This monkey is controlling a robot arm via a brain interface...I love the future.

If you want the epitome of cool cybernetics, it doesn’t get much better than a monkey waving around a robot arm. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh have placed two neural implants in the brain of a macaque, allowing it to control a seven degree of freedom robot arm using only its thoughts. The experiment was designed to push the limits of brain-computer interfaces and increase the complexity of devices controlled by direct neural connections. Check out the amazing video of the monkey using his robot arm in the brief video from IEEE Spectrum below.

While this is the most complex monkey-controlled robot we’ve seen to date, it’s not the only one. The University of Pittsburgh’s earlier version of this experiment used a four degree of freedom robot arm. We’ve also seen similar work in humans: Kevin Warwick of Reading University used a neural implant in his arm to control a robot hand, and the Smart Hand is a complete hand prosthetic controlled by nerve signals in the arm. The macaque projects, however, stand out because of the complexity of the robotic device and the placement of the neural interface directly into the brain. The robot arm nearly has the same degrees of freedom of a human arm (minus the fingers), and the implants in the monkey’s brain measure signals associated with both the arm and the hand.

In the University of Pittsburgh experiment, the macaque needs the complexity of the arm to accomplish its task. The monkey moves a control stick with its natural arm, which places a black knob in an arbitrary position and orientation. Using the robotic arm, the macaque lightly grasps the black knob and receives a liquid treat via a tube. Using this reward system, the monkey was able to learn how to manipulate its robot arm into many different configurations made possible by its high degrees of freedom. Erico Guizzo of IEEE Spectrum was able to talk to Andrew Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh team. He mentioned that the monkey was not only able to use the robotic arm to touch the black knob, but rotate it in place as well.

Watching the monkey deftly manipulate the robot arm is really amazing, but this experiment is just one avenue of approach towards the ultimate goal: humans controlling artificial limbs and bodies using nothing but their brains. We’ve already seen human motor neurons wired to control computer cursors and motorized wheelchairs using the Braingate device. Taken together with the cyborg hand projects we mentioned above, the monkey and human neural interfaces demonstrate that we are nearing that goal. Perhaps much quicker than any would have imagined. It’s no surprise that we could see an XPrize for BCI in the near future. With the right financial incentives, advances to tap directly into the brain could be greatly accelerated.  Once the more complex problems of understanding sensory input are overcome, we’ll have humans controlling computers with their thoughts and exploring virtual environments with their minds. That sounds just awesome enough to beat out monkey-cyborgs on my list of cool technologies.

[image credit: Motor Lab, University of Pittsburgh via IEEE]
[video credit: IEEE Spectrum]
[sources: Motor Lab Univ. Pittsburgh, IEEE Spectrum]

National Children's Hospital used Macaques to test the effects of myostatin blocking on primates. The result: Muscular Monkeys

Get muscles now, ask me how. As published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, researchers at the National Children’s Hospital (NCH) and Ohio State University have proven that blocking myostatin in monkeys will lead to skeletal muscle growth with few or no discernible negative side effects. Myostatin is the protein that helps mammals regulate muscle building, acting as a signal for muscles to stop consuming resources and stop growing. Blocking myostatin leads to enhanced muscle strength and continuous muscle growth. You may remember Liam Hoekstra, the baby apparently born without the myostatin gene, and similarly enabled animals that have absurd strength. Using gene therapy, NCH scientists were able to get follistatin (a myostatin blocker) to promote phenomenal muscle growth in the quadriceps of macaque monkeys. NCH is now working with the FDA to perform the preliminary steps necessary for a human clinical trial. We could see a superman gene therapy available in the next decade.

The National Children’s Hospital interest in myostatin is not to create super strong children, but to help those children whose muscles have already atrophied. Muscular Dystrophy (MD) affects thousands of children in the US who slowly lose muscle and rarely survive into adulthood. Follistatin gene therapy could serve as a method to extend their lives or perhaps even reverse the symptoms of their conditions. Likewise, the eldery are susceptible to several diseases that lead to a loss of muscle strength and coordination. By blocking myostatin, we may all be able to live with the strength of our youth even as we age into our 80s.

My concerns about myostatin have largely focused on potential organ damage, possible unknown dangerous effects on smooth muscle tissue, and ligament/tendon stresses. The NCH work addresses these concerns rather well. Macaques were observed for 15 months after receiving a gene therapy that promoted follistatin (and blocked myostatin) in their quadriceps. There was no observed damage to internal organs, the treatment only seemed to affect skeletal muscle, the reproductive cycles and cells functioned normally, and there was no reported damaged to tendons or ligaments (though this last issue wasn’t expressly pursued by the research).

The belgian blue has been bread to be predisposed towards myostatin blocking.

As with all animals we’ve seen with myostatin inhibition, the monkeys at NCH enjoyed some serious boosts in strength. The macaques exhibited enhanced muscle growth for 12 weeks after treatment, beyond which muscle mass stabilized. The average circumference of the animals quadriceps increased by 15%. Using electric stimulation (you can’t order a monkey to lift weights) scientists were able to observe profound increases in leg strength. One specimen demonstrated a 78% increase over control results.

The next step for NCH is toxicology and biodistribution tests as outlined by the FDA. After that, further rounds of testing will be necessary before human clinical trials can begin. Still, considering the lack of negative side effects, and the profound need from the Muscular Dystrophy community, one hopes that those trials will begin in the next few years. If ultimately successful, follistatin gene therapy could treat the symptoms of MD while different genetic therapies could affect the causes of some forms of MD. And let’s not forget the weight-lifting 800 pound gorilla in the room. Along with MD treatments, and therapies for muscle loss in old age, the defeat of myostatin could lead to an effective way for all of us to get fit fast. No workouts necessary, eat almost all you want, and have a body like Adonis. This research is taking us one step closer to that goal…but it still sounds too good to be true. We can’t all be Superman, can we?

Glowing Primates: Terrible at Flashlight Tag (credit Erika Sasaki - Hideyuki Okano / AP)

The marmosets were given the glowing gene in much the same way as Ruby Puppy but, instead of glowing red like the transgenic dog, the primates glow green.  The genetic mutation of these marmosets holds many of the same implications as a glowing dog, including the potential study of many human diseases as well as the ethical dilemmas that come with the territory.  The marmoset itself was targeted for study because it reaches sexual maturity faster and has more offspring, allowing experiments to take less time from breeding to data collection.

Aside from the usual perks of having a genetically engineered pet/lab experiment, the plethora of scientists credited with writing the report believe that this is the first time that the offspring of genetically engineered primates are able to inherit the new trait.  This was proven when three out of the four second-generation marmosets bred in the experiment were capable of glowing under ultraviolet light.  The presence of this gene in the sperm and egg cells of the marmoset could not only lower the cost of each animal, but also increase the yield.  Whereas only a few marmosets matured to adulthood from the 900 original embryos, tradition breeding could allow for a much better survival rate.

Giving animals a glowing gene is simply an easy way of testing if a genetic modification worked.  The next step would be to recreate human illnesses in the animals so different medications can be tested.  Of course, with any of these types of experimentations there are ethical issues.  Sure, it’s not too bad to make King Kong glow a little bit but the animal rights groups will get a bit ticked off when he is engineered to have Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease.

Eric Kleiman of In Defense of Animals is already outraged, saying that “this is a step backward, not a step forward.”  Other notable quotes include: “Why aren’t scientists harnessing the power of the human genome or any of the other technology that has exploded over the last 10 years?”   Although these alarmist exclamations prove Mr. Kleiman’s ignorance of what has in fact exploded in the last ten years and should not deter the progress of science, an important question is still raised: is it cruel to breed animals with specific diseases solely for the purpose of making human lives better?

There do not seem to be many grave concerns about cruelty towards the genetically modified lab rats that have been used for years.  But perhaps these cute, almost human-like monkeys evoke a greater amount of sympathy from animal lovers.  Ethical dilemmas aside, the number of genetically modified species are steadily growing and, in the not too distant future, humans will join those numbers with the hopes of eradicating diseases and genetic abnormalities.  Genetic engineering, like many other technological advances, will cause great ethical challenges that may be cause for rethinking the moral principles of humanity.  For now, we can just marvel at the glowing marmoset.  We’ll simply have to leave it to the scientists and lawmakers to figure out the rest.

For an hour the monkey watched a video of the far away robot and the two were walking in sync.  Then in the most exciting part of the experiment, the researchers turned off the treadmill and the monkey stopped walking.  Even though the monkey had stopped walking, the monkey was still watching the robot on the video and by thought alone the monkey was able to keep the robot walking for several minutes.

This experiment was carried out by Dr. Miguel A. L. Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke University whose work includes our previous post about a similar experiment in which a monkey controlled robotic arms through a brain implant.  Experiments like these are just the beginning of the burgeoning field of brain computer interfaces (BCI).  In the not to distant future we will be tapping directly into the thoughts and memories that are currently trapped within our brains.

Below is a video of the experiment, followed by a diagram from the NYT article:

“The findings suggest that brain-controlled prosthetics, while not practical, are at least technically within reach.

In previous studies, researchers showed that humans who had been paralyzed for years could learn to control a cursor on a computer screen with their brain waves and that nonhuman primates could use their thoughts to move a mechanical arm, a robotic hand or a robot on a treadmill.

The new experiment goes a step further. In it, the monkeys’ brains seem to have adopted the mechanical appendage as their own, refining its movement as it interacted with real objects in real time. The monkeys had their own arms gently restrained while they learned to use the added one.”

Check out this awesome video of a monkey operating a robotic arm:

Robo-monkey uses brain power to feed itself