Microsoft Word Kurzweil, Ray The Singularity Is Near doc

Other Works in Progress: An Artificial Hippocampus and an Artificial Olivocerebellar Region 
The hippocampus is vital for learning new information and long-term storage of memories. Ted Berger and his 
colleagues at the University of Southern California mapped the signal patterns of this region by stimulating slices of 
rat hippocampus with electrical signals millions of times to determine which input produced a corresponding output.
108
They then developed a real-time mathematical model of the transformations performed by layers of the hippocampus 
and programmed the model onto a chip.
109
Their plan is to test the chip in animals by first disabling the corresponding 
hippocampus region, noting the resulting memory failure, and then determining whether that mental function can be 
restored by installing their hippocampal chip in place of the disabled region. 
Ultimately, this approach could be used to replace the hippocampus in patients affected by strokes, epilepsy, or 
Alzheimer's disease. The chip would be located on a patient's skull, rather than inside the brain, and would 
communicate with the brain via two arrays of electrodes, placed on either side of the damaged hippocampal section. 
One would record the electrical activity coming from the rest of the brain, while the other would send the necessary 
instructions back to the brain. 
Another brain region being modeled and simulated is the olivocerebellar region, which is responsible for balance 
and coordinating the movement of limbs. The goal of the international research group involved in this effort is to apply 
their artificial olivocerebellar circuit to military robots as well as to robots that could assist the disabled.
110
One of their 
reasons for selecting this particular brain region was that "it's present in all vertebrates—it's very much the same from 
the most simple to the most complex brains," explains Rodolfo Llinas, one of the researchers and a neuroscientist at 
New York University Medical School. "The assumption is that it is conserved [in evolution] because it embodies a 
very intelligent solution. As the system is involved in motor coordination—and we want to have a machine that has 
sophisticated motor control—then the choice [of the circuit to mimic] was easy." 
One of the unique aspects of their simulator is that it uses analog circuits. Similar to Mead's pioneering work on 
analog emulation of brain regions, the researchers found substantially greater performance with far fewer components 
by using transistors in their native analog mode. 
One of the team's researchers, Ferdinando Mussa-Ivaldi, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University, commented 
on the applications of an artificial olivocerebellar circuit for the disabled: "Think of a paralyzed patient. It is possible 
to imagine that many ordinary tasks—such as getting a glass of water, dressing, undressing, transferring to a 
wheelchair—could be carried out by robotic assistants, thus providing the patient with more independence."