Cognitive Nanorobots for Pathology Resoulution and Enhancement

One way to think of cognitive nanorobots is as a subset of medical nanorobots, meaning nanorobots for use in the body related to medical purposes, in this case, neural processes. Nanorobots are tiny computing machines at the nanoscale that can perform a variety of operations within the human body and beyond.

In the strictest sense, nanorobots are still conceptual: the Oxford English Dictionary definition of nanorobots (nanobots) is hypothetical very small (nanoscale) self-propelled machines, especially ones that have some degree of autonomy and can reproduce. While this definition that includes autonomy and reproducibility is one for the farther future, in reality there are a number of nanoscale inorganic objects that have already been in use in the body for some time in a variety of medical applications. So far, the activity scope of these nano-objects has been pathology resolution, but the same kinds of techniques and characterization of the underlying biological processes could be explored for enhancement purposes.

The most developed area of nanomedicine is nanoparticle drug delivery (designed particles that disgorge cargo in cellular destinations per simple onboard logic instructions) and other therapeutic techniques, followed by nano-diagnostics, and nano-imaging (like quantum dot imaging) (Boysen 2014). Some of the more recent interesting applications are nanosponge waste soak-up and biomimetic detoxification (Hu 2013), optogenetics (controlling the brain with light) (Klapoetke 2014), and neural dust brain sensors that might be able to read whole sections of brain activity externally (Seo 2013). The current status of the development of neural nanomedicine is well covered in the scientific literature (Provenzale 2010, Kateb 2013, Schulz 2009, Mavroidis 2014, and Boehm 2013).

Thinking in the longer-term, Robert Freitas has designed several classes of medical nanorobots such as respirocytes, clottocytes, vasculoids, and microbivores that could perform a variety of biophysical clean-up, maintenance, and augmentation functions in the body (Freitas 2003). One example of neural nanorobotic clean-up is autonomous diamondoid “defuscin” class nanodevices. These are conceptual nanodevices designed to eliminate the residual lipofuscin waste granules in lysosomes (the ‘trash compactor’ of the cell) that the body cannot fully digest.

References:
Boehm, F. (2013). Nanomedical Device and Systems Design: Challenges, Possibilities, Visions. New York, NY: CRC Press, especially Chapter 17: Nanomedicine in Regenerative Biosystems, Human Augmentation, and Longevity, 654-722.
Boysen, E. (2014). Nanotechnology in Medicine – Nanomedicine. UnderstandingNano.com. Retrieved from http://www.understandingnano.com/medicine.html.
Freitas, R., Jr. (2003). Nanomedicine, Vol. IIA: Biocompatibility. Austin, TX: Landes Bioscience.
Kateb, B. & Heiss, J.D. (Eds). (2013). The Textbook of Nanoneuroscience and Nanoneurosurgery. New York, NY: CRC Press.
Klapoetke, N.C., Murata, Y., Kim, S.S., Pulver, S.R., Birdsey-Benson, A., et al. (2014). Independent Optical Excitation of Distinct Neural Populations. Nature Methods, 11, 338–346.
Mavroidis, C. (2014). Nano-Robotics in Medical Applications: From Science Fiction to Reality, Northeastern University. Retrieved from http://www.albany.edu/selforganization/presentations/2-mavroidis.pdf.
Provenzale, J.M. & Mohs, A.M. (2010). Nanotechnology in Neurology: Current Status and Future Possibilities. US Neurology, 6(1), 12-17.
Seo, D., Carmena, J.M., Rabaey, J.M., Alon, E., Maharbiz, M.M. (2013). Neural Dust: An Ultrasonic, Low Power Solution for Chronic Brain-Machine Interfaces. arXiv, 1307.2196 [q-bio.NC]. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.2196.
Schulz, M.J., Shanov, V.N., Yun, Y. (Eds.). (2009). Nanomedicine Design of Particles, Sensors, Motors, Implants, Robots, and Devices. New York, NY: Artech House.

Correcting Cognitive Bias with Nanocognition, Machine Ethics Interfaces, and an Ethics of Reality

Along with the potential future possibility of changing our perceptual apparatus through nanocognition (nanorobot-aided cognition), comes an increased awareness of the many ways in which we are currently biased due to evolution and sociality.

There is the level of basic biology where nature’s evolutionary requirements filter, order, and hierarchialize the overwhelming amount of input data before it is routed to our cognitive circuits. Likewise, culture and society put a lens on our perception from an individual and group dynamics perspective in the form of attunement to power relations, social conditioning, status-garnering, mate selection, and gender-performing.

With the creation of machine ethics interfaces, we could have the ability to adjust for these built-in biases. It could be possible to choose different kinds of perceptual realities, and this then implies that there should be a philosophical consideration of an Ethics of Reality. An ethics of reality can address questions like: even if we can obtain access to some sort of objective external reality, is it more ethical to see raw reality the way we do now with evolutionary biases or is it more ethical to see a bias-corrected version? One imaginable result is the construction of a transhumanist viewpoint that it is unethical to experience raw reality because it is inhumane, unproductive, or perceptually harmful.

YouTube Video: Machine Ethics Interfaces

Nanocognition Series:

Ethics of Perception and Nanocognition (Nanorobot-aided Cognition)

Killer Apps of Cognitive Nanorobotics

 

What are Cognitive Nanorobots?

Cognitive nanorobots are an extension of the more familiar idea of medical nanorobots.

Medical nanorobots are a range of medical solutions using nanoscale electronics. Medical nanorobots span the continuum from nanoparticles in current pharmaceutical use that disgorge cargo in cellular destinations per simple onboard logic instructions to optically-stimulated channelrhodopsin proteins for real-time live biological intervention to the more elaborate conceptualization of many species of future medical nanorobots such as respirocytes, clottocytes, vasculoids, and microbivores that could perform a variety of biophysical clean-up, maintenance, and augmentation functions in the body.

In the most basic sense, cognitive nanorobots are the analog to medical nanorobots, nanorobots deployed in the specific context of facilitating, aiding, and improving the processes of cognition like perception and memory, a sort of NanoNeuroProsthetics.

Cognition is just another biological function, a process that can possibly be identified, managed, and ameliorated. Robert Freitas in the Nanomedicine text books has already begun to explore the issue of nanorobot biocompatibility with neural cells, and outlined the different levels of concern and response for them: mechanical, physiological, immunological, cytological, and biochemical.

In summary, one initial way to consider and classify cognitive nanorobots is as a special case of medical nanorobots.

More: YouTube Video, Presentation

Economics 2.0 Unbounded Upside: Pay-Forward Debit Karma Society

Unbounded upside is a concept applicable to future economics and the economy 2.0, but also the whole future more generally.

So far, in much our human endeavor, we have been oriented around a baseline and the goal of maintaining, achieving, or re-achieving that baseline, completely ignoring all of the possible outcomes on the positive side of the base line.

In finance and credit, loans are made, and the best anyone can hope for is to regain baseline, to have all of the monies repaid, or to achieve an as perfect as possible credit score.

We do not even have terminology for the conceptual opposite of credit, but what would a society based on debit, positive credit, or paid-forward karma look like? 

One vision is considering that in our societies, the financial surplus and resources already exist, and could be apportioned away from bureaucratic programs to instead pay-forward every person a sustainable living allowance each month or year. This would shift the focus to unbounded upside as everyone wonders what can they do not what they have to do for survival.

Regaining baseline is also the paradigm in other areas such as medicine and psychology: cure is returning a pathology to baseline, not going beyond baseline to improved wellness, enhancement, or future prevention. The advent of new fields such as Positive Psychology in the 2000s helps to expose the pervasive baseline mentality and potential expansions therefrom.

As it has been easier and more obvious to focus on reductionist practices in science, so too has been easy and a clear view to focus on the territory below baseline because it is a bounded defined area, whereas above baseline is open and unbounded, in other words, pure opportunity in the most Deleuzian and Bergsonian sense.

Cognitive and social enhancement tools

Computer software and the internet have long been cognitive enhancement tools. Spellchecker obviated the need for spelling skills. Wikipedia and the internet obviated the need for fact memorization. There is less reason to earn a PhD if the module might be available as a cognitive plug-in within a few years.

The need to speak foreign languages is reduced with Google Translate for Android.

Social networks like Facebook are acting as a social prosthetic. It is now possible to have a massively larger context-driven social apparatus with deep-interest specificity.

Accessing, assimilating, applying, and interacting around knowledge and information has become the critical 21c skill set.

Human morphology-changing technologies

To date, most technology has been human-created. It can be grouped into two categories, technologies that are not likely to have an immediate direct impact on human morphology, and those that might.

Technologies that would likely not change human morphology
There could be the rapid advent of significantly more dramatic technologies than have been experienced to date. While these new technologies could change some aspects of life, human biological drives could remain unchanged, and therefore the structure and dynamics of human societal organization, interaction, and goal pursuit could also remain unchanged. Some examples of these advances could include the realization of molecular nanotechnology, quantum computing, cold fusion, and immortality. Even with several of these revolutionary technologies implemented, the seemingly different world would not actually be structurally different if humanity is still ordered around the same familiar biologically-driven goals.

Technologies that might change human morphology
The other group of technologies is those which could possibly have a near-term impact on the structure and form of what it means to be human, for example, cognitive augmentation, genomic therapies, and synthetic biology. The area with the greatest possible change is improving human mental capability. There have been several significant advances in a variety of neurology-related fields in the last few years that if ultimately realized, could potentially alter human morphology. Even the resolution of all mental pathologies such as Parkinson’s disease, depression, stroke rehabilitation, and addiction would constitute morphological change at a basic level. Augmenting cognition and deliberately managing biophysical states would constitute morphological change at other levels.

Mental enhancement through neuroimaging

In The Neuro Revolution, Zack Lynch contends that there is a coming revolution in neuroimaging technology that could be on the same order as the industrial revolution and the information revolution.

1. Neuroimaging for truth detection
Perhaps the most important application area for neuroimaging is truth detection. According to Joel Huizenga, CEO of NoLieMRI, the annual worldwide market is $36 billion for truth verification. The U.S. government does 40,000 lie detection tests per day, and the Supreme Court acceptance standard is results that have a 95% chance of accuracy. Businesses buy 400,000 tests per year, some of which only have 50% accuracy. FMRIs are much better lie detectors than current tests. Mechanically, more blood goes to other parts of the brain which are related to deception when someone is lying. Explicit lie detection is one demand area but truth verification is much broader. The notion of brain fingerprinting can be used to detect the presence or absence of information in the brain, for example testing knowledge of crime scene details.

2. Neuroimaging for mental illness assessment and rehabilitation
A second important application area for neuroimaging is mental illness identification and rehabilitation. A government-sponsored survey published in 2005 found that almost half of Americans meet the criteria for a mental illness at some point in their lives, and that 25% met the criteria for having a mental illness within the past year. The categories of mental illness assessed were anxiety disorders (panic, post-traumatic stress disorders); mood disorders (major depression, bipolar disease); impulse control disorders (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder); and substance abuse.

In 1990 there were 1.1 million people in U.S. prisons; sixteen years later, in 2006, the number had nearly doubled to 2.1 million. There is a high rate of drug abuse in individuals who are arrested for crime in cities. One claim is that many are self-treating a mental condition (any variety of unproductive mental states) with the primitive tools of drugs and alcohol. 30% of state offenders and 40% of federal offenders are brought on drug charges. Further, a significant percent of inmates have some sort of brain damage or suboptimal brain issue. In the long term, it might be possible to identify and automatically rehabilitate these issues in both at-risk populations and the populace as a whole to improve ongoing mental health.

Conclusions
For fMRI usage to become widespread and routine, there would need to be improvements in several areas including cost, user experience, science findings, and clinical use. However, over time, the wider use of neuroimaging could potentially have a significant impact on human interaction and mental health. There could be interesting cultural changes if there is progress towards a truth-based culture where deception is known and improved levels of mental wellness are sustained across the populace.

Next big VC market: life extension?

Life extension is a growing market and could be the next significant industry targeted by Venture Capitalists and private investment as alternative energy and clean tech eventually wane. The opportunity is made obvious by continuous soaring costs in the world’s largest industry, healthcare, unfunded Medicare type liabilities in every industrialized country, and the demographic aging of populations and below replacement fertility rates together with massive demand and willingness to spend on longevity remedies.

What is the Life Extension Market?
The life extension market is the commercialization of scientific findings from stem cell, immunology, cancer, regenerative medicine and other areas of research. The research linkage between products and research will hopefully become stronger and more standardized. For example, many longevity remedies available today claim scientific support. This research could and should be linked to the products online (23andme is a nice example of research linkage) so consumers and other interested parties can research the products themselves. Bloggers and other independent intermediary watchdogs could synthesize the scientific research and confirm or deny the product claims.

Longevity Docs Needed
It is not clear that traditional physicians will be those prescribing longevity remedies. Specialist longevity docs are needed and will likely arise and market themselves as such, there are a few examples of this today. Most traditional physicians do not currently have expertise in new areas such as longevity and personalized genomics, or the enhancement and prevention vs. cure mindset.

Supplements, Hormones and Enzymes
The first step in life extension treatments is supplements, ranging from a daily multivitamin to the 200 or more supplements per day taken by futurist Ray Kurzweil. The next step is hormone and enzyme replacement therapies, which must generally be overseen by a physician. A variety of treatments have been undertaken per the shifting legal climate, not everyone wanting to be restored to the hormonal levels of their twenties and other reasons.

Longevity Social Network
It would be great to have a health social network (HSN), like PatientsLikeMe and CureTogether for the longevity community. First, people could share the different interventions they are trying. Second, they could upload their ongoing bio-marker test data into an aggregated electronic health record, similar to what Google Health is contemplating, to track and possibly share the impact of the interventions. Third, companies with research and therapies targeting this market could contact an aggregated group to propose field studies, clinical trials and offerings. For example, the 23andme Parkinson’s community has been contacted for such research.

MindModding

Many human characteristics are normally distributed including height, weight, intelligence, nose size, irritability, friendliness, compassion and hormone levels.

If people could choose…
If individuals were given the ability to choose the settings of their personal characteristics and analytes by using an analog of the Edit Preferences menu slider, either on a one-time or ongoing basis, what would they be likely to do? Would most people opt to stay the same, move closer to the median or experiment by selecting an outlier position?

The drive to normalize, people choose brown…

Despite the current demonizing and illegality of human enhancement in athletics, the practice is widespread. In other venues, there are also observable examples of the embracement of mindmodding and Stephen Jay Gould seems to be wrong again, this time in the claim that the median is not the message. Where selection possibilities exist, so far individuals have been reaching for the deep herd in the middle of the bell curve, often acquiescing unthinkingly to corporate marketing.

1. Hormone replacement therapy
Prescriptions continue to increase for both estrogen replacement therapy and testosterone replacement therapy despite medical studies indicating increased heart disease and other risks for women and no realized physical benefit of testosterone therapies for men. As they have for eons, people will pay for and take health risks to “enhance” their physical state to some perceived ideal, even when contradictory medical evidence exists.

It seems likely that more hormone management therapies with improved risk and efficacy profiles will be offered over time. One example is those of Dr. Louann Brizendine’s Women's Mood and Hormone Clinic at UCSF which are focused on ongoing state management for all ages. Hormone management such as continually suppressed menstruation can be useful in normalizing personal levels during the course of the day, week or month, diminishing rather than enhancing the effects of hormones.

Distinctly different flavors of anti-aging can be envisioned: the disastrous scenario of senescent male heads of state running around with the testosterone levels of 20 year olds hastening existential risk for all of humanity contrasted against the beneficent scenario of Aubrey de Grey’s mitochondrial DNA mutation restoration, Alzheimer’s plaque remediation biotechnology and other SENS approaches.

2. Virtual Worlds
Another example of what people actually do when given the opportunity to modify physical characteristics is visible in the thousands of avatars residing in the virtual world Second Life. All aspects of avatar representation can be modified, however, a huge cluster of brown (e.g.; average) can be seen in the age, height and muscle tone of avatars, with a much smaller cluster for furries and a few longtail outliers for unique appearance.

Should people be allowed to choose…
As long as personal characteristic modification is not injurious of the self or others, it would be difficult to conclude other than that it is an acceptable personal freedom. The only tempering aspect seems to be the usual income dispersion argument as only higher income tiers can initially afford these therapies as they are not covered by insurance. The world of the future will probably be like virtual worlds, with setting modification built into or adjunct to physical corporeality.

Is there any role for regulation?
What if someone wanted to play with a very high aggression setting? People can actually do this now except that cultural and societal norms prevent more divergent behavior. In fact, the ability to manage chemical and personality settings would vastly improve communicating with others and being productive in a group setting for some people. What about experimenting with and getting stuck in a lethal cocktail of depression, low esteem and remorse? Default resets would probably kick in before real harm could occur and these types of experiments could be interesting virtual reality experiences for individuals and a useful neurological tool for researchers.

Cure vs. enhancement and the evolving health system
A fundamental change is occurring as the role of the medical industry and medical professional is shifting from curing health impairments to providing enhancements. As enhancement therapies proliferate, there is a clear opportunity for new fields of enhancement counseling, customizing and habituation training to develop.