Brain Integration of functions

Hi all, I am new to the forum but not to biohacking. I am interested in anyone's thoughts on complete brain integration of interfaces such that I could say, produce custom packets of wireless information using only thought, giving one the ability to operate both internal and external devices through thought and thought alone.

Topics of my particular interest are neural interface technology, anything on the systematic neuroscience of how the brain interfaces with the nervous system and muscular system to allow for locomotion, and any engineering topics like feedback control for a neurally integrated system.

My background is in computer hacking so I am perfectly comfortable with the software but need a way to interface.

Been thinking about a subdermal array of electromagnetic brain scanning sensors, maybe implanted onto my skull, but ideally I dream of direct neural interfacing.

Any contributions to this are greatly appreciated.

Comments

  • long story short: hands off the brain.

    long story medium: if you want your brain to trigger stuff you can use an array of on-skin electrodes to measure brain activity. While the recorded data won't make too much sense for the human, it is good enough to train neural networks into delivering reasonable/desired outputs. Simple actions such as selecting an object to interact with or picking from a set of actions can be done.

    long story a bit longer. recording the brain-internal signals is very invasive and difficult. Both on a theoretical and on a practical level. however, leaving the inside of your brain you have a neatly sorted bundle of inputs and outputs running down your spine (convenient eh?). Theoretically you could tap into the spinal cord parts which fork off between vertebrae. If my sources aren't totally off scale you get about 13.5 million neurons running down the spine. Which fork off along the spine on 20-30 places (depending on how much you are willing to risk paralysis of important body mechanics such as breathing), on 2 sides each, sorted in input and output.
    That's about 270k neurons per "easily-accessible" nerve bundle along your spine. Mathematically each of these bundles should be about 1 to 2mm² in size ( someone with better biology skills please correct me if i'm wrong). boils down to an average of 1um per neuron (just ballpark numbers, human neurons range from 0.1um (for very slow signals such as thermal signaling) up to 20um for very fast ones (muscles, feedback from muscles). So ideally you'd want to stimulate all those with an accuracy of 0.1um inside the volume of a nerve bundle. I have no numbers on the actual accuracy you'd need to provide enough fidelity in feedback and to prevent getting too much weird feedback. check out neuronexus.com ,they have many different sorts of neural interfaces , electrode arrays, connectors and circuitry you'd want including price tags. So while humanity is technically very close to actually being able to entirely replace the neural interfaces to/from your brain, it's not exactly feasible to do it with the current level of technology. Something better than poking needles into nerves would be a very welcome addition.

  • Thanks for the well-organized input! I'll definitely check out neuronnexus.com.

    I actually already have a design in the works for a sub-dermal sensor array I was going to train with either neural networks or a more advanced synaptic chip, but I am definitely trying to think bigger. Such an interface should give me functionally what I am looking for for now, at least to some degree.

    Ideally I want to understand how the neural forks are designed such that I could inspire the growth of a new biological fork specifically dedicated to a chip or organ, or interface a new functional one with my brain. I get the hands-off-the-brain warning but I am not planning on wiring in something myself yet. This is still a very biological curiosity, as I want to know what physical neural mechanisms support the peripheral nervous system. In doing so I might be able to nucleate growth of an additional element in the array or add one synthetically, something I would test extensively in rats and human tissue for sure.

    It seems like in order to address a certain nerve line to fire requires an initiation from the cortex, such that the decision has to run and output true in order to start firing. The sub-dermal interface would be using arbitrary data about whole clusters of cells, many of which are firing for unrelated reasons. This is something I could fix with noise cancellation algorithms, but it would still fail to capture the feeling of true telepathy.

    The ultimate goal is a parallel line that can be operated as instinctively and efficiently as as an arm or leg.

  • Honestly I am really excited to just finish the sub-dermal array. Planning on sharing the design on here as soon as the first prototype is printed and coated.

Sign In or Register to comment.