Brain Holograms May One Day Help Blind See, Paralyzed Feel


Brain Holograms May One Day Help Blind See, Paralyzed Feel

May 1, 2018 at 6:58 pm

BERKELEY (KPIX 5) — A technology that one day could help the blind see – and the paralyzed feel – by projecting holograms onto their brains sounds like it’s straight out of Star Wars. But researchers at the University of California, Berkeley are turning this science fiction into fact.

Researchers UC Berkeley’s Adesnik Lab are working on activating and suppressing specific neurons with light by placing laser 3D holograms into the brain.

“We have one laser we use to observe neural activity and we have another laser with holographic patterns to trigger action potential with light,” said researcher Dr. Nicolas Pégard.

What does that mean? Scientists can create a real sensation or experience of something you’ve actually never had. It’s sort of like tricking the brain to see, touch and feel things that are not even there. They hope this technology will eventually help those with prosethetic limbs to feel and the blind to see.

“If you do know all of the steps in convincing an animal that it’s one thing when it’s actually another, than you’ve proven to yourself that you know a lot about the brain,” said researcher Dr. Ian Oldenburg. “You know at least you can create a perception for an animal.”

Right now, they’re in the beginning stages of this innovative technology, testing it only on mice. But it’s the research of the future. Even those working on the project say it’s like something out of a sci-fi movie.

“We always sort of joke it’s like the Matrix for mice,” said researcher Dr. Alan Mardinly. “You close your eyes and what you want is to wake up and fly a helicopter. We’re a long way off from that … If that ever happens, it will be based off of some form of this technology.”

“I probably won’t ever see a patient helped by this technology. I probably won’t live that long,” said Oldenburg.” But it’s adding to the sum total of work done on this subject, albeit a small part. It’s helping.”

“Their work was just published in the journal of Nature Neuroscience. Hundreds of scientists from around the world have already expressed interest. They want as many researchers as possible to start using their technology to hopefully crack the neural code.

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/05/01/brain-holograms-uc-berkeley/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Report: World’s 1st remote brain surgery via 5G network performed in China

World’s 1st remote brain surgery via 5G network performed in China Published time: 17 Mar, 2019 13:12 ·           A Chinese surgeon has performed the world’s first remote brain surgery using 5G technology, with the patient 3,000km away from the operating doctor. Dr. Ling Zhipei remotely implanted a neurostimulator into his patient’s brain on Saturday, Chinese state-run media  reports . The surgeon manipulated the instruments in the Beijing-based PLAGH hospital from a clinic subsidiary on the southern Hainan island, located 3,000km away. The surgery is said to have lasted three hours and ended successfully. The patient, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, is said to be feeling well after the pioneering operation. The doctor used a computer connected to the next-generation 5G network developed by Chinese tech giant Huawei. The new device enabled a near real-time connection, according to Dr. Ling.  “You barely feel that the patient is 3,000 kilometers away,”  he said.
Read more

BMW traps alleged thief by remotely locking him in car

BMW traps alleged thief by remotely locking him in car Stealer's Wheel? Seattle police department quotes "Watchmen" movie in a recap of the recent arrest. Tech Culture by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper December 4, 2016 5:00 PM PST It's maybe the most satisfying arrest we can imagine. Seattle police caught an alleged car thief by enlisting the help of car maker BMW to both track and then remotely lock the luckless criminal in the very car he was trying to steal. Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, deputy director of communications for the Seattle Police Department, posted a witty summary of the event on the SPD's blog on Wednesday. Turns out if you're inside a stolen car, it's perhaps not the best time to take a nap. "A car thief awoke from a sound slumber Sunday morning (Nov. 27) to find he had been remotely locked inside a stolen BMW, just as Seattle police officers were bearing down on him," Spangenthal-Lee wrote. The suspect found a ke
Read more

Visualizing The Power Of The World's Supercomputers

Visualizing The Power Of The World's Supercomputers   BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, JAN 21, 2022 - 04:15 AM   A supercomputer is a machine that is built to handle billions, if not trillions of calculations at once. Each supercomputer is actually made up of many individual computers (known as nodes) that work together in parallel. A common metric for measuring the performance of these machines is  flops , or  floating point operations per second . In this visualization,  Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu uses  November 2021 data from  TOP500  to visualize the computing power of the world’s top five supercomputers. For added context, a number of modern consumer devices were included in the comparison. Ranking by Teraflops Because supercomputers can achieve over one quadrillion flops, and consumer devices are much less powerful, we’ve used  teraflops  as our comparison metric. 1 teraflop = 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) flops. Supercomputer Fugaku  was completed in March 202
Read more