Tag Archives: BCI

Ericsson has published a short report (sort of commercial for 5G) on “Hot consumer trends in 2030“. Let me say, transparently, that I would place that more in the realm of imagination than in the one of science, closer to fake news than to news (even the graphics used have …

The quest towards Brain Computer Interfaces continues. At John Hopkins University researchers have implanted six electrodes in the brain, 3 in each hemisphere, of a paraplegic patient. The electrodes captures the electrical activity of the brain and send the data via an external gateway (see photo) to a computer for …

In the previous posts I pointed out the current status and limitations of BCI, Brain Computer Interface, showing that at the moment there is a tradeoff to be taken between higher precision and sensitivity provided by implanted electrodes/chip and non invasive interfaces. I also pointed out that at present interfacing …

Sense augmentation Our senses have evolved to capture certain parts of our ambient and evolution has been biased by the ambient we have been living in. As an example, our retina is more sensitive to green (plenty of green around in places where we started our human journey). Our sight …

Interfacing with our senses, skipping the sensors In the previous post I shared my doubts on the feasibility of establishing a direct connection from a computer to the brain, at least in the foreseeable future and pointed out that a much more promising approach, already followed, is to take over …

4. Reverse communications, from the computer to the brain If it is difficult to communicate from the brain to a computer the reverse is close to impossible. Now, I know you should “never say never” and indeed some progress has been made but before looking into technology promises let’s consider …

3. Decreasing the training time for the person and improving computer sensitivity (intelligence) As noted in previous posts, current technology is not sufficient to translate the brain electrical activity, captured by sensors, into meaning. Significant progress has been made, thanks to better signal processing capability and more recently by applying …

2. Extending the brain area where signals are captured Although we like to identify specific areas of the brain and associate them to specific function, like speech, hearing, reasoning, emotion, the brain structure is massively diffused. Yes there can be a prevalent area where a specific function is processed (emerge) …

Less invasive physical interface and better electrodes to pick up the signals The challenge facing researchers and medical doctors today when looking for interfacing the brain is the tradeoff between invasiveness procedures and implants versus lower resolution and increased noise. If you embed an electrode in the brain that electrode …

I have touched upon seeing, hearing and touching applied to human to whatever interface. There are three more, smell, taste and proprioceptors (these latter provide a sense of position and acceleration) but I’ll skip these for now since they are not used, nor are likely to be used in isolation …