A newly designed implantable "memory prosthetic" opens the possibility of a cyborg future for the mankind.
Implantable "Memory Prosthetic"
Forgetting information is a very common occurrence to the human condition. According to Neuroscience News, forgetting may even be essential to learning. However, forgetting can also be extremely problematic for people suffering of memory related handicaps like traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer's or dementia.
According to Extreme Tech, relief may soon be on the horizon for such individuals in case that they may be willing to undergo an invasive surgery in order to have a memory prosthetic implanted in their brain. As sci-fi that this might sound, a Los Angeles based startup named Kernel has already started to test their memory prosthetic on human subjects.
A memory prosthetic is potentially as revolutionary as the Xerox machine. The purpose of the implanted device is to create a facsimile of the impressions fed into it stored in long term memory.
Ted Berger and the fellow researchers at UCLA who launched Kernel are using a computer generated model in order to map patterns of neuronal firing used by the hippocampus to convert short term memories into long term ones. These models are loaded onto a computer chip that can be embedded in the human brain, taking the place of a missing or injured hippocampus. The FDA has already cleared the "memory prosthetic" device for clinical trials in humans.
Cyborgs and Transhumanism
Besides medical applications, such devices open the possibility to create cyborgs by augmenting human capabilities beyond their natural limits. This might generate some ethic debates. However, according to The Spinoff, artificial intelligence will radically transform our world.
Confronting with the performance of AI and robots, our only option might be to adopt the transhumanism solution. We can suspend our own obsolescence through transhumanism by simply melding with the robots over time and transform ourselves in cyborgs by augmenting our natural capacities.
