Current state and future potential of brain-computer interfaces

Focal questions:

What are neuroprostheses? How are they used now and what may the future hold for technology-enhanced sensation, motor control, communications, cognition, and other human processes?

Resources (please review before the meeting)

Primary resources

• New Brain-Computer Interface Technology (video, 18 m)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgFzmE2fGXA

• Imagining the Future: The Transformation of Humanity (video, 19 m)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XrbzlR9QmI

• The Berlin Brain-Computer Interface: Progress Beyond Communication and Control (research article, access with a free Frontiers account)
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2016.00530/full

• The Elephant in the Mirror: Bridging the Brain's Explanatory Gap of Consciousness (research article)
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2016.00108/full

Other resources (recommend your own in the comments!)

• DARPA implant (planned) with up to 1 million neural connections (short article)
https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2015-01-19

Extra Challenge: As you review the resources, think of possible implications from the perspectives of the other topics we've recently discussed:

• the dilemma of so much of human opinion and action deriving from non-conscious sources

• questions surrounding what it means to 'be human' and what values we place on our notions of humanness (e.g., individuality and social participation, privacy, 'self-determination' (or the illusion thereof), organic versus technologically enhanced cognition, etc.)