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Last year, Kennedy, a 67-year-old neurologist and inventor, did something unprecedented in the annals of self-experimentation. He paid a surgeon in Central America $25,000 to implant electrodes into his brain in order to establish a connection between his motor cortex and a computer.
Along with a small group of pioneers, Kennedy, who was born in Ireland, had in the late 1980s developed "invasive" human brain-computer interfaces—literally wires inside the brain attached to a computer, and he is widely credited as the first to allow a severely paralyzed "locked-in" patient to move a computer cursor using her brain. "The father of cyborgs," one magazine called him.
Kennedy's scientific aim has been to build a speech decoder—software that can translate the neuronal signals produced by imagined speech into words coming out of a speech synthesizer. But this work, carried out by his small Georgia company Neural Signals, had stalled, Kennedy says. He could no longer find research subjects, had little funding, and had lost the support of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday November 10 2015, @12:27PM
I think it's a chicken and egg problem. In order to understand more about the brain, we need to do experiments. In order to do experiments (safely, humanely), we need to understand more about the brain. Someone has to take the first bold step into the darkness.
Much like the Nazis and their inhumane human experiments. Yes, Nazis, blah blah, but the data that they have obtained on, e.g., humans freezing to death continues to be invaluable to this day saving human lives. Ironic, and I'm not advocating doing groundbreaking, inhumane experiments, but that's reality.
You *might* be able to advance science slowly and humanely, but I wouldn't count on it; sometimes, a key paradigm shift breakthrough is needed.
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(Score: 2) by Gravis on Tuesday November 10 2015, @02:03PM
I think it's a chicken and egg problem. In order to understand more about the brain, we need to do experiments. In order to do experiments (safely, humanely), we need to understand more about the brain.
this is why we have lab animals. not to spoil the surprise but we are closely related to a lot of different animals.