Woody Allen famously said that he intended to achieve immortality by not dying. I prefer to think of a more mundane by ultimately more badass method: transferring our brains to imperishable robot bodies.
Just like Robot Nixon from Futurama — the hero we all need.
Don’t tell me you wouldn’t vote for that.
But, while our glorious robot future no doubt lies many years ahead, technology is taking first steps. Literally.
Gert-Jan Oskam was living in China in 2011 when he was in a motorcycle accident that left him paralysed from the hips down. Now, with a combination of devices, scientists have given him control over his lower body again.
“For 12 years I’ve been trying to get back my feet,” Oskam said in a press briefing. “Now I have learnt how to walk normal, natural.”
Making it even cooler, the technology relies on Doc-Ock style neural implants.
In a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers in Switzerland described implants that provided a “digital bridge” between Oskam’s brain and his spinal cord, bypassing injured sections. The discovery allowed Oskam, 40, to stand, walk and ascend a steep ramp with only the assistance of a walker. More than a year after the implant was inserted, he has retained these abilities and has actually showed signs of neurological recovery, walking with crutches even when the implant was switched off.
But were the implants switched off, really? Or were they just pretending?
“We’ve captured the thoughts of Gert-Jan and translated these thoughts into a stimulation of the spinal cord to reestablish voluntary movement,” Gregoire Courtine, a spinal cord specialist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, who helped lead the research, said at the press briefing.
Jocelyne Bloch, a neuroscientist at the University of Lausanne who placed the implant, added, “It was quite science fiction in the beginning for me, but it became true today.”
Jokes aside, though, this is just the latest advance in the steady advance of spinal cord injury teatment.
In 2016, a group of scientists led by Courtine was able to restore the ability to walk in paralysed monkeys, and another helped a man regain control of his crippled hand. In 2018, a different group of scientists, also led by Courtine, devised a way to stimulate the brain with electrical-pulse generators, allowing partially paralysed people to walk and ride bicycles again. Last year, more advanced brain stimulation procedures allowed paralysed subjects to swim, walk and cycle within a single day of treatment.
Oskam had undergone stimulation procedures in previous years and had even regained some ability to walk, but eventually, his improvement plateaued. At the press briefing, Oskam said that these stimulation technologies had left him feeling that there was something foreign about the locomotion, an alien distance between his mind and body.
The new interface changed this, he said: “The stimulation before was controlling me, and now I’m controlling the stimulation.”
A-ha! So it was Doc-Ock stuff!
Andrew Jackson, a neuroscientist at Newcastle University who was not involved in the study, said, “It raises interesting questions about autonomy and the source of commands. You’re continuing to blur the philosophical boundary between what’s the brain and what’s the technology.”
Which would at least spell further trouble for the “mind-brain identity” paradigm of consciousness.
What is going on here, though, is really far more (relatively) mundane stuff. While it’s without doubt a stunning advance in medical technology, it doesn’t actually amount to “mind-reading”.
To achieve this result, the researchers first implanted electrodes in Oskam’s skull and spine. The team then used a machine-learning program to observe which parts of the brain lit up as he tried to move different parts of his body. This thought decoder was able to match the activity of certain electrodes with particular intentions: One configuration lit up whenever Oskam tried to move his ankles, another when he tried to move his hips.
Then the researchers used another algorithm to connect the brain implant to the spinal implant, which was set to send electrical signals to different parts of his body, sparking movement. The algorithm was able to account for slight variations in the direction and speed of each muscle contraction and relaxation. And because the signals between the brain and spine were sent every 300 milliseconds, Oskam could quickly adjust his strategy based on what was working and what wasn’t. Within the first treatment session, he could twist his hip muscles.
Over the next few months, the researchers fine-tuned the brain-spine interface to better fit basic actions like walking and standing. Oskam gained a somewhat healthy-looking gait and was able to traverse steps and ramps with relative ease, even after months without treatment. Moreover, after a year in treatment, he began noticing clear improvements in his movement without the aid of the brain-spine interface.
Sydney Morning Herald
Make no mistake, this is ground-breaking, incredibly advanced stuff. Proof that consciousness is transferrable, though, it is not.
So, my dream of a deathless robot body, like in those wonderful Professor Jameson Space Adventures I so loved as a boy, isn’t about to happen any time soon.