"For more than a decade, neuroscientist Grégoire Courtine has been flying every few months from his lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne to another lab in Beijing, China, where he conducts research on monkeys with the aim of treating spinal-cord injuries.
The commute is exhausting — on occasion he has even flown to Beijing, done experiments, and returned the same night. But it is worth it, says Courtine, because working with monkeys in China is less burdened by regulation than it is in Europe and the United States"
I personally know researchers who have to take similar measures to be able to do their research.
When we are happy as a society to slaughter billions of animals every year for food (usually keeping them in appalling conditions beforehand) I don't understand how we can justify the restrictions we put on scientists.
I would assume it's because monkeys are more intelligent than the animals we tend to eat; cows, chickens, sheep & pigs.
Also, intentionally paralysing a creature, leaving it to live in that condition, and then performing experimental surgery/procedures on it is significantly different than slaughtering it.
Whilst I appreciate the scientists mean well, and I do understand how this could benefit humanity; this sort of research still seems unethical to me, and at the very least makes me feel sick.
As a software developer and reverse engineer, this feels like hacking anyway. It's not particularly scientific just to "capture and replay" data without much understanding of how it works.
"working with monkeys in China is less burdened by regulation than it is in Europe and the United States"
It reminds of the skeptics about China achieving fusion for one minute, as well as China's new rocket capable of landing taikonauts on the moon.
It seems to me China is doubling down on scientific research. Their methods or ethics might be frowned on the West, but it is clear from recent news that pace of scientific discovery is accelerating in China.
>working with monkeys in China is less burdened by regulation than it is in Europe and the United States
I'd argue in cases like these the European regulations are actually a good thing, mainly considering the animals' welfare: in China rules like minimum cage size are either a fraction of European standards or non-existing/not checked. Of course there's always the argument 'I keep my monkeys healthy otherwise they won't work well for the experiments' but if experiments must be done, wouldn't we rather have the animals housed in a spacious area with daylight vs in a cage of 2m^3 in a dark basement?
I agree. Logically, it should be more acceptable to have animals as test subjects that can benefit all mankind vs being a tasty treat for an individual. But we all have are cognitive dissonances, without exception. Thats just a quirk of being human
A lot of people feel a moral distinction between a quick death to more primitive traditional needs of food v/s slower death for uncertain gains. It is some kind of cognitive dissonance I feel. A lot of Americans who are perfectly happy eating a cow make fun of Indians for referring to cow as holy and outrage at Chinese killing dogs for food.
I personally think eastern world and more paganic religions like that of native Indians are perhaps more right to not see these issues as black and white based on fixed line but instead see our relationship with nature as much more flexible co-dependence. Like a mother who uses her own metabolism to feed her little child and the child who eventually tries to get rid of that dependence.
"The problem I see with this is that they implant monkey before paralysis and can use machine learning to build a model of the monkey's unique representation for walking. Then they paralyze and show the monkey's can adapt to only using their interface in 5 days. There's no way the mapping from neural activity to stimulation is generalizable..." [1]
I have a spinal condition called Syringomyelia, at the moment apart from neuropathic pain it doesn't effect my ability to walk but down the line it could (with complete paralysis been a possible outcome).
They could record the way my brain sends walk signals and if I end up paralysed they have the data to train the model.
There are multiple spinal conditions that result in paralysis after not be been paralysed, not everyone who ends up in a wheelchair gets their by an accident.
One of my fear is an extremely big generation gap in the future when we find a transhuman-level technology that can only work if done from an early age. Exocortex interface comes to mind.
Then you would have an entire generation thinking millions of times deeper, broader, and faster than the previous one, and communication mostly broken. I sort of fear this scenario because I would be on the wrong side of it.
But maybe it is. You can also put people on a VR environment and have them "walk" there (see experiments by Nicolelis et. al.) and try to capture signals like that
Let's guess that each person's unique representation for walking does not change, or changes slowly. That seems reasonable since it is at least partially based on the physical arrangement of neurons.
We could bank it on a regular basis--recording via a device we wear around for a month every 5 years, for example. Then if we are paralyzed, the most recent recording is used to map an implant.
Personally, I will not surprised if we find that each person's nervous system is so different from the next that nothing significant is generalizable. Rather than each person running an "OS on standard hardware" we might find that a more accurate analogy is that each person has constructed their own custom logic circuit and then wrote custom software on top of that.
There 's plasticity involved, and the problem that brain circuits continuously remap. They can be retrained though. I think they had similar problems with the BrainGate BMI many years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrainGate).
We have seen many such interfaces in recent years, but as I understand these techniques they all suffer the same problem. The body eventually coats the electrodes in a non-conductive layer, essentially scar tissue, and the whole thing grinds to a halt in a matter of weeks. Until that practical limitation is surmounted, it seems very wrong to treat animals in such a manner. Watching the paralyzed monkey (also the rat) struggle in obvious agony as the commentators cheered was not fun. This was not the sort of thing I had expected to see on a program clearly aimed at a general audience. This was the very dark side of animal testing.
I saw this story on a canadian news show a couple days ago, a show that regularly does spots on human exploration of Mars. The stories are similar. The headline feel-good story is about the shiny new mars habitat or spacesuit someone is testing, but they haven;t figured out how to actually get it to mars. The result is the false impression that the dreamed future, colonizing Mars and curing paralysis, is closer than is true.
Gliosis is a big problem for sure, and the central nervous system's scarring is not well understood at this time.
Typically with recording electrodes you can either 'jiggle' them to shake off the scarring cells or pass a small amount of current between the combined electrodes to kill off the cells. These recording electrodes are typically only a few microns apart, so long range damage is a non-issue if the subject is not connected to ground in another way. You can go for ~6 months like this before the gliosis really builds up, and honestly, by that time the recording electrode has probably broken anyway or the subject has bonked the implant and it broke that way too, or as is typically the case with monkey subjects, it tore out the implant and ate it, stabbed another monkey with it, or tried to have sex with it. Monkey studies are rare and hard, not just because of ethical issues, but because monkeys are clever little assholes.
A huge amount of progress has been made in this area. The most promising report I've seen was in Nat Methods a few weeks ago:
"we demonstrated stable multiplexed local field potentials and single-unit recordings in mouse brains for at least 8 months without probe repositioning"
I struggled with this while in graduate school studying neuroscience. Fortunately, I was studying crustaceans so there were not too many ethical issues. But there was rodent and monkey research happening in the school. I choose to return to my first profession - software. I assume that I'll be long dead before there are ethical issues with experimenting on AI.
Animal research is something that we as a society are going to struggle with for many years into the future. I would like to be able to argue that it is for the greater good of the planet, but I don't think that I could put up a good argument that we are being proper stewards of the planet.
This is absolutely fantastic and its a great step in the right direction but we are still years if not decades away from being able to circumvent spinal lesions in humans.
One of the major problems with human spinal lesions is the loss of control of the trunk of the body (ie the core). Humans have dozens of muscle groups that control balance and posture through minute movements. Without fine grain control over these muscles balance is going to be extremely difficult.
>we are still years if not decades away from being able to circumvent spinal lesions in humans.
On the other hand it's quite possible that if you implanted the same equipment into humans right now that it could work with a bit of tweaking. It's kind of hard to say till someone tries it.
I'm eager for the day to come when we can map an entire animal to a computer model -or even human-, so animals won't be necessary anymore for this kind of procedure. How many years away do you guys think we are from that dream?
The current trend-line puts computing power at the level of the human brain in 10 years or so. However, processing power increases has been slowing down lately both in terms of time and the amount of money required for each new advance.
In addition, actually modeling a brain is not the same thing as having the computing power to do so. Our current chips have billions of transistors. However, our most sophisticated neural networks have a million nodes or so, I believe.
So we're a ways away from simulating a brain, human or otherwise. It's definitely more than 10 years. Probably 20 or more. And since we can't really predict computing power that far out, it's really hard to predict meaningfully.
That depends largely on whether you want to model mites or mammals.
We could probably make a computer model of tiny arthropods in 2017, if someone were willing to throw piles of money at the problem. A computer model of a human will be more difficult.
But also consider that an acceptably accurate model of the human brain would be an AI. You would still be experimenting on a person.
Security experts have shown dangers in current medical devices like pace makes, where they literally could have killed a patient wirelessly because many of these devices have no security at all.
I cant help to feel sad for the monkey. I'm not sure this is the way research should be done. Why not try this on a smaller scale animal first before doing it on a monkey?
Also you don"t need to cut the spinal cord todo data analysis.
Because of this sentiment, western nations are going to be leaps and bounds behind China and other nations when it comes to technologies /treatments derived from CRISPR.
When George Church and ithers called for a moratorium on CRISPR based research, Chinese scientists said suit yourself and cintinued doing research on it. When the day comes that wr can cinduct research like this with simulations and can spare beasts unnecessary pain, im all for it.
I find it more peculiar that people will treat a dog or other subhuman creature better then they will homeless person.
"The experiments are more of a progression than a sudden breakthrough: they are based on a decade of work in rats, Courtine says, and the monkeys reacted in very similar ways."
Do you also feel sad for the millions of animals that live in miserable conditions for months/years just to be eaten by us afterwards? This is arguably less of a torture to a much smaller number of animals, yet it is heavily regulated in most countries.
Just curious what you would think if they cloned a monkey and then did the operation to the cloned monkey? Would you still feel sad for the monkey if you knew that the only reason it existed was for this one purpose?
[+] [-] biofox|9 years ago|reply
The commute is exhausting — on occasion he has even flown to Beijing, done experiments, and returned the same night. But it is worth it, says Courtine, because working with monkeys in China is less burdened by regulation than it is in Europe and the United States"
I personally know researchers who have to take similar measures to be able to do their research.
When we are happy as a society to slaughter billions of animals every year for food (usually keeping them in appalling conditions beforehand) I don't understand how we can justify the restrictions we put on scientists.
[+] [-] Benjamin_Dobell|9 years ago|reply
Also, intentionally paralysing a creature, leaving it to live in that condition, and then performing experimental surgery/procedures on it is significantly different than slaughtering it.
Whilst I appreciate the scientists mean well, and I do understand how this could benefit humanity; this sort of research still seems unethical to me, and at the very least makes me feel sick.
As a software developer and reverse engineer, this feels like hacking anyway. It's not particularly scientific just to "capture and replay" data without much understanding of how it works.
[+] [-] Waterluvian|9 years ago|reply
That's my guess.
[+] [-] mtw|9 years ago|reply
It reminds of the skeptics about China achieving fusion for one minute, as well as China's new rocket capable of landing taikonauts on the moon.
It seems to me China is doubling down on scientific research. Their methods or ethics might be frowned on the West, but it is clear from recent news that pace of scientific discovery is accelerating in China.
[+] [-] stinos|9 years ago|reply
I'd argue in cases like these the European regulations are actually a good thing, mainly considering the animals' welfare: in China rules like minimum cage size are either a fraction of European standards or non-existing/not checked. Of course there's always the argument 'I keep my monkeys healthy otherwise they won't work well for the experiments' but if experiments must be done, wouldn't we rather have the animals housed in a spacious area with daylight vs in a cage of 2m^3 in a dark basement?
[+] [-] FullMtlAlcoholc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tn13|9 years ago|reply
I personally think eastern world and more paganic religions like that of native Indians are perhaps more right to not see these issues as black and white based on fixed line but instead see our relationship with nature as much more flexible co-dependence. Like a mother who uses her own metabolism to feed her little child and the child who eventually tries to get rid of that dependence.
[+] [-] drumttocs8|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekzy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] popol12|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crisnoble|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quantisan|9 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5c2ljz/brain_impla...
[+] [-] noir_lord|9 years ago|reply
They could record the way my brain sends walk signals and if I end up paralysed they have the data to train the model.
There are multiple spinal conditions that result in paralysis after not be been paralysed, not everyone who ends up in a wheelchair gets their by an accident.
[+] [-] jobigoud|9 years ago|reply
Then you would have an entire generation thinking millions of times deeper, broader, and faster than the previous one, and communication mostly broken. I sort of fear this scenario because I would be on the wrong side of it.
[+] [-] raverbashing|9 years ago|reply
But maybe it is. You can also put people on a VR environment and have them "walk" there (see experiments by Nicolelis et. al.) and try to capture signals like that
[+] [-] snowwrestler|9 years ago|reply
Let's guess that each person's unique representation for walking does not change, or changes slowly. That seems reasonable since it is at least partially based on the physical arrangement of neurons.
We could bank it on a regular basis--recording via a device we wear around for a month every 5 years, for example. Then if we are paralyzed, the most recent recording is used to map an implant.
Personally, I will not surprised if we find that each person's nervous system is so different from the next that nothing significant is generalizable. Rather than each person running an "OS on standard hardware" we might find that a more accurate analogy is that each person has constructed their own custom logic circuit and then wrote custom software on top of that.
[+] [-] TeeWEE|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] return0|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gpderetta|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] return0|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandworm101|9 years ago|reply
I saw this story on a canadian news show a couple days ago, a show that regularly does spots on human exploration of Mars. The stories are similar. The headline feel-good story is about the shiny new mars habitat or spacesuit someone is testing, but they haven;t figured out how to actually get it to mars. The result is the false impression that the dreamed future, colonizing Mars and curing paralysis, is closer than is true.
[+] [-] Balgair|9 years ago|reply
Typically with recording electrodes you can either 'jiggle' them to shake off the scarring cells or pass a small amount of current between the combined electrodes to kill off the cells. These recording electrodes are typically only a few microns apart, so long range damage is a non-issue if the subject is not connected to ground in another way. You can go for ~6 months like this before the gliosis really builds up, and honestly, by that time the recording electrode has probably broken anyway or the subject has bonked the implant and it broke that way too, or as is typically the case with monkey subjects, it tore out the implant and ate it, stabbed another monkey with it, or tried to have sex with it. Monkey studies are rare and hard, not just because of ethical issues, but because monkeys are clever little assholes.
[+] [-] biofox|9 years ago|reply
"we demonstrated stable multiplexed local field potentials and single-unit recordings in mouse brains for at least 8 months without probe repositioning"
http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v13/n10/full/nmeth.3969....
[+] [-] intrasight|9 years ago|reply
Animal research is something that we as a society are going to struggle with for many years into the future. I would like to be able to argue that it is for the greater good of the planet, but I don't think that I could put up a good argument that we are being proper stewards of the planet.
[+] [-] bognition|9 years ago|reply
One of the major problems with human spinal lesions is the loss of control of the trunk of the body (ie the core). Humans have dozens of muscle groups that control balance and posture through minute movements. Without fine grain control over these muscles balance is going to be extremely difficult.
[+] [-] tim333|9 years ago|reply
On the other hand it's quite possible that if you implanted the same equipment into humans right now that it could work with a bit of tweaking. It's kind of hard to say till someone tries it.
[+] [-] truth_sentinell|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anbende|9 years ago|reply
In addition, actually modeling a brain is not the same thing as having the computing power to do so. Our current chips have billions of transistors. However, our most sophisticated neural networks have a million nodes or so, I believe.
So we're a ways away from simulating a brain, human or otherwise. It's definitely more than 10 years. Probably 20 or more. And since we can't really predict computing power that far out, it's really hard to predict meaningfully.
[+] [-] logfromblammo|9 years ago|reply
We could probably make a computer model of tiny arthropods in 2017, if someone were willing to throw piles of money at the problem. A computer model of a human will be more difficult.
But also consider that an acceptably accurate model of the human brain would be an AI. You would still be experimenting on a person.
[+] [-] gallerdude|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duaneb|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adam12|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IpV8|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kayoone|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeeWEE|9 years ago|reply
Also you don"t need to cut the spinal cord todo data analysis.
[+] [-] FullMtlAlcoholc|9 years ago|reply
When George Church and ithers called for a moratorium on CRISPR based research, Chinese scientists said suit yourself and cintinued doing research on it. When the day comes that wr can cinduct research like this with simulations and can spare beasts unnecessary pain, im all for it.
I find it more peculiar that people will treat a dog or other subhuman creature better then they will homeless person.
[+] [-] fdej|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kayoone|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PetitPrince|9 years ago|reply
[1]: https://youtu.be/ejwEqpV8ak4
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