Based on the video we saw in class please respond to the following questons:
1) what did you find most interesting about the video and why?
2) Choose one of the sections (video rat, joystick monkey, quadripelegic (sp?) kid learning language, etc.) and explain what it was (what were they doing) and what we may learn about the human brain and human cognition.
3) drawing on ideas in the video as well as class discussion, web tasks, and readings, make a few educated predictions about what topics may be included in a Cognitive Psychology class after the singularity (or 20-30 years in the future).
I thought the most interesting aspect from the video was the feelings towards the singularity. Prior to watching this video, I had little knowledge of the singularity and the impact it may have on our society. It was interesting to hear why some researchers think the singularity will solve many problems and have positive outcomes for out world while other researchers are unsure if the singularity is even a good idea. For example, the uni-bomber was trying to further stop and progress towards the singularity. This bomber was a graduated from Harvard and was a math professor yet he feared that the singularity was a bad idea. Also, one of the researchers in the video suggested that the singularity will allow computers and technology to gradually take over our world. He realizes the potential outcomes of the singularity could be positive yet he fears the negative outcomes will be substantial. The singularity is an interesting concept that will gradually unfold in the years to come. I was interested to hear the opinions that these educated researchers had regarding the singularity.
I enjoyed watching the kid who was paralyzed from the neck down and how he was trying to re-learn language and communication. In this section of the video, we watched a researcher connect multiple devices to the boy while the computer monitored his brain waves. Next, the researcher and the boy's father would pronounce a word and allow the boy to comprehend and think about how he would repeat the word. Miraculously, the computer would pronounce the word that the boy was thinking. This was amazing because after the kid's severe accident, he was unable to speak and communicate. This section showed that as technology grows, we will be able to learn more about brains after individuals have had severe brain damage. This type of technology will help us determine how to re-train a damaged brain based on the skills they lost after a traumatic experience.
After the singularity occurs, I think a Cognitive Psychology class will focus more on the brain operations and thinking processes. The advanced computer technology will allow classes to observe brain patterns from different cognitive processes. One topic might be as I mentioned before, re-training brains after brain damage. Overall, the singularity will allow a more in depth and hands on material for cognitive psychology courses.
Video Response:
1.
There were a few things that I found very interesting about this video. First, there was the overall idea of the singulate ( I will probably use this words incorrectly throughout; singulate, singulation, a singulate, the singulate, etc). I knew it had something to do with the ability of a computer being able to match that of the brain. I learned that it specifically means that a computer will be able to make as many computations as the brain does in one second. To be honest I thought that computers had reached this a long time ago. What with all the information that the internet holds. But, I started thinking about it more and realized that our brains really control all aspects of our function. We have a ton of environmental stimuli (hearing or seeing things), physiological responses (breathing), and cognitive process (thinking) that all can take place at once without a huge stress being put on our brains. Very impressive!
As far as the video I found the quadriplegic boy the most uplifting story. All the stories that were included were interesting to me but, that one gave a positive outlook for this new technology. Instead of the man who postulated and coined the phrase ‘giga’ (I think it was) which mean the death of billions when singulate was achieved. It is terrifying to think about being stuck in your body with no mobility or means of communication - with your brain still functional, you are fully aware of all of your inabilities. Now there is way that he can learn to communicate - but thinking of what he wants to say he can, with the help of a machine, be able to say it too! It’s amazing!
2.
There are two sections from the video I would like to discuss further - Eric’s ‘Locked in Syndrome’ and the monkey that controlled the machine with its brain. In both cases I am still confused as to how they are controlling the machines with they neural processes - though I have an idea, which I’ll explain. When our brain is functioning it uses electrical pulses to send messages… basically that is how I understand the brain to work - through electrical impulses that allows information be passed throughout the brain which monitors all functions of our body. So it seems that there is a computer that can now monitor the electric impulses throughout our brain. Then combine that technology with the technology that knows what processes control what. In the movie we looked at a man, in Switzerland I think, he was doing brain - mapping in a sense. He was taking all the cells in the brain and mapping their function into computers and recreating a computer brain - one that includes all the cells in the brain would have a football field full of monitors. This process was referred to decoding and they are turning the physical world into an electrical world. So maybe the areas of the brain are used for language (Eric) and hand movements (monkey) have already been mapped. So when the computer picks up these electrical signals it has these areas of the brain mapped so that it know what information is being processed. I’m sure this idea is far from accurate but that’s how I understand it. I obviously have many questions, like aren’t all of our brains wired differently? How would one be able to map out a general brain when (as mentioned in an earlier post about a TED video - we all have our own connectome).
3.
There is a lot of information that we can gain if this research is kept up and continues to grow. We will learn about how the brain functions to control our body. What parts of speech and arm/hand movement take longer to display and what actions happen quicker - also what the common errors or what processes may be closely related or problematic for the brain.
I think after the singularity we will be learning very different things in a cognitive class. To compare it to something we are learning today it might like learning about surgery - but before we knew what sterilization was! We still have so many questions about the brain! It may be that the theories that we learning today will either be fact or fiction in a future class. There will be much more certainty with what information we know about the brain. Certain case studies may be someone who has a brain with extensive plasticity or someone who has no plasticity. We will also know what is common variance from one brain to another. Right now when we look subject A’s brain and then look at subject B’s brain we may find some things that are very different. But if we were to have mapped out multiple people’s brains we might see that this area of the brain is different for everyone - OR we might look at an area of the brain that is supposed to be the same for everyone but a few people (say with autism or Savant syndrome) may have something different going on in that area of the brain. There many things that will very different. The possibilities seem endless - though I would like stay optimistic. I doubt the Matrix will become our reality in the future. I do not doubt that we will be able to communicate with people who are locked in. We will be able to free that person from certain things that can lead to a much more fulfilling life for them! I think this technology is a great thing in that respect. I do not believe that we are creating gods or that we will lose control - those ideas are great for movies but I’d like to think that are more responsible than that.
I thought the way in which the term ‘singularity’ came to use was really interesting. I never would have guessed that singularity was influenced by bulls in Spain. The way singularity was put to use, sending radio signals to the brain of the bull, was neat to see. They discovered that it was possible to unlock signals of the brain of the bulls; by doing so they could control and tame the bull. By discovering such a phenomenon, researchers were better able to understand the human brain. Researchers realized that non biological intelligence does exist.
I found the portion of the video that described the young man in a wheelchair who basically lost mobility in his entire body, really interesting (and sad). The computer was able to make computations like our minds. The father of the young man would speak syllables and the computer was able to vocally speak the same syllable after the young man processed the information and the information was sent and expressed by the computer. Though it was apparent this is a relatively new technique and a significant amount of research and experimenting still needs to be done, I think in the future this could be an extremely beneficial system for many. Although the man was unable to verbally or physically communicate, this was a technique that allowed him to do so.
I think after the use of singularity becomes more utilized and understood, we will encounter it in the majority of our interactions with the outside world. I wonder how our life as humans will change after the use of artificial intelligence expands. I imagine humans may no longer be needed because the use of technology will be more efficient. That is somewhat scary to think about. How we live our lives will be drastically altered. I think within a few years, massive discoveries will be made and go into effect. Once it starts it will be relatively impossible to halt the expansion and use. I think issues that pertain to how our brains compare to how artificial intelligence works will be discussed. I think we will learn how technology can drastically alter how we think by making changes to regions of our brain. I think we will be able to almost “create” or remap the human brain so it functions more efficiently. Discoveries will be taught on how we are able to adjust how our brain functions to eliminate deficits. For instance we will be taught the ways we can alter the brains of people with disabilities, in order for them to function “normally”. People that are blind will no longer be so or deaf individuals will not even know that they once we unable to hear because technology was able to “fix” the problem very early on. We may be taught how to prevent people from being born with deficits because we will be able to see complications and fix them before the person is born.
I’m glad we had the opportunity to watch this video in class. For me, the whole concept of the “singularity”, when the number of computations a computer can do in a second equals that of the human brain, was very interesting. I liked how the video showed human kind’s progression in understanding the brain, starting off with Delgado and the control of the bull with the use of electrodes. This particular part reminded me of my biopsychology course, where there was an expert in our text about this experiment. Overall, I think that part of what makes this so fascinating to many scientists is the fact that this event absolutely does have potential to happen and would show enormous leaps in our understanding of the human brain. At the same time, I think this whole concept is kind of a scary thought. If technology is progressing at such a fast rate, it may reach the point where we cannot slow it down and before we know it, minds and machines will be merged. And who knows what kind of a world that would bring!
I found the section on the quadriplegic to be most interesting, particularly because I could relate. Just a couple of summers ago, after the floods of 2008, a cousin of mine was leaving work one day and fell down a fire escape stair case. He was in a coma for several months, but fortunately he finally came out of it. His accident, however, left him quadriplegic, and much similar to this case, his brain is fully functioning, he just has no means of communicating back to us. It reminded me of the teenage boy in this video segment. He was in a car accident and as a result, became a quadriplegic. Despite this horrible event, his brain was still intact and functioning normally in terms of cognition but he had no outlet of communication to the world. With the advancement of technology, a computer could read his brain waves when he thought of a certain word and would then speak it for him. In order to develop technology of this standard, scientists must understand exactly where in the brain different words are produced and where the thoughts form from.
In the future, after the singularity, the video implies that the understanding of our brains will be complete. Therefore, it is hard to wager a guess as to what would be taught in a cognitive psychology course. Topics may range more along the lines of a discussion of past theories about the brain, which were correct, which were incorrect. And because a lot of the secrets of the brain will be understood by then, I am sure that new college students will be taught all about the missing pieces of how the brain functions. It is hard to say what is around the corner in the future of neuroscience. As far as the concept of the singularity goes, I do not think that it will be a sudden development of these human-equivalent computers…at least I am hoping, because if so, I am not sure what would result when humans met their match.
1. I was totally amazed with the parts of the video showing the latest researches and experiments in combining computers and brain, in the applied technology in this sphere. All of them: a rat controlled by a radio signal; a monkey that plays using her thoughts only, not hands; Eric, the patient with the lock-in syndrome that finally got the opportunity to speak; the neurons that create their own network that growth and functions outside the human body; are fantastic as in my opinion such technology opens the whole new world for us. It is a breathtaking perspective that lives the hope to the thing that one of the experts, Professor Kurzweil, talked about: the recreation of the human intelligence in a machine. Although I do not think it would necessarily be a positive thing, but at the same time I cannot but admire the possibilities that future opens in front of us and the opportunities my kids would experience.
2. I liked the part of the video called “Minds of Rat”. What the scientists did was fantastic and a bit scary at the same time. This was the group of Professor John Chapin from the state University of New-York. They created a remote control rat: an animal that gets a radio signal and changes its behavior according to it. It happened because researches made a special electronic device that had connection with the rat’s brain. Literally they put the electrode into the brain of the rat, the area responsible for whiskers movements. So, when a researcher sent a signal, it went directly into the brain and the rat made right turns while working. This is one of the first steps, an early example of the brain-machine interface but a promising one. We have learned about single neuron firing research technique, but this one is even more interesting. While in the first case we could just detect neuron’s firing in response to a particular stimulus, now we can actually force neurons to fire in the necessary brain area and thus control the behavior. In this experiment it probably was the area responsible for perception and the signal went to the motor area. But what if we sent such signal to the area in the frontal lobes? Areas responsible for complicated cognitive domains?
Another research connected with this topic impressed me even more. In one of the experiments the researches applied neurons to computer – they put some cells on the electronic equipment and they developed their own network – their collective intelligence. This is the 21st century reality and one more step on the way to creating brain-machine interface.
What can we learn about human cognition based on this information? I guess the experiments we have witnessed are just the beginning. And whether we want it or not some of them would be held on humans. So in a while (and with the modern technology I do not think it is going to be a long time) we will see the true connection between a human being and machine. With better understanding of brain localization and the whole processing of the neural network we would be able to create more complex devices and programs combining both human’s and machine’s characteristics.
3. It is difficult to make such predictions. But I still will give it a shot. Here are some of the topics:
a. Such topics as perception, memory and other “traditional” ones would be extended in terms of information, but would take less part of the curriculum. We would probably have two (or more) sections, something like “Human perception” and “Machine perception”.
b. Special section would be dedicated to the animal cognition, because by that time we would know much more about it and about its connection to human’s cognition as well. And as long as I am interested in talking apes and sincerely inspired by what I see in these researches – yes, I think we might even have a section called “Interspecies communication”. (Would be useful for PR majors as well)
For those who have hopes for meeting the extraterrestrial life – their cognition would be studied too. IF we ever meet them…
c. One of the topics covered in class would probably be based on the creation of new types of machines – the ones working on the heuristic mechanisms rather than algorithms. These would probably be machines capable of learning and understanding things in a way similar to (most likely still not identical) the human’s one.
d. We would know more about the work of the neural network and the localization of brain functions. So we would cover the material concerning this “Holy Grail” of neuroscience – brain maps would definitely be studied as well.
e. Artificial intelligence would take much bigger part of the curriculum. Non-biological intelligence would become a sufficient unit in the curriculum.
f. Applied cognitive science for forensic, engineering majors would be a useful topic. It might cover the material concerning the problems of creating devices for the patients with the lock-in syndrome for example.
g. In cognitive laboratories students would create their own small neural networks… grad students might even make primitive robots…
The topic that I found of most interest in particular was the fact that one of the doctors (John) worked with rats for many years. He ended up exploring minds of rats and found a way to have a remote controlled rat. What he did was he could send signals from his laptop to the brain. The signal would stimulate a certain side (left or right) to indicate which way to go. The rat did not have to obey, but if it chose to obey he would get rewarded by having the pleasure spot in the brain stimulated. I had no idea that you could do this, which is one reason why I found it so interesting. Also, the fact that the reward for the rat was to have the pleasure spot in the brain stimulated was interesting. I have seen many other experiments with rats, but never this one.
Another topic from the movie was the joystick monkey. I also found this case extremely fascinating. The researcher (although this experiment was controversial) was able to plant electrodes in the brain of a monkey and actually listen to the monkey’s thoughts. He taught the monkey to play a game (where he had to match a small dot into a bigger dot). The researcher then recorded the information from the brain and then took that and recorded it into the computer. Thus, he was able to use the thoughts of the monkey to control the robot arm, the monkey just thought he was controlling the robot arm with his own arm and joystick. However, after a certain period of time the monkey figured out that he could take his arm of the joystick and still control the robot arm (that part was a little freaky). From this I learned a lot. I always associated robot arms with movement of muscles or just programming them to do certain things. The fact that we can create machines that we can control with our own thoughts is both a little scary and inspiring at the same time. For people that have lost limbs they may be able to have a “robot limb” in the future where they can control the arm just as they would if it was really there. From this I also learned that we know a lot more about the human brain that I realized.
I think in the future as I just stated surgeries will be easier and we will have a lot of medical advances. If we can program to have things do what we are thinking it may be easier for doctors to perform surgery then having them “cut” things themselves. Also, people who have lost limbs may be able to finally have it back (reminds me of I, Robot). I think things that will be covered in cognitive class will be history – how we got to where we are now, possibly what people use to think, and about a lot more specifics of the brain. I think we will know a whole lot more about the human mind and about what specific parts do what, what happens when they are injured, how to fix parts of the brain if they injured, and perhaps even how to train people who lack certain abilities (ex: people with dyslexia). May be even able to distinguish why some people are better at making decisions or weighing consequences and may figure out what “triggers” a psychopath. I really think there are endless possibilities after singularity; however, I am a little cynical of people that think our world will be taken over by robots.
What I found most interesting about this video was the advancement of technology and how in some aspects it is somewhat scary. Even the scientists that were working on specific advancements such as singularity said themselves that when singularity comes about there is no telling what might happen because of it. Some technology could radically extend a person’s life. I began to question how people would react to life extension as well as other areas such as artificial intellect. I found this part of the movie most interesting because of the problems that may be associated with creating artificial intellect. One scientist in the video was quoted that one problem would be that humanity would be divided and a large war could break out between the individuals who would accept or reject the technology.
Another section of the video focused on the study of watching a monkey move a joystick to successfully complete a game. Scientists had the monkey’s brain wired to their computers so that they were controlling the monkey’s movement of the joystick by telling his brain to tell his arm to move. At first the monkey thought he was controlling the joystick because of the movements in his arm that he was controlling. After time passed the monkey realized he did not have to move the joystick in order to move the pointer in the game. This was groundbreaking because it was the most important step. The monkey was moving the pointer in the game with only his mind and no other actions what so ever. From this research we begin to understand the power’s of the brain. By understanding the processes we are also gaining an understanding of how to maybe copy a brain. Who knows maybe one day it will be easy to decipher exactly what the brain is saying and thinking without anyone moving their mouth.
In my opinion technology is moving so fast that there will be a large change in the discussions that may occur in a cognitive psychology course in twenty or thirty years. Singularity will make the brain equal to a computer. I feel that today most people feel that a computer is much smarter than the human brain. It can obviously hold more information with technology like the internet, but the level of computations are not as complex and efficient as the brain is. According to me, I would say it is reasonable to believe that the “secret code” will be a process that will be understood and discussed in the years to come. By this I mean that most scholars will be able do understand how the brain converts the physical world into an electrical world. I can also predict that artificial intelligence will be used even more in the military than it is used today. Computers will be even more advanced and may be able to replicate a human almost identically.
By far the most interesting part of the video was the discussion of singularity. Here's this idea that one day technology will be able to make the same number of computations as the human brain per second, it's fun to imagine the possibilities because they are so unlimited. They're also the subject of a great debate about whether singularity will be a miracle or disaster if achieved. Personally I'm disappointed I won't be around when this milestone is reached as it should raise many ethical as well as other concerns. It's also interesting to note how large the super computers were in the movie. They resembled the old computers that took up entire rooms back in the day before our current technology was created. It's cool to think that one day we may be looking back amazed at how primitive our knowledge is today.
The video included a story about a teenager who suffered a spinal injury that left him paralyzed from the neck down, only allowing him to make movement with his eyes. This condition is know as "locked-in" syndrome. The teen was connected to a machine that recorded his brain waves, allowing the researcher to see specific patterns when different words and sounds were made. The boy's father would go through the painstaking process of sounding out words multiple times and his son would concentrate on the word, producing the recorded brain activity. The computer would then replicate the recorded brain waves to produce words and speech. The extent of the process seemed limited, difficult, and and extremely time-consuming. As technology becomes more advanced, however, this particular procedure may become more useful, easier to conduct, and overall more successful. The future for those left disabled after major traumatic experiences will be considerably more optimistic. The process in the segment will help the boy be able to communicate much more effectively with his family, making life at least a little less frustrating.
Topics in a cognitive class would be much more scientific and brain activities could be explained much more thoroughly. In fact, the brain responses for specific cognitive processes might be able to be identified. We will be able to compare individual brains and determine what makes everyone think differently. As mentioned before, the possibilities are endless and entirely unknown!
This entire video was fascinating. I have to admit I am a fan of the Matrix movies... not only because Neo is a stud, but the whole thought behind it with man creating intelligence beyond human control and inevitably creating our own demise. I find I'm in the same boat as Jose Delgato (I hope I got that right) who was the man with the bull he could stop from charging at him. He loved the science and the discoveries, but when he sees where it's leading up to he no longer wants any part of it. Being realistic leads me to believe that the singularity is a real possibility, there are people out there who won't stop at just theory, but really want to push the limits of human inginuity untill we know all there is to know. It won't matter who speaks up against technological advances of these sort, science will trudge forward. I'm not sure I agree with some of the advances that are sure to come, but I know that it's inevitable.
The most interesting part of the movie for me was the joystick monkey. I have developed quite an interest in neuro psychology over the semester and find it very interesting that researchers found a way to map enough of the brain signals to read the monkeys mind to know the hand and arm movements to play the video game. Five years of "talking" to the monkeys brain cells and recording various signals seems like such a long laborious job. And even after all that time they only know the neural firing for arm movements. How amazingly complex our brains are! The monkey is connected to a computer that essentially reads its mind, or at least the thought patterns for arm movements. The computer then interprets the signal and the monkey can then play the video game. Now the shocker... the monkey somehow came to the realization that the physical arm movements were no longer needed, and stopped moving his arm and began only thinking about the arm movements needed. The monkey somehow had become aware that the game worked on thought alone. I know a bunch of animal lovers are going to tell us how smart monkeys are, but I still ascertain that the average human is smarter. So my big question is what happens when we do the same sort of experiment with humans... how long will it take us to realize we no longer need to use our bodies to complete tasks? Let's also take a brief moment to contemplate the speed of thought compared to the speed at which our minds can make our bodies move. I realize we are all nimble young folk who have awesomely quick reaction time... but I know our minds are so much faster than our bodies will ever be. If we look now at the future of computers and neuroscience breakthroughs we can assume that chatting with the neurons will become easier and less time consuming. we will be able to create those neral firing maps of human brains in a fraction of the time it took to map the monkeys arm movement signals.
This is where we get into discussions of the future of cognitive psychology. I have no idea what will happen, but I know the science of the brain and how we study it is going to change dramatically in ways we can't fathom. The ability to know the electrical innerworkings of someones entire brain is a very real possibility. Technology will catch up with our curiosity and we will be able to answer questions about or brains with computers capable of reading our minds, or at least some of it. I'm not certain if a computer could see into our memories or our dreams. I suppose it would all depend on what exactly goes on in our brains during these processes. If we dream of hugging a loved one would a computer be able to pin point the exact neural firings of memories of this person to be able to interpret what is going on in our dreams? are there specific neurons that fire only for my husband, and can these be mapped so a computer would know when my thoughts are about him? this seems like another movie, The eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, where people can pay to have someone removed from their memories, wiped from their mind completely. The science may not be here yet, but curious humans are already toying with the idea of what the science and technology will bring.
I don't know where or when technology and science will tumble together to create new ways of thinking about our brains, but if television and movies have taught us anything, we should be wary. when the singularity happens I will be waiting to see where it takes us, and I will have alot of questions, I'm sure.
The dramatization in the video was amazing. The idea of singularity itself is interesting enough. The idea that one day computers will match the computing power of the brain is worth pondering. Some look at it in fear and shake in their boots. Some do not see any harm in it; others try and prevent it like the unibomber did. Honestly, there is no question that computers can and will match the computing power of the brain. Hey, when we get too bogged down about an integration problem, we put it into Maple and the computer tells us the answer. It would have taken us years to do it by hand; the computer can give it to us in about half a minute. We have computer models of everything, all involving formulas that we could do by hand but are too lazy to do it—plus it’s just convenient. We get results from an experiment and rather than compute statistics from them by hand, we put it into SPSS and get inferential and descriptive statistics from that. No mystery to it, it is possible.
Besides, our brain is made up of neurons, nearly all of it McCulloch-Pitts neurons. This means that there are only two modes of activity of the cell. It is either firing or it isn’t and overall activity happens with the serial-like turning off and on of neurons. Really, that’s how computers work too. A computer is basically a whole bunch of on/off cell circuits. The turning on of one circuit activates the circuit next in line and that is how processing occurs. Of course, straight off, the brain is much more complex. For example, a computer doesn’t have a baseline firing rate and is generally off until an activity happens, whereas in the brain, some cells have a baseline firing rate and the turning off of one neuron can actually inhibit or slow down the firing rate of the neuron next in line. Really, this is the physical basis of lateral inhibition which is one way the brain can identify edges.
If that was not enough, there is one more reason that a computer can never be quite like the brain. The brain has glial cells in addition to normal neurons. Glial cells used to be thought of as support cells, cells that feed neurons and insulate the axons so that neuron communication can happen faster. Recently, they have been found to play roles in regenerating neurons and even have some processing power. I don’t actually know how they communicate with each other but I understand that they don’t have the firing system that neurons do. A computer could not have anything close to a glial cell—or a non-electric unit. If it could, I would be worried that the massive dominance of computers will take place during singularity. But presently, it seems silly to worry about something like that. Quantum computers don’t quite compare here either.
Anyway, we should backtrack a little bit. This electric system of on/off patterns of McCulloch-Pitts neurons are the reasons why the Joystick monkey can work and why Eric the paralyzed boy can learn to speak once again. I will discuss this in reverse order. Eric the paralyzed boy has a fully functional brain but is paralyzed the next down. Since he cannot talk either, I suppose we should go a little further up the medulla and include a whole bunch of the cranial nerves as well. So he has full functioning somatosensory and motor neurons but hey cannot do anything. So Kennedy the brilliant scientist decides to hook up Eric’s fully functioning neurons to a computer, which can read the firing patterns and respond in spoken language. But that is why that would work. Eric’s motor neurons communicate electrically. Kennedy’s computer also communicate electrically so if you put them together, they can communicate with each other (exactly as a Russian who speaks English can speak with an Norwegian who also speaks English).
And that was the reason why the Joystick monkey could move the joystick around manually and also mentally through a computer. But I think they weren’t communicating the full implications of what was happening with that monkey. I paid careful attention when the monkey stopped manually moving around the joy stick. He was doing something with his hand but that was not reflected in what was happening with the electric joystick. So how can the same neuron simultaneous give out two different instructions? I am tempted to guess that the motor neurons differentiated and some specialized in mental communication and others specialized in manual communication (I mean in-body by ‘manual’). But that can’t really be the case because this wasn’t an intrusive study as in the computer only read the overall firing rates, not really the firing rate of a single neuron. Somehow, the relevant areas in the brain realized they were being tracked. And this is a cause for wonder at our own brains, not really fear of what computers can do. Let me clarify that: this is the brain’s doing, not the computer’s.
With this being said, definitely, cognitive psychology will take a more biological turn in the future because the brain’s processes are biological and computers are designed to interpret these biological processes. So, in the future, rather than creating mental imagery and the like and relying on what the subject can self-report on it (ex. “I remember five items from that list”) it will all be computer based. Instead of having to ask the participant what they’re thinking and risking contaminating it, we can hook them up to a computer and the computer can interpret that for us. So locations of brain parts will become a greater part of cognitive psychology.
I really liked this video! It was very unbelievably thought provoking! To answer the question about what I found most interesting… well that is almost impossible. The highlights to me were that we can grow brains, that we can practically turn a rat into a remote control toy, the monkey, decoding the human brain, and locked-in syndrome. The fact that we are able to grow brains is scary even if the stage that they are able to do so is very innocent and not that complex. The implication this may have is limitless! As far as the rat, I do find it a bit sad and cruel, I admit it. But I guess he doesn’t mind his pleasure center being activated! I don’t think humans should be turned into remote controls unless they are in charge of the remote. Again, I think this discovery could have good as well as bad consequences (example: good=sending animals into small areas to retrieve something or helping a paralyzed person in some way. Bad=A tool in warfare). I’m not going to address the monkey here because I am going to discuss it later on. Decoding the human brain is an amazing thing that is a bit frightening and I’m not sure what possibilities it brings. Lastly is locked-in syndrome. I felt so bad for this young man. I could not imagine living that way. It seems as though it would be so scary, frustrating, sad, lonely, etc. I sure am hoping they do find a way to bring him back some quality of life.
The section I choose is the joystick monkey to try to explain. Nicolelis tried to “eavesdrop” on the thoughts of the monkey and try to decode the mind of the monkey. This monkey (with his mind hooked up) moved the joystick around and the crane thing would do the same. After so long the monkey realized he did not have to move the drumstick, he only had to think about moving it and he stopped moving the joystick, to everyone’s shock and amazement. Besides moving things by thought, if they were able to decode the brain (which I’m sure they will someday), well, the possibilities are almost endless!
In 20-30 years from now (after singularity) the first thing they will be studying is the history of cognitive psychology! They will be looking at the things that we had right and all the things we had wrong. In addition to that cognitive psychologists would be learning the coding of the brain and the workings of “minds” of machines. Mind control and detailed mapping of the brain may be other hot topics. Also how to help people with disabilities and such. All and all I think we will be focused on the detailed workings and possible manipulations of the brain.