This is Tech

Check out this video of Dean Kamen’s design for a Luke Skywalker inspired prosthetic arm. Kamen, known for inventing the Segway, is an amazing designer and has a history of creating innovative medical devices.

[Photo by: gadl]

Here is a youtube clip from a BBC documentary highlighting some recent research relating to time dilation and the effect of adrenaline and drugs on the perception of the passage of time. In the first experiment depicted in the video, a researcher compares a subject’s ability to read rapidly flashing numbers during free fall and in a normal state. Under the influence of adrenaline, the subject was better able to read the numbers. This is touted as evidence that the brain is able to slow things down when in crisis mode.

In the second experiment, researchers tested the perception of time in rats under the influence of marijuana and cocaine. These rats had previously been trained to hit a button every 12 seconds to trigger release of a food pellet. Under the influence of cocaine, the rat hit the button too early. With Marijuana the rat was too late.

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Scientists at Texas Instruments have created a neckband called the Audeo that can interpret nerve signals to general voiceless speech. The New Scientist has posted a full article about it and posted a video demonstration on YouTube (embedded below).

This very early stage technology, and the system’s vocabulary is apparently limited to around 150 hundred words and phrases. Nonetheless, it is exciting to see advances in interfaces between the brain and computers. Being able to silently and motionlessly signal to a computer could make for some interesting applications. One application mentioned in the video is silently querying the Internet with questions and having them spoken back to you. Technologies like these can augment human intelligence. Imagine being able to query the world’s knowledge without being at a computer, or even needing to speak or move. In the same way that wearable cameras can give a user a photographic memory, an invisible connection to the Internet would give users enhanced knowledge.

The only criticism I have is that intercepting nerve signals seems like an over complicated means of decoding silent messages. The Audeo band is worn around the neck, which makes me wonder why it couldn’t just pick up subvocalized vibrations directly from the user’s vocal cords. I realize that speech recognition is tricky enough without trying to decode subvocalized vibrations, but the nerve signal methods sounds like it requires a fair about of self training to make it work, and could be overthinking the problem.

Read the whole article at The New Scientist, and check out the demo video below. If you can think of any interesting applications of this type of technology, let us know with a comment.