Bioelectronics, Medical Imaging and Our
Bodies
Week 5: Reverse engineering &
neuromorphic engineering
Maryse de la Giroday
6-week course
SFU Liberal Arts & Adults 55+ program
It’s all about the … (1 of 4)
• Sitting quietly in jars in a custom-built room at
Yale's medical library are 550 human brains.
It’s all about the … (2 of 4)
• Harvey Cushing, who preserved the brains
from 1903 to 1932 as part of his tumor
registry. When Cushing died in 1939, his
undergraduate alma mater Yale inherited the
brains.
It’s all about the … (3 of 4)
• Cushing introduced practices that dramatically
lowered the mortality rate, such as monitoring
blood pressure during surgery and operating
with a local anesthesic instead of ether. He
was also the first to use x-rays to diagnose
brain tumors.
It’s all about the … (4 of 4)
• Prior to being restored and placed in the
medical library in 2010, the leaky jars holding
Cushing's brain collection were locked in a
basement under Yale's med student dorms.
• http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/20
14/10/06/brains_in_jars_at_the_cushing_cent
er_in_the_yale_medical_library.html
and reverse engineering
• What is that?
Example of reverse engineering (1 of
8)
• (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/greatcathedral-mystery.html)
Brunelleschi’s Duomo (2 of 8)
• The dome that crowns Florence’s great
cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore—the
Duomo—is a towering masterpiece of
Renaissance ingenuity and an enduring source
of mystery. Still the largest masonry dome on
earth after more than six centuries, it is taller
than the Statue of Liberty and weighs as much
as an average cruise ship.
Brunelleschi’s Duomo (3 of 8)
• Historians and engineers have long debated
how its secretive architect, Filippo
Brunelleschi, managed to keep the dome
perfectly aligned and symmetrical as the sides
rose and converged toward the center, 40
stories above the cathedral floor. His laborers
toiled without safety nets, applying novel,
untried methods. Over 4 million bricks might
collapse at any moment—and we still don’t
understand how Brunelleschi prevented it.
Brunelleschi’s Duomo (4 of 8)
• How did a hot-tempered , 15th century, goldsmith
with no formal architectural training create the
most miraculous edifice of the Renaissance?
• The cathedral was started in 1296 to showcase
Florence and its status.
• The dome was intended to be the largest cupola
on earth
(http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/02/ilduomo/mueller-text)
Brunelleschi’s Duomo (5 of 8)
• Even by the early 15th Century , no one had figured out
how to build a dome that was 150 ft. across and
started 180 ft. above the ground on walls that had
already been built.
• In 1418 there was a competition and Brunelleschi who
won “promised to build not one but two domes, one
nested inside the other, without elaborate and
expensive scaffolding. Yet he refused to explain how
he’d achieve this, fearing that a competitor would steal
his ideas. Brunelleschi’s stubbornness led to a shouting
match with the overseers, who twice had him
restrained and forcibly ejected from the assembly,
denouncing him as ‘a buffoon and a babbler’.”
Brunelleschi’s Duomo (6 of 8)
• He (as a boy) mastered
– drawing and painting,
– wood carving,
– sculpture in silver and bronze,
– stone setting,
– niello, and
– enamel work.
Brunelleschi’s Duomo (7 of 8)
• Later he studied optics and tinkered endlessly
with wheels, gears, weights, and motion,
building a number of ingenious clocks,
including what may have been one of the first
alarm clocks in history.
• And, he single-handedly worked out the rules
of linear perspective.
Brunelleschi’s Duomo (8 of 8)
• Italian academic Massimo Ricci believes he has
successfully reverse-engineered the dome
without any contemporary tools (computers,
building materials, etc.)
• Key to solving the puzzle was a flower
• Ricci believes that Brunelleschi created a metal
flower and used the petals as a model for how to
place the bricks (http://www.saylor.org/site/wpcontent/uploads/2011/11/ARTH-206-Dome.pdf)
Reverse engineering the brain
• Why?
Brain-in-a-dish (1 of 5)
Brain-in-a-dish (2 of 5)
• Tufts researchers have created a new, modular
design of bioengineered brain-like tissue. On
injury, this brain-like tissue responds with
biochemical and electrophysiological
outcomes that mimic observations in vivo.
Brain-in-a-dish (3 of 5)
• This model offers new directions for studies of
brain function, disease and injury.
• Each module combined two materials with
different properties: a stiffer porous scaffold
made of silk protein on which cortical neurons,
derived from rats, could anchor and a softer
collagen gel matrix that allowed axons
(projections from the neuron that conduct
impulses away from the nerve body) to penetrate
and connect three-dimensionally.
Brain-in-a-dish (4 of 5)
• The silk scaffolds were assembled into concentric
rings to simulate the layers of the neocortex. Each
layer was dyed with food color and seeded with
[rat]neurons independently.
• Tufts University researchers today [Aug. 11, 2014]
announced development of the first reported
complex three-dimensional model made of brainlike cortical tissue that exhibits biochemical and
electrophysiological responses and can function
in the laboratory for months.
Brain-in-a-dish (5 of 5)
• "There are few good options for studying the
physiology of the living brain, yet this is perhaps
one of the biggest areas of unmet clinical need
when you consider the need for new options to
understand and treat a wide range of
neurological disorders associated with the brain.
… ) said Kaplan [David Kaplan, Stern Family
professor and chair of biomedical engineering at
Tufts School of Engineering]
• http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/201408/tu-bmf080614.php
Brain-in-a-dish (2nd view)
• Bioengineers have created three-dimensional
brain-like tissue that functions like and has
structural features similar to tissue in the rat
brain and that can be kept alive in the lab for
more than two months.
Brain-in-a-dish (2nd view)
• As a first demonstration of its potential, researchers
used the brain-like tissue to study chemical and
electrical changes that occur immediately following
traumatic brain injury and, in a separate experiment,
changes that occur in response to a drug. The tissue
could provide a superior model for studying normal
brain function as well as injury and disease, and could
assist in the development of new treatments for brain
dysfunction.
• http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/201408/niob-bcf080714.php
Brain-in-a-dish (3rd view)
• Dr. Kaplan said his team was working on
sustaining the brainlike tissue for six months —
and with human neurons created from stem cells.
He plans to add a model of the brain’s vascular
system, so researchers can study what happens
when drugs cross the blood-brain barrier.
• http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/12/health/sci
entists-create-3d-model-that-mimics-brainfunction.html
Radiogenetics (1 of 2)
• New way to remotely control brain cells: radio
waves
– Could allow researchers to rapidly activate or silence
neurons within a small area of the brain or dispersed
across a larger region, including those in difficult-toaccess locations
– potential for use treating patients
• The project will make use of a technique called
radiogenetics that combines the use of radio
waves or magnetic fields with nanoparticles to
turn neurons on or off
Radiogenetics (2 of 2)
• Researcher: Sarah Stanley/Rockefeller
University
• Grant for $1.26 million over three years, is one
of 58 projects in the first round of BRAIN
awards
• http://newswire.rockefeller.edu/2014/10/07/r
ockefeller-neurobiology-lab-is-awarded-firstround-brain-initiative-grant/
Controlling the brain (1 of 7)
• Trauma
– McLean Hospital researchers are reporting that xenon gas, used
in humans for anesthesia and diagnostic imaging, has the
potential to be a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD) and other memory-related disorders.
– "In our study, we found that xenon gas has the capability of
reducing memories of traumatic events," said Edward G.
Meloni, PhD, assistant psychologist at McLean Hospital and an
assistant professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "It's
an exciting breakthrough, as this has the potential to be a new
treatment for individuals suffering from PTSD."
• http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-08/mhxes082214.php
Controlling the brain (2 of 7)
• "We have shown how the emotional valence of
memories can be switched on the cellular level.“
– By manipulating neural circuits in the brain of mice,
scientists have altered the emotional associations of
specific memories. The research, led by Howard Hughes
Medical Institute investigator Susumu Tonegawa at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), reveals that
the connections between the part of the brain that stores
contextual information about an experience and the part
of the brain that stores the emotional memory of that
experience are malleable.
• http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/201408/hhmi-rct082714.php
Controlling the brain (3 of 7)
• Injury
– Treatment with xenon gas after a head injury
reduces the extent of brain damage, according to
a study in mice.
– Head injury is the leading cause of death and
disability in people aged under 45 in developed
countries, mostly resulting from falls and road
accidents. The primary injury caused by the initial
mechanical force is followed by a secondary injury
which develops in the hours and days afterwards.
Controlling the brain (4 of 7)
– This secondary injury is largely responsible for
patients' mental and physical disabilities, but there
are currently no drug treatments that can be given
after the accident to stop it from occurring.
– Scientists at Imperial College London found that
xenon, given within hours of the initial injury, limits
brain damage and improves neurological outcomes in
mice, both in the short term and long term. The
findings, published in the journal Critical Care
Medicine, could lead to clinical trials of xenon as a
treatment for head injury in humans.
• http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/201409/icl-xgp090914.php
Controlling the brain (5 of 7)
• … researchers at the UC Davis Center for
Neuroscience and Department of Psychology
have used light to erase specific memories in
mice, and proved a basic theory of how
different parts of the brain work together to
retrieve episodic memories.
• http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.l
asso?id=11053
Controlling the brain (6 of 7)
• Remember the single dose of brain-changing
antidepressant (week 4)?
• A single dose of antidepressant is enough to
produce dramatic changes in the functional
architecture of the human brain. Brain scans
taken of people before and after an acute dose of
a commonly prescribed SSRI (serotonin reuptake
inhibitor) reveal changes in connectivity within
three hours, say researchers who report their
observations in the Cell Press journal Current
Biology on September 18.
Controlling the brain (7 of 7)
• "We were not expecting the SSRI to have such
a prominent effect on such a short timescale
or for the resulting signal to encompass the
entire brain," says Julia Sacher of the Max
Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and
Brain Sciences
• http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/201
4-09/cp-sdo091114.php
Controlling devices with the brain (1 of
12)
• Brain-controlled robotic arm
• http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=6817 (May 2012)
• The video shows a woman getting herself a
cup of coffee for the first time in 15 years.
She’s tetraplegic (aka quadriplegic) and is
participating in a research project funded by
DARPA (US Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency) for developing
neuroprostheses.
Controlling devices with the brain (2 of
12)
• Miguel Nicolelis & the 2014 world cup kick
• I’ve been covering this story since 2011 and,
even so, was late to the party … Nicolelis has
been working on a brain-controlled
exoskeleton to allow paraplegics to walk again
since roughly 2004
(http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=13351)
Controlling devices with the brain (3 of
12)
• Kick Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZrvdODe
1QI
• Juliano Pinto, a 29-year-old paraplegic,
dressed in Brazil's home colours, walked out
into the Arena de Sao Paulo stadium and
performed the ceremonial first kick at the
2014 FIFA World Cup. (June 2014)
Controlling devices with the brain (4 of
12)
• His power-kick came with the help of a robotic
exoskeleton suit, a new technology that is mindcontrolled.
• More than 150 scientists and rehabilitation
professionals from around the world collaborated on
the mind-controlled robotic exoskeleton suit, also
called the Walk Again Project. Led by Nicolelis, the
group's goal is to eventually make wheelchairs
obsolete.
• http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/cyborg-soccer-how-aparaplegic-took-first-kick-at-the-world-cup-1.1868837
Controlling devices with the brain ( 5
of 12)
• Consortium of European research institutions and
companies want to get affected patients quite
literally back on their feet.
• In the EU’s [European Union] NEUWalk project,
which has been awarded funding of some nine
million euros, researchers are working on a new
method of treatment designed to restore motor
function in patients who have suffered severe
injuries to their spinal cord. (video:
http://www.neuwalk.eu/)
Controlling devices with the brain (6 of
12)
• In another project: the technique relies on
electrically stimulating the nerve pathways in
the spinal cord.
• “In the injured area, the nerve cells have been
damaged to such an extent that they no
longer receive usable information from the
brain, so the stimulation needs to be delivered
beneath that,” explains Dr. Peter Detemple
• Fraunhofer device (frogheart post & in notes)
Controlling devices with the brain (7 of
12)
Controlling devices with the brain (8 of
12)
• The implantable microelectrode sensors are
flexible and wafer-thin.
© Fraunhofer IMM
http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/researchnews/2014/may/hope-for-paraplegicpatients.html
• http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=13448
Controlling devices with the brain (9 of
12)
• For the first time, robotic prostheses controlled via
implanted neuromuscular interfaces have become a
clinical reality. A novel osseointegrated (boneanchored) implant system gives patients new
opportunities in their daily life and professional
activities.
• In January 2013 a Swedish arm amputee was the first
person in the world to receive a prosthesis with a
direct connection to bone, nerves and muscles.
• http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/201410/cuot-mpa100214.php &
http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=14845
Controlling devices with the brain (10
of 12)
• Week 1: Intraosseous Transcutaneous
Amputation Prosthesis (ITAP) in the “Growing
into your prosthetics “ post
(http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=3964)
Controlling devices with the brain (11
of 12)
• Media, pop culture, pull marketing, & product
placement
• Glee
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaiO8a1ZY
5g0
Controlling devices with the brain (12
of 12)
• Grey's Anatomy
• Owen hopes that by showing Callie the
Veterans Hospital patients, she will help them
via her robotic limb lab. Elsewhere, Bailey and
Alex get ready to go in front of the board
while Jo becomes jealous of Alex and
Meredith’s friendship. (Thursday, Oct. 9, 2014)
Cyborgs
• What’s a cyborg?
• Wheelchair as part of the body mentioned in
Week 1 (RoboLaw)
Alfred North Whitehead
• There is no absolute gap between living and
nonliving. (paraphrasing: A Key to
Whitehead's Process and Reality, paperback,
Sep 15 1981 by Donald W. Sherburne [Process
and reality, 1929])
Issue of undecidability
• Both dead and alive [inanimate and animate],
human and inhuman [flesh and machine],
monsters always threaten the security of our
closed economies. Rather than confronting
us from the “outside,” the monster, like the
pharmakon, always shows (monstrare) as a
disturbance or undecidability that already
resides on the “inside.”
• The philosophy of Derrida by Mark Dooley and Liam Kavanaugh (p. 29)
Zombies anyone?
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XZ9R2TU
q94
• Zombie as a set of symbols have been of
particular interest for the last few years (e.g.
Zombie Survival Guide, 2003, Max Brooks
started Brooks’ career and led to a high point:
a zombie movie, World War Z with Brad Pitt
based on Brooks’ 2006 book of the same title)
Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic
US Centers for Disease Control
Zombies, history, and pop culture (1 of
2)
• Haiti (1804 and 1825) and voodoo
• Race
• Writers (you can find a history of voodoo and
writers in, “Better Off Dead: The Evolution of the
Zombie as Post-Human”)
• Hollywood
– 1930s: White Zombie (young man turns to a witch
doctor to lure the woman he loves away from her
fiancé, but instead turns her into a zombie slave)
– The White Zombie has no will of her own (1932)
Zombies, history, and pop culture (2 of
2)
• Hollywood
– 1960s: Night of the Living Dead (A group of people
hide from bloodthirsty zombies in a farmhouse.)
– Zombies have become cannibals who lust after your
brains (1969)
• Current zombie epidemic in movies seems to
coincide with an increasing interest in the brain
(exercising it, avoiding Alzheimers/senility,
controlling it, figuring out how it works, etc.)
Zombie, culture, and science (1 of 3)
• The Girl With All the Gifts, a zombie novel of
ideas (review by Torie Bosch for Slate0
• http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/201
4/07/mike_carey_s_zombie_novel_the_girl_w
ith_all_the_gifts_reviewed.html
• The book’s monsters are steered by a mutant
version of the fungus Ophiocordyceps
unilateralis—which you may know as the
parasite behind “zombie ants.”
Zombie, culture, and science (2 of 3)
• Military excursions into zombie-infested turf begin
finding normal-looking children who can speak, learn,
and think, but are nevertheless infected with
Ophiocordyceps. Rounded up into a lockdown boarding
school, the infected kids live in individual cells, leaving
only for weekly shower-and-grub sessions (and yes,
those are literal grubs), and for class, where they are
strapped and locked into chairs. …
• Miss Justineau and Caldwell do battle throughout the
novel, with Miss Justineau’s compassion and eventual
love for Melanie contrasting with Caldwell’s hunger for
the girl’s brain.
Zombie, culture, and science (3 of 3)
• . (Who’s the zombie again?) During one argument,
Caldwell rants:
• You should ask yourself … why you’re so keen on
thinking of me as the enemy. If I make a vaccine, it
might cure people like Melanie, who already have a
partial immunity to Ophiocordyceps. It would certainly
prevent thousands upon thousands of other children
from ending up the way she has. Which weighs the
most, Helen? Which will do the most good in the end?
Your compassion, or my commitment to my work? Or
could it be that you shout at me and disrespect me to
stop yourself from having to ask questions like that?
Emergence of a new culture? (1 of 2)
•
•
•
•
•
Zombie as a symbol of a new culture
Cyborgs
Robots
Androids
Transhumans (Transhumanism (abbreviated as H+ or
h+) is an international cultural and intellectual
movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally
transforming the human condition by developing and
making widely available technologies to greatly
enhance human intellectual, physical, and
psychological capacities.[1]
Emergence of a new culture? (2 of 2)
• Transhumanist thinkers study the potential
benefits and dangers of emerging technologies
that could overcome fundamental human
limitations, as well as the ethics of developing
and using such technologies.[2] They speculate
that human beings may eventually be able to
transform themselves into beings with such
greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label
"posthuman".[1]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism)
The uncanny valley (What about the
heart?)
Mori’s uncanny valley (1 of 3)
• Masahiro Mori
(http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=10170)
Mori’s uncanny valley (2 of 3)
• Some prosthetic hands attempt to simulate
veins, muscles, tendons, finger nails, and
finger prints, and their color resembles human
pigmentation. So maybe the prosthetic arm
has achieved a degree of human verisimilitude
on par with false teeth. But this kind of
prosthetic hand is too real and when we
notice it is prosthetic, we have a sense of
strangeness. (Masahiro Mori)
Mori’s uncanny valley (3 of 3)
• So if we shake the hand, we are surprised by the
lack of soft tissue and cold temperature. In this
case, there is no longer a sense of familiarity. It is
uncanny. In mathematical terms, strangeness can
be represented by negative familiarity, so the
prosthetic hand is at the bottom of the valley. So
in this case, the appearance is quite human like,
but the familiarity is negative.
• This is the uncanny valley. (Masahiro Mori)
(http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=3077)
Animator’s uncanny valley (1 of 3)
Animator’s uncanny valley (2 of 3)
• But then the Uncanny Valley kicks in. That curvy
line changes direction, plunging downwards. This
is the pit into which many characters from The
Polar Express, Final Fantasy and Mars Needs
Moms fall. We stop empathizing with these
characters. They are unintentionally disturbing,
like moving corpses. This is a big problem with
realistic CGI characters: that unshakable
perception that they are animated zombies.
[comments: Chris Landreth {zombie emphasis
mine}] http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=10170
Animator’s uncanny valley (3 of 3)
• (Canada) NFB video clip of Landreth’s
Subconscious Password at:
http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=10170
• … I want to be honest in showing you this
world. My own Uncanny Valley. You have one
too. It’s something to celebrate. (Landreth’s
comment about his work)
Re-entering the Uncanny Valley
• Which is the robot and which is the philosopher
Geminoid robots (1 of 3)
• The first geminoid, HI-1, was created in 2005 by Prof.
Hiroshi Ishiguro of ATR and the Tokyo-based firm,
Kokoro. A geminoid is an android, designed to look
exactly as its master, and is controlled through a
computer system that replicates the facial movements
of the operator in the robot. [sic]
• In the spring of 2010, a new geminoid was created. The
new robot, Geminoid-F was a simpler version of the
original HI-1, and it was also more affordable, making it
reasonable to acquire one for humanistic research in
Human Robot Interaction.
Geminoid robots (2 of 3)
• Geminoid|DK will be the first of its kind outside
of Japan, and is intended to advance android
science and philosophy, in seeking answers to
fundamental questions, many of which that have
also occupied the Japanese researchers. The
most important questions are:
• – What is a human?
– What is presence?
– What is a relation?
– What is identity?
• (http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=3077)
Geminoids and philosophy (3 of 3)
• Henrik Scharfe, an associate professor at
Aalborg University in Denmark director of the
center for Computer-Mediated Epistemology
• commissioned a Geminoid robot
• to probe “emotional affordances” between
robots and humans, as well as “blended
presence” (2011;
http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=3077 &
• video http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=13624)
What about the heart? (1 of 3)
• [Luisa] Whitton [photographer/artist] spent
several months in Japan working with Hiroshi
Ishiguro, a scientist who has constructed a
robotic copy of himself. Ishiguro’s research
focused on whether his robotic double could
somehow possess his “Sonzai-Kan,” a
Japanese term that translates to the
“presence” or “spirit” of a person.
What about the heart? (2 of 3)
• It’s work that blurs the line between
technology, philosophy, psychology, and art,
using real-world studies to examine existential
issues once reserved for speculation by the
likes of Philip K. Dick or Sigmund Freud.
What about the heart? (3 of 3)
• And if this sounds like a sequel to Blade
Runner, it gets weirder: after Ishiguro aged, he
had plastic surgery so that his face still
matched that of his younger, mechanical
doppelganger.
(http://www.fastcodesign.com/3031125/expo
sure/japans-uncanny-quest-to-humanizerobots)
• http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=13624
Robots and intelligence (1 of 6)
• Excellent 2007 essay on robots and artificial
intelligence by Mary King:
http://robotandai.blogspot.ca/
• This research project explores the theories and work of
Japanese and Western scientists in the field of robotics
and AI. I [Mary King] ask what differences exist in the
approach and expectations of Japanese and Western AI
scientists, and I show how these variances came about.
Robots and intelligence (2 of 6)
• Because the Western media often cites Shinto as the
reason for the Japanese affinity for robots, I ask what
else has shaped Japan’s harmonious feelings for
intelligent machines. Why is Japan eager to develop
robots, and particularly humanoid ones? I also aim to
discover if religion plays a role in shaping AI scientists’
research styles and perspectives. In addition, I ask how
Western and Japanese scientists envision robots/AI
playing a role in our lives. Finally, I enquire how the
issues of roboethics and rights for robots are perceived
in Japan and the West.
Robots and intelligence (3 of 6)
• The fields of robotic technology and AI are
closely related and often overlap. Robotics
falls under the umbrella of artificial
intelligence research. Both “The New Oxford
Dictionary of English” and Japan’s
authoritative “Kojien” dictionary define
artificial intelligence as the performance by
computer systems of tasks normally requiring
human intelligence. …
Robots and intelligence (4 of 6)
• Meanwhile, “The New Oxford Dictionary of
English” describes a robot as “a machine
(sometimes resembling a human being) that is
capable of carrying out a complex series of
actions automatically, especially one
programmable by a computer.” The “Kojien”
dictionary says a robot is a “complicated manmade automaton, an artificial person or cyborg, a
machine for work or a machine that is controlled
to perform automatically.”
Robots and intelligence (5 of 6)
• Both the East and the West have an ancient
history of mechanical “machines,” toys and dolls
that can be considered to be the forerunners of
the robot. However, Leonardo da Vinci’s 1495
drawing of a mechanical knight is reputed to be
the first actual plan for a humanoid robot. Stories
of golem and of Frankenstein have also held sway
over Western imaginings of artificial man-made
beings. The word “robot,” with its connotations
of beings that replace humans, derives from the
Czech noun “robota,” meaning forced labour.
Robots and intelligence (6 of 6)
• First staged in 1921, many people interpreted [Czech
playwright Karel Capek ‘s play Rossum’s Universal
Robots] RUR as an attack on technology but Capek
aimed only to question the idea of humans becoming
slaves of machines. The play, however, created a vastly
different impression after it opened in Tokyo in 1924.
The Japanese found the idea of artificially created
humans to be more intriguing than threatening. But
RUR lost its intended meaning in Japan because both
the title of the play and the word “robot” were
translated as “jinzo ningen,” meaning artificial human,
which gave the Japanese a warm feeling.
• (http://robotandai.blogspot.ca/)
Robots and learning (1 of 5)
• RoboEarth (a European Union project)
• … Markus Waibel,
• As part of the European project RoboEarth, I am
currently one of about 30 people working
towards building an Internet for robots: a
worldwide, open-source platform that allows any
robot with a network connection to generate,
share, and reuse data. The project is set up to
deliver a proof of concept to show two things:
Robots and learning (2 of 5)
• * RoboEarth greatly speeds up robot learning and
adaptation in complex tasks.
• * Robots using RoboEarth can execute tasks that
were not explicitly planned for at design time.
• The vision behind RoboEarth is much larger:
Allow robots to encode, exchange, and reuse
knowledge to help each other accomplish
complex tasks. This goes beyond merely allowing
robots to communicate via the Internet,
outsourcing computation to the cloud, or linked
data.
Robots and learning (3 of 5)
• http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=2897 links to
Waibel article and more including the
RoboEarth website and a video
Robots and learning (4 of 5)
• … an Aug. 25, 2014 Cornell University news release by
Bill Steele (also on EurekAlert with some editorial
changes) about the US Robo Brain project immediately
caught my attention,
•
Robo Brain – a large-scale computational system that
learns from publicly available Internet resources – is
currently downloading and processing about 1 billion
images, 120,000 YouTube videos, and 100 million howto documents and appliance manuals. The information
is being translated and stored in a robot-friendly
format that robots will be able to draw on when they
need it. (http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=14500)
Robots and learning (5 of 5)
• An enormous gap exists between human abilities and
machine performance when it comes to understanding the
visual world from images and videos. Humans are still way
out in front. …
• In her research, Parikh is proposing to use visual
abstractions or cartoons to teach machines. She works from
the idea that concepts that are difficult to describe
textually may be easier to illustrate. By having thousands of
online crowd workers manipulate clipart images to mimic
photographs, she seeks to teach a computer to understand
the visual world like humans do. (Devi Parikh, Virginia Tech)
• http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-09/vtccb092614.php
Artificial intelligence/Artificial brains (1
of 2)
• Artificial Intelligence = software
• Artificial brains = devices/entities
• This is a distinction I (Maryse de la Giroday)
make in my presentations. To my knowledge
this is not a standard distinction in the field.
Artificial intelligence/Artificial brain (2
of 2)
• Standard computing architecture: boolean logic;
separation between processing and memory
used for a single purpose only as compared to a
multipurpose biological brain (since 1960s)
• Memristors/electrochemical atomic switches =
emulate synaptic plasticity of a biological brain
making possible an artificial brain that learns
(multipurpose) like a biological brain (since
2000s)
(Massimiliano Versace & Ben Chandler 2010 IEEE article)
AI: Eliasmith and virtual neurons (1 of
3)
• Chris Eliasmith and a team from the University
of Waterloo (Ontario) announced SPAUN
(Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified
Network) in Nov. 2012
• http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=8594 (includes
video)
AI: Eliasmith and virtual neurons (2 of
3)
• Spaun is actually a simulated brain. It
contains2.5 million virtual neurons — many
fewer than the 86 billion in the average
human head, but enough to recognize lists of
numbers, do simple arithmetic and solve
reasoning problems. (excerpt from the
FrogHeart post)
AI: Eliasmith and virtual neurons (3 of
3)
• … Henry Markram, who leads a different
project to reconstruct the human brain called
the Blue Brain, questions whether Spaun
really captures human brain behavior. Because
Spaun’s design ignores some important neural
properties, it’s unlikely to reveal anything
about the brain’s mechanics, says Markram, of
the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in
Lausanne. “It is not a brain model.” (excerpt
from the FrogHeart post))
Neural plasticity and the Memristor
(Copyright: HP Labs Credit: R. Stanley Williams)
Memristor and circuit elements
(electrical engineering)
•
•
•
•
Capacitor
Inductor
Resistor
Memory + Resistor = Memristor (1971), the
fourth fundamental circuit element forming a
non-linear relationship between electric
charge and magnetic flux linkage
– ‘remembers’ how much voltage is carried and for
how long = memory & learning
Memristor
• In 2011, Leon Chua (who first proposed the
memristor in 1971 in work separate from
Bernard Widrow who proposed a similar
entity, the memistor, in the 1960s) argued for
a broader definition: all 2-terminal nonvolatile memory devices based on resistance
switching should be considered memristors
Memristor concept is contested
• Stan Williams/HP Labs has argued (along with Chua)
that MRAM, phase change memory, and RRAM, should
be considered memristor technologies.
• Some researchers say biological structures such as
blood & skin should also be considered memristors.
• Others say memory devices under development by HP
Labs not actually memristors or memristive systems
but part of a broader class of variable resistance
systems & a broader definition of memristor is a
scientifically unjustifiable land grab to favor the
memristor patents of Hewlett-Packard. (Wikipedia
Memristor essay accessed Oct.14.12)
Memristor objections
• One of the latest objections added to Wikipedia
entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor):
Thermodynamic considerations, however, show
that such a memristor component cannot exist as
a solid state device in physical reality because its
behavior would be inconsistent with fundamental
laws of non-equilibrium thermodynamics.[4][5]
The potential applicability of the memristor
concept to any physically realizable device is thus
very much open to question.
Neural plasticity and the
electrochemical atomic switch
• Nanoscale device with a gap bridged by a copper
filament under a voltage pulse stimulation = a
change in conductance which is time-dependant
— a change in strength that's nearly identical to
the one found in biological synaptic systems
• Mimics short-term and long-term memory
• Responds to the presence of air and temperature
changes: it has the potential to perceive the
environment much like the human brain
• (George Dvorsky, June 11, 2012 article for IO9)
Memristor/atomic switch and
neuromorphic engineering teams
• Memristor: HP Labs, University of Michigan, &
Boston University
– MoNETA (Roman goddess of memory)Boston
University/HP Labs
– Wei Lu/University of Michigan/HRL Laboratories
• Atomic switch: UCLA (James Gimzewski) &
National Institute for Materials Science (Japan)
[Neuromorphic Atomic Switch Networks, Aug. 6,
2012, PLoS] also nanoionic devices (Dec. 2012
post: http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=8802)
Brain-on-a-chip
• Survey of research for repairs to human brains and for
making computers more like human brains
• http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=13001
• “A completely different – and revolutionary – human brain
model has been designed by researchers in Japan who
introduced the concept of a new class of computer which
does not use any circuit or logic gate. This artificial brainbuilding project differs from all others in the world. It does
not use logic-gate based computing within the framework
of Turing. The decision-making protocol is not a logical
reduction of decision rather projection of frequency fractal
operations in a real space, it is an engineering perspective
of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem.”
(http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=35084.php)
TrueNorth (IBM) brain chip
architecture
• A neurosynaptic supercomputer the size of a
postage stamp that runs on the energy
equivalent of a hearing-aid battery, this
technology could transform science,
technology, business, government, and society
by enabling vision, audition, and multi-sensory
applications. (August 8, 2014:
http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=14360)
Consciousness
• Hiroshi Ishiguro and geminoid robots
• – What is a human?
– What is presence?
– What is a relation?
– What is identity?
• David Chalmers (philosopher; btw, Eliasmith is a
computer scientist & a philosopher)
• http://blog.ted.com/2014/03/19/the-hardproblem-of-consciousness-david-chalmers-atted2014/
David Chalmers and consciousness
• “Right now you have a movie playing inside your head,”
says philosopher David Chalmers. It’s an amazing
movie, with 3D, smell, taste, touch, a sense of body,
pain, hunger, emotions, memories, and a constant
voice-over narrative. “At the heart of this movie is you,
experiencing this, directly. This movie is your stream of
consciousness, experience of the mind and the world.”
• This is one of the fundamental aspects of existence,
Chalmers says: “There’s nothing we know about more
directly…. but at the same time it’s the most
mysterious phenomenon in the universe.” What is the
difference between us and robots? Nobody knows the
answers.
Coming to the end of Bioelectronics,
Medical Imaging and Our Bodies
• Referring back to week 4 & the ASAP science
video on myths about the brain
Teachers, teaching, and myths about
the brain (1 of 4)
• New research from University of Bristol (pub.
Oct. 15, 2014 in Nature Reviews
Neuroscience)
• Teachers in the UK, Holland, Turkey, Greece
and China were presented with seven socalled 'neuromyths' and asked whether they
believe them to be true.
Teachers, teaching, and myths about
the brain (2 of 4)
• Over 70 per cent of teachers in all countries
wrongly believe a student is either leftbrained or right-brained, peaking at 91 per
cent in the UK.
• And almost all teachers (over 90 per cent in
each country) feel that teaching to a student's
preferred learning style - auditory,
kinaesthetic or visual - is helpful, despite no
convincing evidence to support this approach.
Teachers, teaching, and myths about
the brain (3 of 4)
• The report blames wishfulness, anxiety and a bias
towards simple explanations as typical factors
that distort neuroscientific fact into neuromyth.
• The report highlights several areas where new
findings from neuroscience are becoming
misinterpreted by education, including brainrelated ideas regarding early educational
investment, adolescent brain development and
learning disorders such as dyslexia and ADHD.
Teachers, teaching, and myths about
the brain (4 of 4)
• http://phys.org/news/2014-10-myths-brainhampering.html
• Neuroscience and education: myths and
messages by Paul A. Howard-Jones. Nature
Reviews Neuroscience (2014)
doi:10.1038/nrn3817 Published online 15
October 2014 (open access with registration
on nature.com)
Back to the eye (1 of 2)
• Superhuman eyesight (femtophotography)
• http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=14819
• Superhuman navigation (human eye, brain of a rat, & a
robot; Sept. 16, 2014, Australia)
• "This is a very Frankenstein type of project," Dr Milford
said.
• "It's putting two halves of a thing together because
we're taking the eyes of a human and linking them up
with the brain of a rat.
• http://www.news.qut.edu.au/cgibin/WebObjects/News.woa/wa/goNewsPage?newsEve
ntID=78859
Back to the eye
• http://www.thescientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/41052/title/TheBionic-Eye/
• In 1755, French physician and scientist Charles Leroy
discharged the static electricity from a Leyden jar—a
precursor of modern-day capacitors—into a blind
patient’s body using two wires, one tightened around the
head just above the eyes and the other around the leg. The
patient, who had been blind for three months as a result of
a high fever, described the experience like a flame passing
downwards in front of his eyes. This was the first time an
electrical device—serving as a rudimentary prosthesis—
successfully restored even a flicker of visual perception.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Eye projects around the world
mentioned in The Scientist article on
bionic eyes
US
Italy
Japan
South Korea
Australia
European Union
Canada
Spain
Course summary