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From page 76... ...
Some of these applications are already beginning to appear and may one day impact the intelligence and military communities. COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY APPLIED TO COGNITION, FUNCTIONAL NEUROIMAGING, GENOMICS, AND PROTEOMICS While computing is essentially ubiquitous in the fields of neuroscience and cognition, it can broadly be said to have impact in two areas.
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From page 77... ...
Morphologic data comes from quantitation of cells, phenotyping, and locating over time. Techniques that generate functional neuroimaging data include electroencephalography (EEG)
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From page 78... ...
However, neuroimaging analysis has been somewhat reluctant compared to other kinds of computations analysis to apply state-of-the-art scientific computing techniques. Significant breakthroughs might occur if massively parallel computing were applied to analyzing the neuroimaging data that currently exist, but there is still no significant effort to engage computational resources at such a scale to solve this problem.
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From page 79... ...
This would be a deceptive comparison, however, for the primary difficulty in building a model of the brain is not the lack of computational power but inadequate understanding of how to model in detail the neurophysiological, cognitive, and affective aspects of brain function. Despite tremendous advances in general understanding of how individual parts of the brain work and communicate among themselves, it is highly unlikely under current assumptions that research breakthroughs allowing a neurophysiologically plausible model of a whole brain will occur in the next two decades.
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From page 80... ...
The global scientific computing community is approaching an era in which high-end computing will, in principle, be sufficient in capacity and computational power to model the human brain. However, there does not yet exist either an adequate and detailed understanding of how such modeling can be done, or a complete model of how the brain interacts with complex regulatory and monitoring systems throughout the body.
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From page 81... ...
The genomics revolution has changed this picture remarkably. While the fundamental role of genes has been understood since the time of Mendel, the ability by scientists to decode individual genomes letter for letter has become a powerful tool for biology and neuroscience.
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From page 82... ...
Once significant genomic information is available about the general human population, as there will be in 20 years time, correlating genetic markers not only with intelligence but also with the ability to learn and be trained to perform a variety of specific physical and mental tasks will become a relatively straightforward exercise. 11 Such screening would allow the objective identification of the differential vulnerability of people to intense stress, sleep loss, drug effects, hypoxia, and d ehydration.
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From page 83... ...
Finally, as knowledge of these subjects grows, it may be possible to predict much more about individual abilities, capabilities, personality characteristics, and other traits from the genome; such information may be particularly useful to the intelligence community and the military.12 Distributed Human-Machine Systems Advances in neurophysiological and cognitive science research have fueled a surge of research aimed at more effectively combining human and machine capabilities. Results of this research could give human performance an edge at both the individual and group levels.
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From page 84... ...
• Cognitive and sensory prostheses. These technologies are designed to improve or extend human performance in the cognitive domain through sensory substitution and enhancement capabilities or by continually sensing operator state and providing transparent augmentation of operator capabilities.
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From page 85... ...
of human performance, it has not yet been established that BMI is superior to other methods of control of computing functions and robotic vehicles. Promising areas for continued BMI research include the control of robotic orthotics and the management of information flow to an individual based on changes in the user's cognitive state.
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From page 86... ...
While there are many applications for orthotic devices made for rehabilitative purposes (Krebs et al., 2004) , focus is on devices that have been designed to improve or extend human performance in the physical domain.
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From page 87... ...
. rapidly emerging as quantitatively functional equivalents to muscle tissue, and it is likely that the technological evolution of EAP muscles will soon outpace the natural functional evolution of living muscle tissue." That having been said, they note significant advantages to natural muscle tissue in hybrid biomechatronic prosthetic systems and implants.
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From page 88... ...
SOURCE: Reprinted with permission from Peter Neuhaus and the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition at the University of West Florida.
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From page 89... ...
and of appropriate BMIs for control and feedback. Cognitive and Sensory Prostheses These technologies aim to improve or extend human performance in the cognitive or sensory domain.
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One domain where these concepts are being applied is "sensory substitution." Specific areas of the brain (e.g., the visual cortex) receive information from specific sensory organs (e.g., the eyes)
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From page 91... ...
with appropriate sensory-motor feedback. This ability forms the basis for sensory substitution interfaces that use non-invasive and unobtrusive alternative sensory pathways to extend human sensory capabilities without interfering with existing sensory information processing (Bach-y-Rita and Kercel, 2003)
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, sensory substitution for night vision would not impede use of the eyes at night (left)
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From page 93... ...
, human display agents (visual, auditory, tactile) , and adaptive automation agents (say, assisting in the perfor 13 For additional information, please see the Augmented Cognition International Society Web site at http://www.augmentedcognition.org.
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From page 94... ...
Software and Robotic Assistants Many kinds of software and hardware (in the form of robotic assistants) are being designed in hope of improving or extending human performance in the physical and/or cognitive domains (Bradshaw, 1997; Lieberman, 2001; Murphy, 2000)
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From page 95... ...
While a machine that simulates a complete human brain would be useful, it would be almost as useful to have high-performing machines simulating replicas of different cognitive capabilities. For example, a machine-enabled visual cortex could save untold hours of manual labor spent studying images from satellites
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From page 96... ...
Others are more concerned with the practical engineering of useful intelligent systems through an eclectic mix of engineering know-how and an understanding of human intelligence. Yet others wish to enhance human performance by combining the strengths of humans and automation.
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From page 97... ...
PLOW displays an intelligence that springs from sophisticated natural language understanding, reasoning, learning, and acting capabilities unified within a collaborative agent architecture. • Robotic assistants respond to the growing use of unmanned systems in the military, whereby large numbers of heterogeneous unmanned ground, air, underwater, and surface vehicles work together, coordinated by a smaller number of human operators (Summey et al., 2001)
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From page 98... ...
Software and robotic assistants are designed to improve or extend human performance in the physical and cognitive domains. Much of the newer research has shifted from deliberation to doing, from reasoning to acting remotely.
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From page 99... ...
1972. Brain Mechanisms in Sensory Substitution.
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2003. Sensory substitution, limits and perspectives.
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From page 101... ...
2007. Augmented cognition and cognitive state assessment technology: Near-term, mid-term, and long-term research objectives.
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From page 102... ...
1999. Engineering Psychology and Human Performance, 3rd Edition.
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