Digital Frontiers

Zombies and neuroscientists have a lot in common. Both groups are passionate about brains and both are relentless in their slow forward progress. Just as zombies become much more terrifying when they learn how to operate machines or work together, the history of neuroscience has been defined by technological breakthroughs. In many cases, scientists have made hypotheses that could not be studied using then-current technology but which were later proven to be correct when the technology caught up to the theorists. Given my love for computers and physiological psychology, I look forward to riding the next wave of technological innovation in brain science.

Generally, advances in this relatively new field are driven by new developments in brain scanning. At first, these tended to be fairly devastating to the patient. Electroencephalography (EEG) measures the brain’s electrical activity, but it wasn’t until 1929, over 50 years after the technique’s invention, that Hans Berger figured out how to get that data without opening the subject’s skull. Pneumoencephalography, a highly hazardous primitive imaging technique which replaces the cerebrospinal fluid in a patient’s brain with air (coincidentally, a good way to take out zombies), was the most powerful brain imaging tool from 1918 until 1970. Neuroscience couldn’t really take off until the invention of the MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and CT (Computerized Topography) machines. The CT scan provided multiple angles of the same brain for the first time, but the MRI technique of injecting a radioactive tracer and then using it to measure bloodflow in the brain paved the way for later neuroscience research. The PET (Positron Emission Topography) and fMRI (functional MRI) were built off of this same concept, but allowed researchers enough precision to finally begin studying cognition in real time. As it stands today, neuroscience is ripe for a new development, on par with MRI, that could open up the discipline.

Image obtained through PET

Image obtained through pneumoencephalography

One area in which this breakthrough is likely to occur is in the blossoming field of brain-computer interfaces. Brain-computer interface is poised to change not only the way we understand the activities of the brain, but also the way we interact with virtually all the machines that make modern life possible. The Graphical User Interface changed the way we interacted with computers and made Bill Gates and Steve Jobs household names, but it is by no means a permanent institution. Already, researchers have used implanted electrodes to restore a semblance of vision to the blind, or give amputees prosthetics almost as good as the real thing. It has been more than 10 years since the first “locked-in” paralysis patient was able to move a mouse cursor with his mind, and 5 since advances allowed patients to have the electrodes on the outside of their skulls (it seems to take a couple years to develop a scanning technique that anyone would volunteer for). The direct-brain interface scientists are moving more quickly than the pure scanning researchers because they are motivated to get the money waiting for the first company to really take advantage of the new technology.

Within our lifetimes, we may be controlling much of our important machinery with our brains. Our knowledge of how cognition works in the brain will only improve as neuroimaging waits on the next technological breakthrough to open up research. Neuroscientists, like zombies, work with their limited resources to reach a greater understanding of the brain (or its flavor). If these resources are dramatically expanded by a technique as influential as the invention the MRI/PET/fMRI scanners, neuroscience could make a quantum leap forward. Direct-brain interfaces and down-to-the-neuron imaging are only one disruptive innovation away — and when that innovation comes, it will change the way the entire species understands itself and interacts with its technology.

We may speculate to any end about this new technological revolution, but it remains to be seen how it will all play out. Is this exciting or terrifying? What are some possible implications of this technology? Will we ever completely understand cognition? And what makes brains so delicious (to study, of course)? Use your brain to move your hands and discuss in the comments, but while you do, imagine doing it all at the speed of thought. It may possible sooner than you’d think.

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