Forbes has a fun little story on the state of consumer BCIs that hits on the major consumer players, but also throws real BCIs researchers John Wolpaw and Andy Schwartz into the fray. Each echos the officially sanctioned position of their respective scalp electrode versus implanted microwire/fancier probe electrode camp.
I prefer to call this the Head-Computer Interface versus Brain-Computer Interface debate. I try to be even keeled on the subject. EEG is obviously a worthwhile endeavor because there's none of that messy surgery involved, and thus appeals to a very large audience (at least in the near term). Hey, if you get a signal that can be controlled by the user reliably and with an acceptable level of precision, you have something useful. BUT, EEG is a degraded, garbled, sloppy signal prone to nearly limitless interference sources. Anything that can bork an implanted BCI can bork an EEG-based system, but EEG throws the doors open to the world because you are essentially wearing an antenna (or several).
One major problem with EEG is the fallacy that somehow destroyed information can be recovered by some form of fancy filtering. This is simply not so. Think of the electrode as a point of convergence for all electromagnetic signals of a measurable intensity. Even after narrowing frequency bands and implementing funky probabilistic decoders, any squiggle can be the convergence of several squiggles of indeterminable sources. In other words, at a specific time, a signal of amplitude +5 can be two signals of +4 and +1, -2 and +7, or 5 signals of +1-4-2+3+7. And don't even start with harmonics.
The second problem is population size. I know we like to think that motor cortex responds to only movement. It makes life easier. What life? Life in La-La-Land. MI responds to visual stimuli, movement preparation, auditory stimuli, imagined movements, movement related words (heard, internally rehearsed or spoken), reward, attention, cutaneous and proprioceptive feedback, and a bunch of other factors I'm not even mentioning. Until the impact of these influences is understood and quantified, there will not be any BCI that translates the neural activity for "move my arm to point x,y,z". EEG will never have the fidelity to isolate the differences feedback has at the single neuron level, so the nature of the recorded signal will never allow the 'direct' mapping of neural activity to output. That is, the activity that once gave rise to movement can never be harnessed with an acceptable degree of control to recreate the movement. Yes, I am using the word never. Never. There, I said it again.
Like I said, this isn't an attack on EEG, just reality. Different uses for different technologies. I can drive a car on a road. That doesn't mean I can drive a road, or that a road has no use.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
A story about a child named Notepad.exe
Little Notepad.exe was always the quiet type of child; he never complained, talked out of turn, or crashed for that matter. But, he also never played with the other children, instead opting to spend recess inside, content with a single font and word wrap. The other children left Notepad.exe alone, for he was too plain and boring, and while flaunting their fancy ribbons and spell checkers they would giggle about which mail merge feature was better on standard 9x12 manila envelopes.
[insert more blathering literary setup here, maybe a plot, too]
The alien exploded from Notepad.exe's chest, a freakish monstrosity barely reminiscent of the shy creature it inhabited. As the creature's vessel collapsed to the ground with the sickening thud of dead flesh, the patrons at the motorbike and baby stroller emporium froze in horror. Before anyone could scream, the fearsome being, pulsing with raw energy of a million suns, spoke. "I am Notepad++, destroyer of worlds!"
Anyhow, I wanted to point out that Notepad++ is a great alternative to Notepad, and can be used to completely replace Windows's built-in, underpowered app. It has a ton of fancy tools, like code highlighting/collapsing if you are using it as an editor for any number of different languages, all sorts of text manipulation settings, tabbed and side-by-side document viewing, plugin support, and really too many features to even attempt to explain here, so do check it out. Oh and it's free.
[insert more blathering literary setup here, maybe a plot, too]
The alien exploded from Notepad.exe's chest, a freakish monstrosity barely reminiscent of the shy creature it inhabited. As the creature's vessel collapsed to the ground with the sickening thud of dead flesh, the patrons at the motorbike and baby stroller emporium froze in horror. Before anyone could scream, the fearsome being, pulsing with raw energy of a million suns, spoke. "I am Notepad++, destroyer of worlds!"
Anyhow, I wanted to point out that Notepad++ is a great alternative to Notepad, and can be used to completely replace Windows's built-in, underpowered app. It has a ton of fancy tools, like code highlighting/collapsing if you are using it as an editor for any number of different languages, all sorts of text manipulation settings, tabbed and side-by-side document viewing, plugin support, and really too many features to even attempt to explain here, so do check it out. Oh and it's free.
Font trivia
Filling out grant stuff, and I thought it would make sense to match the font in Word 2007 to the PDF I'm filling out. So I go to check for Helvetica in Word, and... it isn't there!?!? Hel-friggin-vetica? Okay, okay, maybe a bug or something. Let's see if I can download it... $300!?!?!
Needless to say, this mystery just sucked down about an hour of my time. I briefly explored the seedy underworld of typeface worship, following the twisted lies of stroke terminators and outfoxing the glyphs of despair. All I can say is that I can never look at Ariel again. *shudder*
I did find this ancient, sacred text, though.
Oh, and no, Office 2007 does not have Helvetica, no matter how many movies they make about the damn font. And yes, barring the usual alternatives, you have to pay out the nose for a 52 year old typeface.
Needless to say, this mystery just sucked down about an hour of my time. I briefly explored the seedy underworld of typeface worship, following the twisted lies of stroke terminators and outfoxing the glyphs of despair. All I can say is that I can never look at Ariel again. *shudder*
I did find this ancient, sacred text, though.
Oh, and no, Office 2007 does not have Helvetica, no matter how many movies they make about the damn font. And yes, barring the usual alternatives, you have to pay out the nose for a 52 year old typeface.
Feeds updated (final update on these, I swear!)
I'll update the post below as well, but I have the feeds now finalized, and I'm adding them to the sidebar after this is post is up.
For those of you wondering how I'm categorizing the news items with minimal pain, here's how...
I'm using Google Reader for my usual news reading. To keep from having to type tags, I'm using a free program called AutoHotKey, which is an AMAZING piece of software. Sounds simple, but basically it lets you create simple scripts that can do just about anything. Kinda like Windows meets the bash prompt, but easier to use, low on resources, and a $^$&-ton of really useful scripts out there. In fact, many of the little utility programs that you use right now may have an AHK script equivalent, especially if you got them from Donation Coder. AHK scripts can be compiled into executables, or you can let them run in the background, or you can drop files onto them. Want a script that randomizes your desktop icon placement every 15 seconds? 30 seconds of coding (if you don't know what you're doing).
In this case, I have a simple AHK script that changes Alt+F1 into the "t" keystroke (opens the 'tag' section in GReader), Alt+F2 into "Neuroscience and Bioengineering, ", etc. So, I see something I like, I drop my thumb on the Alt, hit F1, consider the categories it falls into and hit those F-keys, and then Return. My hands don't have to move, except in a few cases (which is why I used Alt+F1 for t, when I could just hit t).
If anything is wonky, please please please let me know.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The feeeeeddddssssss must be fed!
He we go...
Starting today, the RSS feed structure will follow the structure from this previous post. Old feed items are not being updated, so for everything before today, starred = BCI, shared = technology. Side bar links updated, too.
Categories:
Starting today, the RSS feed structure will follow the structure from this previous post. Old feed items are not being updated, so for everything before today, starred = BCI, shared = technology. Side bar links updated, too.
Categories:
TED talks worth noting
Of course almost all TED talks are worth noting, but three are particularly rocking. The first two are by Aimee Mullins. The first is more of a show and tell Q&A session, discussing the various legs she has and the stories behind them. The second is a formal talk with an interesting story about her interactions with children.
The third video, featuring Pattie Maes, discusses what her lab calls a "sixth sense" - a combination camera and projector system and is location and context aware. If you've seen some of the MIT 'cyborg' types before, think of this as the iPod-ization of that concept. Though I don't really consider this a new 'sensory' experience, the demo is pretty amazing.
The third video, featuring Pattie Maes, discusses what her lab calls a "sixth sense" - a combination camera and projector system and is location and context aware. If you've seen some of the MIT 'cyborg' types before, think of this as the iPod-ization of that concept. Though I don't really consider this a new 'sensory' experience, the demo is pretty amazing.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Back on the attack Wednesday
Alright, Wednesday is going to be 'relaunch day', so stay tuned. No major redesign or anything like that, but hopefully the RSS changes will be implemented.
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