First two-way interaction between a primate brain and a virtual body

In a first-ever demonstration of a two-way interaction between a primate brain and a virtual body, two monkeys trained at the Duke University Center for Neuroengineering learned to employ brain activity alone to move an avatar hand and identify the texture of virtual objects.

“Someday in the near future, quadriplegic patients will take advantage of this technology not only to move their arms and hands and to walk again, but also to sense the texture of objects placed in their hands, or experience the nuances of the terrain on which they stroll with the help of a wearable robotic exoskeleton,” said study leader Miguel Nicolelis, MD, PhD, professor of neurobiology at Duke University Medical Center and co-director of the Duke Center for Neuroengineering.

Without moving any part of their real bodies, the monkeys used their electrical brain activity to direct the virtual hands of an avatar to the surface of virtual objects and, upon contact, were able to differentiate their textures.

Although the virtual objects employed in this study were visually identical, they were designed to have different artificial textures that could only be detected if the animals explored them with virtual hands controlled directly by their brain’s electrical activity.

The texture of the virtual objects was expressed as a pattern of minute electrical signals transmitted to the monkeys’ brains. Three different electrical patterns corresponded to each of three different object textures.

Because no part of the animal’s real body was involved in the operation of this brain-machine-brain interface, these experiments suggest that in the future patients severely paralyzed due to a spinal cord lesion may take advantage of this technology, not only to regain mobility, but also to have their sense of touch restored, said Nicolelis, who was senior author of the study published in the journal Nature on October 5, 2011.

“This is the first demonstration of a brain-machine-brain interface (BMBI) that establishes a direct, bidirectional link between a brain and a virtual body,” Nicolelis said

“In this BMBI, the virtual body is controlled directly by the animal’s brain activity, while its virtual hand generates tactile feedback information that is signaled via direct electrical microstimulation of another region of the animal’s cortex.”

“We hope that in the next few years this technology could help to restore a more autonomous life to many patients who are currently locked in without being able to move or experience any tactile sensation of the surrounding world,” Nicolelis said.

“This is also the first time we’ve observed a brain controlling a virtual arm that explores objects while the brain simultaneously receives electrical feedback signals that describe the fine texture of objects ‘touched’ by the monkey’s newly acquired virtual hand,” Nicolelis said.

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Chimps understand wildfire

The same chimps recently found to hunt with spears have also shown a nearly human understanding of wildfire.

Jill Pruetz, the Iowa State University primatologist whose nine-year observation of a group of savanna chimpanzees in the African nation of Senegal already led to one groundbreaking discovery earlier this decade: The chimps sharpen tree branches with their teeth and use them to stab small prey.

Now Pruetz is out with a new paper - co-authored with Associate Professor Thomas LaDuke of East Stroudsburg (Pa.) University - that will give evolutionary scientists new information to apply when considering how humans first understood fire.

Their conclusion: Chimpanzees can predict the movement of wildfire well enough to calmly avoid it without fear and without fleeing.

"Our argument is that if chimpanzees with a pretty small brain are intelligent enough to understand how fire behaves, then we should maybe rethink some of the early evidence of bipeds controlling fire," Pruetz said in an interview.

Her conclusions, published online this week by the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, are on the mark, University of Iowa paleoanthropologist Russell Ciochon believes.

Chimpanzees are the most closely related primate to humans, having split with them evolutionarily some 6 million years ago, he said. There is every reason to think that humans' early ancestors would have conceptualized fire similarly, Ciochon said. He agreed with Pruetz that conceptualizing fire is one evolutionary step away from controlling it and two steps away from starting it.

"This is a very interesting and very provocative article," he said.

The paper is based on Pruetz's observations from spring 2006, toward the end of Senegal's dry season, when twice in as many months she was with the chimps as they escaped a wildfire. Such fires are often set by people to clear fields for planting.

The fire's deafening roar could be heard 100 meters away, she said. The chimps did not flee, as one might expect, however. If they had, it would have required long travel in the open sun in 110-degree temperatures with scarce water supply.

Instead, she said the chimps reacted calmly. They monitored the fire, moved to keep out of its way, and in doing so, minimized the amount of energy they expended to stay safe.

As for herself, her gut told her to get out of there - but her brain told her she was better off staying with the chimps.

"I personally didn't like the idea," she said. "But I felt like I had to stick with the chimps to be safe, because I wasn't as good as they were at predicting how the fire would move."

Full article here ...........

Transitional Primate Fossil: NOT Missing Link!

This is Ida, a spectacularly preserved 47-million-year-old primate fossil from the Messel Pit in Germany. She is NOT the missing Link.

It is a transitional fossil, belonging to a new genus and species of primates: Darwinius masillae.

It has some features of the Strepsirrhini, popularly known as "wet nose" primates - the primate suborder that contains lemurs, but which does not belong to the human lineage.

However, the authors say that other features suggest it lies within the other primate group: the Haplorrhini, "dry nose primates", which contains tarsiers, monkeys, apes and humans.

Darwinian Nodes of Action

Charles Darwin
The principles of life on Earth may also be applied to life on other planets, with some exceptions. I am including here an extract from Marc D Hauser's book on Moral Minds. He is influenced in turn by the work of Eduard Tinkelpaugh, the 1920's psychologist, famous for his work with examining the intelligence levels of primates and monkeys.

'We do not know what it is like to have a primate experience of expectation, satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Tinkelpaugh proposed that the primate brain has evolved to respond to actions and events and set up expectations about, the causes and consequences to detect violations, using mimicry, learned behaviour and experiences.

I have listed the 5 principles of living as a primate, emanating from the studies of Tinkelpaugh, Darwin and others. These studies involved intelligent animals, primarily primates but occasionally dolphins and birds (Ravens and Jays).

Principle 1 - If an object moves on its own, it is an animal or part of an animal

Principle 2 - If an object moves in a particular direction towards another object or location, the targeted direction picks out or implies the object's goal

Principle 3 - If an object moves 'flexibly', changing direction in response to environmental objects or events, then it is rational

Principle 4 - If one object's action is followed closely by a second object's action, the second object's action is perceived as a socially intelligent response

Principle 5 - If an object is self-propelled, goal-directed and flexibly responsive to environmental constraints and events, then the object has the potential to cause harm or comfort to other similar objects.

Now you have some insight into the simple rules of thought and behaviour a primate is subject to. Can we now apply these principles more wildly and include them in the search for socially intelligent extra-terrestrial life?