Toyota’s three-seater exoskeleton car and an electric vehicle with touch screens that turn it into a “digital space” are among the concept models that will be on display at the Tokyo Motor Show this week.
Category: cyborgs – Page 130
A team from Stanford University might have made a breakthrough that could change the lives of people with missing limbs. Researchers have developed an artificial substitute for skin that is capable of sensing when it is being touched and sending that data to the nervous system. It’s hoped that technology like this could be used to build futuristic prostheses that could be wired into the nervous systems of amputees. In addition, not only will these people be able to know if they’re touching something, they’ll also know how much pressure is being used.
Put very simply, the skin is comprised of two layers of rubbery plastic skin with a flexible circuit printed on, courtesy of the folks at Xerox Parc. Sandwiched between the two is a run of carbon nanotubes, which conduct electricity when they’re pushed closer together. The harder the compression, the more current passes between them, which is how the skin can understand differences in pressure.
That, however, isn’t enough, since that data would still have to be transmitted somehow into the user’s brain. In the end, the team opted to harness a field of science called optogenetics, which involves genetically-engineering cells so that they react to specific frequencies of light. By creating optogenetic neurons that are capable of sensing light patterns, the team proved that it’s possible to make this technology work in a person.
Mark Pollock became blind asa young man, and was paralyzed by an accident later. Now, he is taking steps with the help of a robotic exoskeleton.
This neural dust sprinkled into an individual’s brain tissue could form an “implantable neural interface system that remains viable for a lifetime.”
Earlier this month, five researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, put out a paper discussing the possible development of mind-reading “neural dust,” which could be implanted directly into the human brain to allow people to interact with machines.
The paper is what the MIT Technology Review calls a theoretical study: The idea is “littered with challenges beyond the state-of-the-art.”
But according to the Berkeley team, this neural dust sprinkled into an individual’s brain tissue could form an “implantable neural interface system that remains viable for a lifetime.”
Memory loss is a truly devastating part of dementia, but this invention aims to fix that by bypassing the damage, and repairing long term memory.
Alzheimer’s and dementia are complex diseases, and there’s currently no effective treatment. Given the unpleasant nature of the disease, there’s an urgent need for results. Instead of taking the usual biological route, one team has constructed a prosthetic made up of a small electrode array — which can help re-encode short term memory into long term.
Built using decades of research, the device operates using a new algorithm based on accumulated neural data. New sensory information is normally translated into a quick memory and transported as an electrical signal through the hippocampus, potentially for long term storage. If this region is damaged then the process is disturbed, and new experiences fail to be encoded. Alzheimer’s patients can often remember childhood events, but struggle with recent experiences; specifically because of this hippocampal damage.
My new and first article for The Daily Dot. It’s about transhumanism and the Immortality Bus tour:
Even though I was born after the 1960s, I’ve always been fascinated with that era. Some people credit Ken Kesey’s cross country bus trip aboard colorfully painted “Further” as helping to create a generation of hippies. Of course, my Immortality Bus (shaped to look like a coffin) wants to stir up the national consciousness as well, aiming to usher in its own cultural shift. Whereas the ‘60s were about peace, love, drugs, and sex, I believe the next decade will be about virtual reality, implants, transhumanism, and overcoming death with science. For futurists like myself, that’s quite an intoxicating mix.
The fact is that a lot of radical tech, science, and medicine are already here in America. Consider that today the paralyzed can walk via exoskeleton suits, the blind can see via bionic eyes, and the limbless can grab a bottle of water and drink with artificial limbs that connect to their nervous system. Additionally, lifespans are increasing for people all around the planet. Science is rapidly making the world a better place, and it’s starting to eliminate suffering and hardship for billions of people.
While scientists have had success in the past printing structures like “bionic ears,” a clear path to making functional internal organs and tissue hasn’t really emerged. However, researchers at the University of Florida in Gainesville have developed a way of printing complex objects in gel, a method that could help pave the way to 3D-printed organs in the future.
The hard thing about printing intricate organic structures like blood vessels and complicated organs is that they collapse under their own weight before they solidify. The gel here, which is made of an acrylic acid polymer, acts as a scaffold to hold the structure in place during the printing process. That approach has already allowed the team to print with organic materials — and even make a replica of a human brain.
Printing in gel isn’t an entirely new idea. And, of course, the method isn’t perfect. For one thing, using inorganic gel as a scaffold can’t keep organic tissue alive. For another, printing very small objects could lead to some particles slipping through the material. However, it’s certainly a solid step forward on the way to printing organs for patients in need someday.