So, I underestimated the amount of work leading up to my prelim defense, and going to start my little break now-ish. It isn't the prelim work as much as the other stuff, like my little Thunderbird on a USB stick took forever to configure perfectly, and was then corrupted by an old version of TrueCrypt hiding on one of my computers. *poof* All that work disappeared. Ugh. Not sure how to handle that now, but might have to think up a little hack to make it work properly.
In the meantime, here are a few stories...
Serious:
60 Minutes covered DEKA on Sunday. Thank you to the 20-ish people that let me know about it, including my parents. They're silly. They still live in a world where missing a TV show means you have to wait for the rerun. Video clip is up on the 60 Minutes site.
This best computer interfaces story is a trip down memory lane.
Pravda has a very vague and almost not worth reading article on a Russian BCI group.
The Boston Globe discusses some of the hurdles of setting up an implantable BCI project, and chronicles the situation over at the now defunct Cyberkinetics. I don't want to say anything about the project that could anger one of the 14,000 government institutions regulating aspects of it (kidding on the number btw), so I will point to here (yes, the page is in a very very early alpha state).
And some sort of licensing setup for ECoG algorithms has been setup with a company called Neurolutions. (Really? Neurolutions? Have we gotten to the point where all the good brain related names are taken? Even DNI, which was a 3am, caffeine-induced hyper-mania induced naming beats the snot out of that.)
Seriously?:
I could bring myself to watch this clip, but here's the title:
"Robotic baby seal has healing powers" - CNN (also known as, "We fired out entire science department, but what could go wrong?" News)
Video clip. Be sure to get the tshirt, too.
Showing posts with label video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Couple quickies
Two things before I return to lurk mode:
1) Stimulus bill looks to be losing science funding, rural broadband, and a bunch of other provisions for schools. The NIH escaped unscathed, but the NSF and NASA got the chop, big time. More details here here here here here.
2) Tech item. I'm getting back into using Miro again (link to the v2 RC3), and thought I would mention it. Miro is a cross platform video and audio rss feed aggregator without the need to really understand anything about rss. Basically, you can browse their catalog of shows, subscribe to any of them (all free), and add websites, making Miro a nice all-in-one video program. I like to keep my video and audio separate, so audio podcasts go with iTunes, vidcasts go with Miro, and the world is at peace. I don't have a dedicated video library program (thinking about using VLC for that).
1) Stimulus bill looks to be losing science funding, rural broadband, and a bunch of other provisions for schools. The NIH escaped unscathed, but the NSF and NASA got the chop, big time. More details here here here here here.
2) Tech item. I'm getting back into using Miro again (link to the v2 RC3), and thought I would mention it. Miro is a cross platform video and audio rss feed aggregator without the need to really understand anything about rss. Basically, you can browse their catalog of shows, subscribe to any of them (all free), and add websites, making Miro a nice all-in-one video program. I like to keep my video and audio separate, so audio podcasts go with iTunes, vidcasts go with Miro, and the world is at peace. I don't have a dedicated video library program (thinking about using VLC for that).
Friday, October 3, 2008
Some Friday Fun!
Ah, Friday. Enjoy a lil barrage of clips. The amazing Randi, phagocytosis in action, walking creatures evolving on your home PC, but first...
New (potentially) awesome show on... The History Channel!?!? Yup. Features one of the guys from Make Magazine*, too (from their vidcast). I saw the first episode and it was good-ish. Lots of potential, but they just have to find their tone. The teaser:
* - If you are not familiar with Make Magazine or Hack a Day, I have to suggest checking both out
New (potentially) awesome show on... The History Channel!?!? Yup. Features one of the guys from Make Magazine*, too (from their vidcast). I saw the first episode and it was good-ish. Lots of potential, but they just have to find their tone. The teaser:
* - If you are not familiar with Make Magazine or Hack a Day, I have to suggest checking both out
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Blue Brain spitting out awesomeness
The Blue Brain project - the IBM backed supercomputer simulating visual cortex - has started spitting out results. Video here. (skip to 39:00 for the pretty stuff)
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Monkey self feeding BCI control
Alright, I get it. Several people have sent along links to Andy Schwartz's Nature publication, so here's the info. Thanks to Remy Wahnoun and Natalia "Get Moose and Squirrel" Bilenko for doing my work for me and compiling the links, and being the first to send info along.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature06996.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7423184.stm
http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/dn14000-robomonkeys-use-brain-power-to-grab-a-bite.html?feedId=online-news_rss20
The work reported involves real time decoding to drive a robot arm, which fed the monkey. I haven't had time to run through the whole thing, so here's the "shoot from the hip" version of my thoughts. I'll update these
Interesting points:
- The monkey was trained to use the arm with a joystick, and followed by, the part I thought was very interesting, various levels of pre-programmed control assistance while using brain signals. I will expand on this later, but it is an interesting task design for several reasons.
- Having seen some of the raw video at the Neurobotics 2007 workshop, there is much more obviously correlated arm motion. They have an entire, substantial paragraph devoted to this, since they probably knew it would be a criticism.
The three points they make are:
1) Movements were with the arm ipsilateral to the electrodes.
2) The movements were delayed by up to a second.
3) Moving is required, since BCI control has been demonstrated before without it.
They cite some supplementary info and write, "... monkey’s hand movement was only loosely coupled to prosthetic control." The video I saw before tells a slightly different story. There was a pulling movement 100% of the time (every trial), and when the arm didn't reach the monkey's mouth it would 'paw' or 'dig' (repeated movements similar to pulling an invisible object toward the body) repeatedly until the arm reached the monkey's mouth. You can see this pretty clearly in the video linked above (watch the hand in the plexiglass tube). Yes, there is a delay, but the whole situation would be interesting to examine. It may not require the 'pulling' at onset, but monkeys very often use both hands to eat. Those of you with monkeys, go give them a treat. They will grab it with they right hand (usually), and then pull it towards their body and engage their left hand as they do so. Feeding it almost always a bimanual task for macaques, explaining the ipsilateral activation and the delay. Reason #3 above is kind of a brush off reason - hey, movement is needed to use a BCI, so no big deal. The three cited papers are all in humans, all were tetraplegic, all lacked some degree of propriocentive feedback, two didn't use PVA or multielectrode arrays, none used an arm, none had confirmed the lack of covert movements with EMG, and the list goes on.
- The trial was very organic and continuous, which is great. From my brief skimming, it looks like simultaneous control of the hand aperture needed to be maintained throughout the task, hinted at when they observe the the hand slowly opening along the path to the food.
In general this is a nice, brief summary with some very interesting points (perfect for a Nature Letter). Obviously they are preparing some studies, and this was released to wet out appetites. The 'organic' nature of the task will open it up to many criticisms, but more studies like this are needed in order to understand the dynamics in play when dealing with a experiences that lack built-in boundaries and environmental awareness. Definitely good thought fodder.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature06996.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7423184.stm
http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/dn14000-robomonkeys-use-brain-power-to-grab-a-bite.html?feedId=online-news_rss20
The work reported involves real time decoding to drive a robot arm, which fed the monkey. I haven't had time to run through the whole thing, so here's the "shoot from the hip" version of my thoughts. I'll update these
Interesting points:
- The monkey was trained to use the arm with a joystick, and followed by, the part I thought was very interesting, various levels of pre-programmed control assistance while using brain signals. I will expand on this later, but it is an interesting task design for several reasons.
- Having seen some of the raw video at the Neurobotics 2007 workshop, there is much more obviously correlated arm motion. They have an entire, substantial paragraph devoted to this, since they probably knew it would be a criticism.
The three points they make are:
1) Movements were with the arm ipsilateral to the electrodes.
2) The movements were delayed by up to a second.
3) Moving is required, since BCI control has been demonstrated before without it.
They cite some supplementary info and write, "... monkey’s hand movement was only loosely coupled to prosthetic control." The video I saw before tells a slightly different story. There was a pulling movement 100% of the time (every trial), and when the arm didn't reach the monkey's mouth it would 'paw' or 'dig' (repeated movements similar to pulling an invisible object toward the body) repeatedly until the arm reached the monkey's mouth. You can see this pretty clearly in the video linked above (watch the hand in the plexiglass tube). Yes, there is a delay, but the whole situation would be interesting to examine. It may not require the 'pulling' at onset, but monkeys very often use both hands to eat. Those of you with monkeys, go give them a treat. They will grab it with they right hand (usually), and then pull it towards their body and engage their left hand as they do so. Feeding it almost always a bimanual task for macaques, explaining the ipsilateral activation and the delay. Reason #3 above is kind of a brush off reason - hey, movement is needed to use a BCI, so no big deal. The three cited papers are all in humans, all were tetraplegic, all lacked some degree of propriocentive feedback, two didn't use PVA or multielectrode arrays, none used an arm, none had confirmed the lack of covert movements with EMG, and the list goes on.
- The trial was very organic and continuous, which is great. From my brief skimming, it looks like simultaneous control of the hand aperture needed to be maintained throughout the task, hinted at when they observe the the hand slowly opening along the path to the food.
In general this is a nice, brief summary with some very interesting points (perfect for a Nature Letter). Obviously they are preparing some studies, and this was released to wet out appetites. The 'organic' nature of the task will open it up to many criticisms, but more studies like this are needed in order to understand the dynamics in play when dealing with a experiences that lack built-in boundaries and environmental awareness. Definitely good thought fodder.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Multimedia mumbo jumbo
An excellent catch by Mike over at Brain Stimulant - a BBC documentary called Human 2.0 can be found online. (Very nice blog, very regularly updated and more on-topic than mine!) Go give him some traffic lovin'. Linky linky...
Also, Mind Hacks has a link to a PBS documentary torrent (OMG! Police! Police! j/k) on the ever popular frontal lobotomy. More info at Neurophilosophy.
And my little contributions:
- The popular song "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, Than have to have a frontal lobotomy" was written by Dr. Randy Hanzlick (Dr. Rock), and can be found on the Dr. Demento 30th Anniversary Collection: Dementia 2000. While I can't find it on 'the usual suspects', it can be found, if you're a little lucky, on SoulSeek. A similarly themed song can be found by Faster Pussycat.
- Another PBS documentary, part of the PBS Curious series, can be found in torrent form as well. This is more on AI and robots, but still delves into some basic neuro and worth a watch.
Also, Mind Hacks has a link to a PBS documentary torrent (OMG! Police! Police! j/k) on the ever popular frontal lobotomy. More info at Neurophilosophy.
And my little contributions:
- The popular song "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, Than have to have a frontal lobotomy" was written by Dr. Randy Hanzlick (Dr. Rock), and can be found on the Dr. Demento 30th Anniversary Collection: Dementia 2000. While I can't find it on 'the usual suspects', it can be found, if you're a little lucky, on SoulSeek. A similarly themed song can be found by Faster Pussycat.
- Another PBS documentary, part of the PBS Curious series, can be found in torrent form as well. This is more on AI and robots, but still delves into some basic neuro and worth a watch.
Monday, March 24, 2008
NSFW or L(ab)
Monday, March 17, 2008
4-Legged robotic menace
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Nicolelis video
For those of you who haven't had a chance to see the inner sanctum of a BCI lab, here is a little video about Nicolelis' most famous experiment, complete with cheesy sound effects and British narrator. Even if you've read about it, there's something about watching the footage that adds to the experience.
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