Over-zealous much?

Just thought I'd point out that the article people are referencing on 'the lab' is a year old. Yeah. I was as surprised to hear we had another Nature paper as everyone else.

This article. Published July 24 2006
Referenced here, and here.

Thought I'd clear that up.

The Bayes of our lives

Somehow the paper below slipped past me. I will start posting a list of new papers every Friday, so if YOU see something worth noting in a journal, post it in the comments to this weekly paper list entry.

The dynamics of memory as a consequence of optimal adaptation to a changing body
Nature Neuroscience pp779 - 786

Konrad P Kording, Joshua B Tenenbaum & Reza Shadmehr

Published online: 13 May 2007 doi:10.1038/nn1901Abstract Full text PDF (449K) Supplementary Information

This covers some interesting territory related to how the nervous system operates on a "best guess" basis. This is important because true real-time operation is an adaptively poor model - too many processing delays due to sloppy, gooey biology make for easy predator bait.

A quick shout out

I am surprised by the amount of attention this blog is getting already. Nothing too crazy, but I haven't really begun to promote it and already I'm getting emails and mentions on other sites. Don't be insulted if I'm a little slow to the draw, as I'm getting up to speed on lots of blog-ish issues. I really appreciate the feedback and mentions. Hell, Google "neural interface" and this is the 6th link. That's pretty wicked.

Over the next few months I'll be deciding on issues like adding writers, polishing content, and planning to promote the site a little. This isn't intended to be a big money making thing for me, but I thought I would get the word out about the site and possibly provide a place for others in the field to share their thoughts. Of course this comes with certain risks and logistics that need to be worked out, and I don't have the time to fully consider them now (after my prelim, please).

There is another possibility. This could get rolled up into a real BCI site, not just a little blog (thought the blog would still be around, I'm sure). That may be a major undertaking, or, it may not. I have enough web design/programming friends that it should be feasible. I'll gauge this option on how things go here as time rolls on. The whole community is so small that cooperation would probably work much better than competition, at least IMHO.

Just throwing that out there. In the meantime, be sure to check out the blog Neurophilosophy. One of my favorites.

Feedback-wear

VivoMetrics has created a vest that records the movements of the wearer. It is currently being used to monitor the behavior of schizophrenics and manic-depressive patients, but could easily be applied to BCI. Something like this could be used as a failsafe for freely roaming patients, possibly as a way to signify the need to recalibrate or rebuild filters. Earth shattering? Nah. But worth a mention.

Cybernetic flying poop machines

Of course, I'm referring to pigeons. Cybernetic pigeons. Should this be filed under "Because We Can"?

I can't find any info on what they are stimulating, but the story linked here to Practical Neurotechnology says it is not MFB stimulation. It is highly doubtful that this is direct motor cortex stimulation for a number of reasons (pigeons are considered to have a 'real' motor cortex, but the highly coordinated movements would be awfully tough to trigger on the fly). MFB, for those not in 'the know', is the Medial Forebrain Bundle, a collection of processes running from the ventral tegmental area to the nucleus accumbens. This pathway represents one of the biggest dopamine-carrying routes in the brain, and connects many of the areas involved in narcotic and addiction research. The earliest reward system experiments used MFB intracranial self stimulation under various environmental and drug-administration situations. Stimulating the MFB increases 'reward' sensation, and has been thought of as the site of potential 'control' signals - do the right thing and good human gets his juice.

A third method for controlling action, aside from MFB or MI stimulation, is vestibular nerve stimulation. Give a person the feeling that they are falling, and they will move to counteract that feeling. This technique is non-invasive, but pretty crude. NTT/Docomo has been working on the technology as one of their fun projects, and there's a first person account here.

Sherrington remembered

I haven't had time to read this in its entirety yet, but thought I would pass it along before I forgot. Good stuff. Out of the journal Brain. PubMed linky.

Sir Charles Sherrington's the integrative action of the nervous system: a centenary appreciation.
Burke RE.
reburke@taosnet.com
In 1906 Sir Charles Sherrington published The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, which was a collection of ten lectures delivered two years before at Yale University in the United States. In this monograph Sherrington summarized two decades of painstaking experimental observations and his incisive interpretation of them. It settled the then-current debate between the "Reticular Theory" versus "Neuron Doctrine" ideas about the fundamental nature of the nervous system in mammals in favor of the latter, and it changed forever the way in which subsequent generations have viewed the organization of the central nervous system. Sherrington's magnum opus contains basic concepts and even terminology that are now second nature to every student of the subject. This brief article reviews the historical context in which the book was written, summarizes its content, and considers its impact on Neurology and Neuroscience.
Personal Name As Subject:
Sherrington C
PMID: 17438014 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Robot arm on the cheap

Caught by the folks at TechEBlog.



This little ditty uses a variable resistor to infer the position of the arm, and sends the info to a bunch of servos. Sure it looks like anything heavier than a dime would cause it to collapse, but what a fun little weekend project that would make. I could think of a million non-BCI uses for something like this. For instance, if you happen to be in some sort of Feng Shui decorating, pepper the tree branches outside with these potentiometers, and tie them to ceiling mounted fake or artistic renderings of tree limbs. This would look great in a house with lots of windows because every time the wind blows outside, the internal fixtures would mimic the direction and magnitude. I so need to patent that. Guess who watched too much HGTV this week?