While humans have been known to experience synesthesia by using hallucinogenic drugs or after brain injury, German scientists have been able to re-wire fruit fly larvae to perceive blue light as smelling like bananas. Although normal larvae would retreat from light, these larvae were thus attracted to it:

The work involves activating single receptor neurons out of 28 olfactory neurons. All the olfactory neurons were capable of producing a protein that is activated by light. The researchers had to choose which one to make light-sensitive.

They found they could either activate cells which would normally register repulsive odors and make the flies go away, or they could activate cells that respond to attractive odors like banana, marzipan or glue. Those odors are all present in rotting fruit, which attracts fruit flies.

The neurons send an electrical signal if they are stimulated with blue light, giving the fly larvae the impression that it has smelled something. As shown in the photo, the larvae went toward the light. The point is to study how the neural network operates, the researchers say.

There are certain instances where synesthesia could potentially be beneficial – this list of famous synesthetes seems to indicate it’s especially common (relatively speaking) among musicians.

He also provides his opinion on who is helping bring about this potential future:

Ok, so who is working towards this eventuality? Well, if it happens this way, pretty much everybody in the NBIC fields – everybody working on nanotech and biotech and AI and brain science, whether as citizen scientists in a collaborationist project or working for a corporation, or those wacky surrealists at DARPA – they’re all pushing this potentiality forward. Of course, we may have to “hijack the singularity” from them eventually – or even now (think gene patent v. open source bio). But mainly, I think all the people who are engaging in open source collaborationist tinkering and culture, the citizen scientists – particularly the more sophisticated and educated young people that are choosing to invest themselves in “garage” projects – I think they all may be taking us there.

I also think the best, smartest critics and skeptics and SF writers and creators are helping – by problematizing these scenarios in advance, by giving us arguments and narratives that remind us about human behaviors and emotions and political and economic and scientific realities. Brilliant fiction adds to our foresight… our pattern recognition… by playing out dramatic, difficult, dark, challenging, ambiguous or dystopian scenarios based on similar technological possibilities.

Like all of R.U. Sirius’ writings, it’s well worth reading.

• Lunar mining
• Medical miniaturization
• 3-D printing
• Smarter smart phones
• Cloud computing
• Nanotechnology
• Flying on algae (algae-based fuels)
• Living forever
• Biotechnology
• Alternative energies

We’re already seeing most of these in practice and over the next ten years we will certainly see significant advances. I’m skeptical of the suggestion that we’ll be setting up mining operations on the Moon anytime soon, however. To make mining helium-3 on the Moon profitable, we first need to develop practical nuclear fusion on Earth, and that is a *big* stumbling block. Second, we’d need to develop mining equipment that functions in the lunar environment, and build the means for workers to live on the moon. All massively expensive and very complicated.

Otherwise, I thought this was a neat list. It’s interesting to see additional mainstream coverage of these issues – particularly acknowledgement that humans may develop the means to effectively live forever (or at least reach “actuarial escape velocity“) in the next decade or so. No mention of robotics or artificial intelligence advances, however, which might be a big hole when we start looking back at these predictions in 2020.

Improved Gene Therapy

While gene therapy holds a lot of promise for providing effective treatments to previously untreatable diseases, in has traditionally been very difficult to administer effectively and also carried the very real risk of serious side effects. In 2009, however, we saw advancements in administration of gene therapy that seems to avoid the risks (such as leukemia) and leading to treatments for serious genetic diseases that can lead to blindness and brain damage.

Commitment to Artificial Intelligence Research

Although we saw a clear example of AI hyperbole when IBM researchers announced they had simulated a cat’s brain, at least we had Henry Markram from the Blue Brain Project deliver the smackdown to clarify the situation. We also saw MIT refine its focus on AI with the Mind Machine Project, it’s effort to understand intelligence and build intelligent machines.

Radical Longevity (somewhat) goes Mainstream

I’ve found that, for most people outside the transhumanist “community,” the idea that humans could actually, feasibly, live for as long as they want seems preposterous. That’s why it was refreshing to see more mainstream coverage of radical longevity, culminating with Sanjay Gupta’s interview with Aubrey de Grey and Dan Buettner on CNN. We also saw some good coverage of the 2009 Longevity Summit which explored many of these concepts, as well.

Advancements in Generating Power

To sustain a high level of technological development, we’ll need to make sure we can continue to generate more electricity. It’s become clear that burning fossil fuels isn’t going to cut it as a long-term solution. One of the most exciting upcoming areas of power generation is decentralized power, which will primarily consist of advancements in solar power. Recently researchers announced “glitter-sized” photovoltaic cells that could even be embedded in fabric, enabling individuals to generate their own power. While nuclear fusion is still a ways away, new talk has been taking place about embracing thorium as a source of nuclear power rather than uranium – thorium is abundant has has a much shorter half-life when compared to uranium, making it easier to store waste. In addition, we wouldn’t have to worry about thorium reactors producing weapons grade materials like plutonium-239 or uranium-235.

Any big stories that I’ve missed here? Anywhere you think I’m wrong or way far off? (Or right on?) Feel free to leave a message in the comments.

I could go on for hours naming the incredible medical developments that have enabled humans to live longer, healthier lives, but what’s really important is how these technologies have helped us. The Wall Street Journal runs down twenty health statistics for which all humans can be thankful, which include:

• 40 percent of adults have never had a permanent tooth extracted
• Hip fractures are down 30 percent in the U.S. and Canada since 1985 (Why? We don’t know, exactly, but it’s still good news)
• In 2008, fewer Americans died in traffic accidents than in any year since 1961
• Life expectancy in the U.S. has reached an all-time high of nearly 78 years
• Around the world, 27 percent fewer children died before their fifth birthday than in 1990 due to access to clean water, medicines, sanitation, and low-tech items like insecticide-treated mosquito nets

Let’s also be thankful that medical technology continues to progress at a rapid pace, and gene therapy and nanotechnology continue to show practical promise that may revolutionize medicine as antibiotics once did.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!

Tiny robots that measure only a few millimeters or less may be used for a number of medical procedures, including injecting stem cells or gene therapy directly into hard-to-reach areas, taking photos and tissue samples, cleaning shunts that drain fluid from the brain, and more.

(H/T Moral Machines)

Starting two weeks after the injections, all 12 subjects reported improved vision in dimly lit environments in the injected eye. An objective measurement, which measures how the eye’s pupil constricts, showed that all the subjects were able to detect significantly more light after treatment and also showed greater light sensitivity in each patient’s treated eye compared to the untreated eye. In addition, before treatment, nine patients had nystagmus, an involuntary movement of the eyes that is common in LCA. After treatment, seven of them had significant improvements in nystagmus.

Among the success stories was a kid who went from needing assistance to see the front of his classroom to being able to play softball for the first time, which is pretty incredible and pretty cool.

EDIT: Cleaned up some language in the first paragraph.

It’s about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature’s ultimate machine.

So far, posts have ranged from the practical to the fanciful, covering the future of user interface, real-life examples of people who have modified their bodies, how “wearable tech” has evolved over the years, advances in prosthetics, biotech developments, and more.

Gene therapy has been shown to have great potential, but has been difficult to administer effectively and for some, has had tragic side effects. In one of the most well-known incidents, a few children cured of a rare disease through gene therapy developed leukemia, from which one died. Despite this terrible setback, researchers now believe they have developed new gene insertion methods that do not lead to cancer. From the NYT:

The latest encouraging news arises from a paper published Friday in the journal Science. An international team of researchers are reporting the successful treatment of two children with adrenoleukodystrophy, or ALD, in which the fatty insulation of nerve cells degenerates. A result is progressive brain damage and death two to five years after diagnosis. The disease was the focus of the movie “Lorenzo’s Oil.”

Scientists say they believe they avoided the cancer problem by using a different method to get genes into the children’s DNA. Two years have gone by, and the children are doing well.

The children were not cured, but their disease was arrested. And gene therapy was as good as the standard treatment for the disease, a bone marrow transplant. In this case, the children could not have a transplant because they did not have marrow donors that matched them genetically.

In addition, a paper last month in the journal Lancet reported that a different method of gene therapy, which did not involve inserting a new gene into DNA, partly restored the sight of five children and seven adults with a rare congenital eye disease, Leber’s congenital amaurosis. People with the disease have a mutated gene that prevents them from making a retina protein.

While not in the DNA, the added gene remains in the body of the cells, directing the production of the missing protein and helping correct the disorder. The patients had no standard treatment, and gene therapy offered them a chance to see again, although their sight was far from perfect. But the gene is not copied when cells divide, as it would be if it were part of the cells’ DNA, so the method is applies only to cells, like those of the retina, that divide rarely.

The possibilities for gene therapy are nearly limitless – not only might it be used to treat chronic diseases where existing treatments are lacking, but could also be used, as Ramez Naam writes in his book More Than Human, to increase muscle mass, correct obesity, change skin tone, cure baldness, change eye or hair color, and more.