We overlooked a hero's anniversary yesterday. 2004
Fuck Authority.
voting is a belief system, aka a deception.
the illusion 'works' everywhere. people are dumb and like believing.
why does the gregorian calendar make 'tomorrow' a 'big day'? What about the hebrew, julian, mayan, ethiopian, etc… calendars?
is it because the gregori are the watchers, who know the cycles, and what time it really is in regards to the sun/'son'?
https://futurism.com/neoscope/military-testing-mood-altering-ai
11.28.17
/BY BRAD JONES
THE US MILITARY IS TESTING MOOD ALTERING, AI-CONTROLLED BRAIN IMPLANTS IN HUMANS
DARPA IS FUNDING TWO PROJECTS THAT SEEK TO USE BRAIN IMPLANTS TO TREAT MENTAL ILLNESS.
Mood Loop
Currently, DARPA is funding two teams which are running preliminary trials of brain implants that use specialized algorithms to detect patterns linked to mood disorders. These devices are able to deliver electrical pulses that can supposedly shock the brain into a healthier state.
Research about these closed-loop brain implants was presented at a Society for Neuroscience meeting held in Washington, DC. There are hopes that the technology could provide a new way to treat mental illnesses that goes beyond the capabilities of currently available therapies.
The use of brain implants to deliver electrical pulses is referred to as deep brain stimulation, and is already used to treat ailments like Parkinson's disease. However, while there has been some evidence to suggest that constant stimulation of particular regions of the brain could help with chronic depression, one major study saw no improvement after 90 subjects were given treatment for a year.
These new projects differ from previous attempts in that the implants are specially designed to tackle mental illness, and they activate only when they are needed. The idea is to only stimulate the brain intermittently, rather than constantly.
Neural Nursing
While the end goal for this research is to develop new treatments for conditions like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, the research group based at the University of Southern California is currently working with people who suffer from epilepsy. The implanted electrodes are being used to track brain activity related to mood in order to develop algorithms that can observe patterns.
Meanwhile, the research group from Massachusetts General Hospital is mapping brain activity associated with behaviors linked to multiple different disorders, like issues pertaining to concentration or empathy. These researchers are working on a set of algorithms that can apply a pulse when the brain is distracted from a particular task, like identifying the emotion presented on a face.
This study has already established that electrical pulses can help performance in such tasks when applied to the areas of the brain responsible for decision-making and emotions. The team was also able to map the brain activity associated with failing or slowing down in a task when distracted, finding that stimulation could reverse the process. The next step in this research is to test algorithms that detect certain patterns that trigger the need for stimulation.
Happy Medium
Closed-loop stimulation has a lot of potential when it comes to applying long-term treatment, but it will require plenty of fine-tuning in order to get the best results. For example, stimulating parts of the brain associated with mood can have the unintended effect of producing exaggerated happiness that drowns out all other feelings.
This research is part of a set of ethical concerns that will shape the continued development of this technology. Implants like these could offer up real-time insights into someone's emotions and moods, and being able to manipulate those feelings carries certain moral obligations. This research has the capacity to do some real good, but it's important that it's developed ethically, with these issues in mind.
https://www.popsci.com/tiny-wireless-implants-could-monitor-your-brain/
Wireless ‘Neural Dust’ Could Monitor Your Brain
Sand-sized sensor implants give instant feedback from nerve cells
BY CHARLES Q. CHOI | PUBLISHEDAUG 3, 2016
On the tips of our fingers
“Neural dust” wireless, implantable sensors are currently only 3 millimeters in length. This new healthcare tech could be even more groundbreaking, as scientists are working to shrink the sensors to microns wide, about the width of a human hair.
Science fiction that features wires connecting brains to computers might now be obsolete. Wireless powered implants, each smaller than a grain of rice, could serve as “neural dust” that can one day scan and stimulate brain cells. Such research could one day help lead to next-generation brain-machine interfaces for controlling prosthetics, exoskeletons and robots, as well as “electroceuticals” to treat disorders of the brain and body.
The new prototypes, made by scientists at the University of California at Berkeley, are each roughly 3 millimeters long, 1 millimeter high and 4/5 of a millimeter thick. Each neural dust mote possesses a piezoelectric crystal that can convert mechanical power from ultrasonic pulses broadcast from outside the body into electrical power. The energy from these 60 ultrasonic pulses broadcast each second drives sensors and other electronics on the motes.
The piezoelectric crystals reflect some of the incoming ultrasonic pulses. Electronics in the neural dust motes can alter the pulses that get scattered outward, and so can wirelessly transmit data they gathered. In experiments with rats, the researchers found that neural dust motes implanted in nerve and muscle fibers in the leg could record and transmit electrical data.
“I was really skeptical of this concept at first, since it was so out of the box,” says Doug Weber, a bioengineer and neuroscientist at DARPA, who helped fund the neural dust research. “But it’s a really elegant approach, and it works pretty well.”
The researchers wanted to create wireless implants to avoid irritating the body. Conventional electronic implants that connect to nerves rely heavily on wires that can inflame tissues over time.
“The approach they’re taking is ingenious,” says neuroengineer Jacob Robinson at Rice University, who did not take part in this research. “They’ve addressed one of the most important challenges out there when it comes to neural interfaces.”
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Within the body
These sensors can currently be placed within the peripheral nervous system, the nerves that work throughout our arms and legs. One day, scientists hope to use sensors in the central nervous system, including the brain and spinal cord.
The scientists had previously explored using radio waves to power and communicate with neural dust motes. However, radio waves are not good at reaching deep within the body, while decades of ultrasonic imaging has revealed that ultrasonic pulses are very good at penetrating soft tissues, says researcher Michel Maharbiz, an electrical engineer at the University of California at Berkeley.
“This is a breakthrough technology that really changes what’s possible in terms of sensing and stimulating nerve activity, especially nerves deep inside the body,” Weber says.
Ultimately, the researchers want to shrink neural dust motes down to just 50 microns wide, or roughly half the average width of a human hair. At that size, “the body should tolerate them much longer,” Maharbiz says.
The scientists are currently developing motes that can also electrically stimulate the body. If they are successful, this means that neural motes can not only monitor health, but actively serve as electroceutical therapies to treat brain disorders such as epilepsy.
Experiments so far with neural dust motes have only involved the peripheral nervous system, which serves the limbs and organs, and not the central nervous system consisting of the brain and spinal cord. Still, electroceutical therapies may still have many applications in the peripheral nervous system, such as bladder control or appetite suppression, says researcher Jose Carmena, a neuroscientist and electrical engineer at the University of California at Berkeley.
In the long run, the scientists want neural dust motes in the brain and spinal cord. One challenge that neural dust targeting the central nervous system faces is how ultrasound does not pass well through bone, Weber says. “That raises challenges if you want to create a brain-machine interface, but I’m not saying it’s impossible by any means,” Weber adds.
The researchers are now working on miniaturizing the motes further, discover more biocompatible materials to package them in so they can last in the body longer, and incorporate other sensors into them. Eventually motes could find use anywhere in the body, not just the nervous system, Maharbiz says.
“In the long term, we want to be able to send energy to and communicate with implants all over the body, to record data from a variety of organs in many different ways, maybe even report on the conditions of tumors or cancer therapies,” Maharbiz says.
The scientists detailed their findings online August 3 in the journal Neuron.
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