I read the following in the September 26, 2013 edition of the LA Times:
Bionic Leg Is Steered By Brain Power
By Melissa Healy
The act of walking may not seem like a feat of agility, balance, strength and brain power. But lose a leg, as Zac Vawter did after a motorcycle accident in 2009, and you will appreciate the myriad calculations that go into putting one foot in front of the other.
Taking on the challenge, a team of software and biomedical engineers, neuroscientists, surgeons and prosthetisists has designed a prosthetic limb that can reproduce a full repertoire of ambulatory tricks by communicating seamlessly with Vawter's brain.
A report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine describes how the team fit Vawter with a prosthetic leg that has learned-with the help of a computer and some electrodes-to read his intentions from a bundle of nerves that end above his missing knee.
.....Vawter's prosthetic is a marvel of 21st century engineering. But it is Vawter's ability to control the prosthetic with his thoughts that makes the latest case remarkable. If he wants his artificial toes to curl toward him, or his artificial ankle to shift so he can walk down a ramp, all he has to do is imagine such movement.
....."With this leg, it just flows," said the 32 year old software engineer......The control system is very intuitive. There isn't anything special I have to do to make it work right."
....."At the institute's Center for Bionic Medicine, Vawter spent countless hours with his thigh wired up with electrodes, imagining making certain movements on command with his missing knee, ankle and foot.
Using pattern-recognition software, engineers discerned, distilled and digitized those recorded electrical signals to catalog an entire repertoire of movements. The prosthetic could thus be programmed to recognize the subtlest contraction of a muscle in Vawter's thigh as a specific motor command."
There are a lot of interesting things to discuss here, but before I do I want to make clear that I am very happy for Mr. Vawter, that I admire all the hard work, dilligence and precision that went into the creation of this device and am excited about the promise that it holds for all people with missing limbs who will eventually benefit from these devices (as soon as these systems are perfected and ways of mass producing such devices are figured out and as soon as our values which are reflected in our health care system improve so that these devices are affordable for all who need them and not just for the ultra fortunate elite that can pay for them).
Such a device, which restores so many of the ambulatory functions that Mr. Vawter had enjoyed prior to his accident, will be described by many, perhaps even by Mr. Vawter, as 'miraculous.' The majority of the team of scientists that were involved in the creation of this device will probably smile inwardly at this description, because they know the actual mechanics of how it works and while it is extremely complex and wonderfully precise, they know that the device is not miraculous, but mechanical, or perhaps more accurately, electro-mechanical.
The point of this post is to show that the device is, actually, miraculous, or, more accurately, that it piggy-backs on what is miraculous about life, about the self and our relationship to our bodies, and does it in such a way that what is truly miraculous is completely overlooked; so that the layperson in her or his wonder at such a device is actually closer to the truth of it, and more emotionally appropriate in their response to it than the research scientists who will be winning Nobel Prizes and receiving enormous sums of money, not for creating something miraculous, but for finding a way, as I said before, of piggy-backing on what is truly miraculous.
....."At the institute's Center for Bionic Medicine, Vawter spent countless hours with his thigh wired up with electrodes, imagining making certain movements on command with his missing knee, ankle and foot.
Using pattern-recognition software, engineers discerned, distilled and digitized those recorded electrical signals to catalog an entire repertoire of movements. The prosthetic could thus be programmed to recognize the subtlest contraction of a muscle in Vawter's thigh as a specific motor command."
So basically, and I know I am over-simplifying, Vawter imagined doing a variety of ambulatory tasks with his missing knee, lower leg, ankle and foot, and each of these specific imaginings created a precise pattern of neuron firings in the nerves leading through his thigh down to the missing lower leg. You can actually do the same thing yourself. Without moving any part of your lower leg or foot, you can imagine doing certain tasks and while you cannot feel directly the neurons firing, you can, with many of these movements, feel the very subtle muscular contractions of various thigh muscles as you do these imaginings. It is also interesting to realize that when you actually do these movements, you don't need to imagine them at all. The only reason you are imagining them is because you are not doing them. If you would just 'intend' to do them, with or without any conscious thought, they would be done. In the same way that Vawter during the research phase of this device, did all this work with his imagination, concentrating on all these specific thoughts, but now that he has an actual leglike and footlike device, he no longer has to imagine anything, but just intend to climb the staircase or get up from the chair and ....."With this leg, it just flows,"......The control system is very intuitive. There isn't anything special I have to do to make it work right."
The research work that was done was in discovering the electrical patterns of neuronal firings that were already there and then creating the software to recognize these patterns and then electrically to conduct signals to that part of the artificial limb that would mechanically perform the task that Vawter intended to perform.
Let me reiterate here what I have mentioned many times before in other posts of this blog. Matter does not want things. Atoms, molecules and electrons do not care what happen to them one way or the other, have no desires, intentions or ambitions. Complex molecules, hydrocarbons, proteins, nucleotides, even DNA have absolutely no ambitions or desires for anything. This should be obvious to any one of normal intelligence, but it seems to be beyond the understanding of our most celebrated scientists who base their understanding of life on ambitious and competitive nucleotides, proteins that desire to work and other such obvious nonsense. Do you really think it makes any difference to a protein molecule if it is part of a complex matrix that keeps your heart beating or if your heart stops beating and that molecule becomes part of a meal for a hungry jackal? Do you really think that DNA wants to replicate? It replicates in automatic response to signals it receives from the surrounding cell. Do you think that dinosaur DNA was in mourning because dinosaurs didn't survive. Do you think any part of dinosaur DNA even realized it was dinosaur DNA? Even realized anything at all?
Vawter's replacement leg is made out of matter, out of atoms and molecules and electrons. It has no desires. It does not care whether Vawter walks or not. It does not care whether it is purchased for ten million dollars or whether it sits on a laboratory shelf. In the same way Vawter's real leg is also made of matter, of atoms, molecules and electrons. It, also, does not care whether Vawter walks or sits in a chair for the rest of his life. What cares in all this, what has intentions is Vawter himself, or I should say, Vawter him Self. Beings have intentions. Beings experience things. The intentions that beings have are to have certain kinds of experiences. The two go hand in hand. If you didn't experience anything you wouldn't desire anything. And what you desire is to have a certain kind of experience, either for yourself or for other beings. You are not your body. You are that which experiences and desires things through the agency of your body. And that includes your brain. Your brain, composed of atoms, molecules and electrons, in spite of its enormous complexity of organization, does not want anything and does not experience anything. Your brain records your experience. Your brain helps you organize your experience by separating it into different categories, so that you, with your human brain, experience the world as a human, and your dog, with its dog brain, experiences the world as a dog and a caterpillar, with its caterpillar brain, experiences the world as a caterpillar. So your brain records and categorizes and helps you define your experience, but it does not experience your experience. You, a non-physical being; you, the context of your experience and the milieu of your desires, you do that. Your body/brain is that which translates instantly, miraculously, your desires or intentions into the precise pattern of neural firings that lead to the precise pattern of muscular contractions, that allow you to fulfill those desires. Your body is the automatic and miraculous servant of your desires.
In all the hoopla and the awards ceremonies and the rising stock prices and the daydreams of all the ungodly profits to be made surrounding this amazing new device, let's not overlook that which the research team has actually done. They have found a way to piggy back on our miraculous bodies that have been designed to do one thing and one thing only: to allow us to automatically fulfill our desires by instantaneously translating those desires, desires which are experienced but not observed and are not part of the physical universe, into the physical firing of enormously complex and precise patterns of neurons which initiate a series of electrical and mechanical responses which result in us being able to do that which we desire to do.
"Isn't it amazing what 'they' can do today!" But isn't it more amazing what God, or the Cosmic Consciousness, or the Universe, if you prefer, has been doing all along.
I welcome your comments.
