Biocybernetics

Citation

Rudall, B.H. (1999), "Biocybernetics", Kybernetes, Vol. 28 No. 9. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.1999.06728iaa.003

Biocybernetics

Keywords Automation, Cybernetics, Research, Technological developments

Abstacts Reports and surveys are given of selected current research and development in systems and cybernetics. They include: RSI and the brain, Innovations, Biocybernetics, Mathematics and cybernetics, Molecular devices, Devices controlled by thought, Automation and cybernetics, VDU radiation.

Biocybernetics

1. Placing chip implants in the brain

At Stanford University, USA, in its neurosurgery clinic a neurosurgeon, Gary Heit, put an implant into the brain of a man who was suffering from a debilitating tremor, similar to that caused by Parkinson’s disease. With one flick of a switch, we are told, the implanted chips in the brain were activated and the 79-year-old man’s tremor was "turned off". It is now, apparently, a fact that silicon technology and biological material, that is the "hard wiring" and "soft flesh", can now be combined. Heit is reported as saying that:

it is simply a lack of money that holds the field back from giving greater benefit to those debilitated by lack of brain function. A brain implant for an injured human being can cost more than $20,000, which is a trivial sum compared with the way it revolutionises patients' lives.

The neurosurgeons also say that patients such as the actor Christopher Reeve, who was paralysed from the neck down in a riding accident in 1995, could be enabled to walk again with the technology already available. It is suggested that a team of researchers would be able to implant an array of high-speed microprocessors which would be able to analyse brain activity and translate those impulses into electrical commands. These commands could be passed to a set of electrodes attached to the nerves that would stimulate muscles to perform a walking action.

2. Laboratory-on-a-chip

UK researchers at the University of Wales, at Bangor, UK, having failed to find UK backing, are now working in the USA on development of a silicon-biological interface. The research which they have pursued will now be developed by Aura Diagnostics of Mountain View, California, USA, a neighbour of Stanford University. They will commercialise the process and develop a "laboratory-on chip" which is capable of isolating cancer cells in tiny blood samples. The process uses electrical signals to manipulate biological molecules which will enable it to detect, at an early stage, cancers that are present in a sample. It could also provide simple, quick and accurate tests for meningitis and a means of regenerating, it is claimed, damaged tissues and organs. In another project the UK’s Institute of Cancer, has just developed its own "cancer chip". It is worth noting that it is the US companies, particularly those who have succeeded in information processing, who are now engaged in applying their expertise to biology. Biochips are, for example, being produced by Motorola, the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National laboratory and Packard Instruments.

3. Mass production of biochips

The aim of this project is for the mass production techniques for "biochips" to be developed. These are "thumb-sized" wafers that carry information processing on the chemicals of life. It is, of course, already accepted that unravelling the human code can provide ways of diagnosing and treating genetic diseases and cancers as well as giving an instruction manual for the assembly of the human body. What is a slow business, when attempted in the traditional laboratory, could be speeded up and made much more efficient.

Combining biochips with robots and computers, claims the US Argonne researchers, will enable one genetic variation among three billion DNA data bits to be found in a matter of minutes, instead of the current conventional method which takes days. The biochip, it is said, will be produced like the microchip, in a mass producing process by photolithography techniques. This will, of course, be a major change in operational techniques for the conventional biotech companies but it is a challenge that they will embrace because of the enormous marketing potential of such developments.

DNA chips are obviously going to change the future of medicine and the way in which cybernetics and systems researchers tackle their field. Linking humans and animals using these systems will bring into reality the cyborg, the individual whose abilities are enhanced by the new technology beyond their present levels.