Brandon's starred items in Google Reader

Principles of neural ensemble physiology underlying the operation of brain-machine interfaces.

2009-06-23T21:04:10Z

Principles of neural ensemble physiology underlying the operation of brain-machine interfaces.

Nat Rev Neurosci. 2009 Jul;10(7):530-40

Authors: Nicolelis MA, Lebedev MA

Research on brain-machine interfaces has been ongoing for at least a decade. During this period, simultaneous recordings of the extracellular electrical activity of hundreds of individual neurons have been used for direct, real-time control of various artificial devices. Brain-machine interfaces have also added greatly to our knowledge of the fundamental physiological principles governing the operation of large neural ensembles. Further understanding of these principles is likely to have a key role in the future development of neuroprosthetics for restoring mobility in severely paralysed patients.

PMID: 19543222 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Exploiting multiple sensory modalities in brain-machine interfaces.

2009-06-22T09:45:24Z

Exploiting multiple sensory modalities in brain-machine interfaces.

Neural Netw. 2009 May 22;

Authors: Suminski AJ, Tkach DC, Hatsopoulos NG

Recent improvements in cortically-controlled brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) have raised hopes that such technologies may improve the quality of life of severely motor-disabled patients. However, current generation BMIs do not perform up to their potential due to the neglect of the full range of sensory feedback in their strategies for training and control. Here we confirm that neurons in the primary motor cortex (MI) encode sensory information and demonstrate a significant heterogeneity in their responses with respect to the type of sensory modality available to the subject about a reaching task. We further show using mutual information and directional tuning analyses that the presence of multi-sensory feedback (i.e. vision and proprioception) during replay of movements evokes neural responses in MI that are almost indistinguishable from those responses measured during overt movement. Finally, we suggest how these playback-evoked responses may be used to improve BMI performance.

PMID: 19525091 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Toward the restoration of hand use to a paralyzed monkey: brain-controlled functional electrical stimulation of forearm muscles.

2009-06-22T09:45:18Z

Toward the restoration of hand use to a paralyzed monkey: brain-controlled functional electrical stimulation of forearm muscles.

PLoS One. 2009;4(6):e5924

Authors: Pohlmeyer EA, Oby ER, Perreault EJ, Solla SA, Kilgore KL, Kirsch RF, Miller LE

Loss of hand use is considered by many spinal cord injury survivors to be the most devastating consequence of their injury. Functional electrical stimulation (FES) of forearm and hand muscles has been used to provide basic, voluntary hand grasp to hundreds of human patients. Current approaches typically grade pre-programmed patterns of muscle activation using simple control signals, such as those derived from residual movement or muscle activity. However, the use of such fixed stimulation patterns limits hand function to the few tasks programmed into the controller. In contrast, we are developing a system that uses neural signals recorded from a multi-electrode array implanted in the motor cortex; this system has the potential to provide independent control of multiple muscles over a broad range of functional tasks. Two monkeys were able to use this cortically controlled FES system to control the contraction of four forearm muscles despite temporary limb paralysis. The amount of wrist force the monkeys were able to produce in a one-dimensional force tracking task was significantly increased. Furthermore, the monkeys were able to control the magnitude and time course of the force with sufficient accuracy to track visually displayed force targets at speeds reduced by only one-third to one-half of normal. Although these results were achieved by controlling only four muscles, there is no fundamental reason why the same methods could not be scaled up to control a larger number of muscles. We believe these results provide an important proof of concept that brain-controlled FES prostheses could ultimately be of great benefit to paralyzed patients with injuries in the mid-cervical spinal cord.

PMID: 19526055 [PubMed - in process]

Human inner ear models for universal radio chip

2009-06-03T22:32:39Z

The human ear is an amazingly effective receiver. The ear can pick up a wide range of frequencies, from the deepest rumble to a high-pitched whine. An MIT professor realized what a unique and perfect model for a radio chip that could function as a universal wireless device to pick up a wide range of electrical signals.

Professor Rahul Sarpeshkar, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and his graduate student, Soumyajit Mandal recreated the elements of the human ear, down to the hairs that line the cochlea using electronics. Transistors for the hairs, inductors for the fluids in the ear, and capacitors for the membranes. The resulting "RF cochlea chip" is just 1.5mm by 3mm and it picks up FM radio, Internet, cellphone and TV signals. It uses 100 times less power than previous analyzers and is faster than any other RF spectrum analyzer. The speed makes it desirable as a universal radio to selectively receive a broad range of frequencies.

Considering his background is creating voice synthesis chips, this is a natural. Will the RF chip hear what his speech chip says?

MIT via Fast Company

Testing Project Natal: We Touched the Intangible [E3 O9]

2009-06-04T00:23:39Z

One hands-on with Project Natal would make for a nice story, but it wouldn't be complete. So we're giving you two full sets of impressions on Microsoft's motion-capturing E3 bombshell.

Matt Buchanan tested Project Natal today, as did I. Here is his personal take on the technology right alongside mine. We did not share our independent experiences before pasting the text below. Neither of us were allowed to shoot what was happening on screen—hence the crazy pics of our bodily reactions, and that intensely audible racing-game video.

How Natal Works
The test system was an ordinary Xbox 360, connected to small PC and camera that simulates the final Natal rig. There are two cameras—one RGB, for face recognition and display video, and one infrared, for tracking movement and depth. Why infrared? The eye doesn't see infrared light. And when you combine an infrared camera with an infrared emitter (also part of Natal), a room is flooded with a spectrum of invisible light that works in the dark.

Natal also has its own internal processing system handling an unspecified amount of the heavy lifting behind Natal's cleaver image and speech recognition. It breaks the human body into 48 points tracked in real time, and it can sense your whole body in Z space, or depth. In fact, on a heat map that measured depth, my hands appeared hotter than my shoulders—because they were closer.

Natal is so smart, in fact, that, if your room is narrowed by a pair of couches, it can signal to a game to narrow the level. It can see about 15' x 20' of a room, according to project leader Kudo Tsunoda's informal estimation.

Breakout
Matt: My first taste was talking to the father of Project Natal, Kudo Tsunoda and watching as his simple, small hand gestures were mapped perfectly onto the screen. He started up the ballsmacker demo you might have seen in our liveblog, knocking a swarm of balls into wall with every part of his body.

When Kudo gestured to me try it, I jumped right in and immediately started smacking at balls with my hands and feet and knees and arms and head as one ball exploded into many, like a virus, until I was doing sad white ninja jerking and jumping movements. Kudo didn't tell me how to "set it up" or what to do. I just did it. You have to realize, Kudo towers over me. I didn't have to calibrate it to my body size, or stand in a weird way for it to adjust. It just worked. Well, until I broke it at the end—it froze up after a few rounds and had to be rebooted for Mark. Hey, it's an early tech demo, so don't read into it. Until that point, it worked remarkably, incredibly well—better than I expected, honestly. The bright fluorescent lights were turned off and on, and Natal didn't flinch. My real movements translated exactly how I expected them to—the precise position, velocity—90 percent of the time, no matter how ridiculously I moved, and some of the other 10 percent might've just been my own bad timing. But the result is a remarkable sense of control. Immersion.

Mark: Microsoft loaded the 3D Breakout demo we saw at their press conference. I stepped up to a white piece of tape right after Matt, and given that I'm 4 inches taller, Natal needed to account for my larger size.

After about 10 seconds, the blue, ghost-like figure filled in. And he was both taller and bigger-handed than Matt's avatar. Natal noticed that I'm a bigger guy. It made no adjustments for the fact that I'm also better looking.

The first thing I noticed was a slight lag I hadn't intended. It's not horrible, but my avatar moved a hair more slowly than I did. That didn't stop me from reaching up, spiking the imaginary ball at a wall imaginary bricks, and then flailing around to keep up with 2, 3, 4, 5 and more spheres flying at me at once.

My avatar recognized both my pitiful kicks and swipes. And while my avatar never left the ground when I jumped, this turned out to be but an animation limitation within Microsoft's tech demo. My wireframe preview image and heatmap did leave the ground. Besides, this is nitpicking. On the PS2 I played Nike Kinetic, something a bit similar. And I always wanted to be having fun. But on Natal, even in a stuffy windowless room surrounded by Microsoft execs, I was having fun. (Disregard my stern, focused face in these pictures.)

Burnout Revenge
Matt: The Burnout racing-game demo was a little more abstract—in one sense, I almost wished I had a wheel to turn, a pedal to press, because I wanted the feedback. I had trouble getting used to "pressing" the gas, which you do by moving your right foot forward. I threw myself off-balance by taking a ginormous step toward the Frankenstein's lab of demo equipment along the wall (upon which I could see myself represented in infared, covered in boxes like smallpox). But turning my air steering wheel, I felt completely in control. A lot of that was the software—it registered even the smallest pivots of my elbows that sent my forearms right or left—but the way it responded exactly how I expected it to is what made it feel so natural. Which is the real key here. It feels natural.

After I hit full speed on a straightaway, I tried to do a 180. I crashed into a wall and died. Normally, that'd make me bad. But I couldn't stop smiling that I'd held the future of gaming control in my hands—and it was simply air.

Mark: As soon as Matt crashed, I greedily jumped in, asking him if it was OK but not waiting for him to answer. I wanted to play Natal more, and I've played a ton of Burnout.

Burnout showcases a few important points for Microsoft. First, it's a real game that's been on the 360. So Natal doesn't weigh down on the processors so hard that you can't play games. Second, it requires fine motor control.

I raised my hands in the air, mining a steering wheel. I hadn't given the system any time to scan my body after kicking Matt out, but I stepped by foot forward, signaling the gas all the same. The car accelerated. I twisted my arms. The car turned just the right amount.

Microsoft had clearly tweaked the Burnout code a bit, forcing the car to feel a bit more like a powerful sedan than a street illegal beast out of some Fast and Furious sequel. And I'm guessing that Natal's ever so slight control delay was masked by the feeling of a looser-driving steering wheel that we find in more standard cars.

So I floor it, growing confident as I wave through traffic and slowly build speed. I reach maximum velocity, throw my foot back to break, cut the wheel and toss the car into a spin. Yes. This feels right. Just right.

Holy shit.

But Natal can't work this well. It just CAN'T. I need to break it, teach this Microsoft prototype a little humility. What if I stand on my tip toes and steer eight feet in the air?

The car handles fine.

What if I kneel on the ground and steer?

Yup, it still works, save for a moment when my knee shifted and I tricked the machine—a fair mistake, even by my highly ridiculous dork standards.

Closing Thoughts
Matt: Project Natal is the vision of gaming that's danced through people's heads for decades—gaming without the abstraction of controllers, using your body and natural movements—which came more sharply into focus when Nintendo announced the Wii a few years ago. I haven't been quite this blown away by a tech demo in a long time. It looked neat onstage at Microsoft's keynote. Seeing it, feeling it in person, makes me want to believe that this what the future of gaming looks like—no buttons, no joysticks, no wands. The only thing left to get rid of is the screen, and even that'll happen soon enough.

Mark: 2010...or maybe even 2011...is just too long to wait. I want Natal now.

Kudo Tsunoda Testing Natal:

Free the Science

2009-05-12T05:58:00Z

30 Neuroscience journals Free access (untill May 30 2009) Thanks SPRINGER

Mirror neurons differentially encode the peripersonal and extrapersonal space of monkeys.

2009-05-17T20:32:12Z

Publication Date: 2009 Apr 17 PMID: 19372433
Authors: Caggiano, V. - Fogassi, L. - Rizzolatti, G. - Thier, P. - Casile, A.
Journal: Science

Actions performed by others may have different relevance for the observer, and thus lead to different behavioral responses, depending on the regions of space in which they are executed. We found that in rhesus monkeys, the premotor cortex neurons activated by both the execution and the observation of motor acts (mirror neurons) are differentially modulated by the location in space of the observed motor acts relative to the monkey, with about half of them preferring either the monkey's peripersonal or extrapersonal space. A portion of these spatially selective mirror neurons encode space according to a metric representation, whereas other neurons encode space in operational terms, changing their properties according to the possibility that the monkey will interact with the object. These results suggest that a set of mirror neurons encodes the observed motor acts not only for action understanding, but also to analyze such acts in terms of features that are relevant to generating appropriate behaviors.

MeSH Categories: Animals, Brain Mapping, Macaca mulatta, Male, *Mental Processes, *Motor Activity, Motor Cortex/cytology/*physiology, Neurons/cytology/*physiology, Personal Space, *Psychomotor Performance, *Space Perception, *Visual Perception

post to: CiteULike

Mendeley Desktop v0.6.5 released

2009-05-11T21:34:28Z

After putting the installers on our website last week we now set the auto-update for Windows, Mac and Linux as well. This update adds integration with OpenOffice.org on Windows, fixes several file organiser problems as well as various bugs reported by users. Work is under way on the next update which will include an integrated PDF viewer and many usability improvements to the user interface.

New Features:

OpenOffice.org integration on Windows. To setup the OpenOffice.org plugin, restart Mendeley after installing the update and select Tools -> Install OpenOffice Plugin
OpenOffice.org integration for Linux will be coming soon.

Improvements to Existing Features:

Conversion between LaTeX commands for accents and equivalent unicode characters when importing from or exporting to Bibtex
Add clickable link under URLs field to open current URL in a browser
Add link in Tools menu to install the website importer in your browser which lets you easily import citations from popular websites such as Amazon, Google Scholar and PLoS

Bug Fixes

Fixes for various problems when installing the Word plugin
Abstract field was not filled in when clicking PubMed lookup button in metadata tab
Fixed problem where file organiser did not always respect ’sort into subfolders’ setting correctly
on Windows
Fixed problem where file organiser could get stuck in an infinite loop, repeatedly copying the same files
Show more accurate progress information when organising files
Fix author extraction sometimes stripping out lower-case name parts such as ‘van’, ‘der’ etc.
Fixed problem on Windows where folder monitoring tried to re-import documents which had been explicitly removed from within Mendeley
After sorting the library view, the wrong metadata was shown in the right-hand pane
Improved RIS importer’s support for several non-standard fields
Fixed crash if a problem occurred loading the data files which support the metadata extraction algorithms
Export user’s notes to ‘annote’ rather than ‘note’ field in Bibtex to prevent the problem where the user’s reading notes could appear as part of the formatted citation in the rendered Latex document. Also import ‘comments’ field into the notes field in Mendeley.

If you have suggestions for improvements please let us know by visiting the feedback forum. If you encounter any problems using Mendeley or have questions to ask please email support@mendeley.com.

Millisecond-timescale optical control of neural dynamics in the nonhuman primate brain.

2009-05-10T15:09:58Z

Publication Date: 2009 Apr 30 PMID: 19409264
Authors: Han, X. - Qian, X. - Bernstein, J. G. - Zhou, H. H. - Franzesi, G. T. - Stern, P. - Bronson, R. T. - Graybiel, A. M. - Desimone, R. - Boyden, E. S.
Journal: Neuron

To understand how brain states and behaviors are generated by neural circuits, it would be useful to be able to perturb precisely the activity of specific cell types and pathways in the nonhuman primate nervous system. We used lentivirus to target the light-activated cation channel channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) specifically to excitatory neurons of the macaque frontal cortex. Using a laser-coupled optical fiber in conjunction with a recording microelectrode, we showed that activation of excitatory neurons resulted in well-timed excitatory and suppressive influences on neocortical neural networks. ChR2 was safely expressed, and could mediate optical neuromodulation, in primate neocortex over many months. These findings highlight a methodology for investigating the causal role of specific cell types in nonhuman primate neural computation, cognition, and behavior, and open up the possibility of a new generation of ultraprecise neurological and psychiatric therapeutics via cell-type-specific optical neural control prosthetics.

MeSH Categories: Action Potentials/physiology, Animals, *Brain Mapping, Gene Expression Regulation/genetics/radiation effects, Green Fluorescent Proteins/genetics, Lentivirus/physiology, Macaca mulatta, Models, Animal, Neurons/*physiology, Nonlinear Dynamics, Optical Fibers, Optics and Photonics/methods, Photic Stimulation/methods, Rhodopsin/genetics/metabolism, Time Factors, Visual Cortex/*cytology, Visual Pathways/anatomy & histology/*physiology

post to: CiteULike

Mendeley Academic Software To Manage And Share Research Papers

2009-04-21T13:28:56Z

Mendeley is a free academic software to manage and share research papers. It is available for multiple operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple Macintosh. The academic software runs on the computer desktop offering the user to add research papers to it. These papers can be added from the local computer system, network and even online document sites like Google Book Search, Amazon, PubMed, Science Direct and WorldCat.

Mendeley will scan the documents and add metadata automatically. This automatic scan and data extraction works surprisingly well but it is always possible to check and edit data manually after the import has been completed. The online import is controlled by a bookmarklet which sends information about the currently selected document to Mendeley. This could cause some XSS warnings if tools like NoScript are installed.

The desktop application can be synced with the online information to ensure that the data sets are the same. The academic software will include information about the selected research paper, book or document if those are provided by the publication. Information include authors, titles, publishers, keywords, pages, dates and references. Mendely offers the following features in its desktop client:

Full-text search, tag, share and collaboratively manage your research papers
Add tags and notes to documents
Create document groups to organize your papers
Apply different citation styles
Export your library to EndNote XML, RIS, or BibTex, or copy library entries formatted in the chosen citation style
Cite documents in Microsoft Word and automatically create bibliographies

It is possible to use Mendely strictly as a desktop application with syncing it to the online account. This would however mean to miss some of the most powerful features of the academic software. It is for example possible to invite members so that it is possible to share research papers. This is excellent for projects that multiple researchers work on. Users will also be notified about profile updates of their contacts.

Photo Collage (2)
Manage Ebook Collections With Calibre (11)
Computer Monitor Lighting Software F.Lux (9)
SMPlayer 0.6.7 out (15)
Novel Writing Software yWriter (7)

Mirror neurons differentially encode the peripersonal and extrapersonal space of monkeys.

2009-04-30T17:06:26Z

Mirror neurons differentially encode the peripersonal and extrapersonal space of monkeys.

Science. 2009 Apr 17;324(5925):403-6

Authors: Caggiano V, Fogassi L, Rizzolatti G, Thier P, Casile A

Actions performed by others may have different relevance for the observer, and thus lead to different behavioral responses, depending on the regions of space in which they are executed. We found that in rhesus monkeys, the premotor cortex neurons activated by both the execution and the observation of motor acts (mirror neurons) are differentially modulated by the location in space of the observed motor acts relative to the monkey, with about half of them preferring either the monkey's peripersonal or extrapersonal space. A portion of these spatially selective mirror neurons encode space according to a metric representation, whereas other neurons encode space in operational terms, changing their properties according to the possibility that the monkey will interact with the object. These results suggest that a set of mirror neurons encodes the observed motor acts not only for action understanding, but also to analyze such acts in terms of features that are relevant to generating appropriate behaviors.

PMID: 19372433 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

The science of neural interface systems.

2009-04-30T16:52:48Z

The science of neural interface systems.

Annu Rev Neurosci. 2009;32:249-66

Authors: Hatsopoulos NG, Donoghue JP

The ultimate goal of neural interface research is to create links between the nervous system and the outside world either by stimulating or by recording from neural tissue to treat or assist people with sensory, motor, or other disabilities of neural function. Although electrical stimulation systems have already reached widespread clinical application, neural interfaces that record neural signals to decipher movement intentions are only now beginning to develop into clinically viable systems to help paralyzed people. We begin by reviewing state-of-the-art research and early-stage clinical recording systems and focus on systems that record single-unit action potentials. We then address the potential for neural interface research to enhance basic scientific understanding of brain function by offering unique insights in neural coding and representation, plasticity, brain-behavior relations, and the neurobiology of disease. Finally, we discuss technical and scientific challenges faced by these systems before they are widely adopted by severely motor-disabled patients.

PMID: 19400719 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

The significance of neuroscience for philosophy.

2009-04-01T20:38:28Z

The significance of neuroscience for philosophy.

Funct Neurol. 2008 Oct-Dec;23(4):175-8

Authors: Churchland PS, Phil B

The ground is shifting under the traditional approaches to problems in the philosophy of mind. Earlier doctrines concerning the independence of cognition from the brain now appear untenable. As neuroscience uncovers more about the organization and dynamics of the brain, it becomes increasingly evident that theories about our nature must be informed by neuroscientific data. Consistent with this progress, we may expect that philosophical problems about the mind will be productively addressed and perhaps radically transformed by a convergence of neuroscientific, psychological and computational research.

PMID: 19331779 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Neurosky Mindset Hands-on: Brainwave Gameplay! [Gdc 2009]

2009-03-25T20:59:05Z

The technology behind Neurosky's Mindset is essentially the same that was peddled around last year at trade shows. The only difference now is that it's ready for PC gaming consumption starting in July.

For those in the dark, the Neurosky Mindset, is a gaming controller that monitors brainwaves, and uses those readings to carry out specific actions within a game. In demos, this includes sliding boxes, lifting objects, and setting crap on fire. It also doubles as a pair of Headphones with a bluetooth mic built-in.

So how well does it work? I didn't spend tons of time with the demo, but I thought it was pretty intuitive, and I was able to channel different types of mind focus into in-game action. When asked to relax in order to levitate an item, I consciously made myself "relax." Lo and behold, the car started flying in the air. "Concentration" occurs when you focus intently on one point on the screen. I wasn't the greatest at this.

The headset is pretty light and sits comfortably over your ears with the probe that rests on your forehead. This probe helps pickup brainwave signals, or "electrical potentials" to be exact. During calibration, the computer detects the type and magnitude of waves you generate in certain scenarios, then adjusts the sensitivity so that gameplay is achievable for everyone.

And to be clear, the Mindset isn't trying to replace standard gaming controls as they exist now. Rather, they're trying to add functionality that doesn't require further, more complex button combos, but intuitive hands-free gestures instead.

The Mindset will be available in July for roughly $200. Neurosky says they would like to partner up with companies and developers down the road (they're launching with Toshiba in Japan), but want to get the hardware out there so that apps can start showing up in the marketplace.

Outside of the PC gaming world, Neurosky says they're working on putting the same technology into cars, where the seats can detect how you're feeling and predict what you need (music, heater, A/C, answering in-car phone). They're also working with medical groups and companies to test disorders like ADD and Cerebral Palsy, and will even produce a DS memory game using a custom headset later this year.

As it stands now, the sticking point with the Neurosky Mindset is that it will depend on third-party developer support to really get off the ground. It won't add new functionality to old games, nor will they be developing their own apps. But they will have an SDK ready over the summer so that people can program their own apps around the device. [Neurosky]

NeuroSky® and Toshiba® to Launch Brainwave-Reading Headset for PCs

San Jose, California (March 26, 2009) – Toshiba, Inc., a leading manufacturer of personal computer (PC) equipment, and NeuroSky, Inc., a Brain-Computer-Interface (BCI) technology company, today announced the launch of a jointly-developed brainwave-based advance headset that operates with most PC products.

The MindSet™ wireless Bluetooth® headset features brainwave-reading and mental-state-translational technology from NeuroSky, Inc., a Silicon Valley company. With earlier NeuroSky partner announcements in the toy (Uncle Milton Force Trainer™, under a Lucas Licensing deal) and video gaming industries (Square Enix Judecca™), the Toshiba-NeuroSky product launch represents the first BCI peripheral directed to mainstream PC users.

"The joint development effort between Toshiba and NeuroSky is a historic step into fusing brainwave-enabled peripherals into the mass market of computer users," stated Hitoshi Tokuda, General Manager of the PC Options Marketing Division at Toshiba.

Stanley Yang, CEO of NeuroSky, considers this announcement a key milestone for both companies. "This Toshiba and NeuroSky partnership is an exciting step towards revolutionizing the way people interact with computers."

Game Developers Conference

NeuroSky will be demonstrating the MindSet along with a variety of partner products at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in booth #6402, North Hall, Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA, on March 23-27.

How MindSet Works

The MindSet headset resembles a pair of headphones with one distinct difference-a single electrode-fitted arm that contacts with the user's forehead. The electrode reads the electrical potentials found on the skin's surface, which are induced by the neuron activity that occurs in the frontal lobe of the user's brain. Various "mental states" of the users-for example, their level of focus and relaxation-can be deciphered from the brainwave patterns. That information can be passed to a variety of PC-based applications for entertainment, health, wellness, education, and training purposes.

Pricing and Availability

The MindSet may now be pre-ordered by consumers, application developers and researchers on the NeuroSky website (www.NeuroSky.com).

The headset will be available to order online under the NeuroSky brand for U.S. residents on June 1, 2009, and roll out to select international markets later this year. MindSet will be priced at $199 (MSRP) and will be accompanied by two demonstration games, Brainwave Visualizer™ and The Adventures of NeuroBoy™. Alternative developer programs will continue to be available on a worldwide basis through NeuroSky.

Both consumers and developers will be offered further incentives with this summer's launch of the NeuroSky Application Store, a portal of downloadable, third-party applications created by the NeuroSky Developer Network.
Begin harnessing the power of your mind with the NeuroSky MindSet headset. This Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) turns your thoughts into actions, unlocking new worlds of interactivity. By measuring your brain waves, the headset can send messages to your computer-allowing you to control the computer with your thoughts. The NeuroSky MindSet can be paired with video games, research devices or a number of other tools for an enhanced user experience.

New applications are coming soon, so get your Mindset to begin developing your mind power.

* The MindSet reports the wearer's mental state in the form of NeuroSky's proprietary Attention and Meditation eSense algorithms.
* Captures brainwave signals from 0-30Hz.
* Providing information on a user's Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma EEG band power levels
* Features Bluetooth microphone input and stereo audio output capabilities.

Also included:

* Instructional videos and detailed documentation
* "NeuroBoy," - a game demo and example environment that highlights different ways to implement NeuroSky's brainwave algorithms. In the game, you play as NeuroBoy, a gifted kid with mental super powers. Float, push, burn, and interact with the world using your mental might.
* Brainwave Visualizer and NeuroSky's demonstration tools - The Brainwave Visualizer paints brainwave activity dynamically displaying the information in an artistic and vibrant manner. With the additional NeuroTech R&D Kit, users can perform their own brainwave research, or develop their own software and hardware applications to interact with, and take advantage of all the MindSet's capabilities.

System Requirements:

* Windows Vista Preferred
* 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo or Equivalent Processor
* 1GB Memory
* DirectX 10
* 256MB 3D Graphics Card for Games/Demonstrations

The World Without Technology

2009-03-25T08:40:07Z

I remember the smoke the most. That pungent smell permeating the camps of tribal people. Everything they touch is infused with the lingering perfume of smoke -- their food, shelter, tools, and art. Everything. Even the skin of the youngest tribal child emits smokiness when they pass by. I can hold a memento from my visits decades later and still get a whiff of that primeval scent. Anywhere in the world, no matter the tribe, steady wafts of smoke drift in from the central fire. If things are done properly, the flame never goes out. It smolders to roast bits of meat, and its embers warm bodies at night. The fire's ever-billowing clouds of smoke dry out sleeping mats overhead, preserve hanging strips of meat, and drive away bugs at night. Fire is a universal tool, good for so many things, and it leaves an indelible mark of smoke on a society with scant other technology.

Besides the smoke I remember the immediacy of experience that opens up when the mediation of technology is removed in a rough camp. Living close to the land as hunter-gatherers do, I got colder often, hotter more frequently, soaking wet a lot, bitten by insects faster, more synchronized to rhythm of the day and seasons. Time seemed abundant. I was shocked at how quickly I could dump the cloud of technology in my modern life for a cloud of smoke.

But I was only visiting. Living in a world without technology was a refreshing vacation, but the idea of spending my whole life there was, and is, unappealing. Like you, or almost anyone else with a job today, I could sell my car this morning and with the sale proceeds instantly buy a plane ticket to a remote point on earth in the afternoon. A string of very bumpy bus rides from the airport would take me to a drop-off where within a day or two of hiking I could settle in with a technologically simple tribe. I could choose a hundred sanctuaries of hunter-gatherer tribes that still quietly thrive all around the world. At first a visitor would be completely useless, but within three months even a novice could at least pull their own weight and survive. No electricity, no woven clothes, no money, no farm crops, no media of any type -- only a handful of hand-made tools. Every adult living on earth today has the resources to relocate to such a world in less than 48 hours. But no one does.

The gravity of technology holds us where we are. We accept our attachment. But to really appreciate the effects of technology – both its virtues and costs -- we need to examine the world of humans before technology. What were our lives like without inventions? For that we need to peek back into the Paleolithic era when technology was scarce and humans lived primarily surrounded by things they did not make. We can also examine the remaining contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes still living close to nature to measure what, if anything, they gain from the small amount of technology they use.

The problem with this line of questioning is that technology predated our humanness. Many other animals used tools millions of years before humans. Chimpanzees made (and of course still make) hunting tools from thin sticks to extract termites from mounds, or slam rocks to break nuts. Even termites themselves construct vast towering shells of mud for their homes. Ants herd aphids and farm fungi in gardens. Birds weave elaborate twiggy fabrics for their nests. The strategy of bending the environment to use as if it were part of your body is a billion year old trick at least.

Our humanoid ancestors first chipped stone scrapers 2.5 million years ago to give themselves claws. By about 250,000 years ago they devised crude techniques for cooking, or pre-digesting, with fire. Technology-assisted hunting, versus tool-free scavenging, is equally old. Archeologists found a stone point jammed into the vertebra of a horse and a wooden spear embedded in a 100,000 year old red deer skeleton. This pattern of tool use has only accelerated in the years since.

To put it another way, no human tribe has been without at least a few knives of bone, sharpened sticks, or a stone hammer. There is no such thing as a total tool-free humanity. Long before we became the conscious beings we are now we were people of the tool. Hunters increased the power of a spear by launching it from a long swinging stick (the atlatl) which literally extended their arm. In fact all tools are extensions of our biological body, just as the artifact of a beehive is an extension of a bee. Neither honeycomb nor queen bee can exist alone. Same for us. Evolutionarily we've survived as a species because we've made tools, and we'd perish as a species without at least some of our inventions.

Although strictly speaking simple tools are a type of technology made by one person, we tend to think of technology as something much more complicated. But in fact technology is anything designed by a mind. Technology includes not only nuclear reactors and genetically modified crops, but also bows and arrows, hide tanning techniques, fire starters, and domesticated crops. Technology also includes intangible inventions such as calendars, mathematics, software, law, and writing, as these too derive from our heads. But technology also must include birds' nests and beaver dams since these too are the work of brains.

All technology, both the chimp's termite fishing spear and the human's fishing spear, the beaver's dam and the human's dam, the warbler's hanging basket and the human's hanging basket, the leafcutter ant's garden and the human's garden, are all fundamentally natural. We tend to isolate human-made technology from nature, even to the point of thinking of it as anti-nature, only because it has grown to rival the impact and power of its home. But in its origins and fundamentals a tool is as natural as our life.

Tools and bigger brains mark the beginning of a distinctly human line in evolution 2.5 million years ago. The first simple stone tools appeared in the same archeological moment that brains of the hominins who made them began to enlarge toward their current size. Thus hominins arrived on earth with rough chipped stone scrapers and cutters in hand. About a million years ago these large-brain, tool-wielding hominins drifted out of Africa and settle into southern Europe, where they evolved into the Neanderthal (with even bigger brains), and further into east Asia, where they evolved into Homo erectus (also bigger brained). Over the next several millions of years, all three hominin lines evolved, but the ones who remained in Africa evolved into the human form we see in ourselves. The exact time these proto-humans became fully modern humans is of course debated. Some say 200,000 years ago but the undisputed latest date is 100,000 years ago. By 100,000 years ago humans crossed the threshold where they are indistinguishable from us outwardly. We would not notice anything amiss if one of them were to stroll alongside of us on the beach. However, their tools and most of their behavior were indistinguishable from their relatives the Neanderthals in Europe and Erectus in Asia.

For the next 50 millennia not much changed. The anatomy of African human skeletons remained constant over this time. Neither did their tools change much. Early humans employed rough-and-ready lumps of rock with sharpened edges to cut, poke, drill, or spear. But these hand-held tools were unspecialized, and did not vary by location or time. No matter where or when in this period (called the Mesolithic) a hominin picked up one of these tools it would resemble one made tens of thousands of miles away or tens of thousands of years apart, whether in the hands of Neanderthal, Erectus or Homo sapiens. Hominins simply lacked innovation. As Jared Diamond put it, "Despite their large brains, something was missing."

Then about 50,000 years ago something amazing happened. While the bodies of early humans in Africa remained unchanged, their genes and minds shifted noticeably. For the first time hominins were full of ideas and innovation. These newly vitalized modern humans, which we now call Sapiens, charged into new regions beyond their ancestral homes in eastern Africa. They fanned out from the grasslands and in a relatively brief burst exploded from a few tens of thousands in Africa to an estimated 8 million worldwide just before the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago.

A simulation of the 50,000 year BP population explosion in prehistory. From Atkinson.

The speed at which Sapiens marched across the planet and settled every continent (except Antarctica) is astounding. In 5,000 years they overtook Europe. In another 15,000 they reached edges of Asia. Once tribes of Sapiens crossed the land bridge from Eurasia into what is now Alaska, it took them only a few thousand years to fill the whole of the New World. Sapiens increased so relentlessly that for the next 38,000 years they expanded their occupation at the average rate of one mile per year. Sapiens kept pushing until they reached the furthest they could go: land's end at the tip of South America. Less than 1,500 generations after their "great leap forward" in Africa, Homo sapiens had become the most widely distributed species in Earth's history, inhabiting every type of biome and every watershed on the planet. Sapiens were the most invasive alien species ever.

Today the breadth of Sapien occupation exceeds that of any other macro-species we know of; no other visible species occupies more niches, geographically and biological, than Homo sapiens. Sapien's overtake was always rapid. Jared Diamond notes that "after the ancestors of the Maori reached New Zealand" carrying only a few tools, "it apparently took them barely a century to discover all worthwhile stone sources; only a few more centuries to kill every last moa in some of the world's most rugged terrain." This sudden global expansion following millennia of steady sustainability is due to only one thing: technology and innovation.

As Sapiens expanded in range they remade animal horns and tusks into thrusters and knives, cleverly turning the animals' own weapons against them. They sculpted figurines, the first art, and the first jewelry, beads cut from shells, at this threshold 50,000 years ago. While humans had long used fire, the first hearths and shelter structures were invented about this time. Trade of scarce shells, chert and flint rock began. At approximately the same time Sapiens invented fishing hooks and nets, and needles for sewing hides into clothes. They left behind the remains of tailored hides in graves. In fact, graves with deliberately interred burial goods were invented at this time. Sometimes recovered beads and ornaments in the burial site would trace the borders of the long-gone garments. A few bits of pottery from that time have the imprint of woven net and loose fabrics on them. In the same period Sapiens also invented animal traps. Their garbage reveals heaps of skeletons of small furred animals without their feet; Trappers today still skin small animals the same way by keeping the feet with the skin. On walls artists painted humans wearing parkas shooting animals with arrows or spears. Significantly, unlike Neanderthal and Erectus's crude creations, these tools varied in small stylistic and technological ways place by place. Sapiens had begun innovating.

The Sapien mind's ability to make warm clothes opened up the artic regions, and the invention of fishing gear opened up the coasts and rivers of the world, particularly in the tropics, where large game was scarce. While Sapien's innovation allowed them to prosper in new climates, the cold and its unique ecology especially drove innovation. More complex "technological units" are needed (or have been invented) by historical hunter-gatherer tribes the higher the latitude of their homes. Hunting oceanic sea mammals in artic climes took significantly more sophisticated gear that fishing salmon in a river. The ability of Sapiens to rapidly adapt tools allowed them to rapidly adapt to new ecological niches, at a much faster rate than genetic evolution could ever allow.

During their quick global takeover, Sapiens displaced (with or without interbreeding) the several other co-inhabiting hominin species on earth, including their cousins the Neanderthal. The Neanderthals were never abundant and may have only numbered 18,000 individuals at once. After dominating Europe for hundreds of thousands of years as the sole humanoid, the Neanderthals vanished in less than 100 generations after the tool-carrying Sapiens arrived. That is a blink in history. As anthropologist Richard Klein says, "this displacement occurred almost instantaneously from a geologic perspective. There were no intermediates in the archeological record. The Neanderthals were there one day, and the Cro-Magnons [Sapiens] were there the next." The Sapien layer was always on top, and never the reverse. It was not even necessary that the Sapiens slaughter the Neanderthals. Demographers have calculated that as little as a 4 percent difference in reproductive effectiveness (a reasonable expectation given Sapien's ability to bring home more kinds of meat), could eclipse the lesser breeding species in a few thousands years. The speed of this several thousand-year extinction was without precedent in natural evolution. Sadly it was only the first rapid species extinction to be caused by humans.

It should have been clear to Neanderthal, as it is now clear to us in the 21st century, that something new and big had appeared -- a new biological and geological force. A number of scientists (Richard Klein, Ian Tattersall, William Calvin, among many others) think that the "something" that happened 50,000 years ago was the invention of language. Up until this point, humanoids were smart. They could make crude tools in a hit or miss way and handle fire – perhaps like an exceedingly smart chimp. The African hominin's growing brain size and physical stature had leveled off its increase, but evolution continued inside the brain. "What happened 50,000 years ago," says Klein, "was a change in the operating system of humans. Perhaps a point mutation effected the way the brain is wired that allowed languages, as we understand language today: rapidly produced, articulate speech." Instead of acquiring a larger brain, as the Neanderthal and Erectus did, Sapien gained a rewired brain. Language altered the Neanderthal-type mind, and allowed Sapien minds for the first time to invent with purpose and deliberation. Philosopher Daniel Dennet crows in elegant language: "There is no step more uplifting, more momentous in the history of mind design, than the invention of language. When Homo sapiens became the beneficiary of this invention, the species stepped into a slingshot that has launched it far beyond all other earthly species." The creation of language was the first singularity for humans. It changed everything. Life after language was unimaginable to those on the far side before it.

Language accelerates learning and creation by permitting communication and coordination. A new idea can be spread quickly by having someone explain it and communicate it to others before they have to discover it themselves. But the chief advantage of language is not communication, but auto-generation. Language is a trick which allows the mind to question itself. It is a magic mirror which reveals to the mind what the mind thinks. Language is a handle which turns a mind into a tool. With a grip on the slippery aimless activity of self-reference, self-awareness, language can harness a mind into a fountain of new ideas. Without the cerebral structure of language, we can't access our own mental activity. We certainly can't think the way we do. Try it yourself. If our minds can't tell stories, we can't consciously create; we can only create by accident. Until we tame the mind with an organization tool capable of communicating to itself, we have stray thoughts without a narrative. We have a feral mind. We have smartness without a tool.

A few scientists believe that, in fact, it was technology that sparked language. To throw a tool – a rock or stick – at an animal and hit it with sufficient force to kill it requires a serious computation in the hominin brain. Each throw requires a long succession of precise neural instructions executed in a split second. But unlike calculating how to grasp a branch in mid-air, the brain must calculate several alternative options for a throw at the same time: the animal speeds up, or it slows down; aim high, aim low. The mind must then spin out the results to gauge the best possible throw before the actual throw – all in a few milli-seconds. Scientists like neurobiologist William Calvin believe that once a brain evolved the power to run multiple rapid throw scenarios, it hijacked this throw procedure to run multiple rapid sequences of notions. The brain would throw words instead of sticks. This reuse or repurposing of technology then became a primitive but advantageous language.

The slippery genius of language opened up many new niches for spreading tribes of Sapiens. They could quickly adapt their tools to hunt or trap an increasing diversity of game, and to gather and process an increasing diversity of plants. There is some evidence that Neanderthals were stuck on a few sources of food. Examination of Neanderthal bones show they lacked the fatty acids found in fish and the Neanderthal diet was mostly meat. But not just any meat. Over half of their diet was woolly mammoth and reindeer. The demise of the Neanderthal may be correlated with the demise of great herds of these megafuana.

Sapiens thrived as broadly omnivorous hunter-gatherers. The unbroken line of human offspring for hundreds of thousands of years proves that a few tools will capture enough nutrition to create the next generation. We are here now because hunting-gathering in the past worked. Several analysis of historical hunter-gather diets show that they were able to secure enough calories to meet the US FDA requirements for folks their size. For example, the Dobe gathered on average 2,140 calories. Fish Creek tribe, 2,130. Hemple Bay tribe, 2,160. They had a varied diet of tubers, vegetables, fruit and meat. Based on studies of bones and pollen in their trash, so did the early Sapiens.

Thomas Hobbe claimed the life of the savage – and by this he meant hunter-gatherers -- was "nasty, short and brutish." But while the life of an early hunter-gatherer was short, and interrupted by nasty warfare, it was not brutish. With only a slim set of a dozen primitive tools humans not only secured enough to survive in all kinds of environments, but these tools and techniques will also afford them some leisure doing so. Anthropological studies confirm that hunter-gathers do not spend all day hunting and gathering. One researcher, Marshall Sahlins, concluded that hunter-gatherers worked only 3-4 hours a day on necessary food chores, putting in what he called "banker hours." The evidence for his surprising results are controversial: much of the research (by others) was based on time studies of groups who were previously hunting and gathering and returned to this mode only for a few weeks to demonstrate their efficiency. And the measurements lasted only a few weeks. Surveys of other tribes' yields gave daily calorie intakes of only 1,500 or 1,800 per day for their few hours of work. Furthermore the definition of what activities should be included as the work of food getting is not clear. For instance if a modern human goes shopping at a supermarket --- to get food of course -- is that classified as "work" time? Why not? Do the elaborate preparations for a community feast where food is exchanged, common to most forager tribes, count as food getting? All these variables shift the measure of how much work it takes to live as a hunter-gatherer with a low dose of technology.

A more realistic and less contentious average for food gathering time among contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes based on a wider range of data is about 6 hours per day. That 6 hour/day average belies a great variation in day to day routine. One to two hour naps or whole days spent sleeping were not uncommon. As one anthropologist noted, when foragers set out to work, "they certainly did not approach it as an unpleasant job to be got over as soon as possible, nor as necessary evil to be postponed as long as possible." Outside observers almost universally noted the punctuated aspect of work among foragers. Gatherers may work very hard for several days in a row and then do nothing in terms of food getting for the rest of the week. This cycle is known among anthologists as the "paleolithic rhythm" -- a day or two on, day or two off. An observer familiar with the Yamana tribe – but it could be almost any hunter tribe -- wrote: "Their work is a more a matter of fits and starts, and in these occasional efforts they can develop considerable energy for a certain time. After that, however they show a desire for an incalculably long rest period during which they lie about doing nothing, without showing great fatigue." The paleolithic rhythm actually reflects the "predator rhythm" since great hunters of the animal world, the lion and other large cats, exhibit the same style: hunting to exhaustion in a short burst and then lounging around days afterward. Hunters, almost by definition, seldom go out hunting, and they succeed in getting a meal even less often. The efficiency of primitive tribal hunting, measured in the yield of calories/hour invested, was only half that of gathering. Meat is thus a treat in almost every foraging culture.

Then there are seasonal variations. Every ecosystem produces a "hungry season" for foragers. In higher cooler latitudes, this late-winter/early spring hungry season is more severe, but even in tropical latitudes, there are seasonal oscillations in the availability of favorite foods, supplemental fruits, or essential wild game. In addition, there are climatic variations: extended periods of droughts, floods, storms that can disrupt yearly patterns. This great punctuations over days, season, and years mean that while there are many times when hunter-gatherers are well-fed, they also can – and do – expect many periods when they are hungry, famished and undernourished. Time spent in this state along the edge of malnutrition is mortal for young children and dire for adults.

The result of all this variation in calories is the paleolithic rhythm at all scales of time. Importantly, this burstiness in "work" is not by choice. When you are primarily dependent of natural systems to provide you foodstuffs, working more does not tend to produce more. You can't get twice as much food by working twice as hard. The hour which the figs ripen can neither be hurried, nor predicted exactly. Nor can the arrival of game herds. If you do not store surplus, nor cultivate in place, then motion must produce your food. Hunter-gatherers must be in ceaseless movement away from depleted sources in order to maintain production. But once you are committed to perpetual movement, surplus and its tools slow you down. In many contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, being unencumbered with things is considered a virtue, even a virtue of character. You carry nothing, but cleverly make or procure whatever you need when you need it. "The efficient hunter who would accumulate supplies succeeds at the cost of his own esteem", says Robert Kelley. Additionally the surplus producer must share the extra food or goods with everyone, which reduces incentive to produce extra. For foragers food storage is therefore socially self-defeating. Instead your hunger must adapt to the movements of the wild. If a dry spell diminishes the yield of the sago, no amount of extra work time will advance the delivery of food. Therefore, foragers take a very accepting pace to eating. When food is there, all work very hard. When it is not, no problem; they will sit around and talk while they are hungry. This very reasonable approach is often misread as tribal laziness, but it is in fact a logical strategy if you rely on the environment to store your food.

We civilized modern workers can look at this leisurely approach to work and feel jealous. Three to six hours a day is a lot less then most adults any developed country put in to their labors. Furthermore, when asked, most acculturated hunter-gatherers don't want any more than they have. A tribe will rarely have more than one artifact, such as an ax, because why do you need more than one? Either you use the object when you need to, or more likely, you make one when you need one. Once used, artifacts are often discarded rather than saved. That way nothing extra needs to be carried, or cared for. Westerns giving gifts to foragers such as a blanket or knife were often mortified to see them trashed after a day. In a very curious way, foragers lived in the ultimate disposable culture. The best tools, artifacts, technology were all disposable. Elaborate hand-crafted shelters were considered disposable. When a clan or family travel they might erect a home for only a night (a bamboo hut or snow igloo) and then abandoned it the next morning. Larger multi-family lodges might be abandoned after a few years rather than maintained. Same for food patches, which are abandoned after harvesting.

This easy just-in-time self-sufficiency and contentment led Marshall Sahlins to declare hunter-gatherers as "the original affluent society." But while foragers had sufficient calories most days, and did not create a culture that continually craved more, a better summary might be that hunter-gatherers had "affluence without abundance." Based on numerous historical encounters with aboriginal tribes, they often, if not regularly, complained about being hungry. Famed anthropologist Collin Turnball noted "The Mbuti complain of food shortage, although they frequently sing to the goodness of the forest." Often the complaints of hunter-gathers were about the monotony of a carbohydrate stable, like mongongo nuts for every meal; what they meant about shortages, or even hunger, was a shortage of meat, and a hunger for fat, and a distaste for periods of hunger. Their small amounts of technology gave them sufficiency for most of the time, but not abundance.

The fine line between average sufficiency and abundance matters in terms of health. When anthropologists measure the total fertility rate (the mean number of live births over the reproductive years) of women in modern hunter-gather tribes they find it relatively low – about 5 to 6 children in total -- compared to the 6-8 of agricultural communities. There are several factors behind this depressed fertility. Perhaps because of uneven nutrition, puberty comes late to forager girls at 16 or 17 years old. (Modern females start at 13) This late menarche for women, combined with a shorter lifespan, delays and thus abbreviates the childbearing window. Breastfeeding usually lasts longer in foragers, which extends the interval between births. Most tribes nurse till children are 2 to 3 years old, while a few tribes keep suckling for as long as 6 years. Also, many women are extremely lean and active, and like lean active women athletes in the west, often have irregular or no menstruations. One theory suggests women need a "critical fatness" to produce fertile eggs, a fatness many forager women lack – at least part of the year -- because of a fluctuating diet. And of course, people anywhere can practice deliberate abstinence to space children, and foragers have reasons to do so.

Infanticide also contributed to small families. The prevalence of infanticide varied significantly among foraging tribes. It was as high as 30% of children in traditional artic tribes (in the early 1900s), and zero in others, with an average infanticide rate of 21% among the cross-culture sample of tribes anthropologists measured. In some cultures infanticide was biased towards females, perhaps to balance gender ratios, particularly in tribes where men contributed more food to the family than women (which was not the norm). In other tribes infanticide was practiced to space births, as Robert Kelley says, "in order to maximize reproductive success, rather than population control." In nomadic cultures mothers needed to carry not only their tools and household items, but also their small children. On frequent long migrations to find food a family had to carry all their possessions. For a pregnant woman to carry more than one small child would endangered the older sibling. Better for all to have children spaced apart.

Child mortality in foraging tribes was severe. A survey of 25 hunter-gatherer tribes in historical times from various continents revealed that on average 25% of children died before they were one, and 37% died before they were 15. In one traditional hunter-gather tribe child mortality was found to be 60%. Most historical tribes have a population growth rate of approximately zero. This depression is made evident, says Robert Kelley in his survey of hunter-gathering peoples, because "when formerly mobile people become sedentary, the rate of population growth increases." All things equal, the constancy of farmed food breeds more people.

While many children died young, hunting-gather elders did not have it much better. There are no known remains of a Neanderthal who lived to be older than 40. Because extremely high child mortality rates depress average life expectancy, if the outlier oldest is only 40, the median age of a Neanderthal was less than 20. It was a tough life. Based on an analysis of bone stress and cuts, one archeologist said the distribution of injuries on the bodies of Neanderthal were similar to those found on rodeo professionals -– lots of head, trunk and arm injuries like the ones you might get from close encounters with large angry animals. Erik Trinkaus discovered that the pattern of age-related mortality for hunter-gatherers and Neanderthal were nearly parallel, except historical foragers lived a little longer.

Mortality rates expressed as percentage of the population who died in a stage of life. From "The Neanderthal's Necklace"

A typical tribe of hunters-gatherers had few very young children and no old people. This demographic may explain a common impression visitors had upon meeting intact historical hunter-gatherer tribes. They would remark that "everyone looked extremely healthy and robust." That's in part because most everyone was in the prime of life between 15 and 35. We might have the same reaction visiting a city or trendy neighborhood with the same youthful demographic. We'd call them young adults. Tribal life was a lifestyle for and of young adults.

A major effect of this short forager lifespan was the crippling absence of grandparents. Given that women would only start bearing by 17 or so, and die by their thirties, it would be common for parents leave their children in their tweens. We tend to think that a shorter lifespan is rotten -– for the individual -– and no doubt it is. But a short lifespan is extremely detrimental for a society as well. Because without grandparents, it becomes exceedingly difficult to transmit knowledge over time. Grandparents are the conduit of culture, and without them, culture stagnates.

Imagine a society that not only lacked grandparents but also lacked language –- as the pre-Sapiens did. How would learning be transmitted over generations? Your own parents would die before you were an adult and in any case, they could not communicate to you anything beyond what they could show you while you were immature. You would certainly not learn anything from anyone outside your immediate circle of peers. Innovation and cultural learning cease to flow.

Language upended this tight constriction by enabling both an idea to form, and then to be communicated. An innovation could be hatched and then spread across generations via children. Sapiens gained better hunting tools (like thrown spears which permitted a lightweight human to kill a huge dangerous animal from a safe distance), better fishing tools (barbed hooks and traps), and using hot stones to cook not just meat but to extract more calories from wild plants. And they gained all these within only 100 generations of using language. Better tools meant better nutrition.

The primary long-term consequence of this slightly better nutrition was a steady increase in longevity. Anthropologist Rachel Capsari studied the dental fossils of 768 hominin individuals from 5 million years ago, till the great leap, in Europe, Asia and Africa. She determined that there was a "dramatic increase in longevity in the modern humans" about 50,000 years ago. Increasing longevity allowed grand parenting, or what is called the "grandmother effect": In a virtuous circle, via the communication of grandparents and culture, ever more powerful innovations were able to lengthened life spans further, which gave more time to invent new tools, which increased population. Not only that, increased longevity, "provides a selective advantage promoting further population increase," because a higher density of humans increased the rate and influence of innovations, which contributed to increased populations. Capsari states that the most "fundamental biological factor that underlies the behavioral innovations of modernity is the increase in adult survivorship." Increased longevity is probably the most measurable consequence of the acquisition of technology, and it is also the most consequential.

By 20,000 years ago, as the world was warming up and its global ice caps retreating, Sapien's population and tool kit expanded hand-in-hand. Sapiens used 40 kinds of tools, including anvils, pottery, and composites – complicated spears or cutters made from multiple pieces, such as many tiny flint shards and a handle. While still primarily a hunter-gatherer Sapiens also dappled in sedentism, returning to care for favorite food areas, and developed specialized tools for different types of ecosystems. We know from burial sites in the northern latitudes at this same time, that clothing also evolved from the general (a rough tunic) to specialized items such as a cap, a shirt, a jacket, trousers and moccasins. Henceforth the variety of human tools would become ever more specialized.

The variety of Sapiens tribes exploded as they adapted into diverse watersheds and biomes. Their new tools reflected the specifics of their homes; river inhabitants had many nets; steppe hunters many kinds of points; forest dwellers many types of traps. Their language and looks were diverging.

Yet they shared many qualities. Most hunter-gatherers clustered into family clans that averaged about 25 related people. Clans would gather in larger tribes of several hundred at seasonal feasts or camping grounds. One function of the tribes was to keep genes moving through intermarriage. Population was spread thinly. The average density of a tribe was less than .01 person per square kilometer in cooler climes. The 200-300 folk in your greater tribe would be the total number of people you'd meet in your lifetime. You might be aware of others outside of them because items for trade or barter could travel 300 kilometers. Some of the traded items would be body ornaments and beads, such as ocean shells for inlanders, forest feathers for the coast dwellers. Occasionally pigments were swapped for face painting, but these could also be applied on walls, or applied to carved wood figurines. The dozen tools you carried would have been bone drills, awls, needles, bone knives, a bone hook for fish on a spear, some stone scrapers, maybe some stone sharpies. A number of your blades would be held by bone or wood handles, hafted with cane or hide cord. When you crouched around the fire, someone might play a drum or bone flute. The handful of your possessions might be buried with you when you die.

But don't take this for harmony. Within 20,000 years of the great march out of Africa, Sapiens helped exterminate 270 out of the 279 then existing species of megafuana. Sapiens used new innovations such as the bow and arrow, spear, and cliff-stampedes to kill off the last of the mastodons, mammoths, moas, woolly rhinos, giant camels -- basically every large package of protein that walked on four legs. More than 80% of all large mammal genera on the planet were completely extinct by 10,000 years ago. Somehow four species escaped this fate in North America: the bison, moose, elk and red deer.

Violence between tribes was endemic as well. The rules of harmony and cooperation that work so well among members of the same tribe, and are often the subject of envy of modern observers, do not apply to those outside of the tribe. Tribes would go to war over waterholes in Australia, or hunting grounds and wild-rice fields in the plains of the US, or river and ocean frontage along the coast in the Pacific Northwest. Commonly, without systems of arbitration, or even leaders, small feuds over stolen goods, or women, or signs of wealth such as pigs in New Guinea, could grow into multigenerational warfare. The death rate due to warfare was 5 times higher among hunter-gatherer tribes than in later agricultural-based societies (0.1% of the population killed per year in "civilized" wars versus 0.5% in war between tribes). Actual rates of warfare varied among tribes and regions, because as in the modern world, one belligerent tribe could disrupt the peace for many. But in general the more nomadic a tribe was, the more peaceful, since it would simply flee from conflict. But when fighting broke out it was fierce and deadly. When the numbers of warriors on both sides were about equal, primitive tribes usually beat the armies of civilization. The Celtic tribes defeated the Romans, the Tuareg smashed the French, the Zulus trumped the British, and it took the US Army three centuries to defeat the Apache tribes and only then because the Army hired traitor Apaches to quell their brothers. As Lawrence Keeley says in his survey of early warfare in War Before Civilization, "The facts recovered by ethnographers and archaeologists indicated unequivocally that primitive and prehistoric warfare was just as terrible and effective as the historic and civilized version. In fact, primitive warfare was much more deadly than that conducted between civilized states because of the greater frequency of combat and the more merciless way it was conducted…It is civilized warfare that is stylized, ritualized, and relatively less dangerous."

From "War before Civilization".

Before the singularity of language 50,000 years ago, the world lacked significant technology. For the next 40,000 years (four times as long as civilization has been around) every human who lived was a hunter-gatherer. During this time an estimated 1 billion people explored how far you could go with a handful of tools. This world without much technology provided "enough." There was leisure and satisfying work for humans. Happiness, too. Without technology, the rhythms and patterns of nature were immediate. Nature ruled your hunger and set your course. Nature was so vast, so bountiful and so close, few humans could separate from it. The attunement with the natural world felt divine. Yet, without technology, the recurring tragedy of child death was ever present. Accidents, warfare and disease meant your life, on average, was far less than half what it could have been. Maybe only a quarter of the natural lifespan you genes afforded. Hunger was always near.

But most noticeably, without technology, your leisure was wasted. You had much time for repetitions, but none for anything new. Within narrow limits you had no bosses. But the direction and interests of your life were laid out in well-worn paths. The cycles of your environment determined your life.

Turns out, the bounty of nature, though vast, does not hold all possibilities. The mind does, but it had not been fully unleashed yet. A world without technology had enough to continue life but not enough to transcend it. The mind, liberated by language, and enabled by the technium, transcended the constraints of nature, and opened up greater realms of possibility. There was a price to pay for this transcendence, but what we gained was civilization and progress.

Those would disappear instantly if technology were to disappear. If a Technology Removal Beam swept across the earth and eliminated every scrap of invention from the world, and sent us into a world without technology – the bus ride no one wants to take – it would shake our foundations. Once the Beam pulverized all hunks of metal, metallic pieces, and slivers of iron and steel into rock dust, and vaporized all plastic, and of course zapped all electronics and modern medicines, and eroded highways and bridges till they disappeared into the landscape without a trace, then the first thing we'd want to do is re-manufacture some hand tools. But if the Technology Removal Beam prevented any constructed tools at all, humans, and humanity, would rapidly be endangered.

After the vast asphalt parking lots of suburban malls melted away, and the greasy blocks of industrial factories subsided beneath the dirt, and the endless sprawl containing hundreds of millions of homes vanished in dust, there would still not be enough bounty in the regrown wilds to sustain 6 billion foragers. For one, the hugely productive herds of megafuana that supported millions of earlier hunters are gone for good. We devoured their easy pickings 20 millennia ago, and removing technology won't return them. For another the current global population of humans spread equally across all land mass on the planet, including the least hospitable areas of icy mountains and empty desert, would be 10 persons per square kilometer, which is several times more than the average density of sustainable foraging. Thus even a pristine environment could not support 6 billion Sapiens at the meager level of a hunter-gather.

Not that we'd last long anyway. Deprived of gun, spear, and knife, humans would no longer be the key predator. We in fact become prey. Any human lucky enough to eat well would become a desirable meal for newly revived packs of wolves and other alpha predators. The stress and inadequate nutrition of subsistence foraging would revert women's fertility to its earlier low rate. The growth rate of Homo sapiens would head quickly towards zero. The entirety of the species would retreat to a few remote havens, much as gorillas and chimpanzees have done.

We are not the same folks who marched out of Africa. Our genes have co-evolved with our inventions. In the past 10,000 years alone, in fact, our genes have evolved 100 times faster than the average rate for the previous 6 million years. This should not be a surprise. In the same period we domesticated the dog (all those breeds) from wolves, and cows and corn and more from their unrecognizable ancestors. We, too, have been domesticated. We have domesticated ourselves. Our teeth continue to shrink, our muscles thin out, our hair disappear, our molecular digestion adjust to new foods. Technology has domesticated us. As fast as we remake our tools, we remake ourselves. We are co-evolving with our technology, so that we have become deeply co-dependent on it. Sapiens can no longer survive biologically without some kind of tools. Nor can our humanity continue without the technium.

In a world without technology, we would not be living, and we would not be human.

The separate neural control of hand movements and contact forces.

2009-03-27T17:59:37Z

The separate neural control of hand movements and contact forces.

J Neurosci. 2009 Mar 25;29(12):3939-47

Authors: Chib VS, Krutky MA, Lynch KM, Mussa-Ivaldi FA

To manipulate an object, we must simultaneously control the contact forces exerted on the object and the movements of our hand. Two alternative views for manipulation have been proposed: one in which motions and contact forces are represented and controlled by separate neural processes, and one in which motions and forces are controlled jointly, by a single process. To evaluate these alternatives, we designed three tasks in which subjects maintained a specified contact force while their hand was moved by a robotic manipulandum. The prescribed contact force and hand motions were selected in each task to induce the subject to attain one of three goals: (1) exerting a regulated contact force, (2) tracking the motion of the manipulandum, and (3) attaining both force and motion goals concurrently. By comparing subjects' performances in these three tasks, we found that behavior was captured by the summed actions of two independent control systems: one applying the desired force, and the other guiding the hand along the predicted path of the manipulandum. Furthermore, the application of transcranial magnetic stimulation impulses to the posterior parietal cortex selectively disrupted the control of motion but did not affect the regulation of static contact force. Together, these findings are consistent with the view that manipulation of objects is performed by independent brain control of hand motions and interaction forces.

PMID: 19321790 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Microchip Mimics a Brain With 200,000 Neurons

2009-03-25T15:48:00Z

Al writes "European researchers have taken a step towards replicating the functioning of the brain in silicon, creating new custom chip with the equivalent of 200,000 neurons linked up by 50 million synaptic connections. The aim of the Fast Analog Computing with Emergent Transient States (FACETS) project is to better understand how to construct massively parallel computer systems modeled on a biological brain. Unlike IBM's Blue Brain project, which involves modeling a brain in software, this approach makes it much easier to create a truly parallel computing system. The set-up also features a distributed algorithm that introduces an element of plasticity, allowing the circuit to learn and adapt. The researchers plan to connect thousands of chips to create a circuit with a billion neurons and 10^13 synapses (about a tenth of the complexity of the human brain)."

Programmed acute electrical stimulation of ventral tegmental area alleviates depressive-like behavior.

2009-03-24T14:13:22Z

Programmed acute electrical stimulation of ventral tegmental area alleviates depressive-like behavior.

Neuropsychopharmacology. 2009 Mar;34(4):1057-66

Authors: Friedman A, Frankel M, Flaumenhaft Y, Merenlender A, Pinhasov A, Feder Y, Taler M, Gil-Ad I, Abeles M, Yadid G

Depressive disorders affect approximately 5% of the population in any given year. Antidepressants may require several weeks to produce their clinical effects. Despite progress being made in this area there is still room and a need to explore additional therapeutic modes to increase treatment effectiveness and responsiveness. Herein, we examined a new method for intervention in depressive states based on deep brain stimulation of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) as a source of incentive motivation and hedonia, in comparison to chemical antidepressants. The pattern of stimulation was fashioned to mimic the firing pattern of VTA neurons in the normal rat. Behavioral manifestations of depression were then monitored weekly using a battery of behavioral tests. The results suggest that treatment with programmed acute electrical stimulation of the VTA substantially alleviates depressive behavior, as compared to chemical antidepressants or electroconvulsive therapy, both in onset time and longitudinal effect. These results were also highly correlated with increases in brain-derived neurotrophic factor mRNA levels in the prefrontal cortex.

PMID: 18843267 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Lesions to the Motor System Affect Action Perception.

2009-03-24T14:12:36Z

Lesions to the Motor System Affect Action Perception.

J Cogn Neurosci. 2009 Mar 20;

Authors: Serino A, De Filippo L, Casavecchia C, Coccia M, Shiffrar M, Làdavas E

Abstract Several studies have shown that the motor system is involved in action perception, suggesting that action concepts are represented through sensory-motor processes. Such conclusions imply that motor system impairments should diminish action perception. To test this hypothesis, a group of 10 brain-damaged patients with hemiplegia (specifically, a lesion at the motor system that affected the contralesional arm) viewed point-light displays of arm gestures and attempted to name each gesture. To create the dynamic stimuli, patients individually performed simple gestures with their unaffected arm while being videotaped. The videotapes were converted into point-light animations. Each action was presented as it had been performed, that is, as having been produced by the observer's unaffected arm, and in its mirror reversed orientation, that is, as having been produced by the observer's hemiplegic arm. Action recognition accuracy by patients with hemiplegia was compared with that by 8 brain-damaged patients without any motor deficit and by 10 healthy controls. Overall, performance was better in control observers than in patients. Most importantly, performance by hemiplegic patients, but by nonhemiplegic patients and controls, varied systematically as a function of the observed limb. Action recognition was best when hemiplegic patients viewed actions that appeared to have been performed by their unaffected arm. Action recognition performance dropped significantly when hemiplegic patients viewed actions that appeared to have been produced with their hemiplegic arm or the corresponding arm of another person. The results of a control study involving the recognition of point-light defined animals in motion indicate that a generic deficit to visual and cognitive functions cannot account for this laterality-specific deficit in action recognition. Taken together, these results suggest that motor cortex impairment decreases visual sensitivity to human action. Specifically, when a cortical lesion renders an observer incapable of performing an observed action, action perception is compromised, possibly by a failure to map the observed action onto the observer's contralesional hemisoma.

PMID: 19302003 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

People Skydiving to See Space Shuttle Launch [Space]

2009-03-24T15:59:00Z

People go to Florida to see the space shuttle launch live, but these guys totally own everyone: They fly next to the launch site and jump from the plane in their wingsuits to watch it.

In the video it looks like it's far away, but take into account that those are very wide lenses. Of course, they are out of the airspace exclusion area, but they are quite close. Apparently, from up there the clarity of the launch is amazing.

I so want to do this.

Brandon's starred items in Google Reader

Principles of neural ensemble physiology underlying the operation of brain-machine interfaces.

Exploiting multiple sensory modalities in brain-machine interfaces.

Toward the restoration of hand use to a paralyzed monkey: brain-controlled functional electrical stimulation of forearm muscles.

Human inner ear models for universal radio chip

Testing Project Natal: We Touched the Intangible [E3 O9]

Free the Science

Mirror neurons differentially encode the peripersonal and extrapersonal space of monkeys.

Mendeley Desktop v0.6.5 released

Millisecond-timescale optical control of neural dynamics in the nonhuman primate brain.

Mendeley Academic Software To Manage And Share Research Papers

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Mirror neurons differentially encode the peripersonal and extrapersonal space of monkeys.

The science of neural interface systems.

The significance of neuroscience for philosophy.

Neurosky Mindset Hands-on: Brainwave Gameplay! [Gdc 2009]

The World Without Technology

The separate neural control of hand movements and contact forces.

Microchip Mimics a Brain With 200,000 Neurons

Programmed acute electrical stimulation of ventral tegmental area alleviates depressive-like behavior.

Lesions to the Motor System Affect Action Perception.

People Skydiving to See Space Shuttle Launch [Space]