Biomimetic rehabilitation engineering: the importance of somatosensory feedback for brain-machine interfaces.

Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) re-establish communication channels between the nervous system and an external device. The use of BMI technology has generated significant developments in rehabilitative medicine, promising new ways to restore lost sensory-motor functions. However and despite high-caliber basic research, only a few prototypes have successfully left the laboratory and are currently home-deployed. The failure of this laboratory-to-user transfer likely relates to the absence of BMI solutions for providing naturalistic feedback about the consequences of the BMI's actions. To overcome this limitation, nowadays cutting-edge BMI advances are guided by the principle of biomimicry; i.e. the artificial reproduction of normal neural mechanisms. Here, we focus on the importance of somatosensory feedback in BMIs devoted to reproducing movements with the goal of serving as a reference framework for future research on innovative rehabilitation procedures. First, we address the correspondence between users' needs and BMI solutions. Then, we describe the main features of invasive and non-invasive BMIs, including their degree of biomimicry and respective advantages and drawbacks. Furthermore, we explore the prevalent approaches for providing quasi-natural sensory feedback in BMI settings. Finally, we cover special situations that can promote biomimicry and we present the future directions in basic research and clinical applications. The continued incorporation of biomimetic features into the design of BMIs will surely serve to further ameliorate the realism of BMIs, as well as tremendously improve their actuation, acceptance, and use

Unmasking Mecha Identities; Visual Media Perspectives on Posthumanism in Japanese Popular Culture

Current Japanese animation has shifted to present posthumanism as a formative tool towards the establishment of personal identity, rather than simply a utopian dream, or a nightmare of fear, which is in contrast with prior works of Japanese visual and print science fiction from the 1930\u27s to 1990\u27s, which depicted posthumanity as, at the least, ambiguous or even destructive towards human identity; this shift can be seen beginning with Japan\u27s earliest science fiction works and is suggestive of a gradual acceptance and integration of the mechanical into the self. Analysis of posthumanity in popular media in other parts of the word, namely the United States, shows posthumanism from a polarizing perspective of either, uncertainty and fear, or idealist fantasy, which suggest that America has yet to establish the same level of conceptual paradigm which has been achieved by the Japanese in the 21st century. From this analysis, it would seem as though the general trend of acceptance and affinity for posthumanity could be represented by an ascending linearity, the general trend is that humanity, especially Japan, is moving closer and closer to robots and identification with them as identity forming tools. This trend suggests a paradigm shift where ideological and cultural constructs are helping to move humans and machines closer together. As opposed to most of the work that has been done in the study of animé, this thesis is an attempt to analyze new animé narratives which have had very little exposure in terms of academic study. It is not simply about putting robots, machines, or mecha on a pedestal, but is rather meant to decode the shifting portrayal of robots within popular culture and then try to understand how these shifts differ across borders, from the United States to Japan

Human Enhancement Technologies and Our Merger with Machines

A cross-disciplinary approach is offered to consider the challenge of emerging technologies designed to enhance human bodies and minds. Perspectives from philosophy, ethics, law, and policy are applied to a wide variety of enhancements, including integration of technology within human bodies, as well as genetic, biological, and pharmacological modifications. Humans may be permanently or temporarily enhanced with artificial parts by manipulating (or reprogramming) human DNA and through other enhancement techniques (and combinations thereof). We are on the cusp of significantly modifying (and perhaps improving) the human ecosystem. This evolution necessitates a continuing effort to re-evaluate current laws and, if appropriate, to modify such laws or develop new laws that address enhancement technology. A legal, ethical, and policy response to current and future human enhancements should strive to protect the rights of all involved and to recognize the responsibilities of humans to other conscious and living beings, regardless of what they look like or what abilities they have (or lack). A potential ethical approach is outlined in which rights and responsibilities should be respected even if enhanced humans are perceived by non-enhanced (or less-enhanced) humans as “no longer human” at all

Signal processing and machine learning methods with applications in EEG-based emotion recognition

Automatic emotion recognition has become increasingly popular, with applications in marketing, advertising, e-learning, entertainment, and more. Currently, the majority of automated emotion recognition is performed using facial expressions, body language, and speech intonation patterns. In recent years, using brain signals has become increasing popular. Being able to understand and analyse brain signals is beneficial in many applications. The goal of this thesis is to develop an effective method for extracting and representing EEG signals associated with human emotions, and to develop a robust classifier using machine learning tools for emotion recognition. The thesis aims to address the common problems related to the EEG-based emotion recognition datasets, including dealing with small sample sizes, low signal-to-noise-ratio and high dimensional data. The contributions of this thesis lie in the proposed subject-dependent and subject-independent EEG-based emotion recognition frameworks. These frameworks are shown to accurately perform two-class classification as well as multi-class classification. In addition, a novel mutual information based signal reduction algorithm is introduced, aiming to increase the accuracy of EEG-based emotion recognition when the duration of the recording due to chosen stimuli is long. Furthermore, Gaussian Process classification is introduced for the purpose of EEG-based emotion recognition. This classifier is combined with the subject-dependent and subject-independent emotion recognition schemes and is shown to increase the accuracy when compared to the previous commonly used classifiers. By using publicly available EEG datasets, the proposed novel frameworks are evaluated and shown to improve the EEG-based emotion recognition when compared against state-of-the-art methods. In addition, different signal processing methods suitable for EEG-based emotion recognition are introduced, explored, and analysed. An in-depth comparison of different feature extraction, feature selection, and classification methods is given using the proposed subject-dependent and subject-independent emotion recognition schemes

Enhancement umano: un dibattito in corso

Non è un caso che l’enhancement umano, cioè il potenziamento di capacità fisiche, cognitive ed emotive degli esseri umani con l’ausilio di tecnologie, sia diventato un tema centrale nei dibattiti etico-applicativi e nei tentativi contemporanei di arrivare a una comprensione più adeguata della natura umana. In esso si incontrano quesiti decisamente ricchi e complessi, sia dal punto di vista tecnoscientifico e medico sia da quello filosofico – e lo fanno in un modo che ci permette di vedere questi quesiti sotto una nuova luce. Il numero raccoglie alcune voci italiane, tedesche, inglesi e statunitensi su diversi aspetti della problematica dell’enhancement umano. Tra le tematiche discusse troviamo il potenziamento genetico, le dimensioni etiche dell’enhancement, la relazione uomo-tecnologia, il cosiddetto enhancement morale, la relazione tra enhancement ed eugenetica, la distinzione tra potenziamento e terapia e la rilevanza delle neuroscienze per lo sviluppo futuro delle bio-tecnologie, della medicina e dell’etica

Privacy and Brain-Computer Interfaces

The research described in this thesis draws on three distinct fields: privacy, brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), and critical theory (specifically, Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action). There are two aims. The first is to identify whether BCIs disrupt privacy, and if so, how. The second is to contribute methodological observations and insights. In meeting the first aim, two subjects are explored: privacy and BCIs. In this research, privacy is understood to take diverse and pliant forms and to be mutually instrumental in the formation of other social values and social contexts. Social contexts may be disrupted by emerging technologies, such as BCIs, which may then disrupt privacy. Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are a group of emerging technologies that interpret someone’s neural activity in order to provide control of external devices. In the literature, it has been suggested that BCIs may disrupt privacy. To the extent that privacy perpetuates other social values, this project has an emancipatory intent which places the research within the purview of critical theory. Critical theory encompasses a broad range of research practices. The research reported here applies a novel method informed by features of Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action (TCA) which was triangulated by an implementation of contextual integrity approach to studying privacy. As the TCA component of the research method is novel, the second research aim is feasible: the contribution of methodological observations and insights. A review of the literature identifies five relevant privacy concepts and four types of BCI. These are orthogonally positioned such that twenty different contexts of potential privacy disruption are considered. These contexts form hypotheses for the project’s first research question: do BCIs disrupt privacy? The method produced both quantitative and qualitative data, within which 35 indications were identified. These indications culminated in 6 knowledge contributions in the form of 2 findings, 1 design recommendation, and 3 methodological recommendations. The research data indicate that BCIs disrupt privacy because BCIs disrupt agency, fairness, self-determination, autonomy, justice, power, and to lesser extents, other values. Design and methodological recommendations are made before concluding the thesis with discussions of the potential social impact of this research, options for future research, and learning outcomes

L'uso del concetto di Personal Identity Over Time nella valutazione delle questioni di fine vita

The purpose of my thesis is to show how we can use the philosophical concept of numerical identity to analyze and provide good arguments about the so called ‘end of life’ issues. In the last decades, both medical and biological research have made progresses that force us to face difficult ethical situations. The case I’m interested in is the one of human death: when we can declare someone dead? When his heart is not beating anymore, or rather when is brain cannot perform his ntegrative functions? According to current laws and protocols, death occurs when the entire brain is irreversibly damaged. However, some important objections have been raised: why should we consider the entire brain, and not only those areas associated with consciousness? In my thesis, I have tried to answer these questions from a different starting point. I didn’t properly work on ‘death’, instead I worked on the concept of ‘continuity of life’ and ‘persistence’: if it were possible to find a criterion of our identity over time, then it would also be possible to say when our death occurs. After an introduction on the concept of numerical identity through time and its ties with ethics, I offered a reconstruction of three main ways to deal with this metaphysical issue. In the first chapter, I focused on the so called psychological approach. In the second chapter, I tried to present the biological approach as it is developed in Eric Olson’s writings. Finally, I briefly introduced Lynne Rudder Baker’s theory about constitution and showed why, according to my analysis, the ‘whole brain criterion’ fails to result as strong as it should to be assumed as a valid death criterion, trying to argue in favour of the so called ‘high- brain criterion’