Building an organic computing device with multiple interconnected brains

Abstract

Recently, we proposed that Brainets, i.e. networks formed by multiple animal brains, cooperating and exchanging information in real time through direct brain-to-brain interfaces, could provide the core of a new type of computing device: an organic computer. Here, we describe the first experimental demonstration of such a Brainet, built by interconnecting four adult rat brains. Brainets worked by concurrently recording the extracellular electrical activity generated by populations of cortical neurons distributed across multiple rats chronically implanted with multi-electrode arrays. Cortical neuronal activity was recorded and analyzed in real time, and then delivered to the somatosensory cortices of other animals that participated in the Brainet using intracortical microstimulation (ICMS). Using this approach, different Brainet architectures solved a number of useful computational problems, such as discrete classification, image processing, storage and retrieval of tactile information, and even weather forecasting. Brainets consistently performed at the same or higher levels than single rats in these tasks. Based on these findings, we propose that Brainets could be used to investigate animal social behaviors as well as a test bed for exploring the properties and potential applications of organic computers.

Blockchain Temporality: Smart Contract Time Specifiability with Blocktime

“…In this paper, my contribution is to (1) provide a conceptual context for smart contracts, (2) argue that blockchains are a next-generation technology enabling much larger-scale and more complex computing projects, and (3) posit blocktime as a new mode of conceiving time. Blockchains are a universal general computing substrate in the Turing-complete sense: any computing problem can be formulated and run on blockchains as a universal computing platform.…”

“…DNA has been proposed as a miniaturized and durable means of storage and computation [1]. Organic-inorganic hybrid computational substrates have been outlined, for example Brainets (linking organic computing units (brains) to silicon computing networks) [2], and Neural Dust (thousands of 10-100 micron-sized in-brain sensor nodes providing neural recording and interface support) [3].…”

An automatic experimental apparatus to study arm reaching in New World monkeys

“…With wireless neural recordings and multiple devices, social interaction experiments such as those involving multiple monkeys reaching for the cued reward locations on separate devices can be designed. Such interactions may also be implemented as brain-to-brain interface experiments ( Pais-Vieira, Lebedev et al 2013 ; Pais-Vieira, Chiuffa et al 2015 ; Ramakrishnan, Ifft et al 2015 ).…”

The Borg–eye and the We–I. The production of a collective living body through wearable computers

“…The filmmaker and the watcher extend their eyes through the camera which provides them a technological mediated point of view (Sobchack 1992, 195;Zimmer 2015, 90). 13 In this paper, we will not refer to the extended mind theory (Andy Clark 2003Clark , 2010Andy;Menary 2010;Hauskeller et al 2016), because we will refer explicitly to postphenomenology, and these two positions cannot be easily compared. Even if they work on the same topic and they both analyze the same theme, they have different approaches.…”