2026-05-12 14:49:15
Why brain implants are more than a sci-fi fantasy #BCI
Why brain implants are more than a sci-fi fantasy #BCI
Well, that's probably been the worst day for #Depression of the whole bloody year, but I did not get nothing done.
I finished an essay, and I think it's an important one.
https://www.
No! No no brain, no brain. no brain. Toot toot toot toot [unintelligible] like-like-like-like YeAH toot. boost. toot. boost. toot. toot toot toot toot like-like-like-like mastodon no brain. mastodon no brain. boost-toot-boost-toot. never! never! never! brain. boost toot boost toot. Never think!
https://
Required reading for programmers
https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer
💧 Hydraulic brain: Body motion linked to fluid movement in the brain
#brain
New research suggests brain-controlled hearing technology can help people single out a voice in a crowd, hopefully covering the largest deficiency of hearing aids.
https://neurosciencenews.com/brain-controlled-hearing-aid-60465/
Paper (open access):
cintestinalis: Tadpole larva brain (C. intestinalis)
Entire connectivity matrix for the complete brain of a larva of Ciona intestinalis. Each directed edge represents a synaptic connection from pre-synaptic cell i to post-synaptic cell j (may not be a neuron). Edge weights represent the cumulative depth of presynaptic contacts in µm.
This network has 205 nodes and 2903 edges.
Tags: Biological, Connectome, Weighted
"none of these legacy behaviours are rational. They arise out of that bundle of behaviours inherited from our two billion years of sexually selected ancestors... If our ancestors had not had these behaviours, we would not be here. Our ancestors were not, in the sense we mean here, rational... A purely rational being — a being created ab initio rational — would not have these behaviours.
No one is proposing to build an AI with a lizard brain. It won't happen."
Hands as the Language of Thought: Correcting a Kant Attribution
There is a line about hands that travels well. It reads cleanly, carries an air of philosophical dignity, and arrives in print wearing the name of Immanuel Kant. "The hand is the visible part of the brain," runs the most common English form, or, in an older rendering, "the hand is the outer brain of man." The phrase appears in publishing copy, in teaching materials, on Goodreads quotation pages, in popu…
The “neural fingerprint” of psychedelics was spotted among hundreds of brain scans of people on LSD, psilocybin, DMT, mescaline and ayahuasca,
pointing to a shared impact on the brain’s behaviour.
The finding emerged from a major study that combined 11 brain imaging datasets from around the world
in an effort to build a reliable picture of how the substances temporarily rewire the brain.
Dr Danilo Bzdok and his colleagues analysed more than 500 brain scans from 267 p…
I'm down with a nasty flu at a very inopportune time. I haven't slept properly in days. Anything that requires brain power delayed.
But #BumDayMonday is here. Photo my own.
I seem to have written a wee essay about #ArtificialGeneralIntelligence #AGI
It's probably not in its final form yet, I'll probably revise a bit. Comments welcome.
Jason Collins, 1st openly gay NBA player, dies of brain cancer at 47 (Ramona Shelburne/ESPN)
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/48753479/jason-collins-dies-47
http://www.memeorandum.com/260512/p106#a260512p106
cintestinalis: Tadpole larva brain (C. intestinalis)
Entire connectivity matrix for the complete brain of a larva of Ciona intestinalis. Each directed edge represents a synaptic connection from pre-synaptic cell i to post-synaptic cell j (may not be a neuron). Edge weights represent the cumulative depth of presynaptic contacts in µm.
This network has 205 nodes and 2903 edges.
Tags: Biological, Connectome, Weighted
I'm not a proponent violence. It's an unevolved, classless, lizard-brain instinct.
Except against people who chew with their mouths open in public. There's a special place in hell for those people.
tummy is Angery and brain cells r Logged Out so I am going to tend to my video game crops
Wow, this chart is wild!! Also, UK Ministers are dropping like flies, which means Starmer is going to be gone soon.
#CanPoli #CdnPoli #Democracy
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c1e2n923v1lt
#Paradromics on brain-computer interfaces: China's recent developments and what they mean for the U.S. https://www.paradromics.com/blog/china-bci-developments
Everybody's King Joffrey on here.
https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/116377687987470957
I bet the galaxy brain strategy will be to replace him with someone even more right-wing and then for some reason completely lose any remaining popular support they might still have
Your AI Use Is Breaking My Brain https://www.404media.co/your-ai-use-is-breaking-my-brain/
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation for visual snow syndrome: symptoms relief and changes in brain dynamics. A case report #rTMS
Endlose Selbstüberschätzung …
Jeff Bezos Is Funding a Wild Hunt for the Brain's 'Core Algorithm' - Slashdot https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/06/08/0418226/jeff-bezos-is-funding-a-wild-hunt-for-the-brains-cor…
"Rejoice, for even though we do, verily, walk through the valley of the shadow of death, not all the phantasms we see in the valley are as dark as they appear."
This essay, like all the essays on my blog, is on #CreativeCommons Attribution/Share Alike licence.
Please feel free to republish it anywhere.
from my link log —
The order of the JSON.
https://blog.almaer.com/the-order-of-the-json/
saved 2019-08-16 https://dotat.at/:/J5LA…
Intermittent fasting triggers surprising changes in the brain #health
"But, given that this new research also reports that this additional brain-fluid sloshing includes an increased flow of electrolyte ions like sodium and potassium, I’m going to go ahead and give you permission to think of this as your brain swishing salt water around to clean itself up. It’s a bedtime classic rinse. Your brain is (metaphorically) gargling."
Scientists Watch Brain’s Self-Cleaning Process During Sleep in Real Time
https://gizmodo.com/scientists-watch-brains-self-cleaning-process-during-sleep-in-real-time-2000743073
Your AI Use Is Breaking My Brain https://archive.is/U2YIx
"We are in a period where we face huge challenges on many fronts: the planet is burning, the species which provide the ecosystem services we depend on to survive are going extinct, we are fighting wars over resources. We need to focus on the real risks we face. #ArtificialGeneralIntelligence is not one of these. It may happen, but probably not soon. If it does happen, i…
🤯 The brain region associated with moral inconsistency
#brain
budapest_connectome: Budapest Reference Connectome 3.0
A parameterizable consensus brain graph, derived from connectomes of 477 people, each computed from MRI datasets of the Human Connectome Project. Nodes are brain regions, and edges are weighted by the number of "tracks" that run between two nodes, as well as fiber length, fractional anisotropy and the number of occurrences in each of the 477 individuals.
This network has 1015 nodes and 105293 edges.
Tags: Biol…
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have shown that
bacteria can learn from past experiences,
store memories across generations
and adapt their behavior to changing environments
all without a brain or nervous system
https://www.cmu.edu…
Having screen-free time and mindful walks (or and other mindful activity) is great.
#mindfulness
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/n
Reading the Lattice Without the Legend: Grinberg, Syntergy, and the Argument for Real Entry
A scientist walks out of his office in Mexico City on December 8, 1994, and never walks back in. The man is Jacobo Grinberg-Zylberbaum, forty-eight years old, a UNAM-trained neurophysiologist with a doctorate from New York Medical College, the author of a stack of monographs on consciousness, and the last serious researcher to claim that the human brain could be wired into a…
"our energy systems are already massively in carbon debt. We cannot afford to borrow any more carbon from fossil reserves. To burn carbon now to build AGI on the vague hope that it may by some remote chance produce systems with more insight than we now have, at a time when our politicians are already failing to act on the very clear data being produced by their own scientists, it the purest folly"
#AGI
There are so many things I want to speak abt irl with clarity and intelligence that I think "I should have an Anki deck for what I'd like to say" then brain goes blank
After flying with virtual wings for one week, the brain learns to accept the impossible #noninvasive…
"we are at the end of days. Our planet — which is, as far as we know, the only planet anywhere in the universe to support intelligent life — is literally burning as I write this, and it is burning because we are burning it. Building huge data centres to pursue the egocentric fantasies of kleptocrat pirates only accelerates that process"
#AGI
Everyone should listen to this week’s Hidden Brain (NPR.)
Some academic named Dave is making the solid case for “radical acceptance “ grounded in design thinking.
I concur with his core argument: reality is the only place where anything can work. Seems like a good place to start, to accept it. That doesn’t mean endorsing reality, just that we live in a broken world and should try to skip the “stages of grief “ in navigating adversity.
now it's time to reset my brain a little... by shovelling rocks. #español
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBCRadio3's #LateJunction
Jenna Sutela:
🎵 Pond Brain
#JennaSutela
One symptom for me of having a bad brain day is that Siri doesn’t understand me as well (I’m using it exclusively to set timers and today both times it misunderstood me on the first try).
For a moment, I mistakenly thought two posts were the same thread and my brain was busy trying to parse what cattle smuggling had to do with the choosing of the astronauts on the Artemis mission
ChatGPT, is brain okay?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SyiDgPACZVc
So there was something about Github culture over time, and maybe just tech and linkedIn culture that started poising my brain.
This idea that when I make stuff... it's gotta be _for other people_ or designed to be consumed by other people... and you have to have a little marketing pitch and sell it... drive adoption etc... That's the narrative that got wedge into my skull.
Open source use to be you published a tar balls for people to download.
Anyway.... I'm b…
I am currently discovering step by step the work of Mark Hallett :
https://www.thetransmitter.org/brain-stimulation/remembering-mark-hallett-leader-in-transcranial-magnetic-stimulation/
Quite a long journ…
Scientists Are Building Electronics That Stretch Like Human Skin and Learn Like a Brain
https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-are-building-electronics-that-stretch-like-human-skin-and-learn-like-a-brain/
Deafness rapidly reorganizes functional brain networks in adult mice https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.30.721913v1 "Sensory loss triggers crossmodal reorganization across sensory modalities, and accumulating evidence indicates that this adaptive capacity…
cintestinalis: Tadpole larva brain (C. intestinalis)
Entire connectivity matrix for the complete brain of a larva of Ciona intestinalis. Each directed edge represents a synaptic connection from pre-synaptic cell i to post-synaptic cell j (may not be a neuron). Edge weights represent the cumulative depth of presynaptic contacts in µm.
This network has 205 nodes and 2903 edges.
Tags: Biological, Connectome, Weighted
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Early
Pink Floyd:
🎵 Brain Damage
#PinkFloyd
https://deejaymrblondie.bandcamp.com/track/pink-floyd-brain-damage-cover-1
https://open.spotify.com/track/05uGBKRCuePsf43Hfm0JwX
Occipital and parietal non-invasive brain stimulation enhances perceptual learning and transfer: evidence from high-frequency tRNS https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2026.1794676/full
My brain is breaking by vibe bros discovering that Tailwind is shit and it’s better to use external CSS with classes (because it uses “fewer tokens”)
Connect-One: Early feasibility study of #Connexus brain-computer interface #Paradromics
fly_larva: Drosophila larva brain (2023)
A complete synaptic map of the brain connectome of the larva of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Nodes are neurons, and edges are synaptic connections, traced individually from brain image sections using three-dimensional electron microscopy–based reconstruction. Node metadata include the neuron hempisphere, hemispherical homologue, cell type, annotations, and inferred cluster. Edge metadata include the type of interaction (`'aa'`,…
Scientists build 'mind-reading' hearing system for noisy environments https://www.sci.news/medicine/mind-reading-hearing-system-noisy-environments-14757.html "a device that reads brain signals to automatically amplify the voice a list…
RE: #BCI
💢 MRI scans reveal how the brain processes toxic workplace abuse
#mri
Visual-to-auditory sensory substitution may be the supplemental "glue" needed to make brain implants for restoring vision shine: textures and shading, undistorted visual feedback, fill-in for failing electrodes, etc https://www.artificialvision.com/neuralink.htm
(LinkedIn) The BCI race: innovation vs. scale (and why the US might lose the brain-to-computer war) 🧠💥 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bci-race-innovation-vs-scale-why-us-might-lose-war-panda-yu-6ba5c/
fly_larva: Drosophila larva brain (2023)
A complete synaptic map of the brain connectome of the larva of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Nodes are neurons, and edges are synaptic connections, traced individually from brain image sections using three-dimensional electron microscopy–based reconstruction. Node metadata include the neuron hempisphere, hemispherical homologue, cell type, annotations, and inferred cluster. Edge metadata include the type of interaction (`'aa'`,…
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #KEXP's #VarietyMix
Demolition Hammer:
🎵 .44 Caliber Brain Surgery
#DemolitionHammer
https://masshypnosia.bandcamp.com/track/44-caliber-brain-surgery-demolition-hammer-cover
https://open.spotify.com/track/0aMqAaZaFz8iD2IsUfMzkt
🎶 show playlist 👇
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6G4PaS9BNkIuGqMo44rbfZ
🎶 KEXP playlist 👇
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6VNALrOa3gWbk794YuIrwg
#CorTec Gets FDA breakthrough nod for Brain Interchange BCI System https://www.mpo-mag.com/breaking-news/cortec-gets-fda-breakthrough-nod-for-brain-inter…
And yet another reply, “But the human brain works just like an LLM!”
Yes, famously we fully understand how human brains work, maybe just some minor details left to figure out.
cintestinalis: Tadpole larva brain (C. intestinalis)
Entire connectivity matrix for the complete brain of a larva of Ciona intestinalis. Each directed edge represents a synaptic connection from pre-synaptic cell i to post-synaptic cell j (may not be a neuron). Edge weights represent the cumulative depth of presynaptic contacts in µm.
This network has 205 nodes and 2903 edges.
Tags: Biological, Connectome, Weighted
(LinkedIn) "The failure we observe in chronic BCI recordings is not purely a materials problem or a surgical problem. It is partly a cellular biology problem. And cellular biology problems have biological solutions." https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tkozai_…
RE: https://mas.to/@seeingwithsound/116376643109925361
A new study helps explain how the brain creates mental images
One of those things about claims of “AGI” is that to really build a human-like intelligence we’d have to simulate a human brain as whole because 1. it’s the only thing we know that produces human intelligence and 2. no one knows how it actually works.
Because of (2) it’s irrelevant what anyone says about LLMs or any other technology (with the exception of simulating a whole brain)—you can’t know if a technology is intelligent like a human because we don’t know what that means or how that works.
Fun thing, it turns out it’s impossible to simulate a whole brain with the resolution required (basically quantum physics level), and you’d have to emulate a chemical and physical environment for the brain as well (it will also need a body etc.).
You’d also have to simulate other humans with brains from which the brain can learn; but to simulate those you’d have simulate evolving humans from single-cell organisms first etc etc ad infinitum
Human #echolocation works step by step https://www.sciencenews.org/article/human-echolocation-blind-brain "A study reveals how individual tongue clicks and their echoes …
Sorry, brain fart and typo. Part of the problem with trying to do philosophy when mentally ill is I have a lot of brain fog, and can't really evaluate how good my ideas are.
However, when I typed 'survival', what I meant to type (and thought I had typed, was 'society'.
fly_larva: Drosophila larva brain (2023)
A complete synaptic map of the brain connectome of the larva of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Nodes are neurons, and edges are synaptic connections, traced individually from brain image sections using three-dimensional electron microscopy–based reconstruction. Node metadata include the neuron hempisphere, hemispherical homologue, cell type, annotations, and inferred cluster. Edge metadata include the type of interaction (`'aa'`,…
Third successful implantation of wireless visual prosthesis brain implant advances the frontier of artificial vision #ICVP (intracortical visual prosth…
NeuroXess eyes mass BCI production with new unit coming online in H2 #BCI
fly_larva: Drosophila larva brain (2023)
A complete synaptic map of the brain connectome of the larva of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Nodes are neurons, and edges are synaptic connections, traced individually from brain image sections using three-dimensional electron microscopy–based reconstruction. Node metadata include the neuron hempisphere, hemispherical homologue, cell type, annotations, and inferred cluster. Edge metadata include the type of interaction (`'aa'`,…
China has approved the world's first invasive brain-computer chip - here's what's next https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/06/01/1138133/china-world-first-brain-chip/ (archived at
A retinotopic wiring principle of the human brain https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.03.716412v1 "well-known perceptual asymmetries correspond to systematic asymmetries in connectivity within early visual cortex"
The platform revolution: Why BCI needs its developer ecosystem https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/platform-revolution-why-bci-needs-its-developer-alvin-chan-phd-lmucc/ "The future of BCI belongs not to any single company, but to thos…
fly_hemibrain: Fly hemibrain (2020)
A synaptic map of the hemibrain connectome of fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Nodes are neurons, and edges are synaptic connections, traced individually from brain image sections using EM reconstruction techniques. Neurons are labeled by their type. Edges are annotated by the connection strength between the neurons.
This network has 21739 nodes and 4259624 edges.
Tags: Biological, Connectome, Weighted, Metadata
Focusing on brain implants for restoring vision to the blind feels like Republicans supporting Trump no matter the cons, following the money and influential power https://bioniclab.substack.com/s/why-bcis-fail Invasive BCIs are not the only game in town, by a long shot.
A brain implant for depression is about to be tested in humans #BCI
The mature brain and the neuroscience of wisdom https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/best-practices-in-health/202603/the-mature-brain-and-the-neuroscience-of-wisdom by William Haseltine; "A late-maturing bra…
🕵️ Your brain's immune system isn't fighting the implant. It's listening to it. https://bioniclab.substack.com/p/your-brains-immune-cells-are-eavesdropping Post 15 in the Why BCIs Fail series;
Seeing with the Brain (not the eyes) #LGN (lateral geniculate nucleus) over visual cortex for a visual prosthesis.
Imagination is not just replaying what we see and hear https://www.sciencenews.org/article/imagination-perception-overlap-brain-neuroscience "Conjuring a nonspecific scene or sound pings brain networks that respond to more than one sense"
I'm looking for quantifiable measures of effective information bandwidth from auditory to visual areas in the human brain. Has anyone tried that using what is now known about the human connectome? Next question will be how sensory experience may affect this bandwidth through functional re-routing (non-physical "rewiring").
#blindness
Revision Implant lands oversubscribed €4M round to take brain-powered sight implant into the clinic https://bmmagazine.co.uk/get-funded/revision-implant-4m-funding-brain-visual-prosthesis/ Brain implant for restoring vision to the blind;
Brain prioritizes "sound offsets" during hearing repair https://neurosciencenews.com/auditory-repair-noise-damage-30639/
Noise-induced reduction and early recovery of superior paraolivary nucleus sound-offset responses
(YouTube) #Neuralink: Accessing new brain regions with surgical robotics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93yWGUiYFEk Totally naive: "Every problem has a specific location in your brain";
Clinical trial: Home-based vision rehabilitation guided by brain imaging (#BRIGHT) https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07635329 "identify neural pathways that support training-induced visual plasti…
How psychedelics push your brain to dream while awake https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-03-psychedelics-brain.html "psychedelics make the brain more likely to 'see' images from memory rather than what's actually in front of it"; mental imagery
How psychedelics push your brain to dream while awake https://theconversation.com/how-psychedelics-push-your-brain-to-dream-while-awake-new-study-276708 Now how to nudge the brain of blind people to see through sound-guided mental image…
Brain rewires to stabilize walking during visual impairment https://neurosciencenews.com/brain-rewires-sensorimotor-walking-blindness-30721/
Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study on the effects of visual status on walking-relate…