Would this not be possible?

[Terminal23]

Is it possible or has any thought been given to use the human brain a processor?For example.Could it be possible to connect your brain directly to some sort of database and download all the information that your brain has absorbed in your life.I would assume that everything that we have ever heard,seen,and done is still in our brain.Would it not be fesible to collect this information from our brains?Just think what it could be like if we could connect directly to our computer and download all of our previous thoughts and knowledge we have accumalated.We could relive childhood moments and watch them unfolded on the computer screen.

[Bovon]

WHEW!! farout, man...

I'm not so sure I would like to remember ALL of my youthfull ways http://www.sysopt.com/forum/biggrin.gif

I have read where recently some guy will be (or is now) experimenting with a chip implanted in his brain for some futurestic purposes...so, guess what you are saying may be possible one day. I have wondered if 'memories' are always retained forever in our brains. Brain cells do die off...so, interesting subject anyway.

[NDC]

I just hope that there aren't any viruses when you ever need to upload the data back to your brain for recovery of "previous thoughts". Imagine what nightmare that would be! LOL http://www.sysopt.com/forum/biggrin.gif

[medo]

Hello,

And also I am wondering what the difference will be between republican and democrat brains when it comes to process a data.

Medo

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[LiLRiceBoi]

I remember reading a few months back about a breakthrough where scientists connected some sort of semiconductor to living tissue.

I think in the future it would be possible.

[Brangwen]

I predict (and you read it here) that man will achieve such an interface, and entire mind contents will be downloadable... altered? and uploadable? Hmm. Probably will happen.

Brangwen http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[zgf2022]

It might be possible in the not so distant future, but you have to remember that no brain is alike and designing an interface to connect to and access all of the memory portions of the brain might be a little to complicated to construct just yet.

[tepo]

I've read about one ( french? ) blind man who has something attached to his brain, so he can "see". It wasn't the exact match for what we see, but it was amazing. I have a blur memory of a TV-prog of the same guy also.

Tepo

Just wait a few decades... http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by tepo (edited 06-01-2001).]

[F4_Hunter]

I'm not so sure thats gonna work. I mean your brain doesn't an upload port. You can only learn though your senses. So how are they gonna put stuff in?

F4

[club_med]

About a year ago I was reading about computer systems that were being tested. They were a combination of modern hardware and biological hardware such a synapses.

Unfortunately I never again heard about it and so i dont know what the outcome was.

However this is a very interesting subject, I think about it quite often, if anyone has some interesting links on the subject please share them with us http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif.

Are we all going to become borgs one day ?, scary thought.

cm.

[Hellmund]

Hey Tepo, I think I know what your talkin about, I saw it on the discovery channel, He has a small low-res camera in a glass eye and they put a small microchip in the back of his eye, it stimulates certain parts on the retina and gives something like an 8X8 pixel view. It's still in real early stages, They were working on 16X16 last I saw, I saw it about 2 months ago, it was quite interesting. There was also a little girl with a bionic arm that moved off her brain impulses but she could only move the thumb, and the other 4 fingers could only be moved simultaneously.

[club_med]

So, does anyone have any cool links ?.

cm.

[DemonKnight]

I think eventualy we will be able to down load our brains contents to a computer system and in effect became immortal. (move the system into an andriod body) I for one would more than welcome the chance to do this. It would probably require technology avalable about 300 years after I die though.

[spuck]

a lot of stuff was invented after it was on the original star trek tv series.if u watched the movie jonny mnemonic,that woman lived her last days in a mainframe of her company.possible? yes.done befor verry likely.by who? u.s.govt.dont forget they (lost)a ship they made dissapear.matrix was where he was hooked to a computer world.they bread humans for power.

[This message has been edited by spuck (edited 06-04-2001).]

[This message has been edited by spuck (edited 06-04-2001).]

[Hellmund]

This is kinda relevant http://popularmechanics.com/popmech/sci/9902STROM.html
There's also http://touchlab.mit.edu/news/lancet99/lancet99.html
These are to do with bionics.

[JacobM5727]

i think it is possible since you can grow brain tissue on silicon chips (it was on discovery science)

you just need to know where to put it i think...

[Axel]

The electronic eye transmits electrical impulses to the brain and they have figured out that those impulses can be modelled and easily copied - so electronic eyes are quite possible and in testing.

Artificial limbs are controlled by electrical impulses coming from nerve endings and those have been understood and in use for decades - It's a matter of re-training the nerve endings and creating what the brain thinks are motor patterns in a limb it doesn't think is there any more....

Then there's the brain.....

You've heard the expression that everything is relative - but nothing is absolute - Great definition of the brain. Memories are stored in a combination of neural networks and chemical enzimes in the brain. While there are many similarities and some parts of the brain control the same things in all man kind - something as complex as memories and sensory storage is currently beyond our means to model and has been found as being stored differently in different people - part of it is different environmental factors altering the body chemistry in different people. Kind of the same reason people are allergic to different things and also don't react the same way to different foods and drugs.

When folks say "he's wired differently" - that's true for everyone to some degree....

I don't think we are anywhere close to being able to copy someone's brain and being able to read the data....

Next step - scientists have attempted to 1) calculate the processing capacity of a single human nerve cell and 2) attempted to come close to being able to do the same number of calculations possible by one nerve cell -
The last study I remember on this is that scientists with a relatively new CRAY super computer were able to generate about 10% of the processing capacity of one rat brain nerve - let that sink in.

I think we are at the technological stage of making cyborgs with complcated peripheral devices and body part replacements. We've got artificial limbs - hearts - vocal cords - hearing aids - and now are working on eyes.

As far as linking directly into a mind like "Brainstorm" or "Johnny Neumonic" or "Neuromancer" - naw - we're quite some time away from that. We'll see another decade of peripheral devices taking their queues from electrical nerve-ending pulses -

Coming from the other direction - I think we'll make learning computers with self extending code - if we haven't already. It won't have "feelings" like we done which are largely a product of harmones, relationships, traditions, etc. etc. But we already have several AI projects out there working today with learning heuristics that have learned to move in a certain way in their environment and even blink when bright lights impact their optical sensors..... We'll probably have expensive house robots that learn our habits so they don't disturb us while performing their tasks.....I'd say those are probably 5 years out or so.


[This message has been edited by Axel (edited 06-07-2001).]

[not head]

To answer the first question posed, your brain is THE BEST processor ever devised. I think the actual "tapping" into the brain might be the biggest problem. Like Axel was saying about the rat brain outprocessing the CRAY supercomputer, the human brain processes in a parallel mode (multithreaded)whereas a computer (with a single CPU) processes a single thread of information at a time. Think about it, while you are sitting reading this processes are going on in the vision areas of your brain, language areas of your brain (especially if you're reading out loud), if you are moving or scrolling the mouse while reading your motor and pre-motor areas are working as well. This is not to mention the autonomous functions being taken care of (heart, lungs. These all occur at precisely the same time along different neural pathways or networks. A computer can process functions quicker than we can. It can process functions at or near the speed of light. Our brains neural pathways transmit electrical impulses at around 200 m.p.h. (remember its travelling through fluid) If we ever tap into the brain fully it's not going to be a simple plugnplay procedure. A computer with a single CPU watches one stream of output. To watch the human brain we would have tap into hundreds, thousands, or millions of neural pathways in the brain.

btw...when we download our brains contents into a computer system and then have that knowledge transferred into an android, that android might look like us, think like us (for a while until its own experiences impact its' "brain"), but will it have my consciousness? I don't think what makes you YOU can be downloaded. Your consciousness is the sum total of what your brain hears, sees, learns, etc. and how that is interpreted by you. Put everything in your brain in someone else's brain, whether real or android, and what you have in that skin is not what makes me ME.