one of the more complex organs). Since a penis is basically blood vessels, flesh, and urinary muscle (which have already been cultured-grown in bladders), it's not unbelievable that penis replacement and extension surgeries will become commonplace within the next decade.

Before everyone goes all buck wild and killing off their livers with the expectation of getting new ones, organs like the kidneys, heart, liver, lungs, pancreas, aetc - basically all of the most common organ transplants performed - are extremely complicated physiologically. Sure we can "print" the basic connective tissue skeleton of these organs, but getting the cell types in each of these systems to become specialized to the degree that they need to do in order to perform the functions that they do in our bodies - carefully balance salt concentrations in the kidney, secrete hormones, respond to negative feedback loops - all while also not being rejected by the transplant patient is REALLY REALLY REALLY Hard. and we have a long ways away before this sees use in the clinic.

But it's still exciting and we should still be pumped about the possibility.

# ? Mar 1, 2013 12:35

Brannock: Feb 9, 2006; TOUCHDOOOOWWWNNNN

Wingless posted:

I'm really confused. How can she possibly recognise speech when she hears it if she was born deaf and this is the first time its been turned on? Even if she learned lipreading there's no way her brain would know how to interpret these new sounds and integrate them with language as she knows it - I'd have thought it would takes weeks or months to learn to understand this alien sensory input? Also, her own speech sounds perfect...don't deaf people have a lot of difficulty enunciating? I'm not doubting the veracity of the video, I just don't understand what I'm seeing.

I've been stone deaf (90-95 dB hearing loss) since the day I was born and I'm certainly able to recognize syllables and rhythm and sounds. I've had hearing aids for quite a while now and I'm pretty confident that if I were to have a cochlear implant that I could transfer my capability to hear via hearing aids to hearing through the cochlear implant. Speech isn't impossible to pick up either when you're deaf - it's just much more difficult and takes a lot of therapy and practice.

Young Freud posted:

Cochlear implants is one of those interesting areas where we are already seeing some culture shock. A bunch of deaf-rights advocates have been up in arms about cochlear implants "destroying" the deaf community because restoring ones hearing removes them from the disabled column.

It really doesn't. You'll still need interpreters and captioning for certain events and situations. On top of that, people who were born and raised deaf won't be able to erase that history nearly so easily. They understand the experiences and they understand the culture around it.

Blue Star posted:

On a more serious note, I love that video of the 29-year old woman hearing for the first time. Are there any videos of blind people seeing for the first time?

As far as I'm aware optical replacement technology isn't nearly as far along as hearing replacement technology. Vision is enormously more complex than hearing (incidentally, this is why I'm always amused when people rant and rave on about how "magical" music is compared to visual arts).

Space Monster posted:

I'm kind of scared. I wasn't expecting humanity to develop a brain/machine interface so quickly and thought we'd have more time to think (as a society) of the implications.

What makes you think we'd actually think things through before they happen? When has this ever happened in human history?

# ? Apr 26, 2013 04:14

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# ? May 19, 2013 08:50

Saint Sputnik: Mar 31, 2007; yeah swing low, sweet
jewel-encrusted chariot
make me young again
make me well

Since the thread popped back up and I just saw this (from the dedication of Bush's presidential library) I think it belongs here

# ? Apr 27, 2013 22:08

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