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What Neuralink is missing (it turns out that connecting brains with computers is the easy part) (www.theatlantic.com)

submitted 7 months ago by boem@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Instead of the difficult task of replacing sight, motor function, or other complicated bi-directional systems, how hard would it be to simply electrically stimulate dopamine release in the brain? At its extreme, you press a button and you feel like you’ve taken a huge dose of cocaine or heroin

Easy. Been done lots of times with rats and I imagine that must be hard with those tiny brains. Brain surgery on humans must be much easier, but they are not allowed to press their own buttons. You know, ethics.

Rats will perform lever-pressing at rates of several thousand responses per hour for days in exchange for direct electrical stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus. Multiple studies have demonstrated that rats will perform reinforced behaviors at the exclusion of all other behaviors. Experiments have shown rats will forgo food to the point of starvation in exchange for brain stimulation or intravenous cocaine when both food and stimulation are offered concurrently for a limited time each day. Rats will also cross electrified grids to press a lever, and they are willing to withstand higher levels of shock to obtain electrical stimulation than to obtain food.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_stimulation_reward

The lesson here is that only the pursuit of porn drives ethical, sustainable progress.

[–] WallEx@feddit.de 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think you have it backwards, human brains are bigger and thus more complicated, so I think much more complicated to do the same things as in mice. Thats why we "practice" on mice

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Elephants have much bigger brains than humans. That doesn't necessarily mean they are more complicated. Maybe they are, but elephants are obviously not able to do, intellectually, nearly as much as humans. Generally, brain size scales with body size. Humans are unusual in that we have brains that are much too big for our bodies.

Structurally, our brains are like those of other mammals. What makes them too big for our bodies is the cerebral cortex. Now, I don't want to mislead anyone by appearing too confident. So let me say that this was pretty much the extent of my knowledge on comparative brain anatomy. I believe that the structures one is aiming for here, are simply larger in larger animals. Besides, when operating on a human, you can always ask them how they feel when you apply a current to a part of their brain to make sure you got the right bit. Standard practice, actually.