During our next discussion meeting, we’ll explore the status, future potential, and human implications of neuroprostheses–particularly brain-computer interfaces. If you are local to Albuquerque, check our Meetup announcement to join or RSVP. The announcement text follows.

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.)