Incremental Advances in Machine-Nerve Interfaces

Computational hardware, electronics, and biotechnology are three of the most rapidly advancing fields of human endeavor at the present time. The years ahead are going to be most interesting, even though progress always seems far too slow and incremental while living it a day at a time. One field that sits within the broad overlap of machinery, computing, and biology is that of nerve-machine interfaces, which spans the gamut from the creation of machines to take on the job of a biological nerve structure, through simulation of nervous system behavior, through to attaching machinery to nerves in order to form a new gestalt system. Examples of this work being demonstrated today are very crude in comparison to what will be possible in the future - but the path forward, while slow and incremental, definitely leads towards functional prosthetics that are fully tied into a biological nervous system. This sort of technology is important to the 2045 Initiative view of the future, but is less relevant to the SENS vision for human longevity, which is (rightly I think) focused on the biology we have and how to repair it. Prosthetic technologies of all sorts are a competitor for regenerative medicine, both having the goal to alleviate serious injuries involving loss of body parts or their function. I'm not sure I see a viable outline for the next five decades in which increasingly sophisticated prosthetics can be used to extend life meaningfully - there are parts of the body that you c...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs