IN MENTAL AUGMENTATION(side-bar
to article in New Scientist,
Stepping Out - The Mind Unbounded, February 16, 2010)
Galvani demonstrates a connection
between nerves, muscles and electricity by animating frog legs with electricity
applied to nerves leading to muscles, thus hinting at how the internal workings
of a mind could be coupled
to external artificial devices.
1906Ramon Cajal and
Camillo Golgi receive Nobel Prize for developing nerve staining methods and elucidating
the detailed structure of the cerebrum and cerebellum, so providing a
rough roadmap for later intervention.
invents the electroencephalogram (EEG) for recording electrical activity in the
human brain: a first crude, one-way channel into the functioning of the mind.
Watson and Francis Crick determine the structure of DNA and its mode of replications,
and suggest its role as the control code for biological growth, so laying
the foundation for molecular biology, and eventually the engineering of biological
structures, including neural assemblies for electronic interfaces.
Penfield produces maps of the cortex by means of
electrical probes of its surface during brain surgery--evoking specific memories,
sensations and motor responses
by stimulating specific locations, thus establishing the geographic nature of
mental organization, and incidentally providing the first examples of artificial
interaction with the internal workings of the mind.
Noyce and Jack Kirby invent the integrated circuit, a way of placing
many electronic components on a single piece of crystal, initiating at least
a half century of exponential growth in electronic complexity, the creation of
mind-like machines, and eventually
the merger of biological and artificial minds.
Rosenblatt develops and reports on learning experiments with the Perceptron,
an artificial neural net: a way of organizing electronic components in a structure
that anatomically and functionally matches the organization of biological
1967George Brindley and William Lewin implant
an electrode array into the visual cortex of a congenitally blind subject, and
generate visual phosphenes (spots)
by camera-controlled computer activation of this array, restoring some sight
to a nerve-blind volunteer, and providing an early major demonstration of a
computer-nervous system symbiosis.
and Rajiv Kamar demonstrate the neural comb, a low-noise, high-bandwidth external
channel to the nervous system, providing for the first time potentially total
external access to higher mental functions.
Kamar and Fred Wright use a
neural comb with a PDP-10 computer to enable a squirrel monkey to play chess and
to read, an early example of mental augmentation by electronic means.
House and Janet Urban install a cochlear implant driven
by an external computer, restoring partial hearing to a nerve-deaf patient,
and creating a successful medical niche for electronic substitution of lost
1982William DeVries installs first permanent
artificial heart implanted
in a human subject, causing a major shift in the public perception of the
relation of "natural" biological functions to "artificial" mechanical devices.
Josephine Bogart and Paul Vogels install a neural
comb in the corpus callosum of an epileptic patient, and program an external computer
to interrupt seizures: the first human application of a neural comb.
Meade develops an artificial retina, integrating
tens of thousands of artificial
neurons on an integrated circuit, developing some of the analog techniques used
in the electronic portions of future "neurochips."
Kawabata develops a successful predictive model of human cortical behavior
building on Edelman's "neural darwinism" formulation, an essential step in
providing the engineering environment used to design the neural structures grown
by neurochip viruses.
1997Ushio Kawabata and Chickie
Levitt develop an information-efficient
method of deriving functional neural anatomy from dense observations
of nerve signals, so laying the foundation for the mental mapping process used
to adapt a neurochip to its host.
2000Chickie Levitt and
Toshi Okada develop a genetic design for a neural interface between the human
callosum and a data transmission integrated circuit. This design is encoded into
RNA viruses which are part of neurochip implants, and act by infecting nearby
neural tissue, so causing the
growth of connective and data-compressing neuron structures that connect the
electronic portion of the neurochip with the brain.
Levitt combines previous electronic, genetic and neural innovations to
produce the first complete, functional, self-connecting neurochip.
first experiment with neurochips is partial success. A neurochip-augmented
chimpanzee demonstrates an equivalent human IQ of 190 for two
months, before dying of a brain