Its the 21st Century, now where's my brain upgrade
Added Wednesday 15.07.2009 
A lot of people are wondering (myself included) with all the advances in technology when can we go out and finally buy the promised brain upgrade from the local store? You know, the plug in memory upgrade for enhanced memory retention or the math processor upgrade to allow us to do mind boggling calculations in a blink of an eye. While the prospect of being able to learn new things by downloading new information directly into the brain Matrix style or making mathematicians out of 6 year olds sounds like a lot of fun most of the human cyborg enhancements have been developed with eye of overcoming disabilities.
In the last decade there has been a lot of advancement in the field of cybernetics, turning many previous science fiction concepts into reality. There are early developments of the Iron Man suit - by Cyberdyne Inc (yes, same name as used in the Terminator series!) in Japan using a body hugging exoskeleton. There are various types of bionic eyes in the works such as the Argus Bionic eye from the Doheny Eye Institute in California. Lets not forget one of the worlds most popular bionic upgrades the Cochlear implant (or bionic ear) with the first modern version appearing on the market in 1982.
A lot of the past cybernetic enhancements, particular artificial limbs have been great in restoring additional mobility but limited when giving feedback to the user. Current bionic eyes are very low resolution at around 16 pixels, compared to modern digital cameras with in excess of 12 mega pixels (12,000,000 pixels). The other disadvantage with some bionic enhancements like the cochlear eye implant is they tend to be irreversible and can reduce the natural sense it replaces (ie. lose any remaining natural hearing). So, at this stage I personally will be waiting until the technology progresses a little further before permanently replacing any natural abilities. However, the good news is like many modern technologies they can often be improved with a simply software upgrade, just like updating to a new version of Microsoft Windows (maybe not the best analogy, but you get the idea).
The really interesting technologies emerging at the moment are the advancement of Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI). Rather than attaching somewhere on the body perhaps to a few stray nerves BCIs attach or link directly with the brain - reading brain waves. BCIs range from the very invasive approach of physical implanting sensory devices into the brain to devices that set atop the head and worn like a hat or head band. The more invasive approach tends to result in being able to read brain waves at higher resolutions where as less invasive approach tends to give poor resolution because of the signals being blurred and weakened when passing through the skull. The first brain implant in a human that produced high enough signal quality to stimulate movement was way back in 1998. Using the implant the patient was able to control a cursor on a computer through thought alone. Subsequent implants have given patients the ability to also control television, play simple video games, write emails and control prosthetic limbs.
Non-invasive BCIs have been developed to the point where they are already commercially available for as little as a few hundred dollars. Most notable are the Neural Impulse Actuator released by OCZ Technology in 2008 and Mindset released by NeuroSky in 2007. Both devices require the user to simply wear a device similar a set of headphones that measures brain activity. NeuroSky has been partnered with a number of other companies including Mattel (one of the largest toy companies in the world), Square Enix (video game and publishing company based in Japan, known for Final Fantasy series), and even Nokia. Judecca, a zombie-killing first-person-shooter computer game was unveiled at the Tokyo Game Show in October 2008 by Square Enix. Even Star Wars has gotten in on the band wagon, of course where there is mind control there is the 'Force'. Even though a little tacky, Uncle Milton has brought us the 'Star Wars Force Trainer', which basically revolves around the use of NeuroSky's Mindset device to control a ping pong ball in a garden blower to simulate the 'Force'.
'Judecca' mind control video game.
'Star Wars Force Trainer'.
So if Uncle Milton has it's finger in the 'mind control' pie we can certain expect the United States Military to have a vested interest. It turns out that the US Military is working on a program called 'Silent Talk', which aims to "allow user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals". Essential it uses EEG (Electroencephalography), a non-invasive BCI much like the 'toys' mentioned above to read brain patterns and generate a computer assist telepathy.
Also, notably in Japan by Advanced Telecommunications Research (ATR) Compututional Neuroscience Laboratories (try saying that five times fast!) have developed a BCI to reconstruct images directly from the brain and display them on a computer. Further development is expecting to make it possible to eventually record dreams!
It is obvious that there are some exciting technologies being developed - enhancing senses, enhancing limbs, and fancy telepathic computer input devices, but it still looks like we are a long way off before we get to human memory upgrades and human logic upgrades. It should also be pointed out that many users of the early more invasive BCIs are no longer with us, often linked with meningitis, blood infections or brain aneurysms - which may be just coincidence seeing that these patients often had disabilities, but still, makes you wonder. So, for the time being, we have to still sharper the mind and do brain training the old fashion way.
Comments
This article is really cool, sci-fi is becoming reality.
fantastic information