WE'RE CRACKING THE NEURAL CODE, THE BRAIN'S SECRET LANGUAGE

by John Horgan, Adbusters

Chances are you have never heard of the neural code. And yet, from both a practical and philosophical perspective, the neural code is the most important remaining scientific mystery.

The immediate goal of many neural-code researchers is producing “neural prostheses” for the disabled. By far the most successful neural prosthesis is the artificial cochlea. More than 80,000 people have been equipped with these devices, which restore at least rudimentary hearing by feeding signals from an external microphone to the auditory nerve. Work on other prostheses is proceeding more slowly. Artificial retinas, light-sensitive chips that mimic the eye’s signal-processing ability and stimulate the optical nerve or visual cortex, have been tested in a handful of blind subjects, but they usually “see” nothing more than phosphenes, or bright spots.

Full article @ adbusters.org/the_magazine/63/Were_Cracking...