The kind of neuroscience that I do and my colleagues do is almost like the weatherman. We are always chasing storms. We want to see and measure storms -- brainstorms, that is. And we all talk about brainstorms in our daily lives, but we rarely see or listen to one. So I always like to start these talks by actually introducing you to one of them.
我和我同事们所从事的神经科学研究 就像天气预报 我们总在追逐风暴 我们想要观测的是头脑风暴 平日里我们总在谈论头脑风暴 但我们很少真正看到,或听到它 所以每当我谈到头脑风暴时 总希望能先让你们真实体验一下
Actually, the first time we recorded more than one neuron -- a hundred brain cells simultaneously -- we could measure the electrical sparks of a hundred cells in the same animal, this is the first image we got, the first 10 seconds of this recording. So we got a little snippet of a thought, and we could see it in front of us.
实际上,这是我们第一次记录到多个神经细胞: 同时观测100个脑细胞时 我们所测到的电火花 来自同一个动物的100个细胞 我们第一次记录到的 就是这段录音的前10秒 我们撷取到了思想的一个小片段 它就这样呈现在我们面前。
I always tell the students that we could also call neuroscientists some sort of astronomer, because we are dealing with a system that is only comparable in terms of number of cells to the number of galaxies that we have in the universe. And here we are, out of billions of neurons, just recording, 10 years ago, a hundred. We are doing a thousand now. And we hope to understand something fundamental about our human nature. Because, if you don't know yet, everything that we use to define what human nature is comes from these storms, comes from these storms that roll over the hills and valleys of our brains and define our memories, our beliefs, our feelings, our plans for the future. Everything that we ever do, everything that every human has ever done, do or will do, requires the toil of populations of neurons producing these kinds of storms.
我总是告诉学生们 某种意义上讲,我们可以把神经学家叫做天文学家 因为我们所处理的这个系统 包含数量巨大的细胞 数量大到只有宇宙中的星系数量可以比拟 现在,在数十亿计的神经元中 我们可以记录到的,已经从10 年前的100个 到了现在的1000个 我们想理解人性的基础 因为,你可能不知道 我们用来确立人性的一切,都源于这些头脑风暴 这些席卷我们大脑沟回的风暴 它确立了我们的记忆,信仰 情感,以及我们的未来规划 我们所做的一切 每一个人曾经做,正在做和将要做的一切 都基于大量的神经细胞工作所产生的这些风暴
And the sound of a brainstorm, if you've never heard one, is somewhat like this. You can put it louder if you can. My son calls this "making popcorn while listening to a badly-tuned A.M. station." This is a brain. This is what happens when you route these electrical storms to a loudspeaker and you listen to a hundred brain cells firing, your brain will sound like this -- my brain, any brain. And what we want to do as neuroscientists in this time is to actually listen to these symphonies, these brain symphonies, and try to extract from them the messages they carry.
而头脑风暴的声音,如果你们没听过的话, 就是这个样子的。 需要的话,你们可以放大音量来听。 我儿子说这就像"一边听着没调准的收音机,一边做爆米花"。 这就是大脑。 这是这些电风暴在扬声器中播放的声音。 你可以听到一百个脑细胞同时开火的声音, 你我的大脑听起来都像这样,任何大脑都如此。 此时,作为神经学家,我们想做的 实际上就是欣赏这些交响乐,头脑的交响乐 试着获取这其中承载的信息。
In particular, about 12 years ago we created a preparation that we named brain-machine interfaces. And you have a scheme here that describes how it works. The idea is, let's have some sensors that listen to these storms, this electrical firing, and see if you can, in the same time that it takes for this storm to leave the brain and reach the legs or the arms of an animal -- about half a second -- let's see if we can read these signals, extract the motor messages that are embedded in it, translate it into digital commands and send it to an artificial device that will reproduce the voluntary motor wheel of that brain in real time. And see if we can measure how well we can translate that message when we compare to the way the body does that.
需要特别提一句的是,大概12 年前 我们创建了一个模式,我们把它叫做 脑-机 介面。 我可以在这里介绍一下它的工作原理。 想法就是,使用某些传感器,去聆听这些风暴,电风暴, 我们能否与此同时 在这些风暴离开大脑达到动物四肢的 半秒左右的时间内 我们能否读取这些信号 将其中携带的运动信息提取出来 转化成数字命令 并发送到人工设备上 设备将同步做出大脑指令的动作 通过比较设备和动物身体所做的动作 我们可以衡量这种“信息翻译”的准确程度
And if we can actually provide feedback, sensory signals that go back from this robotic, mechanical, computational actuator that is now under the control of the brain, back to the brain, how the brain deals with that, of receiving messages from an artificial piece of machinery.
如果我们可以提供反馈 把大脑控制下的 人工机械执行器发出的信号 再次传回大脑 大脑将如何处理 这些从人工设备接收回的信息
And that's exactly what we did 10 years ago. We started with a superstar monkey called Aurora that became one of the superstars of this field. And Aurora liked to play video games. As you can see here, she likes to use a joystick, like any one of us, any of our kids, to play this game. And as a good primate, she even tries to cheat before she gets the right answer. So even before a target appears that she's supposed to cross with the cursor that she's controlling with this joystick, Aurora is trying to find the target, no matter where it is. And if she's doing that, because every time she crosses that target with the little cursor, she gets a drop of Brazilian orange juice. And I can tell you, any monkey will do anything for you if you get a little drop of Brazilian orange juice. Actually any primate will do that. Think about that.
这就是我们 10 年前做的事情。 我们在一只名叫Aurora的猴子身上开始试验 它现在已经成了这个领域的一个超级巨星了。 Aurora喜欢玩电子游戏。 就像你们现在看到的, 就像我们和我们的孩子一样,它喜欢用操纵杆玩这个游戏 作为优秀的灵长类动物,找到正确答案前它甚至还会试着作弊 它需要用操纵杆控制光标穿过目标 但在目标出现之前 Aurora就已经开始到处寻找目标了 只要它这么做, 当它每次操作光标穿过目标, 就可以得到一滴巴西橙汁。 我可以跟你们说,只需一小滴巴西橙汁, 任何猴子都肯为你赴汤蹈火。 这适用于任何灵长类动物。 想想吧。
Well, while Aurora was playing this game, as you saw, and doing a thousand trials a day and getting 97 percent correct and 350 milliliters of orange juice, we are recording the brainstorms that are produced in her head and sending them to a robotic arm that was learning to reproduce the movements that Aurora was making. Because the idea was to actually turn on this brain-machine interface and have Aurora play the game just by thinking, without interference of her body. Her brainstorms would control an arm that would move the cursor and cross the target. And to our shock, that's exactly what Aurora did. She played the game without moving her body.
玩你们看到的这种游戏 每天进行一千次判断 达到 97%的正确率, 获得350 毫升橙汁奖励。 我们记录它大脑中产生的头脑风暴 将它们发送到一个机器手臂 机械手臂学习如何重现Aurora正在进行的动作。 因为我们的想法是开启 脑-机 介面 让Aurora通过思考就可以玩游戏 不需要肢体的加入 它的头脑风暴将控制机械臂 机械臂移动光标穿过目标 我们惊讶地发现,Aurora正是这么做的 它玩游戏时,完全无需移动自己的身体
So every trajectory that you see of the cursor now, this is the exact first moment she got that. That's the exact first moment a brain intention was liberated from the physical domains of a body of a primate and could act outside, in that outside world, just by controlling an artificial device. And Aurora kept playing the game, kept finding the little target and getting the orange juice that she wanted to get, that she craved for.
你们目前看到的每一条光标轨迹 都是来自它第一次做到这点的时候 都来自那一刻 一个意识可以被灵长类动物从物理意义的身体中解放出来 可以通过控制人工设备 在外部世界进行动作 Aurora一直玩游戏,不断寻找目标 并得到它渴望的橙汁
Well, she did that because she, at that time, had acquired a new arm. The robotic arm that you see moving here 30 days later, after the first video that I showed to you, is under the control of Aurora's brain and is moving the cursor to get to the target. And Aurora now knows that she can play the game with this robotic arm, but she has not lost the ability to use her biological arms to do what she pleases. She can scratch her back, she can scratch one of us, she can play another game. By all purposes and means, Aurora's brain has incorporated that artificial device as an extension of her body. The model of the self that Aurora had in her mind has been expanded to get one more arm.
那个时候,它已经获得了“新”手臂 你们在这里看到机械手臂的动作 是在第一个视频的30天后录制的 在Aurora的大脑的控制之下 它正将光标移到目标 Aurora现在知道,它可以用机械臂玩这个游戏, 同时还可以随心所欲使用自己的生物手臂去干别的 用自己的手臂挠自己的背,可以挠我们,还可以玩另一个游戏 总而言之 Aurora的大脑已经整合了这个人工设备 作为它身体的延伸 Aurora意识里的自我已经扩展 多出了一只手臂
Well, we did that 10 years ago. Just fast forward 10 years. Just last year we realized that you don't even need to have a robotic device. You can just build a computational body, an avatar, a monkey avatar. And you can actually use it for our monkeys to either interact with them, or you can train them to assume in a virtual world the first-person perspective of that avatar and use her brain activity to control the movements of the avatar's arms or legs.
这就是我们 10 多年所做的事 让我们快进随后的10 年 就在去年我们意识到,你甚至不需要有一个机械设备 你可以只生成一个计算意义的身体,一个化身,猴子化身 实际上,你就可以使用这个化身与猴子互动 或者训练猴子,让它们学会在一个虚拟的世界中 以化身的角度 用大脑活动控制化身的肢体动作
And what we did basically was to train the animals to learn how to control these avatars and explore objects that appear in the virtual world. And these objects are visually identical, but when the avatar crosses the surface of these objects, they send an electrical message that is proportional to the microtactile texture of the object that goes back directly to the monkey's brain, informing the brain what it is the avatar is touching. And in just four weeks, the brain learns to process this new sensation and acquires a new sensory pathway -- like a new sense. And you truly liberate the brain now because you are allowing the brain to send motor commands to move this avatar. And the feedback that comes from the avatar is being processed directly by the brain without the interference of the skin.
基本上,我们所做的就是训练动物 学习如何控制这些化身 探索出现在虚拟世界中的对象 这些对象看上去一样 但当化身穿过对象表面 对象就会发出与自身表面微结构触感对应的电信息 这些电信息直接返回猴子的大脑 告诉大脑,化身触摸到了什么 短短四个星期内,大脑就学会处理这种新的感觉 并建立起了新的感官通路 — 就像一种新的感觉 现在你真正地解放了大脑 因为可以让大脑发送运动命令来移动化身 同时来自化身的反馈可以直接通过大脑处理 无需皮肤的参与
So what you see here is this is the design of the task. You're going to see an animal basically touching these three targets. And he has to select one because only one carries the reward, the orange juice that they want to get. And he has to select it by touch using a virtual arm, an arm that doesn't exist. And that's exactly what they do.
这里看到的是设计的任务 你将看到实验动物触摸这三个目标 但它只能选择其中一个,因为只有正确选中携带奖励的目标 才能获得它们想要的橙汁 它必须使用并不实际存在的一只虚拟手臂触摸和选择 它们就是这么做的
This is a complete liberation of the brain from the physical constraints of the body and the motor in a perceptual task. The animal is controlling the avatar to touch the targets. And he's sensing the texture by receiving an electrical message directly in the brain. And the brain is deciding what is the texture associated with the reward. The legends that you see in the movie don't appear for the monkey. And by the way, they don't read English anyway, so they are here just for you to know that the correct target is shifting position. And yet, they can find them by tactile discrimination, and they can press it and select it.
这是对大脑的彻底解放 从实际身体的限制中获得解放,完成知觉任务 这只实验动物正控制化身去触摸目标 它通过大脑直接接收电信息来感觉纹理 大脑判断哪种纹理会带来奖励 猴子看不见这个视频上的标示 顺便说一句,反正它们也不懂英语 这里的标示只是为了显示,正确的目标始终在变换位置 然而,动物仍然可以通过触感的区别 找到并选择它
So when we look at the brains of these animals, on the top panel you see the alignment of 125 cells showing what happens with the brain activity, the electrical storms, of this sample of neurons in the brain when the animal is using a joystick. And that's a picture that every neurophysiologist knows. The basic alignment shows that these cells are coding for all possible directions. The bottom picture is what happens when the body stops moving and the animal starts controlling either a robotic device or a computational avatar. As fast as we can reset our computers, the brain activity shifts to start representing this new tool, as if this too was a part of that primate's body. The brain is assimilating that too, as fast as we can measure.
所以,当我们看看这些动物的大脑 上方的图像中,你可以看到125个神经细胞的排列 显示当动物使用操纵杆时 大脑的活动 产生的电风暴的情况 这是每个神经生物学家都熟知的图像 神经元的排列方式显示这些细胞正在编码所有的可能方向 下面的图像是在身体停止移动 实验动物开始控制机械设备或者计算化身时的情况 就像我们重置电脑一样快 大脑的活动发生变化,开始表达这个新工具 就像新工具本来就是这个灵长类动物身体的一部分一样 大脑以最快速度同化了它
So that suggests to us that our sense of self does not end at the last layer of the epithelium of our bodies, but it ends at the last layer of electrons of the tools that we're commanding with our brains. Our violins, our cars, our bicycles, our soccer balls, our clothing -- they all become assimilated by this voracious, amazing, dynamic system called the brain.
这说明,我们的感觉本身 并不会中止于身体的最外层皮肤 而是中止于我们大脑控制的,最终端的设备工具 我们的小提琴、汽车、自行车、足球、衣服等等 它们都被这个称作大脑的,贪婪而令人惊叹的动态系统同化了
How far can we take it? Well, in an experiment that we ran a few years ago, we took this to the limit. We had an animal running on a treadmill at Duke University on the East Coast of the United States, producing the brainstorms necessary to move. And we had a robotic device, a humanoid robot, in Kyoto, Japan at ATR Laboratories that was dreaming its entire life to be controlled by a brain, a human brain, or a primate brain.
我们还能走得更远么? 在前几年的实验中,我们达到了新的高度 我们曾让一只实验动物 在美国东海岸杜克大学的跑步机上运动 产生运动所需要的头脑风暴 同时,我们有了人形机器人设备 放置在日本京都 ATR 实验室 机器人一生的梦想就是 获得一个人类或其它灵长类动物的大脑指令
What happens here is that the brain activity that generated the movements in the monkey was transmitted to Japan and made this robot walk while footage of this walking was sent back to Duke, so that the monkey could see the legs of this robot walking in front of her. So she could be rewarded, not by what her body was doing but for every correct step of the robot on the other side of the planet controlled by her brain activity.
猴子大脑的活动发出运动指令 传到日本,并且控制这个机器人的行走 行走的镜头被发送回杜克 所以,猴子能看到机器人的双腿就在眼前行走 它因此获得奖励,但并不是因为它自己身体的动作 而是来源于地球另一端的机器人 在它大脑活动控制下正确走的每一步
Funny thing, that round trip around the globe took 20 milliseconds less than it takes for that brainstorm to leave its head, the head of the monkey, and reach its own muscle. The monkey was moving a robot that was six times bigger, across the planet. This is one of the experiments in which that robot was able to walk autonomously. This is CB1 fulfilling its dream in Japan under the control of the brain activity of a primate.
有趣的是,这个环绕地球的往返行程 比猴子的头脑风暴离开大脑 达到其本身的肌肉所花的时间还要短20毫秒 这只猴子正在移动地球另一端一个六倍于它身体的机器人 这就是机器人自主行走的实验之一 这是 CB1 正在在日本 在灵长类动物大脑活动的控制下,完成自己的梦想
So where are we taking all this? What are we going to do with all this research, besides studying the properties of this dynamic universe that we have between our ears? Well the idea is to take all this knowledge and technology and try to restore one of the most severe neurological problems that we have in the world. Millions of people have lost the ability to translate these brainstorms into action, into movement. Although their brains continue to produce those storms and code for movements, they cannot cross a barrier that was created by a lesion on the spinal cord.
我们所谈的所有这一切是为了什么? 除了学习我们双耳间的这个动态宇宙, 这项研究还可以用来做什么? 我们的想法是,使用所有的这些知识和技术 尝试解决世界上最严重的神经问题。 数以百万计的人失去了将头脑风暴 翻译成动作,翻译成运动的能力。 虽然他们的大脑还在产生这些风暴,为运动编码, 但他们无法跨越脊髓病变所制造的障碍。
So our idea is to create a bypass, is to use these brain-machine interfaces to read these signals, larger-scale brainstorms that contain the desire to move again, bypass the lesion using computational microengineering and send it to a new body, a whole body called an exoskeleton, a whole robotic suit that will become the new body of these patients.
所以我们的理念是绕道而行, 用 脑-机 介面来读取这些信号, 放大这些携带重新运动愿望的头脑风暴, 利用计算机微工程绕过病变 将它发送到一个新身体,一个可以称为外骨骼的完整身体 这个完整的机器人设备,将成为这些患者的全新躯体。
And you can see an image produced by this consortium. This is a nonprofit consortium called the Walk Again Project that is putting together scientists from Europe, from here in the United States, and in Brazil together to work to actually get this new body built -- a body that we believe, through the same plastic mechanisms that allow Aurora and other monkeys to use these tools through a brain-machine interface and that allows us to incorporate the tools that we produce and use in our daily life. This same mechanism, we hope, will allow these patients, not only to imagine again the movements that they want to make and translate them into movements of this new body, but for this body to be assimilated as the new body that the brain controls.
你们眼前的这个图景 由一个叫做“再次行走项目”的非营利组织制作 这个组织聚集了来自欧洲, 美国和巴西的科学家, 为构建这个全新躯体而共同努力。 我们相信,与Aurora和其它猴子在 脑-机 介面中 所使用的相同的合成设备 我们可以把它们整合并应用于日常生活 通过同样的合成设备,我们希望,能让这些病人 不仅能够把他们想要做的动作 翻译成新身体的动作 同时还可以与这个大脑控制的新身体完美融合
So I was told about 10 years ago that this would never happen, that this was close to impossible. And I can only tell you that as a scientist, I grew up in southern Brazil in the mid-'60s watching a few crazy guys telling [us] that they would go to the Moon. And I was five years old, and I never understood why NASA didn't hire Captain Kirk and Spock to do the job; after all, they were very proficient -- but just seeing that as a kid made me believe, as my grandmother used to tell me, that "impossible is just the possible that someone has not put in enough effort to make it come true."
10 年前,别人告诉我 这是痴人说梦,几乎是不可能的。 作为一个科学家,我只能告诉你 60年代中期,我在巴西南部长大 看着几个疯狂的家伙告诉 [我们] 说他们会去月球。 那时我五岁 我想不通美国国家航空航天局(NASA)为什么不雇柯克船长和斯波克(电影《星际迷航》中的两个著名角色)去登月。 毕竟,这方面他们才是专家。 但儿时所见的这一切 令我相信,我祖母曾经告诉过我的话 "所有不可能其实都是可能的, 只是人们还没有付出足够的努力让它们成真。"
So they told me that it's impossible to make someone walk. I think I'm going to follow my grandmother's advice.
所以,当有人告诉我,让一个人恢复行走能力是不可能的时候。 我觉得我还是会相信我祖母的建议。
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)