{"id":111969,"date":"2020-08-27T04:22:18","date_gmt":"2020-08-27T11:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/the-us-military-is-trying-to-read-minds"},"modified":"2020-08-27T04:22:18","modified_gmt":"2020-08-27T11:22:18","slug":"the-us-military-is-trying-to-read-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/the-us-military-is-trying-to-read-minds","title":{"rendered":"The US military is trying to read minds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-us-military-is-trying-to-read-minds.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Elon Musk\u2019s Neuralink will likely show off its design for a brain-computer interface Friday evening. The concept it unveiled last summer involves surgically implanting it into the brain to detect the activity of neurons. The US military also wants to develop a brain-computer interface, as we explain in this story from October. But here\u2019s the kicker: no surgery required\u2014and the device could be put on and taken off like a helmet or headband.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>In August, three graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University were crammed together in a small, windowless basement lab, using a jury-rigged 3D printer frame to zap a slice of mouse brain with electricity.<\/p>\n<p>The brain fragment, cut from the hippocampus, looked like a piece of thinly sliced garlic. It rested on a platform near the center of the contraption. A narrow tube bathed the slice in a solution of salt, glucose, and amino acids. This kept it alive, after a fashion: neurons in the slice continued to fire, allowing the experimenters to gather data. An array of electrodes beneath the slice delivered the electric zaps, while a syringe-like metal probe measured how the neurons reacted. Bright LED lamps illuminated the dish. The setup, to use the lab members\u2019 lingo, was kind of hacky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elon Musk\u2019s Neuralink will likely show off its design for a brain-computer interface Friday evening. The concept it unveiled last summer involves surgically implanting it into the brain to detect the activity of neurons. The US military also wants to develop a brain-computer interface, as we explain in this story from October. But here\u2019s the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1489,11,1523,2019,9,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3d-printing","category-biotech-medical","category-computing","category-elon-musk","category-military","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/531"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111969\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}