I can extract side effects.

Chapter 570 The Monkey Who Loves Playing Games

The next day, neuroscience lab.

A small meeting room, a long oval table, four people sitting scattered.

The new core team members are gathering together, gearing up one by one, ready to do a big job.

"Old Chen, I just want to ask, how is your research on motor nerves and brain-computer interfaces going? Where are you at?"

As soon as he sat down, Wang Dali couldn't wait to ask.

He was very interested in the project, felt a great responsibility, and wanted to learn as much as possible so he could get started right away.

Chen Yiqing opened the ppt and said in a deep voice, "This is exactly what I'm going to introduce today, please watch it on the big screen."

"Research on brain-computer interface has been conducted in the world for more than ten years, so it is not difficult to catch up with the progress and achieve the current level."

"At present, we have done some animal experiments, all of which have been successful, even including experiments on the brains of primates."

Following his words, a picture of a monkey appeared on the projection screen.

This monkey is no different from the common monkeys in the mountains, the only difference is that it wears a hat on its head.

The hat appears to be glued to the top of its head.

"It's a macaque, and like many humans, it's a video game junkie."

"We spent several months teaching it to play games."

"It started out as a game of picking peaches."

"Put it in front of a display, and when the game starts, peaches will fall from above the display one by one."

"At this time, it needs to grab a joystick in front of it with its right hand, move the fruit basket at the bottom of the screen, and quickly catch the falling peaches."

"There is a tube under the monitor, and whenever a monkey catches a peach, a pine nut will fall out of the tube, be grabbed by the monkey, and quickly stuffed into its mouth."

"This monkey is very fond of eating pine nuts. In order to get the reward of pine nuts and satisfy its addiction to snacks, it likes video games."

"However, after playing this game for a long time, it seemed to get bored, and we tried various other games."

"Finally found the three most popular games for it."

"Each time you get tired of one game, switch to another of the three and it'll be fun to play again."

Chen Yiqing spoke eloquently, introducing the experimental animal, and even played a video of the monkey playing games.

Sure enough, as he said, the monkey in the video, wearing a hat, faced the simple computer game on the screen, playing it with joy and joy.

He is originally elegant, dignified, and articulate, and his words are interesting. When he talks about professional scientific experiments, he can also make people feel like they are in the spring breeze.

After playing the video, Chen Yiqing waved the laser pointer in his hand and returned to the ppt interface.

The red laser dot moved to the side of the monkey.

There the structure of the hat worn on the monkey's head is displayed.

It turns out that there are four plastic connectors connected to the bottom of the hat, and each connector is connected to several metal micro-transmission line arrays, which can receive nerve signals from them.

"We implanted several microwire arrays in the brain of a monkey, collected many movement-related neural electrical signals, constructed the monkey's hand movement program, and performed a simple mechanical reproduction."

"Look, these metal microwire arrays are carefully placed in the brains of the monkeys, placed in the extracellular space of the nerve cells filled with fluid and containing a small amount of salt, and concentrate on collecting the electric sparks emitted by the neurons."

"A microtransmission wire array was placed a few millimeters below different areas of the prefrontal and parietal lobes, areas associated with vision-motor movement in primates."

"Primates are able to use these regions to translate visual cues, such as falling fruit, or a mosquito flying by, into the hand movements required to move a mechanical joystick."

"In addition to this, several microtransmission wire arrays were implanted in the monkey brain's primary motor cortex as well as other motor cortical regions."

"In the monkey brain, whenever a cortical neuron next to a microtransmission wire generates an action potential, a small current flows through the extracellular space and is detected by the microtransmission terminal."

"The charge from all the microwires is pooled and delivered to a connected microchip at the top."

The laser pointer in Chen Yiqing's hand stopped in the middle of the hat.

"This is a neuron chip. Each plastic connector corresponds to a neuron chip. There are four in total. The electronic devices inside it can amplify and filter the tiny electrical signals generated by neurons."

"Each neuron chip has a small bundle of wires that protrudes from the hat and connects to a computer in a soundproof cabinet next to it, which is responsible for converting the monkey's thoughts into a digital signal flow.

"These streams of digital signals control the movements of two robotic arms in the next room according to the ideas of the monkey's brain."

Speaking of this, Chen Yiqing smiled: "Of course, I just introduce the specific working principle. This cute macaque is currently in our laboratory. If you are interested, you can meet it after the meeting and observe it. Take a look at the image of its neural activity while playing the game."

Wang Dali blurted out: "Monkeys can also play games?"

"That's right, not only can monkeys play games, they're even very agile, no worse than some humans."

Chen Yiqing nodded, as if he suddenly thought of something funny, his eyes drifted to Wen Renlong involuntarily.

Wen Renlong listened quietly at first, but when he saw Chen Yiqing's eyes, his complexion turned dark immediately, he snorted, and turned his head to one side.

Wang Dali was instantly overwhelmed with curiosity, and hurriedly asked: "Chen Bo, Boss Chen, what's the matter, I'm happy to say it, is it related to Wen Renlong?"

Chen Yiqing hesitated for a moment, but Zhang Li next to him burst out laughing.

"Actually, it's nothing. Just a few months ago, when we were training monkeys to play games, someone happened to be watching and said that he also likes to play this game, so he can train monkeys for him."

"As you know, training monkeys is a hassle, so we gladly gave him one of the games."

"As a result, after more than a month of training, the monkeys have surpassed the master when they played this game." Zhang Li covered her mouth and laughed hard.

"Hahaha~" Wang Dali let out a burst of laughter, and looked at Wen Renlong in disbelief: "No way, what kind of game is it? Monkeys are even better at it than humans."

"Hit the mole." Chen Yiqing spit out a word briefly, and explained: "Monkeys' reaction speed is very fast, 3-5 times faster than humans, and Aaron's fiasco is justifiable, after all, this is not an intellectual game. "

Wang Dali was silent for a moment. He suddenly remembered that he had played this game before, and it seemed that his grades were not very good.

After all, the strength of human beings lies in intelligence. In terms of the reaction speed of the arms, it cannot be compared with many animals.

He glanced at Wen Renlong sympathetically, and thought, "Fortunately, I'm not stupid enough to compare my reaction speed with monkeys."

Zhang Li said with a smile: "The monkey seems to like this simple game of knocking, and he also has rewards for playing the game. Every time he hits a hamster, he will get pine nuts to eat. The positive feedback is very strong. Think about it on Mount Emei. Many monkeys beat people, not to mention gophers, in order to grab food."

After hearing this, Wang Dali felt more sympathy for Wen Renlong.

Wild monkeys dare to punch humans hard for food, and the monkeys in the laboratory naturally tried their best to play games for snack rewards.

Not to mention Wen Renlong, a crisp-skinned scholar who sits in an office, even if he were an e-sports player, it would be hard to tell the outcome.

Zhang Li thought for a while, and then added: "I read a piece of news, saying that in order to eat nuts, wild monkeys would take a stone and smash it hard, and then eat the fruit inside. Look at how hard the monkeys are to eat. They all use tools like humans.”

She covered her mouth and giggled: "Netizens say that these monkeys have entered the Stone Age."

"Hahaha~" Wang Dali grinned and laughed loudly.

"Ahem~" Chen Yiqing cleared his throat and said, "Okay, let's get back to the topic and continue talking about monkeys, no, about nerve activity."

"Here, I want to explain some neuroscience principles related to primates, including humans."

Chen Yiqing raised his arm, pressed the switch, turned the laser pointer on and off, and then said.

"Look at my hand. In order to achieve the purpose of the switch, the fingers will make pressing movements. Most people will definitely think that these movements are the brain directly controlling every nerve, and then manipulating all the muscles to complete the movements."

"Actually, not so."

"Humans, oh, should be the brains of all primates. Before making an action, they will think, conceive in the brain in advance the actions that the arm and hand muscles should complete, and then send a whole set of action programs to the nerves. system, communicated to the arm to complete these movements."

"Using a monkey as an analogy, when it is thinking about how to play this game, before the hand starts to move, the implanted micro-transmission line array has the priority to spy on the electrical signals in its cerebral cortex."

"You see, our brains are very smart, and they are well-deserved control centers, absolute dictators."

"The brain uses your daily behavior to know what movements your body must perform to accomplish a goal."

"It will conceive in advance, analyze each specific action, form a set of action programs, and then send out nerve electrical signals one by one, driving your body to complete all actions."

"It's also why the loss of the spinal cord, the center of connection between the brain and the body, leaves patients with complete paralysis."

"Because the body has lost the command of the brain, I can't do any small movements, and I don't know what to do."

"The muscle cells in your arm used to only need to execute the instructions of the brain, just turn and jump with eyes closed, but now there is no news, and it can't even distinguish between forward and backward."

"Of course, like some actions that are performed countless times a day, for the brain, a conditioned reflex has been formed, and it will run spontaneously, and it has been completed before you are conscious."

"Such as walking, eating, opening doors, getting out of bed, even driving."

"These are low-power maintenance behaviors for the brain, and they are done automatically without your brain."

"Whether you can't pass your brain, the principles of these two behaviors are the same. It's just that one is more obvious and the other is more subtle."

"In any case, these behaviors can be detected by neural signals."

"This is the neurological principle behind the brain-computer interface. As long as we detect the neural signals corresponding to the behavior and record them as a database, we can convert these biological signals into electromechanical signals, successfully drive mechanical devices, and make the same actions. "

These words were simple and clear, and Wang Dali understood them instantly.

He leaned back in his chair, enjoying the feeling of knowledge flowing through his brain, and said with an intoxicated expression, shaking his head.

"It's so well said that even a layman like me can understand it at once."

"I just realized today that there are so many similarities between the brain and the computer."

"The nervous system is like a circuit that runs throughout the body and controls the muscles of the body to make every movement."

"The computer is a controller with self-awareness. It even programmed its own control program, compiled it into electrical signals, and transmitted them to every part of the body through individual circuits."

"The legendary cyber robot is probably like this."

His eyes gradually became fanatical: "In fact, the principles behind the human body and the machine are the same, but the manifestations are different, and the biological system is much more complicated."

Suddenly, Wang Dali's keen sense of smell as a man of science and technology was touched, and he was keenly aware of the key point.

He suddenly raised his head, looked at Chen Yiqing, and asked a question.

"So, how do you convert raw brain activity into a digital signal?"

clap clap clap!
Chen Yiqing applauded enthusiastically: "Good question."

"That's the crux of it, and earlier, many people thought it was an insurmountable hurdle."

"Think about it, biological nerve signals and alternating current signals are fundamentally two different things. How can we switch freely between the two?"

"After a lot of hard work, the scientists found that..."

"In fact, the answer to the question is quite simple."

"The electrical signal of neurons is a kind of data. As long as it is data, I mean, any data, it can be counted and simulated by simple algorithms."

Having said that, Chen Yiqing looked at Wen Renlong and praised him greatly.

"This requires the ability of algorithms. With the help of Aaron, we have completed this work."

"Of course, the game he played for the monkey before was also the result of his programming. It can be said that Aaron has fully enjoyed the god-like treatment of being overthrown."

Wen Renlong had already shown a smug smile, but after hearing the next sentence, the smile instantly froze on his face.

Chen Yiqing continued to flip through the ppt, displaying the entire algorithm diagram on the screen.

"We used a multiple linear regression algorithm capable of linearly summarizing the simultaneous electrical activity of cortical neurons to accurately predict the position of the monkey's hand."

"The algorithm is able to determine the best way to measure the electrical activity of each neuron, and then sums these weights to produce a continuous motor output signal."

"At the same time, we also put a plastic band on the forearm of the monkey, which contains fiber optic sensors that can sense the movement of the monkey's arm."

"When the monkey moved the arm, we recorded the position of the wrist and compared that with the monkey's neuronal signaling at the start of each movement."

"In this way, one side is the prediction of the monkey's neuron signal to the arm movement, and the other side is the corresponding neuron signal when the monkey's arm moves."

"By comparing the two sets of data, we were able to derive a multivariate linear equation that describes the level of correlation between the neuronal signal and the monkey's arm movement."

"We can then improve the algorithm so that it can translate the neuron's electrical activity into a trajectory of action that changes over time."

"Moreover, after a long period of algorithm improvement, the coefficient value becomes more and more stable and reaches the optimal level."

"In a way, the algorithm is able to artificially recreate complex neurophysiological tasks normally performed by the spinal cord."

"After a lot of training, eventually these neural electrical signals can be used on a mechanical device to reconstruct the movement trajectory of the monkey's wrist, so as to realize the monkey's hand movement."

"The only regret is that this algorithm can only be used to predict motion parameters for the time being."

(End of this chapter)