Calling out the impostor

If you are familiar with BCIs you probably have heard of the project I work on, called BrainGate. I'm a grad student in John Donoghue's lab, though the thoughts and opinions on DNI are entirely my own. I generally try to keep all things related to the 'project' at a very superficial level, due to the FDA/patient confidentiality/my generally responsible nature, and report on news items there as I do with any other project (when they hit the mainstream news agencies).

But, there was something brought to my attention the other day regarding our project that I think needs to be examined. Apparently, someone with no affiliation to the project, no interaction with anyone on the project, and obviously no scruples owns the top level domain (TLD) for the project's name. I'm not going to link to it, since this poser doesn't deserve any traffic, but I wanted to put out the word to the core BCI researchers, students, and labs that keep up with DNI, that http://www.braingate2.org is the ONLY official site for the project. (Yes, that is just a placeholder page with a few links, and the full launch will be mentioned here.)

The BrainFake site, as I will now refer to our charlatan friend, isn't particularly 'bad', I mean, at least he links to the real site under the clinical trials section, but essentially we have someone confusing people interested in the project, stealing attention, providing unverified information, and just generally passing themselves off as the real deal. This is probably one of those people that just went and registered swineflu.com so he could redirect traffic to his lucrative online natural Viagra website, so we're talking parasitic to the nth degree and not some scientist I just happen to disagree with.

Anyone have any ideas on how to deal with this type of situation? My usual inclination is to use 'hired thugs', but that route always seems to get voted down by others. (obviously kidding)

Social adjustment

I was dragged into the Twitterverse kicking and screaming, but the unthinkable has happened. Actually, so far I like it. The signal to noise ratio is pretty poor, but not as bad as I expected. Then again, I have very few people that I'm following.

So, follow me, kids!

Twitter: xbkingx
Friendfeed: xbkingx

These are general accounts related to whatever hits me as interesting, so not just BCI items.

Catching up

Yeah, I loooove to see "1000+" next to my rss feed subfolders... ugh. Catching up on news items slowly, but going to try to be back at a regular clip this weekend. Prelim done, need to update a few research related doohickies, Mendeley thingamabobs, film project whatsits, and organize all the junk that has been piling up the last couple weeks. Whee! Fun!

As a side note, I love Amtrak. Get there 10 minutes beforehand, no lines, power adapters, leg room, smooth riding, jeez. I think I am a total rail convert. No worrying about laptop batteries running low or turning them on and off during take off and landing. Just though I would share the love.

One more thing...

Papers feed is live, and has been added to the list on the right. Or click here.

A week away

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.

Mini Super Paper Friday

Since I have been behind on my feeds, just an abbreviated SPF today. EndNote file available here.

Beurze, S. M., De Lange, F. P., Toni, I. and Medendorp, W. P. Spatial and effector processing in the human parietofrontal network for reaches and saccades. Journal of neurophysiology, (2009).
Link.

Blana, D., Kirsch, R. and Chadwick, E. Combined feedforward and feedback control of a redundant, nonlinear, dynamic musculoskeletal system. Medical & biological engineering & computing, (2009).
Link.

Chib, V. S., Krutky, M. A., Lynch, K. M. and Mussa-ivaldi, F. A. The separate neural control of hand movements and contact forces. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience 29, 29-29, (2009).
Link.

Churchland, P. S. and Phil, B. The significance of neuroscience for philosophy. Functional neurology 23, 23-23.
Link.

Corradi-Dell'Acqua, C., Tomasino, B. and Fink, G. R. What is the position of an arm relative to the body? Neural correlates of body schema and body structural description. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience 29, 29-29, (2009).
Link.

Cunningham, J. P., Gilja, V., Ryu, S. I. and Shenoy, K. V. Methods for estimating neural firing rates, and their application to brain-machine interfaces. Neural networks : the official journal of the International Neural Network Society, (2009).
Link.

Dietrich, A. Imaging the imagination: the trouble with motor imagery. Methods (San Diego, Calif.) 45, 45-45, (2008).
Link.

Dockendorf, K. P., Park, I., He, P., Principe, J. C. and DeMarse, T. B. Liquid state machines and cultured cortical networks: the separation property. Bio Systems 95, 95-95, (2009).
Link.

Fekete, T., Pitowsky, I., Grinvald, A. and Omer, D. Arousal increases the representational capacity of cortical tissue. Journal of computational neuroscience, (2009).
Link.

Friedman, A., Frankel, M., Flaumenhaft, Y., Merenlender, A., Pinhasov, A., Feder, Y., Taler, M., Gil-Ad, I., Abeles, M. and Yadid, G. Programmed acute electrical stimulation of ventral tegmental area alleviates depressive-like behavior. Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology 34, 34-34, (2009).
Link.

Fuentes, R., Petersson, P., Siesser, W. B., Caron, M. G. and Nicolelis, M. A. L. Spinal cord stimulation restores locomotion in animal models of Parkinson's disease. Science (New York, N.Y.) 323, 323-323, (2009).
Link.

Graziano, A. and Jones, E. G. Early withdrawal of axons from higher centers in response to peripheral somatosensory denervation. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience 29, 29-29, (2009).
Link.

Inuggi, A., Amato, N., Magnani, G., González-Rosa, J. J., Chieffo, R., Comi, G. and Leocani, L. Cortical control of unilateral simple movement in healthy aging. Neurobiology of aging, (2009).
Link.

Koulakov, A. A., Hromadka, T. and Zador, A. M. Correlated connectivity and the distribution of firing rates in the neocortex. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience 29, 29-29, (2009).
Link.

Lee, J.-H., Ryu, J., Jolesz, F. A., Cho, Z.-H. and Yoo, S.-S. Brain-machine interface via real-time fMRI: preliminary study on thought-controlled robotic arm. Neuroscience letters 450, 450-450, (2009).
Link.

Lonini, L., Dipietro, L., Zollo, L., Guglielmelli, E. and Krebs, H. I. An Internal Model for Acquisition and Retention of Motor Learning During Arm Reaching. Neural computation, (2009).
Link.

Majdandzic, J., Bekkering, H., Van Schie, H. T. and Toni, I. Movement-Specific Repetition Suppression in Ventral and Dorsal Premotor Cortex during Action Observation. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), (2009).
Link.

Milton, J., Small, S. L. and Solodkin, A. Imaging motor imagery: methodological issues related to expertise. Methods (San Diego, Calif.) 45, 45-45, (2008).
Link.

Park, J.-H. and Shea, C. H. Effector independence. Journal of motor behavior 34, 34-34, (2002).
Link.

Polyakov, F., Stark, E., Drori, R., Abeles, M. and Flash, T. Parabolic movement primitives and cortical states: merging optimality with geometric invariance. Biological cybernetics 100, 100-100, (2009).
Link.

Riva, G., Gaggioli, A. and Mantovani, F. Are robots present? From motor simulation to "being there". Cyberpsychology & behavior : the impact of the Internet, multimedia and virtual reality on behavior and society 11, 11-11, (2008).
Link.

Serino, A., De Filippo, L., Casavecchia, C., Coccia, M., Shiffrar, M. and Ladavas, E. Lesions to the Motor System Affect Action Perception. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, (2009).
Link.

Skipper, J. I., Goldin-Meadow, S., Nusbaum, H. C. and Small, S. L. Gestures Orchestrate Brain Networks for Language Understanding. Current biology : CB, (2009).
Link.

Veyrac, A., Sacquet, J., Nguyen, V., Marien, M., Jourdan, F. and Didier, A. Novelty determines the effects of olfactory enrichment on memory and neurogenesis through noradrenergic mechanisms. Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology 34, 34-34, (2009).
Link.

Wu, S.-W., Delgado, M. R. and Maloney, L. T. Economic decision-making compared with an equivalent motor task. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, (2009).
Link.

Yates, C. A., Erban, R., Escudero, C., Couzin, I. D., Buhl, J., Kevrekidis, I. G., Maini, P. K. and Sumpter, D. J. T. Inherent noise can facilitate coherence in collective swarm motion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106, 106-106, (2009).
Link.

Zanos, S. Neural correlates of high-frequency intracortical and epicortical field potentials. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience 29, 29-29, (2009).
Link.

Slow goin' and syncing madness

Just a quick note (again) that things over here are changing, which always puts the strain on DNI. Right now my big issue is that all my email is being aggregated by GMail with another account, so I have to log in and out to get to my rss feeds and DNI mail. Plus, a little side project knocked out this weekend + the beginning of the week. Sooooo... sorry about the lag. Also, this Wednesday through next Wednesday will be a brief break, since I'll be preparing and presenting my prelim. Just giving fair warning.

I'm thinking of moving to Thunderbird 3 on a USB key for email, then Neuvasync for iPhone contact/calendar syncing. I'd have a TrueCrypt encrypted file to contain it all. The big problem is that TB, and all email clients for that matter, can only move messages to a single folder, which is picked up by GMail as a tag. In GMail you can have multiple tags, and I would like to be able to move seamlessly between TB and GMail. Poopy. Someone needs to make a GMail tagging add-on for TB. Anyhoo....

Also, if you have a LinkedIn account, there is a BCI group that you might find worth checking out.