Engineers attempting to improve either a WBE or a piece of neuromorphic tissue would have considerable advantages that are unavailable to medical teams working with actual brains and nerves.
Medical teams who work to repair spinal injuries are able to stimulate nerve fibers and trace the nerves into the brain. However, a vast set of experimental tools would be available to WBE or Neuromorphic Engineers.
These engineers would be able to write program which cause any specific neuron or group of neurons to fire at any time. They would be able to select the firing pattern for each, and the relative timing of a group of neurons.
They would be able to configure neurotransmitter output at will, and, importantly, they would also be able to set the number of neurotransmitter receptors on cell surfaces.
Altering the concentration of cell surface receptors would, for example, allow the neuromorphic tissue engineers to greatly influence what stimuli are pleasurable. They would be able to set patterns for these cell surface receptors which never occur in the natural course of gene expression in the brain.
We have already done a fair amount of mapping of the neural basis of pain and pleasure. Forthcoming in the next ten years, we will also have results from NIH’s human connectome project. Neuromorphic tisssue engineers will begin their work with vast resources of data on the generation of pain and pleasure, the purpose and use of these sensations.
If they had either a WBE, or a differently-configured piece of neural tissue available to them, seemingly they would have a strong ability to re-wire what causes pain and pleasure in order to suit their needs.
Such techniques alone could allow a WBE to cross the line from an accurate representation of a human mind to something fundamentally different.
Engineers attempting to improve either a WBE or a piece of neuromorphic tissue would have considerable advantages that are unavailable to medical teams working with actual brains and nerves.
Medical teams who work to repair spinal injuries are able to stimulate nerve fibers and trace the nerves into the brain. However, a vast set of experimental tools would be available to WBE or Neuromorphic Engineers.
These engineers would be able to write program which cause any specific neuron or group of neurons to fire at any time. They would be able to select the firing pattern for each, and the relative timing of a group of neurons.
They would be able to configure neurotransmitter output at will, and, importantly, they would also be able to set the number of neurotransmitter receptors on cell surfaces.
Altering the concentration of cell surface receptors would, for example, allow the neuromorphic tissue engineers to greatly influence what stimuli are pleasurable. They would be able to set patterns for these cell surface receptors which never occur in the natural course of gene expression in the brain.
We have already done a fair amount of mapping of the neural basis of pain and pleasure. Forthcoming in the next ten years, we will also have results from NIH’s human connectome project. Neuromorphic tisssue engineers will begin their work with vast resources of data on the generation of pain and pleasure, the purpose and use of these sensations.
If they had either a WBE, or a differently-configured piece of neural tissue available to them, seemingly they would have a strong ability to re-wire what causes pain and pleasure in order to suit their needs.
Such techniques alone could allow a WBE to cross the line from an accurate representation of a human mind to something fundamentally different.