7 ms·

This implanted microchip may one day control your sleep

38 points by type0 5y ago

vangelis 5y ago
No thank you.
scohesc 5y ago
I can't wait for the future of body modification and the reverse engineering/hacking that follows. Everyone and their dog gets one of these chips because they're so cheap, easy, and ubiquitous that you can walk right down to your doctor's office and have it installed same day, covered by your insurance! Then some black-hat hackers come by and pull a Captain Crunch and blast a specific frequency at the highest power possible and it immediately makes everyone with the chip go to sleep.
- jcun4128 5y ago
  In comes me the anti-virus/hacking salesman
- qzw 5y ago
  > the messages traveling to and from the hub will be encrypted, the user will have to somehow verify any command they give the hub, and the data will only be stored on the device itself and not in any kind of cloud. Most importantly, the implantable device couldn’t be used without the armband: remove it and the implant would become useless. And also: > “should anything go wrong” the person wearing the device would “swallow a pill that would kill the cells inside the chip only, leaving the rest of their body unaffected.” I wouldn't be the first person to sign up for this, but it looks like they at least did do some basic thinking about security.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  McAfee, now for biomodifications!
yazaddaruvala 5y ago
My first thought for any implant: What’s the power source? Or do I need to plug myself “in” every few days?
- kadoban 5y ago
  It sounds like they're saying these would be living biological cells, so it'd be powered by you. Gotta be honest though, that kind of creeps me out. As much as I do understand that not everything living in my body is me, the idea of implanting other living cells is kind of disgusting on a fundamental level.
  - hammyhavoc 5y ago
    Yes, symbiotic relationships are to be avoided IMO.
  - Aerroon 5y ago
    Does that mean your body might reject it like it does transplants?
  - yazaddaruvala 5y ago
    Yeah, but activated by lasers. I assume the lasers are part of the device.
rand846633 5y ago
Can’t wait to use this while flying on an airplane. This will basically make flying like teleportation, just that you also arrive freshly sleep at the destination.
- qzw 5y ago
  Plus they can pack the passengers into little compartments as in The 5th Element or Japanese capsule hotels.
  - trainsplanes 5y ago
    Capsule hotels would be a massive space upgrade compared to the "seats" they offer today.
- app4soft 5y ago
  > This will basically make flying like teleportation And if airplane would be in crash it would be easy to switch OFF all on a board before plane crashed on ground.
wyager 5y ago
I’m not putting anything in my body unless its entire codebase and hardware design are public and extensively formally verified. Current medical device standards are clearly insufficient and off-base as they allow for garbage like pacemakers with vulnerable Bluetooth stacks.
- xuhu 5y ago
  Augustus Cole from that X-Files episode would like to disagree.
- slownews45 5y ago
  Fair enough. The VAST majority of users do not care, and many programmers (myself included) do not believe that formal verification is likely for many larger or more complex systems if they have a tech stack element somewhere in mix (probably not on the device itself but perhaps interfacing / programming it). We will see who wins in the market, the open source player with a public and extensive FORMAL verification (NOT EASY!) or the closed source player, first to market, sales reps going to Drs offices etc
  - advael 5y ago
    Almost certainly the latter will "win" in the sense of getting widespread adoption. If current technologies are any indication, this will lead to people, like the poster you're responding to and myself as well, who view proprietary control of such a device an unacceptable risk not adopting the technology until a FOSS alternative is made. If the device sees widespread adoption, this will probably happen several years later, and be mature enough to use about a decade later.
  - wyager 5y ago
    The latter will probably win due to high time preference and soft money. My standard is basically an admission that I'm not going to be able to use any of this hardware, unless there's a separate market for power users.
rdtwo 5y ago
More like a subscription model the less you pay the worse you’re sleep
bruce343434 5y ago
I'm skeptical but intrigued. A lot of what is put forth in this article just seems like 3 brainstorm sessions by middle management, written out and editorialized.
Apocryphon 5y ago
The bit in Heinlein’s Starship Troopers where you can just regularly hypnotize someone (at least in the military) to fall asleep seems less invasive.
thaufeki 5y ago
I_HATE_THE_ANTICHRIST.png
GGfpc 5y ago
If I could get 8 hours of proper sleep and feel energized in the morning I would take this in a heartbeat. I would even take it with unskippable ads lol
- spiderice 5y ago
  Oh man, dreaming in ads. People will be able to make money in their sleep by dreaming ads all night.
  - perihelions 5y ago
    https://dxe.pubpub.org/pub/dreamadvertising/release/1 https://dxe.pubpub.org/pub/dreamadvertising/release/1 ("Advertising in Dreams Is Coming: Now What?")
    - t-3 5y ago
      Well, it sounds good, until you consider the huge chunk of the population that sleeps too deeply to dream. That chunk will only increase as obesity increases.
      - hammyhavoc 5y ago
        I have the most vivid, lucid dreams every night without fail. The idea that other people don't is just baffling to me. However, I've never 'day dreamed' and have zero concept of it.
      - GGfpc 5y ago
        So you're saying I should eat more to sleep better?
dathinab 5y ago
As someone who is struggling with sleep this sounds like both a blessing and a outright spawn of evil which will f-up the live of thousands.
yumaikas 5y ago
So, what makes this fundamentally different from something like an insulin pump?
- sarpeedo 5y ago
  Theoretically this is giving you cells which not only release the medication, but they also manufacture the medication inside the cell. The microchip seems to simply be a control mechanism.
sarpeedo 5y ago
Honestly I think this solves a problem most people don't have. Carrying pills is not that annoying. But if therapies requiring prolonged clinic / hospital visits like chemotherapies or IV infusions could be given out using this technology that might be life changing.
- trutannus 5y ago
  Sleeping pills are a real kettle of worms. I don't think most people have an issue with carrying pills, but sleeping pills themselves are fraught with issues from addiction to nasty side effects.
  - sarpeedo 5y ago
    I'm not convinced this specific therapy will remove the side effects. It's still administering the same contents of the pills to your body.
    - trutannus 5y ago
      Well, not entirely. Not all the drugs used to treat sleep disorders are mimics of existing biomolecules. Some inhibit or modify the reception of the signaling molecules. This article talks about directly generating the substance itself. The pills themselves also tend to be somewhat indiscriminate with where they cause the substance release. When you release a substance that does X into the body via the stomach, or even an injection, you end up with a lot more hitting receptor sites scattered across the body. For example, SSRIs often cause nausea since they affect the serotonin receptors in your GI tract. Just having serotonin released inside the brain would totally side-step this. That said, my point is more about addiction. A large amount of sleeping pills are also common drugs of abuse, and can be highly addictive. A brain chip would not have nearly the same abuse potential.
trutannus 5y ago
I like this idea, but hate the idea of needing a third party app. Something like this would have to be open for me to use it. I dislike the idea of a third party writing the code that controls something embedded in my body. Not even for the typical reasons of 'ads and privacy'. What happens if the business fails? Someone pushes bad code? The organization is sold? Something we can't anticipate now? I'd need the certainty that I can take full control over it if needed.
pedalpete 5y ago
As someone in the sleeptech space, I feel like this is written by someone who doesn't understand sleep. It isn't just "peptides" and "circadian rhythms". Sleep is about much more than just being unconscious, which why sleeping pills don't solve the problem of sleep, they solve the problem of consciousness. Sleep is what your brain and body do during the time you are asleep. Just because you're unconscious, doesn't mean you are getting good sleep. At my company SoundMind we're identifying bursts of brain activity in your deepest sleep called Slow-Wave Oscillations (SWOs). When we detect an SWO, we have a short window in which to stimulate your brain, which causes your SWOs to increase in both power, and the number of slow waves. This results in up to 40% improvement in the performance of deep sleep. This is an improvement to the most important part of sleep, which is why we're starting here. SWOs are responsible for the clearing of Amyloid plaques, memory consolidation, and regulation of hormones such as GH, cortisol, insulin, and prolactin. If you want to find out more, check us out at https://soundmind.co https://soundmind.co
- javajosh 5y ago
  What do you guys know about lucid, or at least intense, dreaming?
  - pedalpete 5y ago
    I've had some experience with lucid dreaming myself, but it isn't an area we're currently interested in pursuing. It's fun when you don't wake yourself up. One anecdote from our early development. When I was using one of our early stims, I woke up when it should have held me in deep sleep. I was a bit disappointed, as I'd had good results for a few days. Then I realized, I wasn't hearing the stim, so I actually wasn't awake. That realization woke me up. :)
    - javajosh 5y ago
      Well, I think it would be cool to correlate whatever sleep measurements you're taking with the subject's dream experience. Could be a good marketing angle for you, too. Dreams are cool.
- 5y ago
imwillofficial 5y ago
“Implanted microchip” Nah, I’m good.
dwighttk 5y ago
absolutely not

38 points by type0 5y ago

No thank you.

I can't wait for the future of body modification and the reverse engineering/hacking that follows. Everyone and their dog gets one of these chips because they're so cheap, easy, and ubiquitous that you can walk right down to your doctor's office and have it installed same day, covered by your insurance! Then some black-hat hackers come by and pull a Captain Crunch and blast a specific frequency at the highest power possible and it immediately makes everyone with the chip go to sleep.

jcun4128 5y ago
In comes me the anti-virus/hacking salesman
qzw 5y ago
> the messages traveling to and from the hub will be encrypted, the user will have to somehow verify any command they give the hub, and the data will only be stored on the device itself and not in any kind of cloud. Most importantly, the implantable device couldn’t be used without the armband: remove it and the implant would become useless. And also: > “should anything go wrong” the person wearing the device would “swallow a pill that would kill the cells inside the chip only, leaving the rest of their body unaffected.” I wouldn't be the first person to sign up for this, but it looks like they at least did do some basic thinking about security.
vorpalhex 5y ago
McAfee, now for biomodifications!

yazaddaruvala 5y ago

My first thought for any implant: What’s the power source? Or do I need to plug myself “in” every few days?

kadoban 5y ago
It sounds like they're saying these would be living biological cells, so it'd be powered by you. Gotta be honest though, that kind of creeps me out. As much as I do understand that not everything living in my body is me, the idea of implanting other living cells is kind of disgusting on a fundamental level.
- hammyhavoc 5y ago
  Yes, symbiotic relationships are to be avoided IMO.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  Does that mean your body might reject it like it does transplants?
- yazaddaruvala 5y ago
  Yeah, but activated by lasers. I assume the lasers are part of the device.

rand846633 5y ago

Can’t wait to use this while flying on an airplane. This will basically make flying like teleportation, just that you also arrive freshly sleep at the destination.

qzw 5y ago
Plus they can pack the passengers into little compartments as in The 5th Element or Japanese capsule hotels.
- trainsplanes 5y ago
  Capsule hotels would be a massive space upgrade compared to the "seats" they offer today.
app4soft 5y ago
> This will basically make flying like teleportation And if airplane would be in crash it would be easy to switch OFF all on a board before plane crashed on ground.

wyager 5y ago

I’m not putting anything in my body unless its entire codebase and hardware design are public and extensively formally verified. Current medical device standards are clearly insufficient and off-base as they allow for garbage like pacemakers with vulnerable Bluetooth stacks.

xuhu 5y ago
Augustus Cole from that X-Files episode would like to disagree.
slownews45 5y ago
Fair enough. The VAST majority of users do not care, and many programmers (myself included) do not believe that formal verification is likely for many larger or more complex systems if they have a tech stack element somewhere in mix (probably not on the device itself but perhaps interfacing / programming it). We will see who wins in the market, the open source player with a public and extensive FORMAL verification (NOT EASY!) or the closed source player, first to market, sales reps going to Drs offices etc
- advael 5y ago
  Almost certainly the latter will "win" in the sense of getting widespread adoption. If current technologies are any indication, this will lead to people, like the poster you're responding to and myself as well, who view proprietary control of such a device an unacceptable risk not adopting the technology until a FOSS alternative is made. If the device sees widespread adoption, this will probably happen several years later, and be mature enough to use about a decade later.
- wyager 5y ago
  The latter will probably win due to high time preference and soft money. My standard is basically an admission that I'm not going to be able to use any of this hardware, unless there's a separate market for power users.

rdtwo 5y ago

More like a subscription model the less you pay the worse you’re sleep

bruce343434 5y ago

I'm skeptical but intrigued. A lot of what is put forth in this article just seems like 3 brainstorm sessions by middle management, written out and editorialized.

Apocryphon 5y ago

The bit in Heinlein’s Starship Troopers where you can just regularly hypnotize someone (at least in the military) to fall asleep seems less invasive.

thaufeki 5y ago

I_HATE_THE_ANTICHRIST.png

GGfpc 5y ago

If I could get 8 hours of proper sleep and feel energized in the morning I would take this in a heartbeat. I would even take it with unskippable ads lol

spiderice 5y ago
Oh man, dreaming in ads. People will be able to make money in their sleep by dreaming ads all night.
- perihelions 5y ago
  https://dxe.pubpub.org/pub/dreamadvertising/release/1 https://dxe.pubpub.org/pub/dreamadvertising/release/1 ("Advertising in Dreams Is Coming: Now What?")
  - t-3 5y ago
    Well, it sounds good, until you consider the huge chunk of the population that sleeps too deeply to dream. That chunk will only increase as obesity increases.
    - hammyhavoc 5y ago
      I have the most vivid, lucid dreams every night without fail. The idea that other people don't is just baffling to me. However, I've never 'day dreamed' and have zero concept of it.
    - GGfpc 5y ago
      So you're saying I should eat more to sleep better?

dathinab 5y ago

As someone who is struggling with sleep this sounds like both a blessing and a outright spawn of evil which will f-up the live of thousands.

yumaikas 5y ago

So, what makes this fundamentally different from something like an insulin pump?

sarpeedo 5y ago
Theoretically this is giving you cells which not only release the medication, but they also manufacture the medication inside the cell. The microchip seems to simply be a control mechanism.

sarpeedo 5y ago

Honestly I think this solves a problem most people don't have. Carrying pills is not that annoying. But if therapies requiring prolonged clinic / hospital visits like chemotherapies or IV infusions could be given out using this technology that might be life changing.

trutannus 5y ago
Sleeping pills are a real kettle of worms. I don't think most people have an issue with carrying pills, but sleeping pills themselves are fraught with issues from addiction to nasty side effects.
- sarpeedo 5y ago
  I'm not convinced this specific therapy will remove the side effects. It's still administering the same contents of the pills to your body.
  - trutannus 5y ago
    Well, not entirely. Not all the drugs used to treat sleep disorders are mimics of existing biomolecules. Some inhibit or modify the reception of the signaling molecules. This article talks about directly generating the substance itself. The pills themselves also tend to be somewhat indiscriminate with where they cause the substance release. When you release a substance that does X into the body via the stomach, or even an injection, you end up with a lot more hitting receptor sites scattered across the body. For example, SSRIs often cause nausea since they affect the serotonin receptors in your GI tract. Just having serotonin released inside the brain would totally side-step this. That said, my point is more about addiction. A large amount of sleeping pills are also common drugs of abuse, and can be highly addictive. A brain chip would not have nearly the same abuse potential.

trutannus 5y ago

I like this idea, but hate the idea of needing a third party app. Something like this would have to be open for me to use it. I dislike the idea of a third party writing the code that controls something embedded in my body. Not even for the typical reasons of 'ads and privacy'. What happens if the business fails? Someone pushes bad code? The organization is sold? Something we can't anticipate now? I'd need the certainty that I can take full control over it if needed.

pedalpete 5y ago

As someone in the sleeptech space, I feel like this is written by someone who doesn't understand sleep. It isn't just "peptides" and "circadian rhythms". Sleep is about much more than just being unconscious, which why sleeping pills don't solve the problem of sleep, they solve the problem of consciousness. Sleep is what your brain and body do during the time you are asleep. Just because you're unconscious, doesn't mean you are getting good sleep. At my company SoundMind we're identifying bursts of brain activity in your deepest sleep called Slow-Wave Oscillations (SWOs). When we detect an SWO, we have a short window in which to stimulate your brain, which causes your SWOs to increase in both power, and the number of slow waves. This results in up to 40% improvement in the performance of deep sleep. This is an improvement to the most important part of sleep, which is why we're starting here. SWOs are responsible for the clearing of Amyloid plaques, memory consolidation, and regulation of hormones such as GH, cortisol, insulin, and prolactin. If you want to find out more, check us out at https://soundmind.co https://soundmind.co

javajosh 5y ago
What do you guys know about lucid, or at least intense, dreaming?
- pedalpete 5y ago
  I've had some experience with lucid dreaming myself, but it isn't an area we're currently interested in pursuing. It's fun when you don't wake yourself up. One anecdote from our early development. When I was using one of our early stims, I woke up when it should have held me in deep sleep. I was a bit disappointed, as I'd had good results for a few days. Then I realized, I wasn't hearing the stim, so I actually wasn't awake. That realization woke me up. :)
  - javajosh 5y ago
    Well, I think it would be cool to correlate whatever sleep measurements you're taking with the subject's dream experience. Could be a good marketing angle for you, too. Dreams are cool.
5y ago

imwillofficial 5y ago

“Implanted microchip” Nah, I’m good.

dwighttk 5y ago

absolutely not