Tiny Machines Monitor the Body

March 15, 2013 - Researchers at the AAAS Annual Meeting touted the benefits of several tiny machines used to monitor the body, such as an “electronic tattoo” the size of a postage stamp and thickness of a human hair that monitors laboring women and seizure-prone infants. Developed by Todd Coleman of the University of California, San Diego, it provides a non-invasive way to track electrical rhythms. Another apparatus, developed by Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University Medical Center and colleagues, allows rats to “feel” infrared light by stimulating the tactile center in their brains.

Devices like these could have remarkable benefits, researchers said, but they may also lead to ethical, legal and social issues that will need to be addressed as technology progresses.

Speakers in the session on brain-machine interfaces, organized by AAAS’ Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion (DoSER) program, suggested that extreme examples of cyborgs or people endowed with superhuman abilities from machines are far from reality. But neuroscience applications, in particular, are moving along faster than other technologies like genetic engineering in the quest to build a better human.

Martha Farah, who directs the Center for Neuroscience and Society at the University of Pennsylvania, warned that the technologies may bring other worries: Will only the rich and connected be able to take advantage of cutting-edge devices? Will our private thoughts be compromised? Will hackers ever be able to control our thoughts through these new interfaces?

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