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A monkey just mind controlled another monkey, so basically we now live in a nightmare future
where no monkey's actions can ever fully be trusted.
[MUSIC]
Anthony Carboni here for DNews and a team at Harvard Medical School implanted a chip
into the brain of a monkey that monitored the activity of 100 neurons in its brain.
A second, sedated monkey had 36 electrodes implanted in its spinal cord- and the two
were hooked up via computer, allowing the first monkey to control the movements of the
second.
The sedated monkey held a joystick, and the master monkey was able to make it move that
joystick towards goals on a screen with 98% efficiency. The goal, of course, being an
army of mind-controlled monkey assassins.
Okay, no- the goal is to help people suffering from limited or full paralysis due to spinal
damage to regain full range of motion. Do more testing and refinement, make more advanced
and smaller versions of the chip and electrodes, and put them into a human. That. Is. Amazing.
Also sorta creepy at first thought. Someone with... a less than optimistic view of human
nature might think this could be used as a form of mind control. The team says that because
this just controls basic movement, not thoughts or intentions, and because an able-bodied
person would still have their own brain-spine connections and control their own muscles,
no one's going to be hijacking anyone else's body anytime soon.
Or maybe that's what the monkeys told them to say.
This sort of augmented brain/body control has seen a lot of advancements in a really
short amount of time. In 2008, University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon researchers
were able to use a cruder implementation of this technology to have a monkey control a
robot arm, and in 2012, Brown University showed paralyzed people using a more advanced version
the the same brain/robot arm combo.
The chip in the brain is connected to a person- or primate's- motor neurons, which send directions
to the limbs and body. Researchers check what directions the motor neurons send and how
a functioning body responds- and try to make the chip and electrodes match up to the same
call and response.
This is the first time it's worked in a living thing- and even though the team is optimistic,
they say a full brain/body control system with precise, natural movement is really far
off.
Hey, Anthony, why'd they use two monkeys and sedate one?
Good question, Catie Wayne from Animalist news. They used two monkeys because they didn't
want to paralyze one for life just to run the test.
Seems legit. But I wonder how humane testing like this is overall.
You... you already have a video about that at Animalist News, don't you?
YYYYYUP
Well, then, I guess this is where I tell eveyrone to check it out over on youtube.com/animalists.
YYYYYYYYYYYYUP
Will you make some Avatar references, since I didn't?
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