Cockroaches and Neurocybernetics...Irgh!!

Prof. Jose Gomes Filho (gomes@dpx.cnen.gov.br)
Wed, 30 Jul 1997 20:07:49 +0000


About neuro, nerves, etc. I've just remebered, when reading Bren's
reply, an interesting possibility:

When I was prepairing my M.Sc. thesis, I had for times, to be awoke
in my university, to use four of the computers of there ant the
same time and finish the simulations of such thesis. So, I got in
contact (far, of course...) with one or other cockroaches that
wandered by the site, at night. Once, I tried to verify if they were
neuro-sensible to something like a simple control signal of my mind,
as "stop", "move left", "move right" (not speaking, but trying to
move it with the mind fixed on it). The most interesting
is that, in a first look, it really seem so... So I thought that if
we should monitor its nervous system and really prove such
interaction (even if statistically, in a first moment), the menthal
transductor would be, practically discovered. Just replicate the
part of a cockroach's nervous system, associated with the
effect (or put cockroaches's little heads connected to electronic
circuits... argh and hehehe). Jokes off, studying these very simpler
nervous systems is much easier than even the little white (or
phosphorescent, hehehe) mice... After, I saw a report about Hokkaido,
Japan, where they are already controlling cockroaches and
crickets (like that of Beaves & Butthead, hehehe) with electronic
circuits, as if they where small "cockrobots" (hehehe). It would
perhaps be possible to use a circuit similar to this to verify
a cockroach's sensibility to human menthal interactions. I have
tryied to develop such experiment here in Brazil, but the Professor,
chief of the Biophysics department said we don't have hereb the
technology necessary to deal with small nervous systems like that.
And came back to his monkeys and opossums...

Gomes.

PS: Is there any japanese here????

> Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 14:51:48 -0600
> From: Brent Allsop <allsop@swttools.fc.hp.com>
> To: extropians@extropy.org
> Subject: Re: Posthuman
> Reply-to: extropians@extropy.org

>
> Prof. Gomes <gomes@cnen.gov.br> responded to Anders Sandberg
> <nv91-asa@nada.kth.se> remark:
>
> > > Hmm, this gave me a truly bizarre idea: if somebody has a
> > > high-resolution chromophorous skin and a net link, it might be
> > > possible to use it as a kind of videophone. Imagine talking to a
> > > small face on your palm...
>
> > **** or directly in the eyes... (something like that glasses tv set
> > that was shown once at Discovery...)
>
> Why even go through these messy, noisy, insensitive, and
> inefficient, multiple transduction stages to and from light? Let's
> directly stimulate the optic nerve. Or even better directly produce
> the visual experience right in our visual cortex (or the corresponding
> much more capable cortex to which we've been uploaded.) We certainly
> don't pump audio through a speaker and back into a microphone every
> time we want to communicate audio signals! Imagine the perfect visual
> clarity one might experience without having to go through all the
> messy mechanics of a vidio display and the eye and retina... I hate
> heavy glasses and display screens that always get dirty.
>
> Brent Allsop
>
>

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Prof. Gomes
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