optogenetics

26 results

pages: 336 words: 93,672

The Future of the Brain: Essays by the World's Leading Neuroscientists
by Gary Marcus and Jeremy Freeman
Published 1 Nov 2014

And Koch and Tsuchiya say that one may be able to use postdecision wagering to test whether the optogenetic mice are consciously seeing the stimulus. High confidence would suggest conscious perception; low confidence unconscious perception. But won’t the shutting off of top-down processes ruin wagering in the mice? Koch and Tsuchiya think that confidence may be mediated by different top-down processes from those involved in attention and global broadcasting and so may not be turned off by the optogenetic switch. One way to think about this proposal is to try to imagine what it would be like to be an optogenetic mouse. Suppose you are a transgenic being whose optogenetic switch has been flipped so as to preclude top-down attention.

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Some theorists have held that the measurement problem may be solved by new technology, a subject to which we now turn. Transgenic Mice and the Optogenetic Switch Global broadcasting involves not only feed-forward flow of activation but heavy feedback from frontal to sensory areas. Christof Koch and Nao Tsuchiya (2014) propose to use transgenic mice whose neural genes have been rendered sensitive to light, for example, by being infected with genetically altered viruses. In these mice, top-down feedback from frontal to sensory areas can be turned off optogenetically by light sources on the skull or optical fibers implanted in the brain. If there is no top-down attentional feedback there can be no “ignition” and no global broadcasting.

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Now, microelectrodes inserted into circuits allow much more precise electrical stimulation to add a signal or disable a signal at critical points. However, even focal electrical stimulation still lacks precision because neural processes the electrical impulse affects are locally entangled nearly everywhere in the brain. By contrast, optogenetic methods provide unprecedented selectivity to turn cells on or off so that the role of selected networks in behavior can be directly tested. Optogenetics promises greater selectivity for manipulating each element of a circuit, but will surely have its own pitfalls. Thus, electrical and optically based neurotechnology are poised to provide the missing middle level of data and key information that links neurons to behavior.

pages: 254 words: 76,064

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future
by Joi Ito and Jeff Howe
Published 6 Dec 2016

,” Mozy Blog, July 2, 2009, https://mozy.com/blog/misc/how-much-is-a-petabyte/. 6 Mark Fischetti, “Computers versus Brains,” Scientific American, November 1, 2011, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/computers-vs-brains/. 7 Elwyn Brooks White, Here Is New York (New York Review of Books, 1949), 19. 8 Edward Boyden, “A History of Optogenetics: The Development of Tools for Controlling Brain Circuits with Light,” F1000 Biology Reports 3 (May 3, 2011), doi:10.3410/B3-11. 9 Boyden, “A History of Optogenetics.” 10 “Edward Boyden Wins 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences,” MIT News, November 9, 2015, http://news.mit.edu/2015/edward-boyden-2016-breakthrough-prize-life-sciences-1109. 11 John Colapinto, “Lighting the Brain,” New Yorker, May 18, 2015, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/18/lighting-the-brain. 12 Quinn Norton, “Rewiring the Brain: Inside the New Science of Neuroengineering,” WIRED, March 2, 2009, http://www.wired.com/2009/03/neuroengineering1/. 13 Katherine Bourzac, “In First Human Test of Optogenetics, Doctors Aim to Restore Sight to the Blind,” MIT Technology Review, February 19, 2016, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600696/in-first-human-test-of-optogenetics-doctors-aim-to-restore-sight-to-the-blind/. 14 Anne Trafton, “Seeing the Light,” MIT News, April 20, 2011, http://news.mit.edu/2011/blindness-boyden-0420. 15 Karl Deisseroth, “Optogenetics: Controlling the Brain with Light [Extended Version],” Scientific American, October 20, 2010, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/optogenetics-controlling/. 16 Ibid. 17 Ernst Bamberg, “Optogenetics,” Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, 2010, https://www.mpg.de/18011/Optogenetics. 18 Udi Nussinovitch and Lior Gepstein, “Optogenetics for in Vivo Cardiac Pacing and Resynchronization Therapies,” Nature Biotechnology 33, no. 7 (July 2015): 750–54, doi:10.1038/nbt.3268. 19 Deisseroth, “Optogenetics: Controlling the Brain with Light [Extended Version].” 20 “1985 | Timeline of Computer History,” Computer History Museum, accessed June 7, 2016, http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/1985/. 21 Quoted in Tom Collins, The Legendary Model T Ford: The Ultimate History of America’s First Great Automobile (Fort Collins, CO.: Krause Publications, 2007), 155. 22 Henry Ford, My Life and Work (New York: Doubleday, 1922), 73. 23 David Gartman, “Tough Guys and Pretty Boys: The Cultural Antagonisms of Engineering and Aesthetics in Automotive History,” Automobile in American Life and Society, accessed June 7, 2016, http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Design/Gartman/D_Casestudy/D_Casestudy3.htm. 24 Elizabeth B-N Sanders, “From User-Centered to Participatory Design Approaches,” Design and the Social Sciences: Making Connections, 2002, 1–8. 25 Quoted in Drew Hansen, “Myth Busted: Steve Jobs Did Listen to Customers,” Forbes, December 19, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhansen/2013/12/19/myth-busted-steve-jobs-did-listen-to-customers/. 26 Sanders, “From User-Centered to Participatory Design Approaches.”

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That night I collected data that demonstrated all the core principles we would publish a year later in Nature Neuroscience, announcing that ChR2 could be used to depolarize neurons.”9 This was a significant breakthrough—and in 2015 it would be recognized as exactly that when Deisseroth and Boyden received $3 million each as part of the Breakthrough Prize awards organized by Mark Zuckerberg and other tech-industry philanthropists.10 Previously neuroscientists were simply spectators at brain events, watching vast swaths of neurons react to this or that stimulus, and attempting to infer causality. But with “optogenetics,” as Deisseroth and another colleague called the new technique, researchers could stimulate individual neural circuits and observe how they behaved. Boyden is quick to share credit for optogenetics—with his collaborators, but also with other scientists who were hot on the trail in 2005 when he and Deisseroth first went public with their method. But it seems far from accidental that the two people who “thought of what no one thought of before,”11 in the words of one prominent neuroscientist, were both outsiders who tended to view the brain as an entity within a larger system.

Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
by Anna Lembke
Published 24 Aug 2021

Meanwhile, the future holds tantalizing possibilities for ways to reverse the scars of addiction. Vincent Pascoli and his colleagues injected rats with cocaine, which demonstrated the expected behavioral changes (frenzied running), then used optogenetics—a biological technique that involves the use of light to control neurons—to reverse the synaptic brain changes caused by cocaine. Maybe someday optogenetics will be possible on human brains. The Balance Is Only a Metaphor In real life, pleasure and pain are more complex than the workings of a balance. What’s pleasurable for one person may not be for another.

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Sullivan, “Remapping the Brain to Compensate for Impairment in Recovering Alcoholics,” Cerebral Cortex 23 (2013): 97–104, https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhr381; Changhai Cui, Antonio Noronha, Kenneth R. Warren, George F. Koob, Rajita Sinha, Mahesh Thakkar, John Matochik, et al., “Brain Pathways to Recovery from Alcohol Dependence,” Alcohol 49, no. 5 (2015): 435–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcohol.2015.04.006. optogenetics: Vincent Pascoli, Marc Turiault, and Christian Lüscher, “Reversal of Cocaine-Evoked Synaptic Potentiation Resets Drug-Induced Adaptive Behaviour,” Nature 481 (2012): 71–75, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10709. “a ticket to the safety”: Henry Beecher, “Pain in Men Wounded in Battle,” Anesthesia & Analgesia, 1947, https://doi.org/10.1213/00000539-194701000-00005.

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abstinence binging following, 87 in DOPAMINE framework, 76–81 and goal of moderation in drug use, 87 relapses following periods of, 57 required for homeostasis, 77 reward pathway reset by, 76, 78–79, 234 role of, in recovery, 234 time required for, 78–79 abstinence violation effect, 87 abundance in modern world, 1, 67 acceptance, 217 access as risk factor for addiction, 18–20, 22, 29–30 accountability promoted truthful autobiographies, 186–92 and prosocial shame, 219 acupuncture, 154 Adderall clients’ experiences with, 32, 33, 41–44 dopamine output effected by, 50 increasing rates of prescription of, 39 questions on efficacy of, 130 risk of addiction to, 129 addiction and decreased sensitivity to rewards, 56 definition of, 16 to drugs that cannot be abstained from, 88 exercise’s impact on, 150–51 genetic predisposition to, 87 and moderation of drug use, 87–88, 107–9 motivation to pursue recovery, 104 and new synaptic pathways in recovery, 64 and optogenetics, 64 to pain, 160–68, 234 potential for, measured by dopamine, 2, 49 poverty as risk factor for, 105 and relapses, 57 rising rates of, 29 risk factors for, 18–22 of rodents, to wheel-running, 161–65 and tolerance (neuroadaptation), 53–58 trading one for another, 79–80, 99 vulnerability to, 65 See also withdrawal; specific addictive substances and behaviors ADHD Drug Abuse Crisis on American College Campuses, The (Watson), 130 Aeschylus, 189 age and time required to reset reward pathways, 79 and vulnerability to negative consequences, 75 Aguiar, Mark, 106–7 Ahmed, S.

pages: 339 words: 92,785

I, Warbot: The Dawn of Artificially Intelligent Conflict
by Kenneth Payne
Published 16 Jun 2021

But perhaps something cruder is possible. In a recent experiment, scientists ‘input’ emotion using ‘optogenetics’, a relatively new technique. They were able to stimulate an aggressive response in mice, via genetically modified, light sensitive neurons in its amygdala, an evolutionary ancient brain region integral to mammalian fear and rage systems.33 Essentially, they made the mouse furious and aggressive at the flick of a light switch. More recently still, another startling experiment optogenetically stimulated oxytocin neurons in mice via a wireless headset, this time stimulating pro-social behaviours.34 Emotion at the flick of a light switch.

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Lein, Pietro Perona, and David J. Anderson. ‘Functional identification of an aggression locus in the mouse hypothalamus’, Nature 470, no. 7333 (2011): 221–226. 34. Anpilov, Sergey, Yair Shemesh, Noa Eren, Hala Harony-Nicolas, Asaf Benjamin, Julien Dine, Vinícius E. M. Oliveira et al. ‘Wireless Optogenetic Stimulation of Oxytocin Neurons in a Semi-natural Setup Dynamically Elevates Both Pro-social and Agonistic Behaviors’, Neuron, in press, (2020). 35. See Mitchell, Kevin J. Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. 36. See Plomin, Robert.

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Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’ Trap? London: Scribe, 2017. Altmann, Jürgen and Frank Sauer, ‘Autonomous Weapon Systems and Strategic Stability’, Survival 59, no. 5 (2017): 117–142. Anpilov, Sergey, Yair Shemesh, Noa Eren, Hala Harony-Nicolas, Asaf Benjamin, Julien Dine, Vinícius E. M. Oliveira et al. ‘Wireless Optogenetic Stimulation of Oxytocin Neurons in a Semi-natural Setup Dynamically Elevates Both Pro-social and Agonistic Behaviors’, Neuron, in press, (2020). Ashby, Ross, and Paul R. Stein. ‘Design for a Brain’, PhT7, no. 4 (1954): 24. Asimov, Isaac. I, Robot. London: Harper Voyager, 2013. Athurton, Kelsey D.

pages: 360 words: 100,991

Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence
by Richard Yonck
Published 7 Mar 2017

Another technology that may eventually lead to brain-computer interfaces goes by the somewhat unlikely name of optogenetics. Optogenetics uses light to control and monitor neurons that have been genetically modified using a family of photochemically active algae-derived proteins called opsins. These allow the neurons to be switched off and on using pulses of light as the trigger. Neurons can also be made to fluoresce when active, effectively creating a means of two-way communication. Because of optogenetics’ high spatial and time resolutions, this two-way channel not only lets researchers control brain activity but also helps them decipher the brain’s hidden language—the neural code that generates our thoughts and actions.2 Though it’s still early days for this technique, animal studies are well underway, and the first human testing using the technique as a treatment for blindness caused by retinitis pigmentosa was carried out in March 2016.

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These will initially operate using webcams to detect facial expressions and microphones that sense alterations in the gamer’s voice, but this will no doubt grow in sophistication and eventually integrate our brain activity as well. As users continue the hunt for more complete and immersive experiences, new technologies will be developed to make them possible. Whether they will use TMS, optogenetics, or some other newer, more refined technology, the games of tomorrow will inevitably be vastly more realistic than anything we can experience today. The technologies used for therapeutic purposes and emotionally interactive games and environments will become increasingly available, inexpensive, and user-friendly, eventually leading to their being used as easily as turning on a switch.

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See massive open online courses (MOOCs) Moodies, 72 Moore, Gordon, 38 Moore’s law, 38–40, 147 Mor, Yuval, 72, 76–77 Mori, Masahiro, 96–98 Moss, Frank, 62 MP3, 210 Mukai, Toshiharu, 152 Musk, Elon, 263–264 My Real Baby, 200 Myriad Genetics, 75 N Nadine, 87 Nanyang Technological University, 87 NAO, 112–113, 152 Napster, 210 NASA Ames Research Center, 256 NASA Space Technology 5 (ST5) antennas, 256 Nass, Clifford, 28, 50 National Center on Elder Abuse, 155–156 National Science Foundation, 60 NDR-113 (Andrew), 232 Negroponte, Nicholas, 52 Nemesysco, 73 neural networks, 67–68 NeuroSky, 213 neurotransmitters, 186, 187, 190, 216, 220, 221 “New Strategy for Robots,” 151 Nexi - MDS(mobile-dexterous-social) robot, 85 Next-Generation Identification, 144 1984, 229 Noldus, 72 nonverbal communication, 25–26 North Carolina State University study (2013), 114 Norvig, Peter, 39 O objectophilia, 186–188 Objectùm-Sexuality Internationale, 187 Oculus Rift, 189 Office Assistant, 51–52 Office for Windows, 51 Official Secrets Act, 37 online training systems, 120–121 Ono, 88 “Onslaught (Dove),” 69–70 open source EEG projects, 126 opsins, 213–214 optogenetics, 213–214, 218 On the Origin of Species (Darwin), 228 Orwell, George, 229 OS ONE, 195 “otherness,” 106 oxytocin, 16, 186, 196 P P-consciousness. See Phenomenal-consciousness Pan paniscus, 14 Pan troglodytes, 14 Paranthropus boisei, 12, 14–15 paraphilia, 187 Parkinson’s disease and DBS systems, 126–127 PARO, 148–149 patent and intellectual property (IP) law, 75 pattern recognition, 53–54 Pearson, Ian, 168–169 peer-to-peer file sharing, 210 People’s Human Brain Emulation, 240 Pepper, 82–83 Perceptio, 75 personal biometrics, 5 personal identity, 206 Personal Robotics Group, MIT, 85, 118–119 personalized education, 117–118 Peter Sager Wallenberg Charitable Trust, 66 Phenomenal-consciousness, 243–249, 258, 270 Physiio, 70, 74 physio-emotional self-knowledge, 34 Picard, Rosalind, 42–48, 51, 53, 57, 60–62, 77 Pinker, Steven, 13, 267 Pinocchio, 233–234 Plato, 29–30 Pleo, 89–90 Plutarch, 206 The Polar Express (Allsburg/Zemeckis), 95–96 The Positronic Man (Asimov and Silverberg), 232 Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 221–222 Michael’s nightmares, 122–123 and the military, 123–125 prosthetics, 103–104 Psychological Operations (PSYOP), 134 Psychology Today, 141 PSYOP.

pages: 367 words: 102,188

Sleepyhead: Narcolepsy, Neuroscience and the Search for a Good Night
by Henry Nicholls
Published 1 Mar 2018

Jones, ‘Discharge of Identified Orexin/Hypocretin Neurons across the Sleep-Waking Cycle’, Journal of Neuroscience, 25.28 (2005), 6716–20 <https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.1887-05.2005>. p. 108 envy the mouse Antoine R. Adamantidis and others, ‘Neural Substrates of Awakening Probed with Optogenetic Control of Hypocretin Neurons’, Nature, 450.7168 (2007), 420–4 <https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06310>. For the video clip of optogenetic activation of hypocretin neurons see <https://images.nature.com/full/nature-assets/nature/journal/v450/n7168/extref/nature06310-s2.mov>. p. 108 surge of hypocretins Ronald M. Salomon and others, ‘Diurnal Variation of Cerebrospinal Fluid Hypocretin-1 (Orexin-A) Levels in Control and Depressed Subjects’, Biological Psychiatry, 54.2 (2003), 96–104 <https://doi.org/10.1016/S0006-3223(02)01740-7>. 6 Bad breath p. 112 cause of his moodiness Alex Iranzo, Carlos H.

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A few kids are waving sparklers, someone lights a Roman candle and a Catherine wheel inspires a half-hearted ‘ooh’ and a reluctant ‘aaah’ before spinning off into the bushes. There’s no getting round it. The party sucks. There’s lots of research that confirms this rocket-like role for hypocretins. Easily the strongest evidence comes from optogenetics, an incredibly powerful approach for studying the brain that de Lecea had a hand in pioneering. ‘If you shine a light in the brain nothing happens,’ says de Lecea. But with a bit of molecular cunning, involving a virus, a promoter and a gene found in blue-green algae, it is possible to transform a particular population of neurons so that it becomes sensitive to light.

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Sticking a pipette into a brain and hoping its tip hits home is a bit like shoving an arm into a haystack and hoping to pull out the proverbial needle. What’s more, while the pipette method allows measurement of cell activity, it doesn’t give a reliable way to take over control of the cell, to manipulate its activity at whim. This is where optogenetics comes in. De Lecea sets a video to play. There is a mouse in a cage with a thin fibre-optic cable running into its brain. ‘The mouse is asleep,’ he says, crests of slow, non-REM sleep spooling across an inset video at the top of the screen. ‘In a moment, you’ll see the light travelling down the fibre-optic cable.’

pages: 418 words: 102,597

Being You: A New Science of Consciousness
by Anil Seth
Published 29 Aug 2021

Remarkably, a version of this experiment may soon be possible, thanks to the new technology of optogenetics, which allows researchers to control the activity of precisely targeted neurons with exquisite detail. Optogenetics uses genetic techniques to modify specific neurons so that they become sensitive to light at specific wavelengths. Then, by using lasers or LED arrays to shine light into the brains of genetically modified animals, these neurons can be switched on or switched off. In principle, optogenetics could be used to inactivate already inactive neurons, with the effects on conscious perception – if any – being assessed.

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PLoS Biology, 17(2), e3000112. Dehaene, S., & Changeux, J. P. (2011). ‘Experimental and theoretical approaches to conscious processing’. Neuron, 70(2), 200–227. Dehaene, S., Lau, H., & Kouider, S. (2017). ‘What is consciousness, and could machines have it?’ Science, 358(6362), 486–92. Deisseroth, K. (2015). ‘Optogenetics: ten years of microbial opsins in neuroscience’. Nature Neuroscience, 18(9), 1213–25. Della Sala, S., Marchetti, C., & Spinnler, H. (1991). ‘Right-sided anarchic (alien) hand: a longitudinal study’. Neuropsychologia, 29(11), 1113–27. Demertzi, A., Tagliazucchi, E., Dehaene, S., et al. (2019).

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, 1, 2, 3, 4 information processing, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 insects, 1 instantiation, 1, 2 intelligence: artificial, see AI; birds, 1; consciousness and, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (Fig. 21), 6, 7, 8, 9; measuring, 1; octopus, 1, 2 intention(s): awareness of, 1; conscious, 1, 2, 3, 4; intentional inhibition, 1; perception of others’, 1; selfhood, 1, 2; urges and, 1 interoception, 1, 2, 3 interoceptive: inference, 1, 2; predictions, 1, 2, 3, 4; sensory signals, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5n Ishiguro, Hiroshi, 1 (Fig. 22), 2 Jain, Ramesh, 1n James, William, 1, 2 Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1 Kanai, Ryota, 1n Kandel, Eric, 1, 2 Kant, Immanuel, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Kelvin, Lord, 1 Kim, Chang-Sub, 1 Koch, Christof, 1, 2 Kuhn, Thomas, 1 Kurzweil, Ray, 1 La Mettrie, Julien Offray de, 1, 2, 3 Lakatos, Imre, 1 Lange, Carl, 1 language, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Laplace, Pierre-Simon, 1 learning, 1 Leary, Timothy, 1 Libet, Benjamin, 1 (Fig. 19), 2 life, scientific understanding of, 1 living systems: free energy principle (FEP), 1, 2; properties, 1, 2; self-maintenance, 1 Locke, John, 1 locked-in syndrome, 1, 2n, 3 Loew ben Bezalel, Rabbi Judah, 1 LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), 1, 2 Lush, Peter, 1 LZW complexity (Lempel-Ziv-Welch complexity), 1, 2, 3, 4 McEwan, Ian, 1, 2 McGinn, Colin, 1 McGregor, Simon, 1 Mach, Ernst, 1, 2 (Fig. 16) Magritte, René, 1 (Fig. 13) Mariola, Alberto, 1 Markov blanket, 1, 2 Marr, David, 1 Masood, Daanish, 1 Massimini, Marcello, 1, 2, 3 materialism, 1; eliminative, 1 measurement, 1, 2 Mediano, Pedro, 1 MEG (magnetoencephalography), 1 memories: amnesia, 1; ‘being a self’, 1, 2, 3; being you, 1; early, 1; selfhood, 1, 2, 3, 4 metacognition, 1, 2, 3 Metzinger, Thomas, 1, 2 minimally conscious state, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Monet, Claude, 1, 2 monkeys, 1, 2 Monti, Martin, 1 moods: aspects of embodied selfhood, 1, 2; control-oriented perceptions, 1, 2, 3; interoceptive inference, 1; perception, 1 Mooney image, 1 (Fig. 6), 2 (Fig. 7) Mori, Masahiro, 1 Müller, Johannes, 1 Muotri, Alysson, 1 Muthukumaraswamy, Suresh, 1 mysterianism, 1 Nagel, Thomas, 1 NCC (neural correlates of consciousness), 1, 2, 3, 4 neurons: awareness of, 1; bottom-up view of perception, 1; cerebellum, 1, 2; cerebral cortex, 1, 2; ‘cerebral organoids’, 1; connections, 1, 2n; degree of activity, 1; IIT implications, 1; information and integration, 1, 2; maximally random activity, 1; measurement of activity, 1n; ‘mirror’, 1; network, 1; number, 1n, 2, 3, 4; octopus, 1, 2; serotonin system, 1 neurophenomenology, 1, 2 Neurosciences Institute, San Diego, 1, 2 objecthood, 1, 2, 3 octopus: brains, 1; camouflage, 1; consciousness, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; intelligence, 1, 2; nervous system, 1; perception, 1, 2; research, 1, 2; RNA sequences, 1 optogenetics, 1 out-of-body experiences (OBEs), 1, 2 ‘out-of-body-like’ experiences, 1, 2, 3, 4 Owen, Adrian, 1 pain, 1, 2, 3, 4 panpsychism, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 pareidolia, 1 (Fig. 11) Pasteur, Louis, 1 PCI (perturbational complexity index), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Penfield, Wilder, 1 perception: accurate (veridical), 1, 2; action and, 1, 2; of bodily changes, 1; as bottom-up feature detection, 1 (Fig. 3), 2; of change, 1 (Fig. 15), 2; changing, 1; concept of the beholder’s share, 1; conscious, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10; control-oriented, 1, 2, 3; as controlled hallucination, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10; ‘deep structure’ of, 1; different kinds of, 1; emotion and mood, 1, 2, 3, 4; exteroceptive, 1, 2; flow of perceptions, 1; forming, 1, 2; influence of predictions on, 1, 6), 2; interoceptive, 1, 2; interoceptive inference, 1; mechanisms of, 1; nested, 1; as neural ‘hypothesis-testing’, 1; of objecthood, 1; octopus, 1, 2; ‘perceptual control theory’, 1; perceptual expectations, 1, 6), 2, 3; predictive, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10; predictive processing, 1, 2; of ‘reality’, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; proprioception, 1, 2, 3n; role of precision weighting, 1; of self, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10; self-related, 1, 2, 3, 4; social, 1, 2; of time, 1, 2, 3; top-down inference, 1, 2 (Fig. 4), 3, 4; unconscious, 1; varieties of, 1 perceptual inference: Bayesian principles, 1, 2, 3; brain’s adjustment of, 1 (Fig. 5), 2; causality, 1; controlling interior of body, 1; experience of change, 1, 2, 3; experience of the-self-as-really-existing, 1; finding out things, 1, 2; first-person perspective, 1; Helmholtz’s work, 1; Impressionist landscapes, 1; improving, 1; mental states of other people, 1; seeming-to-be, 1; volition and, 1, 2 Petzschner, Frederike, 1 phantom limb syndrome, 1, 2 phenomenological: aspects of vision, 1, 2; character of any specific conscious experience, 1; character of ‘being real’, 1, 2, 3; control, 1; properties of conscious perception, 1, 2; properties of consciousness, 1, 2, 3, 4 phenomenology: of alternative possibilities, 1; of being real, 1; ‘computational’, 1; of all conscious experiences, 1; of emotions and moods, 1, 2; experiences of ‘being a self’, 1; and free energy principle (FEP), 1; of hallucination, 1; ‘hard problem of consciousness’, 1, 2; Nagel’s approach, 1; of normal conscious perception, 1; of objecthood, 1, 2, 3, 4; perceptual, 1; properties of, 1; ‘redness’, 1; subjective properties of conscious experience, 1; ‘synthetic’, 1; of volition, 1, 2 physicalism, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Picasso, Pablo, 1 Pinto, Yair, 1 Pissarro, Camille, 1, 2 Plato, 1 Popper, Karl, 1 Powers, William, 1 prediction(s): active inference, 1; ‘best guesses’, 1, 2; bottom-up, 1, 2; brain-based, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; brain as prediction machine, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; conditional, 1, 2, 3n, 4, 5, 6; controlled hallucination view, 1, 2, 3; error minimisation, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; errors, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8; of IIT, 1, 2; influence on perception, 1, 2; interoceptive, 1, 2, 3, 4; neurally encoded, 1; perceptual, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13; predictive control, 1; proprioceptive, 1; sensorimotor, 1; sensory prediction error, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; temperature control, 1; top-down, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 predictive processing: active inference, 1, 2; minimising sensory prediction error, 1, 2; relationship to free energy principle (FEP), 1, 2, 3; robot control, 1; term, 1; theory, 1, 2, 3 Price, Richard, 1 probability distribution, 1 (Figs. 8, 9), 2 proprioception, 1, 2, 3n psychedelia, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 qualia, 1, 2 readiness potential, 1, 2 reality: hallucinations and, 1, 2; instantiation, 1; mind-independent, 1, 2, 3; objective, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; perception of, 1, 2, 3; physiological, 1; self-unreality, 1; source of, 1; substitutional, 1; virtual, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Riegl, Alois, 1 Robbins, Apollo, 1 robots: attitudes to, 1, 2; consciousness issue, 1, 2; Geminoids, 1; Turing test, 1 Roseboom, Warrick, 1 rubber hand illusion, 1 (Fig. 17), 2, 3, 4 Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, 1, 2 Sacks, Oliver, 1, 2 Schartner, Michael, 1, 2 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 1 Schurger, Aaron, 1 Science, 1, 2, 3 Scott, Ridley, 1, 2 sea squirt, 1n self: conception of, 1, 2, 3; conscious, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; embodied, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; experience of ‘being a self’, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; ‘mirror self-recognition’, 1; narrative, 1, 2, 3; personal identity, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8; perspectival, 1, 2 (Fig. 16), 3; social, 1, 2, 3, 4; subjective stability of the, 1, 2; volitional, 1, 2 self-change-blindness, 1, 2, 3 self-maintenance, 1 selfhood: Bayesian best guesses, 1, 2; beast machine view of, 1, 2, 3; being-a-self, 1, 2; change blindness, 1, 2; conscious, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; ‘ego dissolution’, 1; embodied, 1, 2, 3, 4; essence of, 1, 2; experiences of, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; experiences of unified, 1; experiences of volition, 1, 2; first-person perspective, 1, 2; ‘free will’, 1; layers of, 1, 2, 3; levels of, 1, 2, 3; memory, 1; monkeys, 1, 2; robot, 1; self-awareness, 1; social, 1; subjective body ownership, 1, 2 sensory prediction error, minimisation of, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Shannon, Claude, 1 Sherman, Maxine, 1 Shugg, Wallace, 1 Simons, Daniel, 1 simulation, 1, 2, 3 ‘sine wave speech’, 1, 2 ‘Singularity’ hypothesis, 1 (Fig. 21), 2, 3 Slater, Mel, 1 sleep: dreamless, 1, 2, 3, 4; early, 1; lack of, 1; mammalian brain activity, 1; REM (rapid eye movement), 1, 2; waking from, 1, 2; see also dreaming somatoparaphrenia, 1, 2 souls, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 split brain, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Strawson, Galen, 1 Sussex University, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Sutherland, Stuart, 1 Suzuki, Keisuke, 1, 2, 3 synaesthesia, grapheme-colour, 1 teletransportation, 1, 2, 3, 4 Terminator (film), 1 time: entropy, 1; perception of, 1, 2, 3; ‘self-change-blindness’, 1, 2 TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation), 1, 2 Tononi, Giulio, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Turing test, 1, 2, 3 twins, craniopagus, 1 2001: A Space Odyssey (film), 1, 2 ‘uncanny valley’, 1, 2 vegetative state: communication with patient, 1, 2; level of consciousness, 1, 2, 3, 4; measuring consciousness, 1, 2, 3, 4; recovery from, 1 Vienna Circle, 1 virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), 1, 2, 3 virtual body swapping, 1 virtual objects, 1 (Fig. 14) virtual reality (VR), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 vitalism, 1, 2, 3, 4 volition, 1, 2; brain basis of, 1, 2, 3; experiences of, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; experiment, 1 (Fig. 19); phenomenology of, 1 wakefulness (arousal), 1, 2 (Fig. 1), 3, 4 Waller, Bruce, 1n, 2 Wearing, Clive, 1 Wearing, Deborah, 1 Wegner, Daniel, 1 Westworld (TV series), 1 Wheeler, John, 1 Whitman, Charles, 1 Wiener, Norbert, 1, 2 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1, 2, 3, 4 xenomelia, 1, 2 ‘zap and zip’ approach, 1 zombie thought experiment, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 About the Author Anil Seth is a leading British researcher in the field of consciousness science.

pages: 324 words: 91,653

The Quantum Thief
by Hannu Rajaniemi
Published 1 Jan 2010

Isidore never looks forward to interrogating resurrected crime victims: their memories are always fragmented, and some are unwilling to overcome the traditional Oubliette obsession with privacy, even to help solve their own murder or a gogol piracy case. ‘Perhaps never,’ the Gentleman says. ‘What?’ ‘This was an optogenetic black box upload. Very crude: it must have been agony. It’s an old trick, pre-Collapse. They used to do it with rats. You infect the target with a virus that makes their neurons sensitive to yellow light. Then you stimulate the brain with lasers for hours, capture the firing patterns and train a black box function to emulate them.

…

Unruh drops his glass, but remains upright, eyes glazed. There are a few slow collapses, but overall, almost everyone at the party remains standing, gazes fixed on something far, far away, but unseeing, as the fireworks fizzle and die above us. Another trick from the gogol pirate handbook: an optogenetic virus that makes brain cells hypersensitive to certain wavelengths of light. It was not hard to customise it not for the purposes of uploads, but for creating a period of inactivity. It looks like the infection from my flower spread even faster than I thought. And there are only so many fireworks manufacturers in the Moving City: bribing them with the pretence of a little innocent surprise for M.

…

Adrian Wu’s article. Sighing, Isidore takes it and digs out a pen from his pocket. Isidore blinks at the daylight, glad to leave the dark facade of the Resurrection House behind. The wind on Persistent Avenue feels hot after the chill of the underworld, but the sound of human voices is refreshing. The optogenetic attack at the party left him feeling disoriented, with a mild headache. A med-Quiet inspected him along with the rest of the guests, but found no permanent traces of an infection. It was able to isolate the virus, and when Isidore and Odette searched the grounds, they found the discarded flower that had been used to spread it.

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Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100
by Michio Kaku
Published 15 Mar 2011

More recently, MRI scans have given us revealing pictures of the thinking brain, but they are incapable of tracing the specific neural pathways of thought, perhaps involving only a few thousand neurons. But a new field called optogenetics combines optics and genetics to unravel specific neural pathways in animals. By analogy, this can be compared to trying to create a road map. The results of the MRI scans would be akin to determining the large interstate highways and the large flow of traffic on them. But optogenetics might be able to actually determine individual roads and pathways. In principle, it even allows scientists the possibility of controlling animal behavior by stimulating these specific pathways.

…

On the Tonight Show, Jay Leno even talked about a remote-controlled fly that could fly into the mouth of President George W. Bush on command. Although comedians had a field day imagining bizarre scenarios of the Pentagon commanding hoards of insects with the push of a button, the reality is much more modest. The fruit fly has roughly 150,000 neurons in the brain. Optogenetics allows scientists to light up certain neurons in the brains of fruit flies that correspond to certain behaviors. For example, when two specific neurons are activated, it can signal the fruit fly to escape. The fly then automatically extends its legs, spreads its wings, and takes off. Scientists were able to genetically breed a strain of fruit flies whose escape neurons fired every time a laser beam was turned on.

…

So although comedians like to poke fun at these scientists for trying to create Frankenstein fruit flies controlled by the push of a button, the reality is that scientists are, for the first time in history, tracing the specific neural pathways of the brain that control specific behaviors. MODELING THE BRAIN Optogenetics is a first, modest step. The next step is to actually model the entire brain, using the latest in technology. There are at least two ways to solve this colossal problem, which will take many decades of hard work. The first is by using supercomputers to simulate the behavior of billions of neurons, each one connected to thousands of other neurons.

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Editing Humanity: The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing
by Kevin Davies
Published 5 Oct 2020

When he flicked on the light switch, the mouse suddenly started spinning in circles; switched off, the mouse stopped moving.4 Optogenetics was ready for the big time: a tool to study brain function far more precisely than sticking electrodes into the brain or taking blurry MRI pictures. “This is one of those things that only comes around every five or ten years,” Deisseroth told his student.5 And he was right: Deisseroth won the Breakthrough Prize in 2015 and helped lay the foundation for President Barack Obama’s $300-million BRAIN Initiative. Deisseroth credited Zhang’s skills as “absolutely essential to the creation of optogenetics.”6 Not too many PhD students get to see their handiwork featured in the Times or win a share of a major scientific prize.

…

His first choice supervisor, Nobel laureate Steven Chu, had moved on; camped out in Chu’s former office was a new faculty member, Karl Deisseroth. A psychiatrist by training, Deisseroth had treated many patients with schizophrenia and depression, but was frustrated at how poorly we understand those diseases. He was developing a new technique called optogenetics for studying neuronal activity and neurological diseases. Deisseroth’s brainstorm was to introduce a light-sensitive protein called an opsin into a rodent neuron, affording him the ability to trigger and control its activity.II Zhang’s initial task, building on his familiarity with gene therapy, was to introduce the opsin gene, which was derived from a pond-dwelling green algae, into single rat neurons on a tissue culture plate using a recombinant virus.

…

See also Genome editing cancer genes, xiii–xiv, 138, 224, 340, 351 CRISPR and, xii cutting, xii diseases and, xi–xviii, 5 identifying, xi, 5 mutations in, xvi, 5, 12, 113, 118, 152, 157, 175–176, 227, 270, 321–322, 328–334, 342 rewriting, xii therapeutic gene, 16, 112, 140–149, 336 Genetic alphabet, xi, xvi, 17, 25, 68, 130, 323, 334 Genetic code amino-acid code and, 77 cleaving, 322–323 correcting, 167–168 cracking, 18, 131, 362 CRISPR and, ix–xvi, 21 editing, 236, 338–339 elucidation of, 128–131 of Haloferax species, 31–33 interfering with, 271 modifying, 128–129, 236, 322–323, 336–339 moral code and, xviii, 277, 288–296, 355–360 mutations in, 247–248, 322–323 reading, xv–xviii, 5, 77, 107, 248 rewriting, x–xvi, 5, 236, 323, 336–337 Genetic engineering, 124, 133 Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, 89, 335 Genetic therapy, xvi, xviii, 88, 133, 140, 155, 357 Genetically modified organism (GMO), xvi, 45, 67, 170, 287, 294–295, 298, 301–320, 356 Genetics advances in, xv–xvi bacterial genetics, 40 biochemical genetics, 131–132 epigenetics, 109, 322 molecular genetics, 18, 58–59, 109 optogenetics, 78–79 prenatal genetics, 155, 355 Genome editing applications, 65–68 artificial intelligence and, 349–350 beginnings of, 19–21, 179–180 benefits of, xvi–xviii, 14–16, 167–168 before CRISPR, 5, 105–122, 289 CRISPR and, 20–21, 28–29, 54–56 development of, 20 dinosaurs and, 76–77 diseases and, xviii, 84 early platforms of, xii, 5, 19–21, 105–122 establishing, xvi–xvii ethics of, ix, 4–5, 11, 14–16, 195, 199–200, 231, 235–246, 264 explanation of, xvi–xviii, 4–5, 19–21, 28–29 fears about, 295–296, 358–359 forms of, 20–21 future of, 357–367 heritable genome editing, xvii, 228, 257, 362 human genome editing, ix–x, 15–16, 220, 233, 256–258 mosaicism and, 199, 220, 248–249, 262–263, 339 precision of, 29, 86–87, 94, 112, 116–122 progress in, 19–21, 322–323 revolution in, 4–5, 20–21 stem cells and, 84, 116 technologies of, 4–7, 322–323 term for, 20 trials, xvi–xvii twin girls, x, 14, 195, 203–204, 235–249, 253, 261–263, 354–356 warnings about, 11, 255–257 Genome engineering, xvi, 56, 74, 82, 87, 102, 233, 326, 339 Genome Research, 38 Genome sequencing cracking, 18, 131, 210, 362 future of, 357–358 human genome sequence, 112, 226–228 impact of, xi, xv, 265, 287 map of, 17, 18, 91 mosaicism and, 199, 248 mutations and, 227–228 progress in, 279–281 revolution in, 46 Genomes editing platforms, xii of humans, xii of livestock, xii modulating, xii in newborn baby, xv of parasites, xii of plants, xii Genomic Prediction, 350–352 Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, 325 Genovo, 142–143 Gerby, Sue, 109 Germline barriers with, 359–360 crossing, 245–259, 341 editing process, xvii, 14–15, 73, 203–205, 213–214, 220–234, 238–241, 250–258, 265–276, 338–347, 353–363 gene therapy and, 254, 359–360 genetic engineering of, 133 human germline editing, 197, 200–205, 213, 221–227, 238, 243, 254–258, 261–267, 339, 343 mitochondrial germline therapy, 221 modification process, 246–247, 254 moratorium debate, 15, 204, 225, 238–241, 254–259, 272–275, 296, 338, 355 warnings about, 254–257 Ghebreyesus, Tedros, 271 Gilmore, Michael, 81–83, 182 Gitschier, Jane, 349 “Giving Genetic Disease the Finger,” 116 GJB2, 270 GlaxoSmithKline, 145 Global Blood Therapeutics, 155 “Golden Promise,” 303–304 Goldman, John, 298 Gonzales, Karine, 60 Goodale, Hubert, 123–124 Google, 95 Gootenberg, Jonathan, 100 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 108 Gorner, Peter, 137 Gosling, Raymond, 125 Gottlieb, Scott, 239, 264 GP-Write (Genome Project-Write), 281 Gray, Sarah, 255 Gray, Thomas, 143 Gray, Victoria, xvi, 169, 170, 172 Great Ormond Street Hospital, 163 Greely, Hank, 21, 188, 196, 222, 245, 253, 352–353 Green Revolution, 303, 319–320 Gregory, Philip, 111, 115 Greider, Carol, 183 Gretzky, Walter, 196 Gretzky, Wayne, 196 Groundhog Day, 191 Guangzhou Medical School, 222 Guardino, Christian, 147–148 Guggenheim Foundation, xvii Guinness World Record, xv Gupta, Sanjay, 12 Guschin, Dmitry, 111 Gusella, Jim, 49 Guthrie heel-stick test, 337 Gutterson, Neal, 314 H Haas, Corey, 150 Hadassah Hospital, 136 Haidt, Jonathan, 315 Halcyon, 280 Hall, Stephen, 345 Haloferax species, 31–33 Hamburg, Margaret, 258 Hamilton, Jennifer, 365 Handyside, Alan, 339 Hanks, Tom, 166 Hansen, Egan Beck, 44 Haoyi, Wang, 275–276 Happiness Hypothesis, The, 315 “Happy,” 96 Harald V, King, 9 Harari, Yuval Noah, 191 Harmonicare Shenzhen Women and Children’s Hospital, 201 Harper, Joyce, 252 Harrington, Lucas, 100 Harris, John, 255, 359 Harrison, Patrick, 29 Harrison, Sean, 249 Harvard Medical School, xii, 15 Harvard University, xii, 15, 48, 70, 76–80, 85–91, 96–97, 101–102, 107, 148, 171, 233, 236, 265, 274, 279, 291, 295, 323–324, 351, 353, 355, 366 Haurwitz, Rachel, 53, 56, 173, 174 Hawking, Stephen, 7, 15–16, 97 “He Jiankui and Michael Deem Joint Laboratory,” 209 Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), 10–11 Heart disease, xi, xii, xiv, 223, 331, 345, 350, 351 Helicos, 208, 212 Hematopoietic stem cell (HSC), 157–158, 168 Hemmes, Don, 48 Hemochromatosis, 90, 329 Hemophilia, xviii, 114, 120, 136, 164 Henner, Marilu, 343 Hereditary persistence of fetal hemoglobin (HPFH), 156–157 Heritable genome editing, xvii, 228, 257, 362.

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Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
by Robert M. Sapolsky
Published 1 May 2017

Carter et al., “Tuning Arousal with Optogenetic Modulation of Locus Coeruleus Neurons,”Nat Nsci 13 (2010): 1526. 32. D. Blanchard et al., “Lesions of Structures Showing FOS Expression to Cat Presentation: Effects on Responsivity to a Cat, Cat Odor, and Nonpredator Threat,” Nsci Biobehav Rev 29 (2005): 1243. 33. G. Holstege, “Brain Activation During Human Male Ejaculation,” J Nsci 23 (2003): 9185; H. Lee et al., “Scalable Control of Mounting and Attack by Ers1+ Neurons in the Ventromedial Hypothalamus,” Nat 509 (2014): 627; D. Anderson, “Optogenetics, Sex, and Violence in the Brain: Implications for Psychiatry,” BP 71 (2012): 1081. 34.

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Herry et al., “Switching On and Off Fear by Distinct Neuronal Circuits,” Nat 454 (2008): 600; S. Maren and G. Quirk, “Neuronal Signaling of Fear Memory,” Nat Rev Nsci 5 (2004): 844; S. Wolff et al., “Amygdala Interneuron Subtypes Control Fear Learning Through Disinhibition,” Nat 509 (2014): 453; R. LaLumiere, “Optogenetic Dissection of Amygdala Functioning,” Front Behav Nsci 8 (2014): 1. 21. T. Amano et al., “Synaptic Correlates of Fear Extinction in the Amygdala,” Nat Nsci 13 (2010): 489; M. Milad and G. Quirk, “Neurons in Medial Prefrontal Cortex Signal Memory for Fear Extinction,” Nat 420 (2002): 70; E. Phelps et al., “Extinction Learning in Humans: Role of the Amygdala and vmPFC,” Neuron 43 (2004): 897; S.

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Krendl et al., “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: An fMRI Investigation of the Functional Anatomic Correlates of Stigma,” Soc Nsci 1 (2006): 5; F. Sambataro et al., “Preferential Responses in Amygdala and Insula During Presentation of Facial Contempt and Disgust,” Eur J Nsci 24, (2006): 2355. 29. X. Liu et al., “Optogenetic Stimulation of a Hippocampal Engram Activates Fear Memory Recall,” Nat 484 (2012): 381; T. Seidenbecher et al., “Amygdalar and Hippocampal Theta Rhythm Synchronization During Fear Memory Retrieval,” Sci 301 (2003): 846; R. Redondo et al., “Bidirectional Switch of the Valence Associated with a Hippocampal Contextual Memory Engram,” Nat 513 (2014): 426; E.

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Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, From Atoms to Economies
by Cesar Hidalgo
Published 1 Jun 2015

Through the creation of objects, Hugh and his colleagues are endowing our species with a new set of capacities, expanding what is humanly possible.2 The most poetic part of Hugh’s accomplishment, however, is not that he is walking on robotic legs but that he is walking on solidified pieces of his own imagination. Ed’s case is different from Hugh’s but also tremendously inspiring. Over the past decade Ed has helped develop the field of optogenetics, a method to stimulate neurons using light. Together with other researchers, Ed is helping invent future interfaces between humans and machines. Over the long run Ed and his colleagues will give rise to what I call colloquially “a USB port for the brain.” A USB port for the brain is a great example of a technology that will open a universe of future possibilities.

…

See Crystallized imagination Incentives, as production stimulus, 77–78 India, economic growth in, 159 Individual limits on accumulation of knowledge and knowhow, 79–81, 82, 83–85, 179, 180 Indonesia, 161 Industrial development/diversification, personbyte theory and, 139, 142–144 Industrial structure and size, trust and, 115–116 Industries, geographic distribution of, 130–132 Industry-location matrices, nestedness of, 132–136, 139, 142–143 Industry space, 139, 141 Information ability to process, 35–37 behind chaos, 30–31 Boltzmann and, xiii computation of, 23–24 conceptual aspects of, xv–xvi connection with knowhow, 165–169 contained in tweet, 13–14 decoding, 23 in DNA, 5, 22–23, 34, 166–168, 176 embedded in objects, 5–6, 8, 11–13, 43–44, 45, 178 embedded in solids, 33–35, 176 embodied in product, source of, 62–63 emerging from out-of-equilibrium systems, 28–33, 35, 175 energy and, 175, 177 entropy and, 14–15 environmental conditions conducive to growth of, 176–177 evolution of, xix–xx irreversibility of time and, 26 mathematical study of, xiii–xiv meaning vs., xvi–xvii physical nature of, xvii–xxi as physical order, xv, xix, 5, 7–8 physical origins of, 28–35 sciences and, xiv Shannon’s theory of, xv–xvii, 13–15, 17–18, 19–20 social sciences and, xiv–xv as something and about something, 7 “stickiness” of, 31–35 Information growth computational ability of matter and, 35–37, 41, 176, 177–178, 181 computational capacity as constraint on, 75 economy as system of, 8–9, 177–180 entropy and, ix, xx history of universe and humans and, xviii–xix nineteenth-century physics and, 26–28 Information processing, as purpose of life, 43–44 Information-rich states, 18–24 properties of, 22–23 Information-rich steady states, out-of-equilibrium systems and, 29–31 Information theorists (cyberneticists), xiv Information theory, xv–xvi Innovative economic sectors, adaptability of firms and, 124 Instantaneous nature of reality, 40 Institutions new institutional economics, 89–91, 93, 117–118, 123 social networks and, 44–45 See also Social institutions Intel, 92, 95 International trade, product exports as crystallized imagination, 51–55 Internet, 92 iPads, 50 iPhones, 50, 92 iPods, 92 Irreversibility of time, in statistical system, 37–40 Italy, familial networks in, 122 Ito, Joi, 73 James, LeBron, 130 Jamestown colony, 170 Japan, formation of large networks in, 115, 116 Jet engine production, 154–155 Jigsaw puzzle analogy, 135–136 Jobs, social networks and, 112–114 Jobs, Steve, 65, 92, 119–120, 142 Joule, James, 60 Just, Sándor, 59 Kauffman, Stuart, 37 Kingston, 92 Knowhow, xviii connection with information, 165–169 as constraint on spread of economic development, 169–171 crystals of imagination and, 61 defined, 6–7, 165 embedded in networks, in economies, 167–169 embodied in biological organisms, 166–168 embodied in products, 52–55, 65–71 geographic distribution of, 77, 80–81, 127–128 information processing and, 35–36 objects and, 8, 41 physical embodiment of, 73–74 quantization of, 73–75, 87–88 social isolation and loss of, 169–171 value of, 61–62 Knowledge, xviii accumulation of, 79–85 creation of complex products and, 78–79 crystals of imagination and, 61 defined, 6 difficulty of accumulating in networks, 106–108 embodied in human networks, 179–180 embodied in products, 52–55, 78–79 genetic factors modulating ability to accumulate, 84 geographic distribution of, 77, 80–81, 127–128 human capital and, 152 industrial development and accumulation of, 139, 142 objects and, 8, 41 physical embodiment of, 73–74 products and practical use of, 65–71 quantization of, 87–88 sharing practical uses of, 69–70 tacit, 78 value of, 61–62 volumes contained in manufacturing networks, 105, 106–107 See also Personbytes Korea, balance of trade with Chile, 52, 54–55 Kuznets, Simon, 146–147, 149 Labor, economic growth and, 146 Labor markets, social networks and, 112–114, 121, 124 Landry, Dave, 139 Language, cost of interactions and, 100–101 Latin America, familial societies in, 115, 122 Law of induction, 59, 69 Learning experiential, 79–80, 81 social nature of, 80–81 Leontief, Wassily, 147, 148, 155, 162 Life ability to compute and, 37 non-equilibrium systems and, 32–33 purpose of, 43–44 Light bulb, invention of, 59 Lovelace, Ada, 49, 69 Low-trust familial societies, family networks and, 120, 121–123 Lyell, Charles, 27 Mach, Ernst, xii Machinarium, 92 Malaysia, export structure of, 137–139, 140 Managed by the Markets (Davis), 101 Mankiw, Gregory, 148 Manufacturing,, migration from United States to China, 161–162 Manufacturing networks Barbie doll, 101–102 as dominant model of production, 105 exchange of intermediate products in, 105–106 personal computer, 92, 105 volumes of knowledge and knowhow in, 105 Market interactions, cost of, 95, 100 language and, 100–101 Markets, coevolution of standards with, 100 Mathematical study of information, xiii–xiv The Mathematical Theory of Communication (Shannon & Weaver), xv–xvi Matter, computational capacities of, 35–37, 41, 176, 177–178, 181 Maxwell, James C., 28, 69 Meaning, information vs., xvi–xvii Medicinal pills, context and value of, 63–64 Melanesians, 170 Message, minimum volume of data needed to specify, xvii, 13–15 Microsoft, 95 Microstates, entropy and, 16, 17 Minsky, Marvin, 7 MIT Media Lab, 52, 61, 62, 73 Mozart, Wolfgang, 84, 124 Multiplicity of a state, entropy and, 16–17 Music genetic factors in musical ability, 84 instruments and access to knowledge, 66–67 National Bureau of Economic Research, 113 Natural sciences, xviii “The Nature of the Firm” (Coase), 90 NEC, 95 Negroponte, Nicholas, 61–62 Nestedness of industry-location matrices, 132–136, 139, 142–143 Netgear, 92 Netherlands, exports, 132 Networks accumulation of knowledge and knowhow in, 106–108 complex computation and, 179 limits on ability to form, 74–75 personbytes accumulated in, 88–89 transferral of productive, 143 transition points in structures of, 107 See also Firms; Manufacturing networks; Professional networks; Social networks Network size, familial societies vs. high-trust societies and, 115–116 Networks of firms, 92–93 social capital and, 152 New institutional economics, 89–91, 117, 123 Newton, Isaac, 25, 40 New York Times (newspaper), 92, 113 Nicolis, 32–33 Nigeria, 161 Non-equilibrium systems life and, 32–33 steady state of, 29–30 Nonequilibrium thermodynamics, 28 Nonspecific recurrent transactions, 94 Nortel, 95 Nova Lima (Brazil), 139, 141 Nyquist, Harry, xvii Object-oriented programming, 120, 142 Objects as crystallized imagination, 44, 178–180 information embedded in, 5–6, 8, 11–13, 43–44, 45, 178 knowledge and knowhow and, 41 See also Products; Solids Observatory of Economic Complexity, 52 Occasional and specific transactions, 94 On Competition (Porter), 147–148 Optogenetics, 51, 61 Order emerging in out-of-equilibrium systems, 29–30 functions and, 63 growth of, 26–28 See also Physical order Ordered states, entropy and, 17–19, 21 Out-of-equilibrium systems computation and, 37 information emerging from, 175 information-rich steady states and, 29–31 Page, Jimmy, 70 Pakistan, economic complexity of, 157–159 Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC), 119–120, 142 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, 113 Past, unreachableness of, 40 Personal computer production by network of firms, 92, 105 professional networks and, 119–120 Personbytes, 83–84, 107, 180 accumulated in networks, 88–89 available in large networks with bureaucratic burden, 103–104 defined, 82 industrial development/diversification and, 139, 142–144 migration of manufacturing and, 161–162 required to produce cars, 88 ubiquity of products and nestedness of industry-location matrices, 135 Phenotypes/genotypes analogy, 130–131, 136 Physical capital, 152 export data and diversity of, 154–156 measuring, 153–154 Physical embodiment of knowledge and knowhow, 73–74.

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The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
by Walter Isaacson
Published 9 Mar 2021

So when he went to Stanford for graduate school, he asked to join the lab of Karl Deisseroth, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who was developing ways to make the workings of the brain and its nerve cells, known as neurons, more visible. Along with another graduate student, they pioneered the field of optogenetics, which uses light to stimulate neurons in the brain. That allowed them to map different circuits in the brain and gain insights about how they functioned or malfunctioned. Zhang focused on inserting light-sensitive proteins into the neurons—an echo of his high school work inserting green fluorescent protein into skin cells.

…

Edward Boyden, Feng Zhang, Ernst Bamberg, Georg Nagel, and Karl Deisseroth, “Millisecond-Timescale, Genetically Targeted Optical Control of Neural Activity,” Nature Neuroscience, Aug. 14, 2005; Alexander Aravanis, Li-Ping Wang, Feng Zhang… and Karl Deisseroth, “An Optical Neural Interface: In vivo Control of Rodent Motor Cortex with Integrated Fiberoptic and Optogenetic Technology,” Journal of Neural Engineering, Sept. 2007. 4. Feng Zhang, Le Cong, Simona Lodato, Sriram Kosuri, George M. Church, and Paola Arlotta, “Efficient Construction of Sequence-Specific TAL Effectors for Modulating Mammalian Transcription,” Nature Biotechnology, Jan. 19, 2011. Chapter 23: George Church 1.

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Morgan, 210 jumping genes (transposons), 49, 373–76 June, Carl, 249 Jurassic Park, xviii, 164 Kass, Leon, 280–81 Kass Commission, 280–81 Katz, Deborah, 238 Kavli Prize, 221 Ketchens, Doreen, 480 Kilby, Jack, 240–41 Kim, Jin-Soo, 202 Kingsley, David, 385 Kissinger, Henry, 4 Klee, Paul, 395 Klompe, Sanne, 375 Knoepfler, Paul, 356 Knott, Gavin, 260, 378, 379–81, 402–3, 462 Kolter, Roberto, 34–35 Koonin, Eugene, 76–77, 80, 92, 423 Krauthammer, Charles, 281 Lam, Wifredo, 395 Lander, Eric, 39, 175–77, 193, 207, 209, 211, 212, 216, 222, 374, 388 as Broad Institute director, 64, 144, 160, 175, 216, 220, 223, 225–28 Charpentier and, 220, 223–24 Church and, 172, 227–28 in competition to adapt CRISPR into tool for gene editing in humans, 64, 160 COVID and, 410–11 Doudna and, 144–45 Doudna and Charpentier’s Nobel and, 471–72 “The Heroes of CRISPR,” 182, 223–29, 388 moratorium issue and, 330–32 prizes and, 219–20 Zhang and, 182–83, 220 Larson, Christina, 310 Lasky, Larry, 115 Lassa fever, 425 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 64, 87, 117, 456–57 Leber congenital amaurosis, 250 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 159 Leonardo da Vinci, xix, 4, 259, 338, 375, 457, 478, 479 Lessing, Doris, 7 Levy, John, 165–66 Levy, Steven, 454 licensing COVID and, 405 of CRISPR technology, 208, 211 life, origin of, xvii, 45–49 Lifton, Richard, 47 light-sensitive proteins, 167 Lin, Shuailiang, 184, 192 Lincoln, Abraham, 64–65 linear model of innovation, 89–90 Lin Shiao, Enrique, 412, 415–18 Linux, 163, 256 lipid nanoparticles, 441 lipitoids, 456–57 Litton Industries, 114 Locke, John, 357 Lord of the Rings, The (Tolkien), 415 Lovell-Badge, Robin, 314, 316–22 Liu, David, 209, 321–22, 461–62, 472 Luria, Salvador, 19, 37 MacFarlane, Seth, 219 Mahler, Gustav, 352 Makarova, Kira, 376 malaria, 343, 390 Malthus, Thomas, 12–13 mammoth, woolly, 160, 169, 172 Mammoth Biosciences, xv, 249–50, 423–25, 429–32, 460 Manson, Charles, 352 Mäntyranta, Eero, 348 Marchione, Marilynn, 310, 313 Mardi Gras, 476, 480 Marletta, Michael, 101 Marraffini, Luciano, 70, 93–94, 176, 213, 220, 376, 470 Doudna’s meeting of, 180–81 patent and, 234–35, 240 Zhang and, 180–82, 186, 192, 200, 213, 234–35, 240 Marson, Alex, 440, 456 Max Planck Institute, 123–24, 140 May, Andy, 203–7, 235–36, 240 Mayo Clinic, 410 McCarthyism, 23 McClintock, Barbara, 49, 463 McCullough, Candy, 346–47 McGovern Institute, 428 McGwire, Mark, 349 Medical Research Council, 26 medical tourism, 291, 329 Mello, Craig, 66 memory, 354 Mendel, Gregor, 10, 11, 13–15, 292, 475 mental illness, 166–67, 177, 352–54 bipolar disorder, 177, 327, 352–53 depression, 166, 352–53 schizophrenia, 177, 352–53 of Rufus Watson, 38, 277, 352, 386, 389, 393 MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome), 409, 438, 441 Mezrich, Ben, 171 Mic, 227 mice, 74, 122, 167, 259, 260, 348, 354 microchips, xvii, xix, 117, 201, 432, 473 patent rights for, 240–41 microfluids, 460 Microsoft, 206, 450 Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), 409, 438, 441 military defense, 260–63 Mill, John Stuart, 357 Milner, Yuri, 219 Miró, Joan, 395 MIT, 63, 64, 89, 117, 235n, 269 McGovern Institute, 428 see also Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard MIT Technology Review, 227, 312 Moderna, 441–42, 447 Moineau, Sylvain, 148, 220 Mojica, Francisco, 70, 71–76, 79, 80, 81, 90–93, 220, 223, 224, 470, 479 molecules, 7, 8, 29, 34, 51, 473 Moore, Henry, 395 moral questions, xvi, 268–69, 273, 333–70 continuum conundrum and, 337–38 diversity, 362, 376, 480 decision making, 355–65 Doudna and, 367–70 Engineering the Human Germline conference and, 276–78 enhancements, 276, 281, 302, 303, 326–27, 355–56, 360, 365, 376 absolute vs. positional improvements, 350–51 attractiveness, 386 cognitive skills, 354, 376 height, 349–51, 361, 376 intelligence, 354, 360–62, 376 memory, 354 muscle mass and athletic ability, 253–55, 348–49, 361, 376 super-enhancements, 339, 351–52 treatments vs., 338–39, 341, 350, 369–70, 376 free market, 331, 357–59, 363 eugenics, 360–63 germline editing, 245–47, 276–77, 287–93, 332, 341 He Jiankui and, 304 Napa Valley conference and, 287–90, 292, 332, 367 as red line, 276–77, 322, 324, 336–38 individual choice, 331, 358, 359, 369 community vs., 356–59 free-market eugenics and, 360–63 inequality, 274, 288, 358, 360, 362–63, 369, 376–77, 391–92 National Academy of Sciences and, 355–56 playing God, 269, 273, 333, 363–65, 480–81 preventions, 339 red lines, 335–39 germline as, 276–77, 322, 324, 336–38 slippery slope, xvi, 277, 289, 361, 481 societal discussion about, 355–56 Splicing Life report and, 273–74 thought experiments, 339, 341–54, 361, 362 character, 345–46 cognitive skills, 354 deafness, 346–48 disabilities, 345–48 Huntington’s disease, 341–42, 361, 365 psychological disorders, 352–54 sexual orientation, 347–48, 361 sickle cell, 343–45, 361 skin color, 347–48 unintended consequences, 277, 290, 364 Moreau, Sylvain, 93 Morrill Land-Grant Act, 65 mosquitoes, 122, 260, 261 Mount Sinai Medical Center, 381 Moviegoer, The (Percy), 345 MSTN gene, 348 Mukherjee, Siddhartha, 20–21 Muller, Hermann, 19 Mullis, Kary, 408 muscles and sports, 253–55, 348–49, 361, 376 Musunuru, Kiran, 312 Myhrvold, Cameron, 448, 450–54, 457, 460 Myhrvold, Nathan, 448, 450 myostatin, 253 Napa Valley conference, 287–90, 292, 303, 332, 367 Napolitano, Janet, 417 NASA, 254 Apollo program, 417 Nash, John, 352 National Academy of Medicine, 363 National Academy of Sciences, 143, 262, 269, 292–94, 309, 329 video of, 355–56 National Center for Biotechnology Information, 376 National Council of Churches, 273 National Human Genome Research Institute, 309 National Institutes of Health (NIH), 39, 56, 94, 117–18, 248, 294, 329, 331, 364, 390, 410, 423, 442, 446, 461 National Science Foundation, 89 National Transportation Systems Center, 206 Natural Science Society, 14–15 natural selection, 12, 13, 302 nature, xviii, xix, 5, 7, 8, 12, 17, 29, 33, 46, 51, 69, 75, 157, 280, 294, 310, 336, 342, 343, 364–65, 367, 375, 447, 457, 481 Nature, 47, 75, 108, 111, 198, 290, 291, 330, 374, 376, 469, 470, 474 Charpentier’s 2011 paper in, 125–27, 131, 147, 179–80, 185, 218 He Jiankui and, 309, 311, 312, 315, 316 Nazi Germany, 356, 359 Neanderthal, 205 nematodes, 66, 187 neurons, 167 Newton, Isaac, 159 New York Times, 40, 172, 289, 304, 307, 390, 427 New York University, 122 1984 (Orwell), 358–59 NMDA receptors, 354 Nobel Prize, 19, 20, 21, 44, 49, 53, 66, 100, 219, 221, 226, 270, 305, 470, 472 awarded to Doudna and Charpentier, xix, 468, 469–73 awarded to Watson, Crick, and Wilkins, 28, 470 Nogales, Eva, 111 Novak, Rodger, 122, 204, 205–7, 213, 216 Novartis, 206 Noyce, Robert, 240–41 Nozick, Robert, 353, 357–58 NPR, 245, 247, 290 nuclear location signal or sequence (NLS), 182, 189–90, 191, 194, 380, 440 nuclear power, xvii atom bomb, xvii, 89, 117, 224, 265, 338 attacks or disasters, 262, 351 nucleases, 155, 177 TALENs (transcription activator-like effector nucleases), 155, 167, 177–79, 187, 190 ZFNs (zinc-finger nucleases), 155, 178, 179 nucleic acids, 17 see also DNA; RNA nucleofection, 382 Nuffield Council, 293, 294 Obama, Barack, 294 Ochsner Hospital, 445 ODIN, The, 255 Office of Scientific Research and Development, 89 oil spills, 232 On the Origin of Species (Darwin), 11, 28 open-source software, 163, 256 optogenetics, 167 Orwell, George, 358–59 osmium hexamine, 57 Our Posthuman Future (Fukuyama), 281 Oviedo Convention, 278 Oxford University, 438, 439 P53 gene, 250–51 PAC-MAN (prophylactic antiviral CRISPR in human cells), 454–57, 460 Palievsky, Julia, 414 Panasenko, Sharon, 33–34 pandemics, 256–57, 263, 357, 405, 447 Black Death, 447 COVID, see COVID-19 Pasteur, Louis, 123, 231–32 Pasteur Institute, 119–22, 471 patents, xv, 39, 76, 98, 99, 114, 231–41 on biological processes, 231–32 for CRISPR systems, 92, 94, 115, 135–36, 144, 156, 232–41 of Doudna and Charpentier at Berkeley, 207–8, 210, 219, 224, 233–40 Doudna’s battle with Zhang over, 184, 194, 208, 224, 234–40, 425, 470 pool idea for, 207–8 of Zhang and the Broad Institute, 192, 207–8, 210–11, 219, 224–27, 233–40 effects on collaboration and competition, 219, 234, 375 for genetic engineering techniques, 392 for microchips, 240–41 of Pasteur, 231–32 universities and, 232, 473 Pauley, Jane, 352 Pauling, Linus, 21–25, 51, 159, 391 Pauling, Peter, 23–24 Pawluk, April, 261, 376 PBS, 384, 386, 389–90, 392, 393 PCR (polymerase chain reaction), 408, 413, 416, 421, 425, 428, 430 PCSK9 gene, 251 PD-1 protein, 249 Peacock Initiative, 301 Pei, Duanqing, 295, 317–19 penicillin, 56, 122 Penrose, Roger, 469–70 People’s Daily, 318 Percy, Walker, 345 Personal Genetics Education Project, 220–21 Pfizer, 435, 441, 442, 445, 447 Phage Group, 19, 479 phages (bacteriophages; viruses that attack bacteria), 19, 37, 75 bacteria’s use of CRISPR against, xiv, xviii, 67, 76–77, 86, 87, 93–94, 106, 111 see also CRISPR number of, 75 philanthropic foundations, 118 Phillips Academy, 171 physics, xvii, xix, 89 Pinker, Steven, 291–92 Pisano, Gary, 114 Pixar, 463 Plague, The (Camus), 399 Planck, Max, 471 Plath, Sylvia, 352 playing God, 269, 273, 333, 363–65, 480–81 PNAS, 143–44 pneumonia, 121 pneumonic plague, 159 Poe, Edgar Allan, 352 Poincaré, Henri, 69 Polaris Partners, 209 polio, 345, 437 polymerase chain reaction (PCR), 408, 413, 416, 421, 425, 428, 430 Pomona College, 30, 31–34 Porteus, Matthew, 344 He Jiankui and, 306–7, 314, 321, 323 preimplantation genetic diagnosis, 274–76, 285, 327, 337, 342, 361–62 prizes, see scientific prizes procreative beneficence, 360 Project Lightspeed, 441 Project McAfee, 443 Prometheus, 268, 286, 363, 365 Prometheus Bound (Aeschylus), 243 Protein & Cell, 290 proteins, 17, 43, 44, 45, 47, 51, 59, 61, 65 enzymes, see enzymes fluorescent, 165–67, 382–83 light-sensitive, 167 Pauling’s work on, 21 psychological disorders, see mental illness PubPeer, 226 Putin, Vladimir, 294 Quake, Stephen, 300, 301, 307 Quebec conference, 373–77 Qi, Stanley, 448, 453–57, 460 Quiz Kids, 18 race African Americans COVID vaccines and, 461 as researchers, 461 and skin color as disadvantage, 347–48 Watson’s comments on, 37, 49, 386–92, 394 radiation exposure, 260, 351 Rakeman, Jennifer, 409 Ramsey, Paul, 268–69 Rawls, John, 281, 357–58 Raytheon, 89, 117 Reader, Ruth, 227 Reagan, Ronald, 309 Rebennack, Mac, 479 Redesigning Humans (Stock), 278 Reed, Jack, 328 Reed, Lou, 352 Regalado, Antonio, 227, 312–13 religious organizations, 273 Remaking Eden (Silver), 277 reprogenetics, 277 reverse transcription, 270, 408 ribozymes, 44–45, 47, 53, 60 Rice University, 300, 307–9 Ridley, Matt, 90 crystallography and, 19–23, 51 Rifken, Jeremy, 269 RNA (ribonucleic acid), xvii, xviii, 17, 43–50, 85, 105, 385, 435–36, 446–47 in central dogma of biology, 44, 47, 270 of coronavirus, 65, 403–4 in CRISPR, 79, 108, 133 Cas13 targeting of RNA, 423–25, 429, 451, 452, 454–57 CRISPR RNA (crRNA), 86, 106, 124–26, 131–35, 137–39, 143, 146, 147, 180, 184, 186, 217 RNA interference, 77, 79, 93 single-guide RNA (sgRNA), 134–35, 139, 186, 190, 191, 195, 198 trans-activating CRISPR RNA (tracrRNA), 124–27, 131, 134, 135, 139, 146–47, 179–80, 182, 184–86, 217–18, 225 crystallography and, 53, 55–57, 66, 171, 181 Doudna’s work on, xviii, 45–49, 51–61, 63, 65–67, 134, 181, 220, 435–36, 446 first, origin of, 47 interference, 65–67, 77, 79, 85, 87, 93, 107 introns, 44–45, 49, 53, 55, 66 messenger (mRNA), 43–44, 65, 66, 77, 85, 439–42, 445 and origin of life, 45–47 replication in, 45, 47, 49, 51, 55 reverse transcription and, 270, 408 ribozymes, 44–45, 47, 53 structure of, xviii, 48, 51–61, 63, 65, 66, 134, 181, 220 self-splicing, 45, 47–49, 53–55, 60, 66 vaccines, 439, 440–42, 445–47, 449 in viruses, 65, 451–53 Rockefeller University, 17, 121, 181, 200, 205, 234–35, 270 Rogers, Michael, 270 Rolling Stone, 270 Roosevelt, Franklin, 345, 346, 386 Rossant, Janet, 369 Rothkopf, Joanna, 227 Royal Swedish Academy, 470 Russia, 294, 414 Sabeti, Pardis, 450–52 Sabin, Albert, 345, 437 Safe Genes, 260, 262, 380 Şahin, Uğur, 441 St.

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We Are Electric: Inside the 200-Year Hunt for Our Body's Bioelectric Code, and What the Future Holds
by Sally Adee
Published 27 Feb 2023

By 2016, Chernet could not only stop new tumors from forming—he was able to “reprogram” existing ones back into normal tissue in tadpoles. Their tumors were advanced: they had already spread and formed their own blood supply. But when Chernet used light-activated channels (a technique known as optogenetics) to modulate the cells’ resting potential, they stopped acting like cancer. “You can turn on the light… and the tumor goes away,” Adams, who was one of the co-authors of the paper, told Reuters.55 Electrically reminding the cells of their role in the rest of the tissue, Levin told me, appeared to snap them out of their midlife crisis and help them re-enter the society of cells.

…

“Endogenous Voltage Potentials and the Microenvironment: Bioelectric Signals that Reveal, Induce and Normalize Cancer.” Journal of Clinical and Experimental Oncology, Suppl. 1:S1-002 (2013), doi: 10.4172/2324-9110 54 Chernet & Levin, “Endogenous” 55 Gruber, Ben. “Battling cancer with light,” Reuters, 26 April 2016 <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-cancer-optogenetics-idUSKCN0XN1U9> 56 Chernet, Brook, and Michael Levin. “Transmembrane voltage potential is an essential cellular parameter for the detection and control of tumor development in a Xenopus model.” Disease Models & Mechanisms, vol. 6, no. 3 (2013), pp. 595–607, doi: 10.1242/dmm.010835 57 Silver & Nelson, “The Bioelectric Code” 58 Tuszynski, Jack, Tatiana Tilli, and Michael Levin.

pages: 271 words: 52,814

Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy
by Melanie Swan
Published 22 Jan 2014

This could be useful, for example, in the case of neural potentiation in a brain, increasing nerve impulses along pathways, for which systemwide resource redistribution could optimize performance. We want to redistribute and equalize potentiation capability among synapses in a physical brain with our cognitive enhancement technology or in an artificial intelligence or software-simulated brain. Different kinds of brain-based resources—such as potentiation capability, optogenetic excitation (manipulating living cells with inserted genetically adapted proteins and light), or transcranial direct stimulation—could be the demurrage currencies targeted for redistribution across a brain or mindfile. Another example of demurrage redistribution in the health context could be for cellular resources such as oxygen, waste removal nanobots, and circulating lab-on-chips as the physical enablement currencies of the body.

pages: 252 words: 79,452

To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death
by Mark O'Connell
Published 28 Feb 2017

Boyden, a bearded and bespectacled and serenely exuberant American in his mid-thirties, led the Synthetic Neurobiology research group at MIT Media Lab. His work involved building tools for mapping and controlling and observing the brain, and using them to figure out how the thing actually works. He had gained considerable fame in recent years for his role in the creation of optogenetics, a neuromodulation technique whereby individual neurons in the brains of living animals could be switched on and off by the application of directed light photons. Randal had mentioned his name on several occasions during our discussions—both as someone broadly supportive of whole brain emulation and whose work was of significant relevance to that project—and Boyden had been a speaker at the Global Future 2045 event in New York the previous year.

pages: 326 words: 88,968

The Science and Technology of Growing Young: An Insider's Guide to the Breakthroughs That Will Dramatically Extend Our Lifespan . . . And What You Can Do Right Now
by Sergey Young
Published 23 Aug 2021

Or could they someday be used to download skills and knowledge like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix or to implant memories like Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception? A couple of MIT researchers, Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu, hypothesized that it was indeed possible. In 2014, the two identified the exact cells in a mouse’s brain responsible for a specific odor and then used a technique called optogenetics to make mice think they had been shocked in association with that smell. When mice were exposed to that smell in real life, they froze in fear, as if they had been punished in the past. Actually, they never were. The memory was completely synthetic. “We can say without flinching, it is possible to artificially create false memories in the brain,” says Ramirez.

pages: 798 words: 240,182

The Transhumanist Reader
by Max More and Natasha Vita-More
Published 4 Mar 2013

Briggman, Helmstaedter, and Denk recently published a study (Briggman et al. 2011) in which they carried out both electrical recording and reconstruction from morphology obtained by electron microscope imaging of the same retinal tissue. They demonstrated that it was possible to determine the correct functional layout from the morphology. Bock et al. carried out similar studies of neurons of the visual cortex (Bock et al. 2011). The technique known as optogenetics was developed by Karl Disseroth and Ed Boyden (Boyden et al. 2005), which enables very specific excitation or inhibition in vivo by adding light sensitivity to specific sets of neurons. These and similar techniques enable testing of hypotheses about the significance of specific groups of neurons with regards to mental function.

…

The technology is based on existing fabrication capabilities from the integrated circuit industry, builds on prior successful work embedding chips in cells (Gomez-Martinez et al. 2010), and adds to this RFID-inspired passive communication, and infrared signaling and power technology. Even before those tools reach their full potential, there are ongoing efforts in the Ed Boyden group to scale up multi-electrode arrays to thousands of recording channels that are integrated with light-guides for optogenetic stimulation. Such a stimulation-recording array would provide previously unobtainable feedback about mechanistic hypotheses that are relevant to WBE. Peter Passaro (University of Sussex) is working on a systematic automation scheme for research and data acquisition essential to WBE, and on suitable model conventions that build on work by Chris Eliasmith (University of Waterloo) (Eliasmith and Anderson 2003).

pages: 340 words: 101,675

A New History of the Future in 100 Objects: A Fiction
by Adrian Hon
Published 5 Oct 2020

Treatments developed in the early 2020s resulted in modest and highly variable reductions in aggressive behavior, but a breakthrough from the University College London labs that combines the standard viral vector with repeated “tuning” of specific cell clusters via transcranial magnetic stimulation has proved to be much more effective. Rival optogenetic approaches use opsin genes with LED implants for similar effects. Not all patients are eligible for treatment in this way. For example, those whose aggressive behavior is not attributable to— * * * “Thank you for that illuminating lecture, Professor Mathy. Since we are a little short on time, we have a few questions from the audience that I’m going to bundle together, if you don’t mind.”

The Deep Learning Revolution (The MIT Press)
by Terrence J. Sejnowski
Published 27 Sep 2018

The conclusion was a surprise: the function of a neuron is determined not simply by how it responds to inputs, but also by the neurons it activates downstream—by its “projective field.” Until recently, the output of a neuron was much more difficult to determine than its inputs, but new genetic and anatomical techniques make it possible to track the axonal projections downstream with great precision, and new optogenetic techniques make it possible to selective stimulate specific neurons to probe their impact on perception and behavior.13 Even so, our small network could only identify the curvature of hills or bowls, and we still don’t know how globally organized perceptions, called “gestalts” in the psychology literature, are organized in the cortex.

pages: 444 words: 117,770

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma
by Mustafa Suleyman
Published 4 Sep 2023

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Now the global GP-write Consortium See GP-write Consortium, Center of Excellence for Engineering Biology, engineeringbiologycenter.org/gp-write-consortium. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Using a gene for light-detecting proteins José-Alain Sahel et al., “Partial Recovery of Visual Function in a Blind Patient After Optogenetic Therapy,” Nature Medicine, May 24, 2021, www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01351-4. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT CAR T-Cell therapies engineer bespoke “CureHeart—a Cure for Inherited Heart Muscle Diseases,” British Heart Foundation, www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/cure-heart; National Cancer Institute, “CAR T-Cell Therapy,” National Institutes of Health, www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/car-t-cell-therapy.

When Computers Can Think: The Artificial Intelligence Singularity
by Anthony Berglas , William Black , Samantha Thalind , Max Scratchmann and Michelle Estes
Published 28 Feb 2015

It might make it possible to grow intelligent structures rather than attempt to understand the tangled mess that is seen in a fully grown brain. However, very little is known about neurogenesis, and in particular why neurons connect to other neurons in the ways that they do. To be sure ongoing investigations are being made, with many new advanced techniques being developed. For example, optogenetics technology now enables light-sensitive channels taken from the Chlamydomonas protozoa to be genetically introduced into specific mammalian neuron cells. Light can then be used to activate these channels with millisecond precision, which causes the neurons to become active or be suppressed. This enables many fine-grained experiments to be performed, such as one that implanted false memories into mice.

pages: 588 words: 131,025

The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine Is in Your Hands
by Eric Topol
Published 6 Jan 2015

Ferguson et al., “Real-Time, Aptamer-Based Tracking of Circulating Therapeutic Agents in Living Animals,” Science Translational Medicine 5, no. 213 (2013): 213ra165. 59. Y. Ling et al., “Implantable Magnetic Relaxation Sensors Measure Cumulative Exposure to Cardiac Biomarkers,” Nature Biotechnology 29 (2011): 273–272. 60. T.-I. Kim et al., “Injectable, Cellular-Scale Optoelectronics with Applications for Wireless Optogenetics,” Science 340 (2013): 211–216. 61. “Nanotube-Based Sensors Can Be Implanted Under the Skin for a Year,” Nanowerk, November 3, 2013, http://www.nanowerk.com/news2/newsid=33040.php. 62. A. Myers, “Swimming Through the Blood Stream: Stanford Engineers Create Wireless, Self-Propelled Medical Device,” Stanford University News, February 22, 2012, http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/february/micro-device-implant-022212.html. 63.

pages: 574 words: 164,509

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
by Nick Bostrom
Published 3 Jun 2014

The combined (and in some cases corrected) network is available from the “WormAtlas” website (http://www.wormatlas.org/). 30. For a review of past attempts of emulating C. elegans and their fates, see Kaufman (2011). Kaufman quotes one ambitious doctoral student working in the area, David Dalrymple, as saying, “With optogenetic techniques, we are just at the point where it’s not an outrageous proposal to reach for the capability to read and write to anywhere in a living C. elegans nervous system, using a high-throughput automated system…. I expect to be finished with C. elegans in 2–3 years. I would be extremely surprised, for whatever that’s worth, if this is still an open problem in 2020” (Dalrymple 2011).

How Emotions Are Made: The New Science of the Mind and Brain
by Lisa Feldman Barrett
Published 6 Mar 2017

And my heartfelt thanks go out to the generous and thoughtful colleagues who spent time answering my questions, including Howard Fields, who was always available for enticing and enlightening discussions about the relation between nociception, reward, and interoceptive processing; Vijay Balasubramanian, who provided extremely useful explanations in response to my extensive questioning about the visual system; Thom Cleland, who enthusiastically shared his insights on the olfactory system; Moran Cerf, who gave me the inside scoop on intracranial electrical recording in live humans; and Karl Friston, who rewarded my out-of-the-blue email on predictive coding with an insightful email discussion wrapped in encouragement. Several others provided helpful answers to my questions via email or Skype, including Dayu Lin, who provided a detailed discussion of her research using optogenetics; Mark Bouton, who taught me the basics of contextual learning in mammals; Earl Miller for explaining the implications of his single-cell recording research on category learning in macaques; and Matthew Rushworth, who offered additional details about his mapping of the anterior cingulate cortex.

pages: 2,466 words: 668,761

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig
Published 14 Jul 2019

The development of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (Ogawa et al., 1990; Cabeza and Nyberg, 2001) is giving neuroscientists unprecedentedly detailed images of brain activity, enabling measurements that correspond in interesting ways to ongoing cognitive processes. These are augmented by advances in single-cell electrical recording of neuron activity and by the methods of optogenetics (Crick, 1999; Zemelman et al., 2002; Han and Boyden, 2007), which allow both measurement and control of individual neurons modified to be light-sensitive. The development of brain-machine interfaces (Lebedev and Nicolelis, 2006) for both sensing and motor control not only promises to restore function to disabled individuals, but also sheds light on many aspects of neural systems.

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A., 734, 1089 Olson, N., 48, 1104 Olteanu, A., 1046, 1061, 1098 Olum, P., 1028, 1096 omniscience, 58 Omohundro, S., 51, 1061, 1108 one-hot encoding, 725, 808, 908 One Hundred Year Study on AI, 45 Ong, D., 667, 1106 Ong, J., 47, 1086 ONLINE-DFS-AGENT, 155 online gradient descent, 697 online learning, 721, 855 online planning, 383 online replanning, 963 online search, 152, 152–159, 162–163 ontological commitment, 272, 295, 404 ontological engineering, 332, 332–334 ontology, 290, 293 general, 335–346 upper, 355 open-loop, 82, 958 open-world assumption, 385 OpenAI, 1059 OpenAI Gym (simulated environment), 873 open class, 886 OPENCYC (knowledge base), 357 open list, see frontier OPENMIND (knowledge base), 334 open universe probability model (OUPM), 649 operations research, 28, 79, 125, 126 Oppacher, F., 161, 1108 OPS-5 (logical reasoning system), 310, 329 optical flow, 1000, 1028 optimal brain damage, 838 optimal control theory, 160 optimality (of a search algorithm), 93 optimality theory (in linguistics), 902 optimally efficient algorithm, 108 optimal solution, 83 optimism under uncertainty, 157 optimistic description (of an action), 380 optimistic prior, 849 optimization, 684 convex, 140, 159 optimizer’s curse, 527, 549 OPTIMUM-AIV (planning and scheduling system), 402 optogenetics, 19 order-of-magnitude distribution, 650 orderability, 520 order statistic, 526 ordinal utility, 522 Organon (Aristotle), 265, 357 origin function, 649 OR node, 141 Orseau, L., 873, 1054, 1103 Ortega, P. A., 873, 1054, 1103 Osawa, E., 983, 1101 Osborne, M. A., 1050, 1095 Osborne, M. 1., 638, 1108 Osherson, D.