Did you ever wish you could remember everything you heard, enhance your eyesight, or control things with your mind? We all do, all the time. Perhaps this is why science and technology are taking giant leaps towards turning these sci-fi tokens into reality. The tremendous progress in neuroscience is in a tight partnership with novel technology to enhance the human mind. Whether via non-invasive brain-machine interfaces or brain implants, we are not only improving our capacities thanks to technology, but are indeed on the fast track to merging with it.
Cognitive training as a warm-up
Attempts to enhance the abilities of the mind using technology are much more prevalent than we think. Starting from the least extravagant means of doing so, cognitive training is being used in many different domains. This method refers to a program of regular activities serving to maintain or improve the user’s cognitive abilities. Cognitive training can include programs and smartphone apps, and can come in the form of exercises, simulations, and games. For example, Elevate Labs developed a game-based cognitive training app with millions of downloads. The games serve to improve memory and decision-making. A similar company, Lumosity, develops games that are meant to challenge and improve core cognitive abilities. These training apps not only enhance our abilities, but can reduce in the short-term or the long-term different impairments, though the effects are generally subtle.
Rather than aim for general cognitive enhancements, some companies try to improve task-specific cognitive skills. Neurotracker develops sophisticated training platforms for an array of domains, from aviation and sports to education, wellness, and even military. Their technology is based on decades of research into cognitive neuroscience and in particular visual perception. If you’re an athlete, this system will help you work on your brain’s ability to process visual information quickly, as well as make quick decisions. If you’re a pilot in the making, your brain would be working to improve cognitive load, or how much information it can handle, and to hone your attention in the midst of turmoil.
Non-invasive brain technology
While training the mind is available and user-friendly, some choose a more direct route. The technological and scientific developments of the past decade have allowed us to open a channel of communication between machine and mind. Non-invasive braintech requires no surgery or implants; it relies on electromagnetic signals transmitted from the apparatus to the brain. Brain-computer or human-machine interface thus allows machines to capture and interpret brain activity, and even influence that activity in a controlled manner.
One company that rose to the challenge is FocusCalm, which provides a brain-sensing headband and an app to help users control their mindset. The device is basically a one-way lane, reading brain waves without influencing them. A similar apparatus is Neurosity’s Crown, a device that you put on your head to increase concentration. It reads brain waves to detect when you’re in a focused state of mind, signaling that it is time to get to work.
Other endeavors are more ambitious, focusing on the other side of this human-machine relationship. Companies such as Delaware-based Neuronetics aim not just to make sense of brain waves, but to influence them for a desired outcome. Backed by many investors, including GE Ventures and Pfizer Venture Investments, the cognition-specialized company developed a therapy that uses magnetic fields to stimulate brain regions in patients who have not responded to anti-depressants. Besides curing pathologies, companies are eager to use this technology to optimize the psychological and cognitive state for healthy customers. Thync for example produces wearables that deliver low-level electric signals to nerves in order to energize or calm the mind. With a click of a button, you could modify your brain activity to optimize work in the morning, or to relax in the evening. While impressive, this technology is still in the cradle. Its goals and the ability to attain them are humble, compared to what the very near future has in store.
If there is non-invasive, there is invasive braintech
Although non-invasive technology is raising a lot of enthusiasm, some feel that the next step in brain-machine relations is in fact invasive braintech. Non-invasive technology cannot zero in on the precise neurons that need to be stimulated to effectively boost someone’s mental skills. To properly achieve this, we would need to reach down beneath the skull.
We have already been hacking the brain for a while, mostly to treat health conditions, such as Parkinson’s or paralysis. But what if by installing a chip in your brain, you could actually amplify your brainpower? Would you remember every word said during a conversation or drive better thanks to enhanced senses? Whether they are visionaries or madcaps, some entrepreneurs have already been working on just such technology. Prime among them is Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO who launched Neuralink, a project dedicated to blending human brains with computers. One of the company’s infamous demonstrations was that of a cyborg monkey playing MindPong using a brain chip. This required implanting more than 2,000 electrodes in diverse regions of the monkey’s motor cortex. In Musk’s opinion, we will have to keep pace with ever-smarter artificial intelligence by implanting machine interface that will make us smarter. Other opinions are more reluctant to mess with our minds so directly and decisively. Invasive technology (and to a lesser degree non-invasive tech) is already controversial, raising many ethical questions touching on freedom, identity, and personal responsibility.
A cyborg future
All these developments, going from cognitive training devices all the way to invasive brain technology, are gradually and quietly blurring the lines between human and machine. Indeed, the era of merging our minds with technology has begun. Research and development of bionic limbs is progressing at a staggering rate. Companies like Iceland-based Össur are designing mind-controlled prosthetics that use implants to convert brain signals into digital commands for a robotic device. It does not come as a surprise that one major investor in these developments is the military. In fact, US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) runs the Brain Initiative, working on quite the array of human-machine interface projects aiming to help the body heal itself, augment sensory abilities, and allow soldiers to operate drones, silently communicate, and integrate into defense systems.
While this may take a while, there are already ongoing efforts to create wireless cyborg eyes that would restore eyesight to blind people. If a fresh new pair of eyes could be purchased, why not brain implants for customized abilities? In her book Artificial You, Susan Schneider imagines a world where you can stroll into a shop for “cosmetic neurology”. There, customers pick from a selection of brain enhancement products, such as “Human Calculator” which gives you savant-level mathematical abilities, or the brand-new product Merge, which allows customers to augment and transfer their mental functions to the cloud.
It is no doubt daunting to think of the drastic changes to our very nature that may lurk right around the corner. But as the co-founder of CyborgNest said, we have been integrating with technology since we started aiming arrows at bears. In that endless unknown are also exciting and important opportunities to continue evolving and exploring our potential.