"Augmented Cognition," the Darpa program to build computer interfaces that adapt to their users' brains, has officially run its course.� But efforts to build mind-reading PCs continue throughout the military establishment.�
Augmented Cognition relies on the idea that people have more than one kind of working memory, and more than one kind of attention; there are separate slots in the mind for things written, things heard and things seen. By monitoring how taxed those areas of the brain are, it should be possible to change a computer's display to compensate. If people are getting too much visual information, send them a text alert. If they reading too much at once, present some of the data visually -- in a chart or map.

Pentagon's Mind-Reading Computers Replicate | Danger Room from Wired.com

A particularly wild project is Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics, or SyNAPSE. "The program will develop a brain inspired electronic 'chip' that mimics that function, size, and power consumption of a biological cortex," DARPA promises us. "If successful, the program will provide the foundations for functional machines to supplement humans in many of the most demanding situations faced by warfighters today" -- like getting usable information out of video feeds, and starting tasks. The agency is looking to spend $3 million next year, to get started on its faux brain effort. My guess is that it will take considerably more cash to get it done.

DARPA 2009: Brains-on-a-Chip, Transparent Displays | Danger Room from Wired.com

Director of rehabilitation engineering services at NHS Lothian in Britain, David Gow, believes his new i-Limb system (bionic arm, hand combo) from Touch Bionics is so superior to biological limbs that it may have to "scale down its power." We've been waiting our whole lives to hear those sweet words.

it will be interesting when this becomes a type of cosmetic option.

I-Limb Bionic Hand Gets Upgradable Bionic Arm - Medgadget - www.medgadget.com

Image: Bryn Nelson
Bryn Nelson
Columnist
A tiny assembly line that powers the whip-like tail of sperm could be harnessed to send future nanobots or other tiny medical devices zooming around the human body, according to a preliminary research report.

Scientists look to sperm to power nanobots - Frontiers- msnbc.com

That might sound pretty awesome, but the prospect of brain-controlled virtual joysticks has some scientists worried that games might end up controlling our brains.

Several makers of brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs -- devices that facilitate operating a computer by thought alone -- claim the technology is poised to jump from the medical sector into the consumer gaming world in 2008.

Companies including Emotiv Systems and NeuroSky say they've released BCI-based software-development kits. Gaming companies may release BCI games next year, but many scientists worry that users brains' might be subject to negative effects.

For example, the devices sometimes force users to slow down their brain waves. Afterward, users have reported trouble focusing their attention.

...

Fairclough envisions a "brain security network with passwords and firewalls." He says, "I think it's important that the kind of electronic security we normally have for our computers should translate over to the BCI area."

BCI - Brain to Control Games Directly, Maybe Vice Versa

File this one under "you cannot be serious" until we see pictorial evidence, but the North Denver News is reporting that a local man has had thumb-altering surgery so as to better use the touchscreen on his iPhone.

You know, most people would just opt for the phone with bigger (or real) buttons... What a moron.

Man gets thumbs surgically

Not quite aging gracefully

Micheal Jackson Faces

Experiments in Galvanism is the culmination of studio and gallery experiments in which a miniature computer is implanted into the dead body of a frog specimen. Akin to Damien Hirst's bodies in formaldehyde, the frog is suspended in clear liquid contained in a glass cube, with a blue ethernet cable leading into its splayed abdomen. The computer stores a website that enables users to trigger physical movement in the corpse: the resulting movement can be seen in gallery, and through a live streaming webcamera.

Garnet Hertz - Experiments in Galvanism: Frog with Implanted Webserver

(ANSA) - Rome, May 30 - Italian doctors have built the world's first biotech vagina.

So far, two patients lacking vaginas because of a rare malformation have been helped to grow ones, using stem cells taken from their own bodies.

Nice... The italians should make gardens of them.

ANSA.it - News in English - Italians build biotech vagina

The journey to pack more (proverbial) internal storage into the human brain has been going on for years, but a recent development at Tel-Aviv University could actually bring us one step closer to storing rudimentary memories on a manmade device. Reportedly, a new experiment has shown that it is indeed possible to store said memories "in an artificial culture of live neurons," which is a fairly significant step towards the "cyborg-like integration of living material into memory chips." Essentially, Itay Baruchi and Eshel Ben-Jacob carefully examined the firing patterns of a sea of electrodes and found that they could "deliberately create additional firing patterns that coexist with the spontaneous patterns." These forced patterns could theoretically represent simple memories stored in the neuron network, and after giving it a go on their own, they were able to see "memory patterns" persist for over forty hours in a homegrown concoction.

'Living' cyborg chip stores rudimentary memories - Engadget