From: "Han Tacoma" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The World's First Brain Prosthesis
By DUNCAN GRAHAM-ROWE
Posts like these are one of the reasons for being addicted to the list. Thanks, Han.
Any device that mimics the brain clearly raises ethical issues. The brain not only affects memory, but your mood, awareness and consciousness - parts of your fundamental identity, says ethicist Joel Anderson at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri.
From the article, I understand clearly that the job of the hippocampusappears to be to "encode" experiences so they can be stored as long-term memories elsewhere in the brain. I also understand that the research team is merely (allegedly) copying its' behavior. But reading about the proposed accuracy of performance of this prosthesis, I can't help but wonder about the fact that if we can break down into such detail the structure of memory patterns, could we apply this technology into simulating them so much that we can implant new ones that may or may have not existed?
JJ
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