Mind and Machine

Considering controls in context.  

When Mind Melds With Machine, Who's in Control?

By Wired, January 11, 2022

The last time I saw my friend James was at the townie bar near our old high school. He had been working in roofing for a few years, no longer a rail-thin teenager with lank hippie hair. I had just gotten back from a stint with the Peace Corps in Turkmenistan. We reminisced about the summer after our freshman year, when we were inseparable—adventuring in the creek that sliced through the woods, debating the merits of Batman versus the Crow, watching every movie in my father's bootlegged VHS collection. I had no idea what I wanted to do next. His future, on the other hand, was decided: He had recently joined the Navy and was starting boot camp the following week. He wanted to serve in Afghanistan.

James Raffetto trained for the next three years as a special-operations medic. He got married and, shortly after, was deployed to southern Afghanistan. About four months into his first tour, just after he had treated a local woman's sick daughter, he stepped on an improvised explosive device—an ingenious contraption triggered by a balsa-wood pressure plate, invisible to bomb detectors. He recalls finding himself face down, unable to right himself, screaming "No!"

His platoon mates asked him what to do. James directed them to tourniquet his limbs, inject him with morphine, and tell his wife, Emily, how much he loved her. He woke up a week later in a hospital in Maryland, missing both legs, his left arm, and three fingers on his right hand.

I was on the other side of the country by that point, working toward a PhD in neuroscience. We messaged a few times. He expressed how hard it was for him to accept help after years of fierce competence.

James' injury prompted me to attend a symposium on the emerging field of brain-computer interfaces—devices designed to read a person's neural activity and use it to drive a robotic prosthetic, speech synthesizer, or computer cursor.

Mind Melding with Machine, In Wired

Biological Signals

Machine Sensing, again an area we examined for product manufacturing process control.

Making Sense With Biology By Samuel Greengard  Commissioned by CACM Staff

November 11, 2021

Machine-based sensing has advanced remarkably in recent years, and now is used in an array of devices and systems. Yet for all the gains, silicon still can't match the innate capabilities of a moth or a dog. With hundreds of millions of years of evolution, a biological system wins every time.

Of course, scaling moth antennae and canine noses to check humans for diseases or spot ultra-low concentrations of hazardous particles is not possible. As a result, researchers are exploring ways to fuse biology and silicon into hybrid systems that deliver the best of both worlds.

Using a variety of techniques, including engineering bio-hybrid systems and tapping synthetic biology to grow artificial neurons that can interact with computing devices, they are opening the door to a brave new world.

"Living systems and synthetic systems can each do some things better than the other," says Thomas Daniel, a professor in the department of biology at the University of Washington in Seattle. "By combining them, it's possible to extend beyond the limitations of each."

Beyond Biology, .

Combining synthetic and living systems is not a new idea. Pacemakers, bionic implants, and other biomedical devices already bridge these two worlds. Now, however, instead of implanting technology inside a lifeform, researchers are exploring ways to place living cells inside silicon-based devices to create sophisticated bio-hybrid systems.

"Insects and certain animals can sense at about five orders of magnitude better than even the best synthetic device," Daniel explains. This makes it possible, for example, for trained dogs to detect COVID or cancer in humans. A moth and other insects can detect a variety of odors that can represent risks.

"The goal is to build devices that use biological sensing to address real-world issues," says Jennifer Talley, senior research biological scientist at the U.S. Air Force Research Lab. Biohybrid systems would detect viruses, diabetes, cancer, toxic chemicals, and other contaminates before they impact humans. They also would help first responders identify dangerous situations, including bombs and terrorist activity, before people are injured or killed.

In 2020, for example, a team from the University of Washington developed a drone, aptly named the Smellicopter, that uses insect antenna from a Manduca sexta hawkmoth to sense specific odors in the environment. Researchers attached the biological and silicon components by inserting tiny wires into the base and tip of the antenna and then using electrodes to measure electrical activity.

Not surprisingly, the use of biological components presents challenges. The antennae in the Smellicopter, for instance, remain biologically and chemically active for about four hours. As a result, biohybrid systems are typically limited to one-time use. This is fine for something like a virus test, but is a problem for more complex devices that would require constant refrigeration and replacement.

It also is a challenge to develop a single device that can handle multiple tasks. "Insects are typically hard-wired to 'smell' or 'see' certain things. You are essentially restricted to what they care about, whether it's food or a mate," Talley says.

Decoding the signals

All of this is leading researchers down a different path. Synthetic biology, including gene editing tools like CRISPR, now make it possible to design bio-hybrid systems. "You grow the sensor you want," Talley says. "By engineering neurons to accomplish a specific task, it becomes a lot easier to develop a functional system."