BCIs & Neurotechnology News and Discussions

[wjfox]

BCI decodes neural signals for handwriting

17th May 2021

Researchers at Howard Hughes Medical Institute have, for the first time, decoded neural signals associated with writing letters, then displayed typed versions of these letters in real time. They hope their invention could one day help people with paralysis communicate.

[...]

In this study, the participant managed to type at 90 characters per minute – more than double the previous record (40) for a brain-computer interface (BCI).

Read more: https://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/202 ... riting.htm

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

Here are the timestamps.

1:13 - Kernel Flow demo
10:25 - The future of brain-computer interfaces
43:54 - Existential risk
49:33 - Overcoming depression
1:04:52 - Zeroth principles thinking
1:13:05 - Engineering consciousness
1:19:19 - Privacy
1:23:48 - Neuralink
1:33:27 - Braintree and Venmo
1:49:10 - Eating one meal a day
1:55:22 - Sleep
2:15:04 - Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro
2:22:02 - Advice for young people
2:26:38 - Meaning of life

You know, I'm curious as to if Kernel has gotten access to GPT-3 and, if so, have they been able to train it on neural data.

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

Gabe Newell says brain-computer interface tech will allow video games far beyond what human 'meat peripherals' can comprehend

The head of US gaming company Valve Corporation says a future is fast approaching where video games will use data from people's brain signals to adjust the experience they get — and even a future where people's minds can be adjusted by computers.
Gabe Newell spoke to 1 NEWS about the future of brain computer interfaces (BCIs) — an area he and other Valve staff have studied for several years now — and talked about how Valve is working to put BCIs to use in the gaming sector.

Newell admits some of the ideas may seem incredible, and said some of the discussions he's having around BCIs are "indistinguishable from science fiction" — but according to him, game developers would be making a mistake by not investigating BCIs within the short-term future.

To help them to do that, Newell said Valve is currently working on an open-source BCI software project, allowing developers to begin to interpret the signals being read from people's brains using hardware like modified VR (virtual reality) helmets.

[Yuli Ban]

Brain-Computer Interface Smashes Previous Record for Typing Speed
Imagining "writing-by-hand" is faster than imagining moving a cursor in new BCI system

The ancient art of handwriting has just pushed the field of brain-computer interface (BCI) to the next level. Researchers have devised a system that allows a person to communicate directly with a computer from his brain by imagining creating handwritten messages. The approach enables communication at a rate more than twice as fast as previous typing-by-brain experiments.

Researchers at Stanford University performed the study on a 65-year-old man with a spinal cord injury who had had an electrode array implanted in his brain. The scientists described the experiment recently in the journal Nature.

“The big news from this paper is the very high speed,” says Cynthia Chestek, a biomedical engineer at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the study. “It’s at least half way to able-bodied typing speed, and that’s why this paper is in Nature.”

For years, researchers have been experimenting with ways to enable people to directly communicate with computers using only their thoughts, without verbal commands, hand movement, or eye movement. This kind of technology offers a life-giving communication method for people who are “locked in” from brainstem stroke or disease, and unable to speak.

Successful BCI typing-by-brain approaches so far typically involve a person imagining moving a cursor around a digital keyboard to select letters. Meanwhile, electrodes record brain activity, and machine learning algorithms decipher the patterns associated with those thoughts, translating them into the typed words. The fastest of these previous typing-by-brain experiments allowed people to type about 40 characters, or 8 words, per minute.

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

Can a $110 Million Helmet Unlock the Secrets of the Mind?

Over the next few weeks, a company called Kernel will begin sending dozens of customers across the U.S. a $50,000 helmet that can, crudely speaking, read their mind. Weighing a couple of pounds each, the helmets contain nests of sensors and other electronics that measure and analyze a brain’s electrical impulses and blood flow at the speed of thought, providing a window into how the organ responds to the world. The basic technology has been around for years, but it’s usually found in room-size machines that can cost millions of dollars and require patients to sit still in a clinical setting.

The promise of a leagues-more-affordable technology that anyone can wear and walk around with is, well, mind-bending. Excited researchers anticipate using the helmets to gain insight into brain aging, mental disorders, concussions, strokes, and the mechanics behind previously metaphysical experiences such as meditation and psychedelic trips. “To make progress on all the fronts that we need to as a society, we have to bring the brain online,” says Bryan Johnson, who’s spent more than five years and raised about $110 million—half of it his own money—to develop the helmets.

Johnson with one of his helmets in a lab at Kernel’s offices. PHOTOGRAPHER: DAMIEN MALONEY FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK

[Yuli Ban]

Pong? Kernel and Aim Lab partner to bring BCIs to eSports

Today, Kernel is announcing its second commercial partnership, with Statespace, publisher of Aim Lab. With over 16 million players globally, Aim Lab is an industry leader in performance optimization and training for eSports and video gaming. The combination of Kernel’s groundbreaking neurotechnology and Aim Lab’s competitive user base is the ideal partnership to leverage Kernel’s brain-computer interface (BCI) for quantified performance enhancement.

"What's measured is improved, and Kernel is making brain measurement mainstream,” said Kernel founder Bryan Johnson. “Pairing Kernel Flow with Aim Lab opens a new frontier of learning and mental optimization.”

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

Flow 50 Partner Update

Our Flow 50 partners are an extraordinary collection of talent. Below is just a partial list. Stay tuned for the first shipment, unboxing and initial reactions!

[Yuli Ban]

[weatheriscool]

Tapping into the Brain to Help a Paralyzed Man Speak

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/heal ... 175be38b67
By Pam Belluck

July 14, 2021Updated 5:28 p.m. ET

He has not been able to speak since 2003, when he was paralyzed at age 20 by a severe stroke after a terrible car crash.

Now, in a scientific milestone, researchers have tapped into the speech areas of his brain — allowing him to produce comprehensible words and sentences simply by trying to say them. When the man, known by his nickname, Pancho, tries to speak, electrodes implanted in his brain transmit signals to a computer that displays them on the screen.

His first recognizable sentence, researchers said, was, “My family is outside.”

[funkervogt]

Tapping into the Brain to Help a Paralyzed Man Speak

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/heal ... 175be38b67
By Pam Belluck

July 14, 2021Updated 5:28 p.m. ET

He has not been able to speak since 2003, when he was paralyzed at age 20 by a severe stroke after a terrible car crash.

Now, in a scientific milestone, researchers have tapped into the speech areas of his brain — allowing him to produce comprehensible words and sentences simply by trying to say them. When the man, known by his nickname, Pancho, tries to speak, electrodes implanted in his brain transmit signals to a computer that displays them on the screen.

His first recognizable sentence, researchers said, was, “My family is outside.”

Here's a video of him using thoughts to make words.

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

Wearable brain machine interface turns intentions into actions
Researchers combined wireless soft scalp electronics and virtual reality in a BMI system that allows the user to imagine an action and wirelessly control a wheelchair or robotic arm

A new wearable brain-machine interface (BMI) system could improve the quality of life for people with motor dysfunction or paralysis, even those struggling with locked-in syndrome—when a person is fully conscious but unable to move or communicate.

A multi-institutional, international team of researchers led by the lab of Woon-Hong Yeo at the Georgia Institute of Technology combined wireless soft scalp electronics and virtual reality in a BMI system that allows the user to imagine an action and wirelessly control a wheelchair or robotic arm.

The team, which included researchers from the University of Kent (United Kingdom) and Yonsei University (Republic of Korea), describes the new motor imagery-based BMI system this month in the journal Advanced Science.

"The major advantage of this system to the user, compared to what currently exists, is that it is soft and comfortable to wear, and doesn't have any wires," said Yeo, associate professor on the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.

BMI systems are a rehabilitation technology that analyzes a person's brain signals and translates that neural activity into commands, turning intentions into actions. The most common non-invasive method for acquiring those signals is ElectroEncephaloGraphy, EEG, which typically requires a cumbersome electrode skull cap and a tangled web of wires.

These devices generally rely heavily on gels and pastes to help maintain skin contact, require extensive set-up times, are generally inconvenient and uncomfortable to use. The devices also often suffer from poor signal acquisition due to material degradation or motion artifacts—the ancillary "noise" which may be caused by something like teeth grinding or eye blinking. This noise shows up in brain-data and must be filtered out.

The portable EEG system Yeo designed, integrating imperceptible microneedle electrodes with soft wireless circuits, offers improved signal acquisition. Accurately measuring those brain signals is critical to determining what actions a user wants to perform, so the team integrated a powerful machine learning algorithm and virtual reality component to address that challenge.

[Yuli Ban]

Anticipating Arrival of the Kernel Flow Device

The Boston University Neurophotonics Center is excited to be one of the phase 1 partners with Kernel to receive a new cutting edge time domain functional near infrared spectroscopy system that Kernel calls the Flow system, as was announced by Kernel on Dec 2, 2020 here.

The capabilities of this Flow system were revealed in detail during a live stream event on Oct 27, 2020 that is summarized and archived here. I had the opportunity during this event to go through a tear down of the system with the Flow product lead Ryan Field at Kernel that you can view here.

The pandemic has caused supply chain disruptions in all sectors, as we are all well aware. As a result, we had to wait a little longer to get our Flow system. In anticipation of the upcoming delivery of the first Flow systems, Bloomberg Businessweek published on June 16, 2021 an article about Kernel with the tantalizing title “Can a $110 Million Helmet Unlock the Secrets of the Mind?”. Written by Ashlee Vance, this article provides an inside look into what motivated the Kernel Founder Bryan Johnson to develop the Flow system and its closely related Flux system, a wearable magneto-encephalography system for measuring magnetic fluxes resulting from brain activity. This was also discussed a few days later on the Bloomberg radio show Bay State Business coming out of Boston on June 18, 2021.

Now, one month later, we have been told that we will receive our Kernel Flow system next Tuesday. Stay tuned for more as we learn firsthand about the capabilities of this new time domain fNIRS system.

[From David Boas's lab at Boston University. Boas is like one of the leading light, old ascended-masters of FNIRS technology.]