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by Corry Shores
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NeuroScience

The NeuroScience of Memory

Sperling (1960) ‘The Information Available in Brief Visual Presentation’, notes

 

Sperling (1967) ‘Successive approximations to a model for short term memory’, notes

Levitt (1971) ‘Transformed up‐down methods in psychoacoustics’, notes


Fuster and Alexander. (1971) ‘Neuronal Activity Related to Short-Term Memory’, notes

Weichselgartner & Sperling (1985) ‘Continuous Measurement of Visible Persistence’, notes

Funahashi et al. (1989) ‘Mnemonic coding of visual space in the monkey's dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,’ notes

 

Funahashi et al. (1993) ‘Prefrontal neuronal activity in rhesus monkeys performing a delayed anti-saccade task’, notes

Miller et al. (1996) ‘Neural Mechanisms of Visual Working Memory in Prefrontal Cortex of the Macaque’, notes

Rainer et al. (1999) ‘Prospective Coding for Objects in Primate Prefrontal Cortex’, notes

Heywood & Zihl (1999) Case Study of L.M.’s Inability to Perceive Motion, in their book chapter “Motion Blindness”, summary notes

 

 

 

 

Neurocomputation & Neural-network Computation

[Skip to subheading] Computation Entry Dirctory

Brain-Machine Interface Research

Some Recent Scientific Developments in Brain Machine Interface (for Robotic Prosthesis), Neuroplasticity, Neurocomputation, and Whole Brain Emulation

 

 

 

Some Recent Scientific Developments in Brain Machine Interface (for Robotic Prosthesis), Neuroplasticity, Neurocomputation, and Whole Brain Emulation

summary by Corry Shores
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[All boldface is my own]

Some (mostly) Recent Scientific Developments in Brain Machine Interface (for Robotic Prosthesis), Neuroplasticity, Neurocomputation, and Whole Brain Emulation

Brief Summary: New scientific advances support the posthuman vision of robotically enhanced and reconstructed post-humans. Neuroplasticity and brain machine interface (also brain computer interface) empower brains to control robotic parts just like biological ones. Whole brain emulation and cognitive prosthetics could allow brain implanted chips to replace or enhance our brain functioning, perhaps even completely “uploading” our brain onto a computerized simulation. Progressive replacement of bodily and neural parts with robotic and computerized ones could enable one to make a complete and continuous transition from human to robot.

 

"Brain" In A Dish Acts As Autopilot Living Computer

Explore: Research at the University of Florida

Spring 2005 Vol. 10 No.1

http://www.research.ufl.edu/publications/explore/v10n1/extract2.html

Thomas DeMarse has created a miniature living brain on a dish. He placed neurons that grew connections to form a network, and it can perform tasks in a virtual world.

“It’s essentially a dish with 60 electrodes arranged in a grid at the bottom,” DeMarse said. “Over that we put the living cortical neurons from rats, which rapidly begin to reconnect themselves, forming a living neural network — a brain.”

The brain and the simulator establish a two-way connection, similar to how neurons receive and interpret signals from each other to control our bodies. By observing how the nerve cells interact with the simulator, scientists can decode how a neural network establishes connections and begins to compute, DeMarse said.

When DeMarse first puts the neurons in the dish, they look like little more than grains of sand sprinkled in water. However, individual neurons soon begin to extend microscopic lines toward each other, making connections that represent neural processes. “You see one extend a process, pull it back, extend it out — and it may do that a couple of times, just sampling who’s next to it, until over time the connectivity starts to establish itself,” he said. “(The brain is) getting its network to the point where it’s a live computation device.”

To control the simulated aircraft, the neurons first receive information from the computer about flight conditions: whether the plane is flying straight and level or is tilted to the left or to the right. The neurons then analyze the data and respond by sending signals to the plane’s controls. Those signals alter the flight path and new information is sent to the neurons, creating a feedback system.

“Initially when we hook up this brain to a flight simulator, it doesn’t know how to control the aircraft,” DeMarse
said. “So you hook it up and the aircraft simply drifts randomly. And as the data come in, it slowly modifies the (neural) network so over time, the network gradually learns to fly the aircraft.”

Although the brain currently is able to control the pitch and roll of the simulated aircraft in weather conditions ranging from blue skies to stormy, hurricane-force winds, the underlying goal is a more fundamental understanding of how neurons interact as a network, DeMarse said.

“There’s a lot of data out there that will tell you that the computation that’s going on here isn’t based on just one neuron. The computational property is actually an emergent property of hundreds or thousands of neurons cooperating to produce the amazing processing power of the brain.”

Monkeys Think, Moving Artificial Arm as Own

By Benedict Carey

New York Times

Published: May 29, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/science/29brain.html?_r=0

Two monkeys with brain-controlled prosthetics successfully use their robotic arms to reach for food and feed it to themselves.

Two monkeys with tiny sensors in their brains have learned to control a mechanical arm with just their thoughts, using it to reach for and grab food and even to adjust for the size and stickiness of morsels when necessary, scientists reported on Wednesday.

The report, released online by the journal Nature, is the most striking demonstration to date of brain-machine interface technology. Scientists expect that technology will eventually allow people with spinal cord injuries and other paralyzing conditions to gain more control over their lives.

ALSO reported at MIT Technology Review

Monkey Thinks Robot into Action

A monkey is able to feed itself with a robotic arm.

    By Emily Singer

MIT Technology Review

May 28, 2008

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/410189/monkey-thinks-robot-into-action/

“It’s the first time a monkey–or a human–is directly, with their brain, controlling a real prosthetic arm,” says Krishna Shenoy, a neuroscientist at Stanford University who was not involved in the research. (Singer)

TED

Henry Markram: A brain in a supercomputer
Filmed Jul 2009 • Posted Oct 2009 • TEDGlobal 2009

http://www.ted.com/talks/henry_markram_supercomputing_the_brain_s_secrets.html

Supercomputers are being used to simulate brain activity. They began with animals and are moving up to human brain. They first catalogued neurons and described their interactive behavior. They can simulate human neuronal activity on a small scale. Also see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project

Rat memory under computer simulation

Eric Mankin

Public release date: 17-Jun-2011

Restoring memory, repairing damaged brains
Biomedical engineers analyze -- and duplicate -- the neural mechanism of learning in rats

Eureka Alert

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-06/uosc-rmr061211.php

Scientists have developed a way to turn memories on and off—literally with the flip of a switch.

Using an electronic system that duplicates the neural signals associated with memory, they managed to replicate the brain function in rats associated with long-term learned behavior, even when the rats had been drugged to forget.

"Flip the switch on, and the rats remember. Flip it off, and the rats forget," said Theodore Berger of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Department of Biomedical Engineering.” (Mankin)

ALSO reported in The New York Times

Memory Implant Gives Rats Sharper Recollection

By Benedict Carey

The New York Times

Published: June 17, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/science/17memory.html?_r=0

The authors said that with wireless technology and computer chips, the system could be easily fitted for human use. (Carey)

New horizons in auditory prostheses

Zeng, Fan-Gang PhD

Hearing Journal

November 2011 - Volume 64 - Issue 11 - pp 24,26,27

http://journals.lww.com/thehearingjournal/Fulltext/2011/11000/New_horizons_in_auditory_prostheses.5.aspx

There are many recent developments in cochlear implants.

All contemporary cochlear implants use similar signal processing that extracts temporal envelope information from a limited number of spectral bands, and delivers these envelopes successively to 12-22 electrodes implanted in the cochlea. As a result, these implants produce similarly good speech performance: 70-80 percent sentence recognition in quiet, which allows an average cochlear implant user to carry on a conversation over the telephone. Interestingly, though, sentence recognition in quiet has essentially remained at this same level since 1994. (Figure 1.)

Active tactile exploration using a brain–machine–brain interface

Joseph E. O’Doherty, Mikhail A. Lebedev, Peter J. Ifft, Katie Z. Zhuang, Solaiman Shokur, Hannes Bleuler & Miguel A. L. Nicolelis

Nature 479, 228–231 (10 November 2011)

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7372/full/nature10489.html

Monkeys operating virtual robotic arms had their brains given touch stimulations.

ALSO reported by The Huffington Post

Is It Possible To Feel Textures Using Just Brain Waves? New Study Shows How

The Huffington Post

Amanda Chan Posted: 10/07/11 11:49 AM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/07/brain-touch-texture-feelings-senses_n_996844.html

 

This is basically one of the holy grails of this field," study researcher Miguel Nicolelis, a neurobiology professor and co-director of the Duke Center for Neuroengineering, told Bloomberg. "No other study has provided an artificial sensory channel directly to the brain of animals. This is really needed to restore in patients that have a spinal cord injury not only their mobility, but their sense of touch." (Chan)

Going mental: Study highlights brain’s flexibility, gives hope for natural-feeling neuroprosthetics

By Sarah Yang, Media Relations

UC Berkeley News Center

March 4, 2012

http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2012/03/04/brain-flexibility-gives-hope-for-neuroprosthetics/

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have shown that neurons used for physical tasks can be retrained for brain machine interface usage. This shows that neuro-prosthetics can feel natural.

“Their new study, to be published Sunday, March 4, in the advanced online publication of the journal Nature, shows that through a process called plasticity, parts of the brain can be trained to do something they normally do not do. The same brain circuits employed in the learning of motor skills, such as riding a bike or driving a car, can be used to master purely mental tasks, even arbitrary ones.

[…]

To clarify these issues, the scientists set up a clever experiment in which rats could only complete an abstract task if overt physical movement was not involved. The researchers decoupled the role of the targeted motor neurons needed for whisker twitching with the action necessary to get a food reward.

The rats were fitted with a brain-machine interface that converted brain waves into auditory tones. To get the food reward – either sugar-water or pellets – the rats had to modulate their thought patterns within a specific brain circuit in order to raise or lower the pitch of the signal.

Auditory feedback was given to the rats so that they learned to associate specific thought patterns with a specific pitch. Over a period of just two weeks, the rats quickly learned that to get food pellets, they would have to create a high-pitched tone, and to get sugar water, they needed to create a low-pitched tone.

If the group of neurons in the task were used for their typical function – whisker twitching – there would be no pitch change to the auditory tone, and no food reward.

“This is something that is not natural for the rats,” said Costa. “This tells us that it’s possible to craft a prosthesis in ways that do not have to mimic the anatomy of the natural motor system in order to work.”

Simulated brain scores top test marks

First computer model to produce complex behaviour performs almost as well as humans at simple number tasks.

    Ed Yong

Nature | News

29 November 2012

http://www.nature.com/news/simulated-brain-scores-top-test-marks-1.11914

A computer simulated brain with 2.5 million virtual neurons can perform simple mathematical calculations.

Mind-controlled robot arms show promise

People with tetraplegia use their thoughts to control robotic aids.

    Alison Abbott

Nature | News

16 May 2012

http://www.nature.com/news/mind-controlled-robot-arms-show-promise-1.10652

[AP Report here]

Two tetraplegics use brain machine interface to gain some lost abilities.

Neurosurgeons implanted tiny recording devices containing almost 100 hair-thin electrodes in the motor cortex of their brains, to record the neuronal signals associated with intention to move.” (Abbott)

Cathy can use her thoughts to direct the motion of a robotic arm. She is able to direct it to grab a bottle of coffee and lift it to her lips. Bob as well operates the arm successfully. There is also a subject who operates a computer cursor using this interface, as if operating a computer mouse. The subjects used the BrainGate2 brain implant system [image below from the BrainGate wiki page.]

(Thanks wiki)

Paralyzed Man Uses Thoughts Alone to Control Robot Arm, Touch Friend's Hand, After Seven Years

Science Daily

Feb. 8, 2013 —

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130208124818.htm

Based on this journal article

Wei Wang et al.

An Electrocorticographic Brain Interface in an Individual with Tetraplegia. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (2): e55344

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0055344

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC describe in PLoS ONE how an electrode array sitting on top of the brain enabled a 30-year-old paralyzed man to control the movement of a character on a computer screen in three dimensions with just his thoughts. It also enabled him to move a robot arm to touch a friend's hand for the first time in the seven years since he was injured in a motorcycle accident. (Science Daily)

ALSO reported by AP

Paralyzed Man Uses Mind-Powered Robot Arm To Touch
Tim Hemmes

By Lauran Neergaard  

10/10/11 10:04 AM ET  

AP

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/10/mind-powered-robot-arm_n_1003204.html

"It wasn't my arm but it was my brain, my thoughts. I was moving something," Hemmes says. (Neergaard)

Bionic Eye Implant Approved by U.S. for Rare Disease
By Anna Edney

Bloomberg

Feb 15, 2013 7:01 AM GMT+0200

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-14/bionic-eye-implant-approved-by-u-s-for-rare-disease.html

New neuroprosthetic eye implant restores some visual capabilities.

While the $100,000-plus system won’t restore sight, it gives patients the ability to perceive the difference between light and dark. The device consists of a video camera, a transmitter mounted on a pair of eyeglasses and a processing unit that transforms images into electronic data sent to an implanted retinal prosthesis, the FDA said.

[…]

Konstantopoulos, of Glen Burnie, Maryland, said he was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa when he was in his early 40s and became completely blind about six months ago. He can see shadows now with the device and tell if the sun is behind a tree. Argus II is comfortable and the surgery was painless, he said.

[…]

A clinical study of 30 people showed the eye device helped patients recognize large letters or words, detect street curbs, walk on a sidewalk without falling and match black, gray and white socks.

Rats With Linked Brains Work Together
Megan Gannon, News Editor

Live Science

Date: 28 February 2013 Time: 12:23 PM ET

http://www.livescience.com/27544-rats-with-linked-brains-work-together.html

Brain plasticity so great that brains can use information from other brains.

Scientists have engineered something close to a mind meld in a pair of lab rats, linking the animals' brains electronically so that they could work together to solve a puzzle. And this brain-to-brain connection stayed strong even when the rats were 2,000 miles apart.

The experiments were undertaken by Duke neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis, who is best known for his work in making mind-controlled prosthetics.

"Our previous studies with brain-machine interfaces had convinced us that the brain was much more plastic than we had thought," Nicolelis explained. "In those experiments, the brain was able to adapt easily to accept input from devices outside the body and even learn how to process invisible infrared light generated by an artificial sensor. So, the question we asked was, if the brain could assimilate signals from artificial sensors, could it also assimilate information input from sensors from a different body?"

For the new experiments, Nicolelis and his colleagues trained pairs of rats to press a certain lever when a light went on in their cage. If they hit the right lever, they got a sip of water as a reward.

When one rat in the pair called the "encoder" performed this task, the pattern of its brain activity — something like a snapshot of its thought process — was translated into an electronic signal sent to the brain of its partner rat, the "decoder," in a separate enclosure. The light did not go off in the decoder's cage, so this animal had to crack the message from the encoder to know which lever to press to get the reward.

The decoder pressed the right lever 70 percent of the time, the researchers said.

[…]

"We saw that when the decoder rat committed an error, the encoder basically changed both its brain function and behavior to make it easier for its partner to get it right," Nicolelis explained in a statement. "

[…]

The connection was not lost even when the signals were sent over the Internet and the rats placed on two different continents, 2,000 miles (3,219 kilometers) apart.”

.

Neuronal Assemblages and Reassemblages, in Flohr, "Qualia and Brain Process"

by Corry Shores
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Neuronal Assemblages and Reassemblages

in

Hans Flohr

"Qualia and Brain Process"

Emergence or Reduction?

Essays on the Prospects of Nonreductive Physicalism.

Activity in our brains neural networks "is coupled with reorganization of these nets." *(225c)

Flohr's hypothesis is that "the occurrence of phenomenal states depends on the rate at which activity-dependent synaptic changes occur and neural assemblies are formed." (22cd)

Assemblies

In The Organization of Behavior, D.O. Hebb proposes that

repeated stimulation of specific receptors will lead slowly to the formation of an 'assembly' of association area cells which can act briefly as a closed system after stimulation has ceased; this prolongs the time during which structural changes of learning occur. (Hebb, qtd in Flohr 225d)

Later in 1959 he adds:

The key conception is that of the cell assembly, a brain process which corresponds to a particular sensory event, or a common aspect of a number of sensory events. This assembly is a closed system in which activity can 'reverberate' and thus continue after the sensory event which has started it has ceased. Also, one assembly will form connections with others, and it may therefore be made active by one of them in the total absence of the adequate stimulus. In short, the assembly activity is the simplest case of an image or an idea: a representative process." (Hebb, qtd in Flohr 226a)

Neural nets can self-organize on account of plastic synapses, called Hebb synapses. According to Hebb,

synapses on a neuron that are active while the neuron discharges will be strengthened, whereas inactive synapses will be weakened. Synapses from different inputs that are active at the same time on the same neuron will be reinforced and selected over others. (226)

Self-organized assemblies emerge from random beginnings.

When applied to nets of spatially distributed groups of neurons with non-specific, random interconnections, these so-called Hebb rules lead to a relative stabilization and association of neurons firing in a correlated fashion. An assembly of preferentially connected, coherently active cells is formed. If coincident activity is induced in some neurons of such a net by a patterned input, an assembly will be formed because the synchronous activity selectively modulates the pathways connecting these neurons.

The assembly detects and encodes the coherent properties of the stimulus pattern so that a representation of that pattern is generated. Once the assemblies have been formed, they would function as detectors of the same or similar input patterns expressing the detections of coherent features by coordinating their activities. It is easy to envisage that the output of such assemblies could in turn be used as input to other modifiable nets which then would reorganize their structure as a function of this input. Iteration of such processes would generate more and more abstract metarepresentations. (226c)

Flohr, Hans. "Qualia and Brain Process." in Emergence or Reduction? Essays on the Prospects of Nonreductive Physicalism. Eds. Ansgar Beckermann, Hans Flohr, Jaegwon Kim. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1992.

http://books.google.be/books?id=vpB_d4J_c14C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Emergence+or+Reduction%3F+Essays+on+the+Prospects+of+Nonreductive+Physicalism&ei=p1gpSqOOMZWOyATfgN39Cg&hl=en#PPA227,M1

Andy Clark's Cyborgs and Deleuze's Restructive Element

by Corry Shores
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Andy Clark's Cyborgs

and

Deleuze's Restructive Element

To elaborate the notion of Deleuzean selfhood, I will explore Andy Clark's vision of human plasticity. He offers very compelling evidence for his claim that we naturally extend our nervous systems through our technological apparatuses. This fits our image of a body without organs, a machine without mechanisms, a computer without programs, a cyborg without systems. But to make it illustrate our more Deleuzean vision, I will emphasize something implicit in Clark's thinking. His claim that our selfhoods are continually plastic implies that chaotic change is essential to who we are.

First I summarize his paper. Afterwards I comment.

Andy Clark

Re-Inventing Ourselves:

The Plasticity of Embodiment, Sensing, and Mind

Abstract

New technologies and scientific advances will radically change the way we interact with machines and computers. We can expect soon new interfaces between our brains and machines. Yet the notion of such machine interfaces has not been adequately explored. We have already considered using machines as tools. But we still need to discuss a more radical machine use where the human agent himself is literally extended or augmented. Clark will argue for this radical version of interface. And, we can expect it. For, we are biologically disposed to "literal (and repeated) episodes of sensory re-calibration, of bodily re-configuration and of mental extension." There is a "profoundly embodied agency" that we need to consider, instead of merely looking at a weaker sense of human embodiment. Clark ends by addressing questions and concerns regarding converging technologies.

I

Introduction:

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Fear of robotic enhancements is rooted in our misconception of humanity. We are not "locked-in agents" whose minds and physical capacities are fixed quantities that can only be compensated-for with technology. Rather, Clark argues, our minds and bodies are

essentially open to episodes of deep and transformative restructuring, in which new equipment (both physical and “mental”) can become quite literally incorporated into the thinking and acting systems that we identify as minds and persons.

Our embodied agencies contact the outer world (where the rubber meets the road) in our sensations and motions. We are born with our natural sensory tools. However, simple tools extend these faculties. Even a stick can serve this end.

It is a commonplace observation, however, that the use of simple tools can lead to alterations in that local sense of embodiment. Picking up and using a stick, we feel as if we are touching the world at the end of the stick, not (usually) as if we are touching the stick with our hand. The stick, it has sometimes been suggested, is in some way incorporated and the overall effect seems more like bringing a temporary whole new agent-world circuit into being, rather than simply exploiting the stick as a helpful prop or tool. (emphasis mine)

When using the stick, there seems to be two interfaces:

1) where the hand meets the stick, and

2) where the stick meets the road ("the place where the extended system 'biological-agent-stick' meets the rest of the world.")

Our given bodies place us into an "agent-world circuit." The stick places us in a new one. When we discover new technologies that extend our interaction with the world, we sense the tension between the two types of interface, between us and tool and between tool and world. However, if the technology is successful, we stop feeling our separation from the tool.

the new agent-tool interface itself fades from view, and the proper picture is one of an extended or enhanced agent confronting the (wider) world.

II. What's in an Interface?

Clark agrees with Haugeland that "we discern an interface where we discern a kind of regimented, often deliberately designed, point of contact between two or more independently tunable or replaceable parts." However Clark does not agree that flow across the interface is simple. But indeed, there is "intimate intermingling of mind, body and world" (qtd).

Gibson distinguishes two ways we might conceive our natural sense systems.

1) The standard (non-Gibsonian) view. [Digital]:

The sensory interface is the location where for example visual input is transformed into representations which may guide our actions. Such an interface is "a kind of fixed veil between an agent and a represented world."

[This version is digital, because sensory information about the world is communicated by means of a representation that 'codes' for discrete entities.]

2) The task-specific agent-world circuit. [Analog]:

In this view, there is not a representative medium that stands between us and the world around us. Rather, there is "an open conduit allowing environmental magnitudes to exert a constant influence on behavior." Consider this example. We are outfield, playing baseball. Crack. The ball flies our way. We cannot just know where the ball is at any given moment. More importantly, we need to know where it is going, so we may be there to catch it. Does our visual system first represent images of the ball's location; and then does our mind subsequently deduce where the ball will go? Most likely not. We do not "throw away the world" so to internally solve the problem of where to run. Rather, our visual sensors are more like an open channel. The magnitudes of the visual information, the ball's location and speed for example, have a direct modifying influence on the direction and speed of our running.

Sensing is here depicted as the opening of a channel, with successful whole-system behavior emerging when activity in this channel is kept within a certain range. What is created is thus a kind of new, task-specific agent-world circuit. As Randall Beer recently puts it,

The focus shifts from accurately representing an environment to continuously engaging that environment with a body so as to stabilize patterns of coordinated behavior that are adaptive for the agent (in press, ms. p. 13). (qtd)

[This version is analog, because there is a direct and continuous modulation from incoming information.]

So there seems to be no mediation between agent and world in this second sort of interface. For this reason Haugeland considers it to not involve an agent-world interface.

Clark disagrees. Consider when we connect many computers together to perform a common task. We know that there must be interface between them. However, while solving a problem, they all work together and "function as a single unified resource. Nonetheless, we still think of it as a web of distinct-but-interfaced devices."

III. New Systemic Wholes

"Biological systems, from lampreys to primates, display remarkable powers of bodily and sensory adaptability."

There is a performance artist with a robotic third arm. Electrode sensors allow his brain to control its motion. He has become so accustomed to the robotic arm that willing it is second nature.

It has become what some philosophers call “transparent equipment,” something through which Stelarc (the agent) can act on the world without first willing an action on anything else. In this respect, it now functions much as his biological hands and arms, serving his goals without (generally) being itself an object of conscious thought or effortful control.

There is a monkey who can control a robotic arm with his brain. The experiments concluded that the robotic arm system was assimilated into the physiology of the monkey's nervous system.

Creatures capable of this kind of deep incorporation of new bodily (and, as we'll see, sensory and cognitive) structure are examples of what I shall call (see section 4) “profoundly embodied agents.” Such agents are able constantly to negotiate and re-negotiate the agent-world boundary itself.

The infant must also learn to integrate her limbs into her neural physiology until they finally become "transparent equipment."

Another example is a system for helping blind people "see" with their skin. A grid of blunt nails is fixed to their backs. A visual sensory system detects the presence and distribution of objects around her, and conveys that information by applying pressure to the corresponding coordinate nail. Soon the blind users ceased feeling the nails, and could function as though "seeing" with their skin sensations. This is another example of "recalibration and renegotiation" of neural plasticity.

These technologies are new, but advancing rapidly. The back-mounted grid has been replaced with a tongue-mounted coin sized array. Soon we might have direct electrical connections to the nervous system.

Consider also an experimental helicopter flight-suit. When the helicopter tips one way, the pilot's body is hit with a "puff-induced vibrating sensation on that side of the body." The pilot moves his body to balance the vibrations, which accordingly tips the helicopter level. The suit links the pilot into a closed loop interaction that extends his agency outside his physical body.

We know such a device is successful when the pilot no longer feels the vibrations, but rather just the helicopter's position.

IV. Incorporation versus Use

A critical response could be: are we not just speaking in the usual sense of "the same old user in command of a new tool."

Clark addresses neural research in response. There are neurons that receive both visual and tactile information. These neurons were monitored while monkeys learned to use a rake. They found that the neurons became sensitive to things at the rake's distance away, "as if the rake was part of the arm and forearm” (qtd)

Berti and Frassinetti conclude that “[t]he brain makes a distinction between 'far space' (the space beyond reaching distance) and 'near space' (the space within reaching distance)” and that “ … simply holding a stick causes a remapping of far space to near space. In effect the brain, at least for some purposes, treats the stick as though it were a part of the body” (qtd)

Clark distinguishes the body image from the body schema.

the body image is a conscious construct, able to inform thought and reasoning about the body. The body schema is a suite of neural settings that implicitly (and non-consciously) define a body in terms of its capabilities for action, for example, by defining the extent of “near space” for action programs. I would speculate, however, that the striking conscious experiential datum of equipment (not just rakes but even cars and violins) falling transparent in use is plausibly one result, in conscious agents, of just these kinds of deeper changes: changes (that may be temporary, context-dependent, or long-term) in the body-schema itself.

Clark notes that when we use tools, there is more than just awareness of its capacities. We use it automatically as extending the reach of our "near space."

In this way, our own embodied activity brings forth new systemic wholes.

V. Extended Cognition

We see that we extend our sense of our physical body. Can we extend and augment our minds too?

We often already must coordinate new and old brain processes when learning something new. Hence we already are extending our cognitive capacities naturally. Clark suggests that we could as well use non-biological extensions.

When we obtain deep implicit access to new mental operations or bodies of information, we have extended our brains.

Experiments show that our minds store information by visual indices, and retrieve that information by looking to them again. Other research finds that we are really only aware of very small portions of what happens around us. But because we can retrieve detail, we think we are aware of it.

The point, for present purposes, is that the brain need not actively represent the availability of such and such information from any given internal or external location. Instead, it simply deploys a problem-solving routine (that may involve programmed saccades to a visual location, or calls to biological memory) whose fine temporal structure assumes the easy availability of such and such information from such and such a location. It is in this way (I am suggesting) that non-biological informational resources can become—either temporarily or long-term—genuinely incorporated into the problem-solving whole. Just as the experienced brain need not (though it sometimes can) explicitly represent the shape of a tool and then infer the available reach, so too it need not (though it sometimes can) first represent the availability of specific information at some location, and then infer that it can find what it needs by accessing a given resource.

Instead, a problem-solving routine is delicately “grown” so as to maximally exploit the local informational field. Such a field can include biological resources, environmental structure, and cognitive artifacts such as notebooks and laptops. As we move towards an era of wearable computing and ubiquitous information access, the robust, reliable information fields to which our brains delicately adapt their routines will become increasingly dense and powerful, further blurring the distinction between the cognitive agent and her best tools, props and artifacts.

VI. Profound Embodiment

There are three grades of embodiment: mere, modest, and profound.

1.

A “merely embodied” creature or robot would be one equipped with a body and sensors, able to engage in closed-loop interactions with its world, but for whom the body was nothing but a means to implement solutions arrived at by pure reason. Imagine also that this being can control the body only by issuing a complex series of micro-managing commands to every tiny muscle, tendon, spring and actuator.

2.

A “modestly embodied” creature or robot would then be one for whom the body was not just another problem-space, requiring constant micro-managed control, but was rather a resource whose own features and dynamics (of sensor placement, of linked tendons and muscle groups, etc.) could be actively exploited allowing for increasingly fluent forms of action selection and control.

The reason these embodiments are modest is because the robots are "locked in" to respond rigidly to external sense data.

Such systems are congenitally unable to learn new kinds of body-exploiting solution “on the fly,” in response to damage, growth, or change.

3.

A “profoundly embodied” creature or robot is thus (according to this definition) one that is highly engineered so as to be able to learn to make maximal problem-simplifying use of an open-ended variety of internal, bodily or external sources of order.

Such an embodiment creates new agent world circuits by seeking-out opportunities to make the most of their systems and interfaces with the world. Primates and especially humans are profoundly embodied.

We are not disembodied. We are "promiscuously body-and-world exploiting," "forever testing and exploring the possibilities for incorporating new resources and structures deep into their problem-solving regimes." We are Natural-Born Cyborgs. There is no disembodied rational faculty within us.

Instead, much of our skilled engagement with the world flows, we saw, from the way subtle neural changes enable the embodied agent to rather directly engage the world, without representing every detail of bodily form and action-taking capacity

And our bodily assemblages can reconfigure.

all this is now highly negotiable, with the body-schema and other supporting resources apparently able to re-form and re-configure as components, interfaces, and resources change and shift.

We are

are the surprisingly plastic minds of profoundly embodied agents: agents whose boundaries and components are forever negotiable, and for whom body, thinking, and sensing are woven flexibly (and repeatedly) from the whole cloth of situated, intentional action.

VII. Enhancement or subjugation?

If Clark is right, the we

the human self emerges as a “soft self” (Clark, 2003), a constantly negotiable collection of resources easily able to straddle and criss-cross the boundaries between biology and artifact.

Many fear that this dehumanizes us or that such technologies threaten our well-being. Clark remains optimistic for three reasons.

1) Human enhancement is as old as humanity. From the first time we used a stick for some purpose, we extended our embodiments.

2) Our brain will just naturally incorporate useful extensions. We already unconsciously use brain processes to grasp an object. As we saw with robotic arms, we can quickly come to unconsciously use extensions of our brain's processes. It comes quite naturally for us to solve mathematical problems with calculators. They do not threaten humanity, even though they extend our brain's computational capacities to an external technology. And presumably, we will still be responsible self-controlled agents.

3) We can better decide and determine what is best for humanity. When we realize that our technologies become us, we can demand that they be beneficent and aid human flourishing. By choosing our bio-technologies, we choose who and what we are.

VIII. Conclusions

Clark has argued that we are profoundly embodied agents. We extends our bodies and minds using technology. And this process happens continually. With each new technology we again reconfigure our agent/world boundary. Yet, we are not disembodied cogitos. We are in direct contact with the world and with our technological sensory and cognitive extensions. The walking stick does not just become a part of our body. It becomes a part of our brain as well, and a part of us.

These technologies are developing rapidly, and may take a variety of forms, for example chemical, computational, genetic, bio-mechanical, and nano-technological.

Given our natural plasticity, we should not fear a "post-human" future. We should instead be optimistic that these technologies will enhance human happiness and flourishing.

Clark, Andy. "Re-Inventing Ourselves: The Plasticity of Embodiment, Sensing, and Mind. in Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Volume 32, Issue 3 May 2007 , pages 263 - 282.

More information and text available at:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a780168855~db=all~jumptype=rss

Deleuzean Cyborgs without Systems

Clark explicitly states that our brain's plastic alterations are on-going. He also at times refers to the breakdown of organic bodily and mind operations that happen when the new tool is first being incorporated into our nervous systems. For example, when the macaque monkey started controlling the robot arm, he seemed to have experienced disjunctions within his own system's operations. Clark writes:

When the robot arm was inserted into the control loop, the monkey displayed a striking degradation of behavior. It took two full days of practice for fluent thought-control over the onscreen cursor to be re-established. (emphasis mine)

When learning to use a new tool, we might as well feel the way it disorients us, and places our systems into chaos, until we adjust to it. So it seems that when we extend and alter our nervous system's operations, we do so under the conditions of confusion, disorder, and disorientation.

Hence it might seem that the aim of new tool use is to master the world around us. But at first, we let the world master us. We submit ourselves to chaos. When we first take a wet paintbrush to canvass, we apply too much or too little pressure. We have not learned to extend our sensitivities out to the end of the brush. And we can clearly feel the brush in our hand. We are aware of the contact-point between hand and brush, but not between brush and canvass. Slowly, the brush becomes like a sixth finger. We lose our sensitivity to the brush itself. We no longer feel it in our hands. But we do feel the canvass at the end of the brush. We can sense through the brush whether the canvass is smooth or rough, wet or dry. The brush-bristles are new nerve endings. Information comes through the brush that our nervous systems have learned to cooperate-with as though the bush extended our nerves beyond our bodies. So while we do not have nerve endings that touch the canvass, the ones in our fingers along with the neurons in our brains have modified their operations so that they convert the information coming through the brush as giving indications to what lies on the other end. At first we feel a tug in the brush. That means nothing at first. Slowly we learn to translate the amount of tug with the roughness of the surface. As we become adept, we need not think twice. We instantly feel the canvass' surface with each stroke.

So consider a professional painter. Take away her brushes and paints, and tell her she must live without them. Some argue that these instruments are not truly parts of us. But what about the painter without her brush? Will she feel that something essential to her is lacking, maybe even what is most essential to her? Our tools become extensions of our selfhoods, and not just in a metaphorical way. They literally are co-operational extensions of our brains and nerves.

Yet Clark does not stress the element of chaos. However, he does imply it. And by addressing it, we can take his line of thinking in a new direction. Because we can see that what makes us living, growing selves are our confrontations with disorder. As soon as we master the new tool, we are desensitized. What this tells us is that to be alive and to be ourselves, we need to explore. We should jump into new worlds, and let them change us.

'"A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he drowns—nicht wahr? . . . No! I tell you! The way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up. So if you ask me—how to be?"

...

"And yet it is true—it is true. In the destructive element immerse." . . . He spoke in a subdued tone, without looking at me, one hand on each side of his face. "That was the way. To follow the dream, and again to follow the dream—and so—ewig—usque ad finem. . . ." (Conrad, Lord Jim)

Neurogenesis in Bear, Connors, & Michael, Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain

by Corry Shores
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Bear, Connors, & Michael

Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain

Research in the past few years by Fred Gage at the Salk Institute has established definitively that new neurons are generated in the adult rat hippocampus, a structure that is important for learning and memory. Interestingly, the number of new neurons goes up in this region if the animal is exposed to an enriched environment, filled with toys and playmates.

Hippocampal neurogenesis is not restricted to rats; Gage has found evidence that the same holds true for humans.

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Bear, Mark. F., Barry W. Connors, & Michael A. Paradiso.Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain. London: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007.