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Interview with Robert Freitas
This story is from the category Total Immersion
Date posted: 14/11/2005
Nanotechnology Business have conducted an interview with Robert Freitas, author of Nanomedicine, on, amoungst other topics, the use of nanobots in the body to create a pervasive virtual reality.
The scenario of billions of nanorobots positioned in our brains, to create full-immersion virtual reality, will be feasible in the future, he states.
"I first described the foundational concepts necessary for this in Nanomedicine, Vol. I (1999), including noninvasive neuroelectric monitoring (i.e., nanorobots monitoring neuroelectric signal traffic without being resident inside the neuron cell body, using >5 different methods), neural macrosensing (i.e., nanorobots eavesdropping on the body?s sensory traffic, including auditory and optic nerve taps), modification of natural cellular message traffic by nanorobots stationed nearby (including signal amplification, suppression, replacement, and linkage of previously disparate neural signal sources), inmessaging from neurons (nanorobots receiving signals from the neural traffic), outmessaging to neurons (nanorobots inserting signals into the neural traffic), direct stimulation of somesthetic, kinesthetic, auditory, gustatory, auditory, and ocular sensory nerves (including ganglionic stimulation and direct photoreceptor stimulation) by nanorobots, and the many neuron biocompatibility issues related to nanorobots in the brain, with special attention to the blood-brain barrier.
The key issue for enabling full-immersion reality is obtaining the necessary bandwidth inside the body, which should be available using the in vivo fiber network I first proposed in Nanomedicine, Vol. I (1999). Such a network can handle 10^18 bits/sec of data traffic, capacious enough for real-time brain-state monitoring. The fiber network has a 30 cm^3 volume and generates 4-6 watts waste heat, both small enough for safe installation in a 1400 cm^3 25-watt human brain. Signals travel at most a few meters at nearly the speed of light, so transit time from signal origination at neuron sites inside the brain to the external computer system mediating the upload are ~0.00001 millisec which is considerably less than the minimum ~5 millisec neuron discharge cycle time. Neuron-monitoring chemical sensors located on average ~2 microns apart can capture relevant chemical events occurring within a ~5 millisec time window, since this is the approximate diffusion time for, say, a small neuropeptide across a 2-micron distance. Thus human brain state monitoring can probably be ?instantaneous?, at least on the timescale of human neural response, in the sense of ?nothing of significance was missed.? "
See the full Story via external site: www.nanotech.biz
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