“It’s not because we want to implant or ‘incept’ some false experience into the human mind, but because it could be useful, eventually”

Scientists Make Mice “Remember” Things

That Didn’t Happen

Researchers manipulate mouse neurons to create a false memory; the work could lead to a better understanding of how memories form.

• By Susan Young on July 25, 2013

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517226/scientists-make-mice-remember-things-that-didnt-happen/

scientists-implant-false-memories-brains-flies

Scientists have created a false memory in mice by manipulating neurons that bear the memory of a place. The work further demonstrates just how unreliable memory can be. It also lays new ground for understanding the cell behavior and circuitry that controls memory, and could one day help researchers discover new ways to treat mental illnesses influenced by memory.

In the study, published in Science on Thursday, the MIT scientists show that they can modify a memory and have a mouse believe it experienced something it didn’t. Susumu Tonegawa, a neuroscientist at MIT, and members of his lab used mice that were genetically modified to allow for certain neurons to be activated with a flash of light; the technique enabled the researchers to activate a memory that caused a mouse to believe it had experienced electrical shocks in a particular box, even though no such thing had happened there. “The process of memory is nothing like a tape recording,” says study co-first author Steve Ramirez. “It’s really malleable and susceptible to the incorporation of new information.”

The results are “really mind-blowing,” says Sheena Josselyn, a neuroscientist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. “It shows that your memories are really just activities of different cells, and they can take the place of an actual thing that happened by just activating some cells in the brain,” she says. “People have been playing around with this idea for a while, but having a theory and showing it are two different things.”

Advances in neuroscience methods and technology are giving researchers an unprecedented understanding of the biological basis of memories. In recent years, researchers have uncovered details about the molecular and cellular components of memory creation and the electrical language that cells use to recall memories (see “Making Memories” and “A First Step Toward a Prosthesis for Memory”).

More broadly, neuroscientists are increasingly exploring human cognition at its molecular and cellular origins. Someday, this deeper understanding could lead to better or novel treatments, such as memory implants that replace lost memories (see “Memory Implants”) or novel drugs to boost beneficial memory reconsolidation.

Previously, the MIT-based team had shown that it could pinpoint the location and assemblage of cells that carry a memory, and that activating those cells stimulated memory recall in mice. To create the new, false memory, Tonegawa’s team reactivated a mouse’s memory of a safe place while the animal received shocks in its feet, thus transforming the original memory.

First, the team used genetic tricks to label the brain cells involved in the memory of a chamber that was safe and neutral. The next day, they put the animal in a second chamber, a completely different setting. There, the animal got foot shocks while the researchers simultaneously shone light to reactivate the memory of the harmless first chamber. When the animal was put back in the first chamber, it fearfully froze—a clear indication that it remembered getting shocked in that chamber, even though that never happened. “It formed a false memory,” says Ramirez.

One of the long-term goals for the work is to be able to identify new methods for helping patients with cognitive disorders. “It’s not because we want to implant or ‘incept’ some false experience into the human mind, but because it could be useful, eventually, to develop methods to reduce cognitive abnormalities associated with psychiatric diseases, such as the delusions experienced by patients with schizophrenia,” says Tonegawa.

The work also explores…..(Continues)

Its only a matter of time….

All the basic tech is there someday human minds will be controlling robots!

Here’s an excerpt from  Kenneth Hayworth’s very interesting paper

Killed by Bad Philosophy– Why brain preservation followed by mind uploading is a cure for death

“By the year 2110 such mind uploading will probably be as common place as laser eye surgery is today. No one will be seriously bothered by the philosophical questions that mind uploading provokes today. No one will ask “Sure it will have my memories, it will act like me, and it will even think it is me, but will it really be me?””

Here’s the link for the full paper- http://brainpreservation.org/content/killed-bad-philosophy

The computer does it…..

Brazilian police to use ‘Robocop-style’ glasses at World Cup

Brazilian police will use futuristic ‘Robocop-style’ glasses fitted with facial recognition equipment to identify and root out troublemakers at the 2014 World Cup.

Military Police officials from Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have been given demonstrations of how the device works Photo: AFP/GETTY

By Robin Yapp, Sao Paulo 6:07PM BST 12 Apr 2011

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/brazil/8446088/Brazilian-police-to-use-Robocop-style-glasses-at-World-Cup.html

A small camera fitted to the glasses can capture 400 facial images per second and send them to a central computer database storing up to 13 million faces.

The system can compare biometric data at 46,000 points on a face and will immediately signal any matches to known criminals or people wanted by police.

If there is a match a red signal will appear on a small screen connected to the glasses, alerting the police officer of the need to take further action or make an arrest.

The devices will soon be tested at football matches and concerts and police in Brazil, South America’s biggest country, are already planning to use them during the next World Cup.

The camera will generally be used to scan faces in crowds up to 50 metres (164ft) away but can be adjusted, if searching for a specific target, to recognise faces as far as 12 miles away.

Military Police officials from Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, which will both host key games in the World Cup, have been given demonstrations of how the device works.

Major Leandro Pavani Agostini, of Sao Paulo’s Military Police, said: “It’s something discreet because you do not question the person or ask for documents. The computer does it.

“To the naked eye two people may appear identical but with 46,000 points compared, the data…….(Continues)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/brazil/8446088/Brazilian-police-to-use-Robocop-style-glasses-at-World-Cup.html

“I’ve just thought of something” IMPLANTS!

‘Chipped’ Detainees, Iran Mega-Missiles And More in Latest WikiLeaks

• By Spencer Ackerman
• November 28, 2010  
• SOURCE-WIRED.COM- http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11/chipped-detainees-iran-mega-missiles-and-more-in-latest-wikileaks/

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia told a senior White House official to consider surgically implanting homing devices under Guantanamo Bay detainees’ skin. That’s one of the many potentially embarrassing comments from diplomatic back rooms now being made public by WikiLeaks.

During a March 2009 meeting with John Brennan, President Obama’s closest counterterrorism adviser, Abdullah proposed shooting electronic chips into the residual Guantanamo population, “allowing their movements to be tracked with Bluetooth.” Abdullah appears to have come up with the idea on the fly during their meeting — “I’ve just thought of something,” the cable quotes him saying — and considered forced subcutaneous chip implantation uncontroversial, since it’s already “done with horses and falcons.”

Brennan appears to have gingerly waved him off: “[H]orses don’t have good lawyers,” he replied, “but agreed that keeping track of detainees was an extremely important issue that he would review with appropriate officials when he returned to the United States.”

That’s a particularly bizarre proposal revealed inside the third large trove of U.S. secrets the radical anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks has published in the last six months. This current one — reported on Sunday by the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and the Guardian — centers around more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic communications, earning the dump a furious condemnation from the State Department and the White House. Our sister blog Threat Level first reported in June that WikiLeaks got ahold of the cables, and reports today on the U.S. information-sharing initiative that made the leak possible.

Perhaps the most worrisome news to come out the diplo doc dump is that….(CONTINUES)http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11/chipped-detainees-iran-mega-missiles-and-more-in-latest-wikileaks/

“test subjects drawn from prisons, hospitals and nursing homes”

CIA brain experiments pursued in veterans’ suit

By Jeff Stein-

Washington Post

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/11/cia_brain_experiments_pursued.html

The CIA is notorious for its Cold War-era experiments with LSD and other chemicals on unwitting citizens and soldiers. Details have emerged in books and articles beginning more than 30 years ago.

But if military veterans have their way in a California law suit, the spy agency’s quest to turn humans into robot-like assassins via electrodes planted in their brains will get far more exposure than the drugs the CIA tested on subjects ranging from soldiers to unwitting bar patrons and the clients of prostitutes.

It’s not just science fiction — or the imaginings of the mentally ill.

In 1961, a top CIA scientist reported in an internal memo that “the feasibility of remote control of activities in several species of animals has been demonstrated…Special investigations and evaluations will be conducted toward the application of selected elements of these techniques to man,” according to “The CIA and the Search for the Manchurian Candidate,” a 1979 book by former State Department intelligence officer John Marks.

“[T]his cold-blooded project,” Marks wrote, “was designed … for the delivery of chemical and biological agents or for ‘executive action-type operations,’ according to a document. ‘Executive action’ was the CIA’s euphemism for assassination.”

The CIA pursued such experiments because it was convinced the Soviets were doing the same.

Victims have sought justice for years, in vain. Now, almost 40 years later, a federal magistrate has ordered the CIA to produce records and witnesses about the LSD and other experiments “allegedly conducted on thousands of soldiers from 1950 through 1975,” according to news accounts.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John Larsen’s Nov. 17 order exempted the agency from having to testify about electrode tests on humans, but Gordon P. Erspamer, lead attorney for the veterans, says “we are pursuing this as well.”

“There is no question that these experiments were done,” Erspamer said by e-mail Tuesday, “but defendants say that they used private researchers and test subjects drawn from prisons, hospitals and nursing homes as subjects, not active duty military [personnel]. CIA said it had no one knowledgeable on this topic.”

Erspamer, senior counsel in the San Francisco office of Morrison & Foerster, said “several” CIA witnesses “are…still alive,” naming some that have been publicly identified, but opting to keep secret others before he calls them.

Papers filed in the case describe “electrical devices implanted in brain tissue with electrodes in various regions, including the hippocampus, the hypothalamus, the frontal lobe (via the septum), the cortex and various other places,” Erspamer said, drawing on [research papers] (http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/spytalkheathdocument.pdf) written by government scientists.

“We believe that one of our plaintiffs was given a septal implant at [Edgewood Arsenal] (www.edgewoodtestvets.org),” he said, based on an MRI he has “showing a ‘foreign body’ on the border between the septum and the frontal lobe.”

“A lot of this work was done out of Tulane University using a local state hospital and funding from a cut-out (front) organization called the Commonwealth Fund,” he continued, again drawing on the research papers.

“We tried to get docs from Tulane, but they told us that they were destroyed in the hurricane flooding.”

The CIA claims that at least some of the documents should remain classified as “state secrets.” But Magistrate Larson told the agency to come back with a better rationale, a “supplemental declaration explaining with heightened specificity” why the documents should be protected after all these years.

SOURCE-http://voices.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/11/cia_brain_experiments_pursued.html

“This October has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays all in one month. It happens only once in 823 years.”

SOURCE- http://unitedcats.wordpress.com/ (DOUG’S DARKWORLD)

Well, isn’t that an amazing little factoid? I read that on line and did what everyone else did, passed it along to delight and edify my readers. And it’s posted all over the Internet, often with dozens of comments and jokes about how cool it is and how it’s a great month to enjoy the weekend and so on. And as I read on, as my astute readers may have guessed, I was soon pounding my head on my keyboard in amazement and horror. Is the average Internet reader so brain dead that they believe the most egregious garbage if they see it posted on a  web site?

Apparently so. Let’s think about this, a year can only start on one of seven days, so there are seven possible basic calendar years. Add leap years, and there are fourteen basic calendars. Period. And one of those calendars only gets used every 823 years? How would that be possible? It’s not of course, all fourteen calenders get cycled through regularly, in fact 2010 uses the exact same calendar as 1999. That’s eleven years, not 823. The calendar above is a copy of an October 1999 calendar, not 2010. Now that my amazement is over, I’m appalled, though not surprised. I read literally hundreds of people’s comments related to this factoid, and maybe one percent of the comments were of the “that can’t be right” variety. The other 99% of people who read it simply accepted it at face value. What the hell is going on here? (CONTINUES)- http://unitedcats.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/this-october-has-5-fridays-5-saturdays-and-5-sundays-all-in-one-month-it-happens-only-once-in-823-years/

Same systems to be used by millions of voters this November!

Pac-Man Hacked Onto a Touch-Screen Voting Machine Without Breaking ‘Tamper-Evident’ Seals

By Brad Friedman on 8/21/2010 12:48PM  

Full Article-  http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7998

This is your Sequoia touch-screen voting machine….

This is your Sequoia touch-screen voting machine with Pac-Man hacked onto it without disturbing any of the “tamper-evident” seals supposedly meant to protect it from hackers…

Any questions?…

Sequoia’s voting machines, used in some 20% of U.S. elections, employ Intellectual Property (IP) still owned by a Venezuelan firm tied to Hugo Chavez. Sequoia itself is now owned by a Canadian firm called Dominion. (Though Dominion, like Sequoia itself before it, lied about the continuing Venezuelan/Chavez ties in its recent announcement of the acquisition, as detailed exclusively by The BRAD BLOG, to little notice, in June.)

The Pac-Man hack onto the Sequoia/Dominion voting machine was revealed this week. It was accomplished without breaking any of the “tamper-evident” seals that voting machine companies and election officials claim are used to ensure nobody can physically hack into them without being discovered.

“We received the machine with the original tamper-evident seals intact,” the hackers from Princeton and University of Michigan report. “The software can be replaced without breaking any of these seals, simply by removing screws and opening the case.”

Here’s a video of Pac-Man running on the hacked Sequoia touch-screen voting machine…

This particular Sequoia DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) voting machine model is known as the AVC Edge. It used to be described on the Sequoia website and promotional materials as “tamperproof.” It has been hacked previously and has failed time and again in recent elections, even though election officials continue to force voters to use the machines.

For example, the AVC Edge miscounted votes in New Jersey in 2008, the same election during which the systems also failed to even boot up when polls opened at a Hoboken precinct, forcing voters, including the state’s then-Governor John Corzine, to wait some 45 minutes before they could cast votes on them at all. Whether those votes were recorded accurately as per the voters’ intent, once the machines finally booted up, is scientifically impossible to know. Use of any touch-screen voting machine is the equivalent of a 100% faith-based election. No votes cast during an election — none — can be verified as having been accurately recorded on such systems. Ever.

J. Alex Halderman and Ariel J. Feldman, the academic computer science and security experts who hacked the Sequoia machine, this time with Pac-Man, report that, “In 2008, the AVC Edge was used in 161 jurisdictions with almost 9 million registered voters, including large parts of Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, and Virginia.”

As first reported by The BRAD BLOG in 2006, Halderman and Feldman previously hacked a touch-screen voting machine made by Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (which became Premier Elections Solutions, which was then also purchased by Dominion, just like Sequoia). They hacked the Diebold/Premier system with a virus that was able to pass itself from one machine to the next and flip the results of an entire election with little chance of detection. That hack was demonstrated, among other places, live on Fox “News” shortly after it was announced. (Watch the video here.)

Short of adding “tamper-evident” seals to these machines — the same seals that went undisturbed when Pac-Man was hacked……(Continues)

Full Article-  http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7998

Future iPhones, iPads could recognize, adjust for individual users.

By Neil Hughes

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/08/19/future_iphones_ipads_could_recognize_adjust_for_individual_users.html

Published: 08:45 AM EST

Relying on a user’s picture or the sound of their voice, future portable devices from Apple like an iPhone or iPad could recognize individuals who pick up and use the item.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this week revealed a patent application from Apple entitled “Systems and Methods for Identifying Unauthorized Users of an Electronic Device.” The security-centric invention describes methods to identify users through a picture, the sound of their voice, or even their unique heartbeat.

“The photograph, recording, or heartbeat can be compared, respectively, to a photograph, recording or heartbeat of authorized users of the electronic device to determine whether they match,” the application reads. “If they do not match, the current user can be detected as an unauthorized user.”

If an unauthorized user were to attempt to access an iPhone or another device, the owner of the handset could be notified in a variety of manners, including a phone call, text message or e-mail. It could even send the owner — or the police — a picture of the unauthorized user, or other information specific to the potential thief, such as the current location.

The handset could also recognize an unauthorized user if they do certain uncharacteristic activities with the phone. Specifically named are hacking, jailbreaking, unlocking, or removing a SIM card.

But beyond security, such technology could also be used to identify individual users and allow users who share a product, like an iPad, to customize it to their liking. Apple has shown interest in such capabilities for some time.

In January, before the iPad was announced, The Wall Street Journal revealed that an early prototype of the device would use a camera to recognize users’ faces, allowing it to be one device easily shared by the entire family. Apple reportedly experimented with the ability to customize the device, and have it automatically switch to a user’s personal settings once they picked it up.

One early feature included virtual “sticky notes” that one user could leave for another, and would be read the next time they picked up the iPad.

Apple’s security-centric patent application was first filed on Feb. 19, 2009. It is credited to Taido Nakajima, Pareet Rahul and Gloria Lin.

The invention is also not the first time Apple has explored recognizing users by their heartbeat. One patent application revealed in May dealt specifically with that technology, describing a heart rate monitor seamlessly built in to the exterior of an iPhone. Reading a user’s unique biometric data, the iPhone could then recognize them.

source- www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/08/19/future_iphones_ipads_could_recognize_adjust_for_individual_users.html

Pentagon: Boost Training With Computer-Troop Mind Meld

Photo: Jeff Corwin Photography/Boeing

The Pentagon is looking to better train its troops — by scanning their minds as they play video games.

Adaptive, mind-reading computer systems have been a work-in-progress among military agencies for at least a decade. In 2000, far-out research agency Darpa launched “Augmented Cognition,” a program that sought to develop computers that used EEG scans to adjust how they displayed information — visually, orally, or otherwise — to avoid overtaxing one realm of a troop’s cognition.

The Air Force also took up the idea, by trying to use EEGs to “assess the operator’s actual cognitive state”  and “avoid cognitive bottlenecks before they occur.”

Zeroing in on brainpower is a strategy that reflects the changing tactics of fighting wars: today’s troop needs to be as cognitively ready as they are physically — if not more. They’ve also got to spend more time on the ground in urban settings, interacting with locals and canvassing for information. That’s where virtual cultural trainers often come in handy. Troops are prepped in language, social norms and cultural sensitivity, before they even leave their base.

The trainers are quickly becoming more sophisticated. As Danger Room pal Peter Singer notes, the Pentagon is already using  “three-dimensional experiences that hit multiple senses,” including, in one case, a wearable collar that emits key odors.

Now, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) is soliciting small business proposals for an even more immersive trainer, one that includes voice-recognition technology, and picks up on vocal tone and facial gestures. The game would then react and adapt to a war-fighter’s every action. For example, if a player’s gesture “insults the local tribal leader,” the trainee would “find that future interactions with the population are more difficult and more hostile.”

And, most importantly, the new programs would react to the warrior’s own physiological and neurological cues. They’d be monitored using an EEG, eye tracking, heart and respiration rate, and other physiological markers. Based on the metrics, the game would adapt in difficulty and “keep trainees in an optimal state of learning.”

The OSD isn’t ready to use neuro-based systems in the war zone, but the agency does want to capitalize on advances in neuroscience that have assigned meaningful value to intuitive decision-making. As the OSD solicitation points out, troops often need to make fast-paced decisions in high-stress environments, with limited information and context. Well-reasoned, analytic decisions are rarely possible — which would make intuition, if it were reliable, an ideal tool to give American troops the upper hand.

That’s where neuroscience comes in. OSD wants simulated games that use EEGs to monitor the cognitive patterns of trainees, particularly at what’s thought to be the locus of neurally based, intuitive decision-making — the basal ganglia. In his seminal paper on the neuroscience of intuition, Harvard’s Matthew Lieberman notes that the ganglia can “learn temporal patterns that are predictive of events of significance, regardless of conscious intent … as long as exposure is repeatedly instantiated.”

By using neural monitoring to supervise a trainee’s progress in their simulated world, the military could bolster the odds that snap decisions in the real-world will be based on more than just a gut feeling.

 

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/04/pentagon-boost-training-with-computer-troop-mind-meld/#ixzz0mOsrH2M8

“Behavior Placement” a.k.a. Monkey See Monkey Do

 Television’s Benevolent Mind Control Program

America is a nation of mostly poor, unattractive people who take their cues on life from the fictional actions of rich, attractive characters on television. The NBC network, your father figure, has decided to educate our slackjawed populace. With television!

It used to be that NBC used its teevee shows’ potent mind control powers only to sell us Subway sandwiches, and feebly remind us to recycle. But knowing that you, the insecure American viewer, will take the advice of fictional 30 Rock characters when it comes to selecting a carbonated beverage, NBC figured, hey, why not instruct our viewers on how to accomplish the most basic tasks that will allow them to live a moderately healthy life, without drowning to death in their couch under a tidal wave of Cheez-Its? A healthy consumer is a consumer that can purchase advertised products, as they say in our nation’s scientific broadcasting academies. Therefore, the WSJ reports today, NBC has instituted “behavior placement” along with product placement in its shows—to teach you, the American Idiot, how to Be Good.

First there was Green Week. In June, NBC “will emphasize healthy eating and exercise,” subtly, via the actions of characters there on the screen of your unmoving teevee.

Behavior placement gives marketers extra incentive to advertise at a time when digital video recorders equip viewers with an unprecedented ability to skip commercials, says Jason Kanefsky, a media buyer at Havas’s MPG. “You’re not forcing your way into a program in any shape or form,” he says. “You’re just nodding your head at a program.”

You’r just nodding your head to the program. What the program says is what you will do. Fortunately, our NBC overlords are using this power for benevolent purposes. One can only imagine what could happen if it were, say, unleashed only in service of convincing us to purchase certain brands of automobiles and beauty products and 100-Calorie Snak Paxxx.

Looks like the Hypodermic Needle Theory of communications was right after all. F**k you, Cognitive Revolution.

Source- http://gawker.com/5511622/televisions-benevolent-mind-control-program?skyline=true&s=i

————————————————————————————————————————

-“If we could sit poor George Orwell in front of a TV set right now, he would freak out!”

———————————————————————————————————————–

What Your TV Is Telling You to Do

Full Article- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304364904575166581279549318.html

30 Rock

NBC

The Message: Small changes can reduce your carbon footprint.

What Viewers Saw: Kenneth, the page, is put in charge of reducing the carbon footprint of fictional late-night show “TGS” by 5%. Liz Lemon, Tina Fey’s character, reluctantly gives up her office mini-fridge.

The Office

NBC

The Message: Get rid of plastic water bottles in the workplace.

What Viewers Saw: Employees complain about metallic-tasting reusable water bottles. “We weren’t on theme, we were just on comedy,” says Paul Lieberstein, an executive producer.

Top Chef

NBC

The Message: Organic, locally grown foods are better for the environment.

What Viewers Saw: Competing chefs prepare a meal for the farm workers at Blue Hill farm using organic, local fruits, vegetables and other ingredients.

In just one week on NBC, the detectives on “Law and Order” investigated a cash-for-clunkers scam, a nurse on “Mercy” organized a group bike ride, Al Gore made a guest appearance on “30 Rock,” and “The Office” turned Dwight Schrute into a cape-wearing superhero obsessed with recycling.

Coincidence? Hardly. NBC Universal planted these eco-friendly elements into scripted television shows to influence viewers and help sell ads.

Full Article- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304364904575166581279549318.html