Researchers at UC Santa Cruz have developed a nanoscale particle that converts the brain’s electrical impulses to infrared light, optical signals that can be picked up by sensors outside the body that don’t require a hardwired connection that passes through the skull, and also could improve the response time of devices that would be controlled by this new brain-machine interface.
Called Neurophotonic Solution-dispersible Wireless Activity Reporter for Massively Multiplexed Measurements (or Neuro-SWARM3, for short), these particles are extremely tiny, consisting of a silicon oxide core only 63 billionths of a meter wide supporting an electrochromically active layer that converts the minute electrical impulses of individual neurons into near-infrared light, tuned to a specific wavelength that human tissue is transparent to. The particles also have a 5 nanometer coating of gold, a metal that can safely be used in the body, allowing them to enter the neurons themselves, to prevent being shed away in the cranial or cerebral spinal fluid.
“NeuroSWARM3 can convert thoughts (brain signals) to remotely measurable signals for high precision brain-machine interfacing,” according to study co-author Ahmet Ali Yanik, an engineer with UCSC’s Jack Baskin School of Engineering. “It will enable people suffering from physical disabilities to effectively interact with external world and control wearable exoskeleton technology to overcome limitations of the body. It could also pick up early signatures of neural diseases.”
This system has a number of advantages over more traditional electrical interfaces, such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink—a complex interface that requires electrical wires to physically connect the implants to external computers—and since it can be injected via the bloodstream it doesn’t require surgery to be applied to the subject. Electrical transmissions also have bandwidth limitations, limiting the speed of the system’s data transfer; Neuro-SWARM3’s use of infrared light to transmit the brain’s impulses allows for a substantially faster response time, meaning devices being controlled by an individual using such a system will be more responsive to the user’s input.
NeuroSWARM3’s in vitro (test tube) prototypes proved to be very sensitive to minute electrical fields, similar to the 70 millivolts found in an individual neuron, exhibiting a signal-to-noise ratio of 1,000 to 1, a sensitivity sufficient to pick up on the faint electrical signal generated when a single brain cell fires. The resulting signal was apparently four orders of magnitude more sensitive than traditional electrical interfaces, and ten times stronger than quantum dot-based technologies that are being explored.
Although they would provide a stronger signal than electrical-based links, Neuro-SWARM3 would still require sensitive IR sensors to be placed close to the scalp to pick up on the system’s transmissions. Machine learning programs would then be trained to decode the user’s unique brain patterns, and then send the commands to the device being controlled.
“We are just at the beginning stages of this novel technology, but I think we have a good foundation to build on,” said Yanik. “Our next goal is to start experiments in animals.”
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Is this interface bidirectional? The report suggests a one way link, effectively just reporting neuronal activity… but could it be used to #affect# neuronal activity by the application of external IR light, I wonder?
As it stands, it doesn’t look like it could: the mechanism looks too simplistic to be able to convert light to electrical impulses, although I have to add the caveat that I’m not very familiar with how the silicon oxide layer does its job. However, if the system were to be found to be capable of receiving signals, it would just result in a very expensive form of electroshock therapy.
One has to bear in mind that at our current state of technological development, we lack the computing power to be able to transmit cohesive thought patterns into a brain, at least neuron-by-neuron. Since everyone’s neurology is different, we require advanced AI to make heads or tails out of the patterns transmitted by current neurological implants, so it would take powerful supercomputers to map an individual’s neural activity in order to transmit or implant cohesive thoughts into an individual.
One day this form of two-way interface will be possible, and probably with technology that resembles Neuro-Swarm3, but we’re definitely not there yet. What our itty-bitty brains can accomplish with ease still stymies warehouse-sized supercomputers that chew up megawatts of power.
Thanks for the informed response. Regarding the pattern created by neuronal activity…. I suspect very little computing power would be required if the signal could be just recorded (rather than created) and then played back. Although I suspect the playback might only be fully decipherable by the same person whos brainwaves were recorded in the first place.
I can’t help remembering the film Brainstorm (1983), with Christopher Walken. It’s looking less like science fiction!
In 1996, the US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board published a 14-volume study of future developments in weapons called New World Vistas. Tucked away on page 89 of an ancillary 15th volume are some hair-raising insights into the future ‘coupling’ of man and machine in a section dealing with ‘Biological Process Control’. The author refers to an ‘explosion’ of knowledge in the field of neuroscience, adding, ominously: “One can envision the development of electromagnetic energy sources, the output of which can be pulsed, shaped, and focused, that can couple with the human body in a fashion that will allow one to prevent voluntary muscular movements, control emotions (and thus actions), produce sleep, transmit suggestions, interfere with both short-term and long-term memory, produce an experience set, and delete an experience set.” I dont know if the Airforce can do this yet, but the book New World Vistas: Air and Space Power for the 21st Century : Ancillary is available as a free e book on google books. But there is no doubt they want the technology that will allow them to produce edit and delete our experience sets
…..and eventually the METAL GODS will SPIT OUT our BONES!