Tag Archives: Kyle Munkittrick

Magic, science, and neuro

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This latest news from the University of Leicester brings to mind Arthur C. Clarke’s famous (and overused) quote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” From the Mar. 12, 2013 news item on ScienceDaily,

A magician is using his knowledge of magic theory and practice to investigate the brain’s powers of observation.

Hugo Caffaratti, engineer and semi-professional magician from Barcelona, Spain, has embarked on a PhD with the University of Leicester’s Centre for Systems Neuroscience.

Hugo has 12 years of experience working with magic — specialising in card tricks — and is a member of the Spanish Society of Illusionism (SEI-ACAI).

The engineer also has a longstanding interest in neuroscience and bioengineering, having taken a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering at University of Barcelona.

He hopes to combine his two interests in his PhD thesis project, which covers a new field of Cognitive Neuroscience:Neuro-Magic.

The University of Leicester Mar. 11, 2013 press release, which originated the news item, goes on to reveal that Caffaratti’s study is about observation and choice,

As part of his work, he will investigate how our brains perceive what actually happens before our eyes – and how our attention can be drawn away from important details.

He also plans to study “forced choice” – a tool often used by magicians where we are fooled into thinking we have made a free choice.

Among other experiments, Hugo will ask participants to watch videos of card trick performances, while sitting in front of an eye-tracker device.

This will allow him to monitor where our attention is focused during illusions – and how our brain can be deceived when our eyes miss the whole picture.

Hugo said: “I have always been interested in the study of the brain. It is amazing to be involved in the process of combining the disciplines of neuroscience and magic.

“I am really interested in the fields of decision making and forced-choice. It is incredible that many times a day we make a decision and feel free. We do not realise that we have been forced to make that decision.

“I am constructing an experiment to study what happens when we make forced decisions – to try and find the reasons for it. I am thinking about which kinds of tricks I know could be useful to give more insights about brain function.”

He will work under the tutelage of Professor Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, director of the Centre for Systems Neuroscience.

I am intrigued by Quian Quiroga’s perspective on this work,

Professor Rodrigo Quian Quiroga said: “I am very interested in connections between science and the arts. Last year, for example, we organized an art and science exhibition as a result of a 1-year rotation in my lab of visual artist Mariano Molina. Hugo’s PhD will look at decision-making and attention – and although he is doing his first steps in neuroscience, I think he already has a lot of expertise in this area based on his training as a magician.

“Magic theory has thousands of years of experience. Magicians have been answering similar questions that we have in the lab, and they have an intuitive knowledge of how the mind works. Hugo will likely bring a fresh new view on how to address questions we deal with in neuroscience.”

Happily, Caffaratti plans to continue as a magician while he studies,

Hugo is also keen to carry on with his work in magic while studying for his PhD, and is hoping to perform in bars in Leicester while staying here.

He has also applied for membership with The Magic Circle – a prestigious magic society of London. He will have to sit exams to prove his magical mettle in order to join the exclusive club.

Hopefully one of these days I’ll get to Leicester and have a chance to Caffaratti in action at a bar. Perhaps I’ll be able to recognize him from this image,

L-R: Professor Quian Quiroga, Director of the Centre for Systems Neuroscience, with PhD student and semi-professional magician Hugo Caffaratti. [downloaded from http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2013/march/neuro-magic-magician-uses-magic-tricks-to-study-the-brain2019s-powers-of-perception-and-memory]

L-R: Professor Quian Quiroga, Director of the Centre for Systems Neuroscience, with PhD student and semi-professional magician Hugo Caffaratti. [downloaded from http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2013/march/neuro-magic-magician-uses-magic-tricks-to-study-the-brain2019s-powers-of-perception-and-memory]

For anyone who’s intrigued by Clarke’s quote and its overuse, there’s a good May 9, 2011 essay by Kyle Munkittrick about the movie Thor, magic, and science on the Science not Fiction Discover magazine blog,

If you haven’t seen it yet, Thor is a ridiculous and entertaining superhero spectacle. All the leads did a great job, particularly Hopkins as Odin. If you can take a man seriously when he’s standing on a rainbow bridge wearing a gold-plate eyepatch, he’s doing something right. Kenneth Branagh’s interpretation of Asgard was visually overwhelming, but weirdly believable.

The reason? Branagh leans heavily on the magi-tech rule of Arthur C. Clarke, which Natalie Portman’s character quotes in the film, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” So what is the difference between really-really advanced technology and actual magic? Sean Carroll, who did some science advising for the film, clears the idea up a bit: …

… Clarke’s rule of magical tech helps create some of that consistency. I both love and loathe Clarke for that statement. Love because it strikes at the heart of what technology is: a way for humans to do things previously believed not just implausible, but impossible. Loathe because it creates an infinite caveat for lazy authors and screenwriters.

So there you have it: two approaches to science and magic.

Rats with robot brains

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A robotic cerebellum has been implanted into a rat’s skull. From the Oct. 4, 2011 news item on Science Daily,

With new cutting-edge technology aimed at providing amputees with robotic limbs, a Tel Aviv University researcher has successfully implanted a robotic cerebellum into the skull of a rodent with brain damage, restoring its capacity for movement.

The cerebellum is responsible for co-ordinating movement, explains Prof. Matti Mintz of TAU’s [Tel Aviv University] Department of Psychology. When wired to the brain, his “robo-cerebellum” receives, interprets, and transmits sensory information from the brain stem, facilitating communication between the brain and the body. To test this robotic interface between body and brain, the researchers taught a brain-damaged rat to blink whenever they sounded a particular tone. The rat could only perform the behavior when its robotic cerebellum was functional.

This is the third item I’ve found in the last few weeks about computer chips being implanted in brains. I found the other two items in a discussion about extreme human enhancement on Slate.com (first mentioned in my Sept. 15, 2011 posting). One of the Brad Allenby [the other two discussants are Nicholas Agar and Kyle Munkittrick] entries (posted Sept. 16, 2011) featured these two references,

Experiments that began here at Arizona State University and have been continued at Duke and elsewhere have involved monkeys learning to move mechanical arms to which they are wirelessly connected as if they were part of themselves, using them effectively even when the arms (but not the monkey) are shifted up to MIT and elsewhere. More recently, monkeys with chips implanted in their brains [2008 according to the video on the website] at Duke University have kept a robot wirelessly connected to their chip running in Japan. Similar technologies are being explored to enable paraplegics and other injured people to interact with their environments and to communicate effectively, as well. The upshot is that “the body” is becoming more than just a spatial presence; rather, it becomes a designed extended cognitive network.

The projects are almost mirror images of each other. The rat can’t move without input from its robotic cerebellum while the monkeys control the robots’ movement with their thoughts. From the Oct. 3, 2011 news release on Eureka Alert,

According to the researcher, the chip is designed to mimic natural neuronal activity. “It’s a proof of the concept that we can record information from the brain, analyze it in a way similar to the biological network, and then return it to the brain,” says Prof. Mintz, who recently presented his research at the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence meeting in Cambridge, UK.

In reading these items, I can’t help but remember that plastic surgery was a means of helping soldiers with horrendous wounds and it has now become part of the cosmetics industry. Given that history, it is possible to imagine (or to assume) that these brain ‘repairs’ could be used to augment or reshape our brains to increase intelligence, heighten senses, improve motor coordination, etc. In short. to accomplish very different goals than those originally set out.

Human enhancement, brains, and transhumanism: what does nano have to do with it?

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A Sept. 14, 2011 conversation on Slate.com about Extreme Human Enhancement started with this provocative title, Should We Use Nanotech, Genetics, Pharmaceuticals, and Augmentations To Go Above and Beyond Our Biology? The official discussants are Kyle Munkittrick, Brad Allenby, and Nicholas Agar. Here’s a little more about Kyle, Brad, and Nicholas, from page one of the the Slate discussion,

Nicholas Agar is an associate professor at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. He is the author, among other things, of Humanity’s End: Why We Should Reject Radical Enhancement (2010) and Liberal Eugenics: In Defense of Human Enhancement (2004).

Brad Allenby is the Lincoln professor of engineering and ethics; a professor of civil, environmental, and sustainable engineering; and the founding director of the Center for Earth Systems Engineering and Management at Arizona State University. He is co-author with Daniel Sarewitz of The Techno-Human Condition.

Kyle Munkittrick is a bioethicist and a program director at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology. He blogs at Pop Bioethics and Discover magazine’s Science Not Fiction. [Note: I have made some formatting changes.]

Nanotechnology and the other technologies are mentioned in passing, the focus of the discussion is ‘should we or shouldn’t we enhance ourselves’ along with some comments as to whether or not humans have a biological imperative to create and apply technology to the planet and to ourselves.

This Slate discussion is a way of publicizing a Future Tense event in Washington, DC being held today, Sept. 15, 2011.

This conversation is part of a Future Tense, a partnership between Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State. On Thursday, Sept. 15, Future Tense will be hosting an event in Washington, D.C., on the boundaries between humans and machines, “Is Our Techno-Human Marriage in Need of Counseling?” [I removed the RSVP]

You can watch the livestreamed event here.

Coincidentally, Brain Gear is opening today. From the host’s (University of Groningen in The Netherlands) website page,

BRAIN GEAR, A conference in Groningen on September 15 and 16.
Neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, regulators and artists discuss the available and emerging technologies to repair and enhance the brain.

Professor Andy Miah, one of the invited speakers at Brain Gear, has made his presentation, Neurodevices for the Posthuman Mind,  available for viewing at Prezi.

I find all this quite exciting given my paper, Whose electric brain? about memristors, artificial synapses, and cognitive entanglement. I have currently raised $460 towards my presentation at ISEA 2011 (International Symposium Electronic Arts). Thank you to everyone who has given funds toward my dream at DreamBank.