We wanted flying cars, instead we’re getting telepathy: the new boom in neurotechnologies
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1
École Normale Supérieure, France
The field of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) started several decades ago and remained largely restricted to dedicated research labs. But neurotechnologies have recently gained a lot of interest from investors and innovators in the industry. The old fantasy of communicating and controlling stuff directly with our brains appears to be a new quest for many industrial groups. This is good news for the field, especially given that investments in technological innovation have dramatically slowed down over the past decades. As famously stated by Peter Thiel "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters", referring to Twitter and other social medias invading the technology sphere and generating huge revenues with little innovation on the pipeline. Nowadays, massive investments are being poured into creating neurotechnologies for large-consumer markets. Yet, despite regular media stunts, there are still no BCIs that proved robust and reliable enough to be used in a meaningful way, whether it is for scientists, clinicians or consumers. Why is that? In this talk, I will focus on the promises and pitfalls of neurotechnologies across various domains (invasive vs. non-invasive, sensory vs. motoric, etc). After providing a comparative overview of mainstream approaches to BCI, and how they are incorporated in large-scale projects from the industry, I will describe how recent approaches in which cognitive neuroscience constitutes the central tenet over machine learning and engineering turn out to be much more successful. In particular, I will focus on how recent progresses in the neuroscience of consciousness, attention and volition are providing new insights into the development of reliable BCIs. I will also describe a few principles for moving towards use cases allowing BCIs to go over the limits of current applications. I will conclude with a roadmap for neurotechnologies that organise the various approaches in terms of priorities for getting towards high-bandwidth BCIs and reliable applications for large-consumer markets.
Keywords:
neurotechnology,
Brain Computer Interface,
invasive,
noninvasive,
Neuroimaging
Conference:
2nd International Neuroergonomics Conference, Philadelphia, PA, United States, 27 Jun - 29 Jun, 2018.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Neuroergonomics
Citation:
Kouider
S
(2019). We wanted flying cars, instead we’re getting telepathy: the new boom in neurotechnologies.
Conference Abstract:
2nd International Neuroergonomics Conference.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2018.227.00149
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Received:
03 Apr 2018;
Published Online:
27 Sep 2019.