SciShow Tangents - Cyborgs with AshleyRoboto

Episode Date: June 29, 2021

This week, Twitch streamer and science enthusiast AshleyRoboto joins us to talk about cyborgs! Get ready to radically broaden your definition of cyborgs all the way down to “person with glasses!”Can’t get enough AshleyRoboto? Follow her @AshleyRoboto and check out her Twitch stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/ashleyrobotoHead to the link below to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter! https://www.patreon.com/SciShowTangentsA big thank you to Patreon subscriber Eclectic Bunny for helping to make the show possible!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @slamschultz Hank: @hankgreen

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase. I'm your host, Hank Green, and joining me this week, as always, is science expert, Sari Reilly. I'm your host Hank Green and joining me this week as always is science expert Sari Reilly. I feel like I need an asterisk next to my science expert for this episode too. Just a little imagine it. And also our resident everyman Sam Schultz. Hello. And we also have a special guest today, Twitch streamer and artist Ashley Roboto.

Hi everybody. I love having guests. I'm very excited. Ashley, what's the best Zelda game? Oh, my gosh. Okay. Considering this is a conversation I've had much today, I think personally, yes. My favorite Zelda game is Majora's Mask

just because I am a fan of creepier stuff. And it was one of the first games I ever played. And I just, I love it. I feel like every time I play it, I discover something new and nuanced about it. And it's really cool. But replayability, I feel like Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker are pretty solid. I think that I have spent the most of my Zelda time in Majora's Mask personally. So I appreciate that.

Oh, that makes me feel very sophisticated. Solid. That was college time for me. So I can't picture a version of Hank that has time to play video games. I haven't played a video game in so long. Oh, no. I'm very sorry. Also, I won't tell you when game in so long. Oh, no. I'm very sorry. Also, I won't tell you when I played Majora's Mask.

I'm going to leave that age off the table then. No, I'm used to this. Yeah. I usually say something like I played Majora's Mask when I was little and it scared me because I was too small. And so the moon coming down was just like ah this is too frightening for me because sari hadn't been born yet she was just an embryo playing majora's mask she saw through her mother's stomach the moon coming at her and got scared yeah through the belly button hole that's how it works this is a science podcast that's exactly how it works yeah. Yeah, that's why it's there. It's a peephole.

I had a great conversation today with Maddie in the SciShow studio where we both discovered that we watched Blue's Clues at the same time, but I did it as an adult because I didn't want to think about my responsibilities. Uh-huh. Oh. Very valid. She did it because she was in preschool. She did it because she was a preschooler.

That's awful. This thing that you're listening to right now is SciShow Tangents. Every week we get together, we try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with science fact, all while trying to stay on topic. Our panelists are playing for Glory, but we're also playing for Hank Bucks, which I will be awarding as we play. And at the end of the episode, one which I will be awarding as we play. And at the end of the episode, one of you will be crowned the winner. Now, as always, we introduced this week's topic with the traditional science poem. This week, it's going to be from me. Resistance is futile, they say with a smile. As we visit the Apple store, walk down the aisle to see AirPods and watches we can add to our bodies they're hundreds of dollars

but still don't feel gaudy they connect us to others and to our own selves they're always upon us and never on shelves helps you sleep helps you wake helps you bake a sweet cake helps you get from your house to a good steak and shake there's this idea that someday we might be part machine with sensors embedded in our skin so serene but that isn't a day that we someday aspire for because already most of us have become cyborgs and our topic for the day is cyborgs

oh my god do we even we don't even get a snapping break that was beautiful everybody snaps if it's good wow Sari didn't snap it was fine wow Sari's been on a poem hot streak lately so it's true it's true look we keep getting better at poems and so occasionally one one maybe a little bit

misses the mark i feel like that last stanza could i could have worked harder on it well nothing rhymes with cyborg literally sari what what's a cyborg? Well, I think you approached the heart of the debate in your poem, which is that it doesn't really have a scientific definition. So it's kind of like wherever you want to draw the line, the line can exist. But the principle of a cyborg is that it is like a shortened form of cybernetic, an organism, and is used to describe something that is part biological and part technical. And so for some people, it's like, well, we're riding a bicycle or we're wearing glasses and that's like a piece of technology that is enhancing our physical form in some way. But some people are like, you need to have like the traditional sci-fi picture of a cyborg is someone with like a laser eye or a completely replaced chunk of their body that not only performs the function of that chunk,

but like enhances it and is seamlessly integrated with the biological parts of their flesh, as opposed to like a phone that you hold in your hand. That was a little more broad than I have ever thought. And as soon as you said glasses, I just kind of sat here for the rest of the time thinking about if that really makes me a cyborg. You're totally a cyborg. Yeah. That's like up to you to decide as a glasses wearer. Do you want to be a cyborg? I think it just sounds cooler. Yeah. But also what counts is technology, right? Like language is a kind of technology. So from that perspective, humans have kind of been cyborgs from the very beginning.

That's the thing that makes us so spectacularly able to survive. Maybe a little bit too able to survive if you ask some other species. So what is the technology and how is it integrated into us? But I really do feel like the AirPods, that makes me feel very much like I'll be across the house and then Siri will be like, hey, Hank, you just got a text from your mom and here's what it says. And I'm like, you took the internet and put it into my brain just then. I'm not going to make Siri tell us the etymology of the word cyborg because it seems pretty recent. It's recent, but it's interesting. I was excited for this one. All right, you go. It was coined in 1960 from a paper co-authored by two dudes, Manifed Clines and Nathan Klein, unrelated, who were specifically writing about people exploring space.

And they made an argument that instead of creating human-like habitats in space, so like a lot of NASA research is like seeing how human bodies are affected by space and how we can build spacecraft or like habitats on other planets to protect humans and mimic an Earth environment. They suggested that what if we solve this problem by creating cyborgs? So changing the human body to adapt to a space environment rather than changing space to adapt to humans. And that is why they came up with a term. They were like, we can't adapt fast enough to extraterrestrial conditions, so we should just become cyborgs if we want to go to space and adapt our bodies with technology instead. I mean, it's a real win. It's a win of a term.

Cyborg. It just sounds very good. I often think sometimes whether or not an idea sort of sticks in our culture really comes down to whether you come up with a good word for it. So good job, Klein and Klein. Yes. The dynamic duo. And because it's a constructed word,

maybe that's part of why it doesn't have a lot of good rhymes. The only one I can think of is morgue. Yeah, I did. I looked at morgue. I thought about morgue for a while. Not a great, not very fun though. No. Fly morgue.

You can make it kind of, I guess, fly the organism or fly cool. It could be a cool place where dead people hang out. Fly morgue. It's like, not like for the not like for the dead flies but like the the hip version of a fly yeah the lit one as they say right the hip and cool uh-huh it's a fly morgue now that we're fully uh up to speed on where the word cyborg comes from and what it means uh it's time for the quiz portion of our show. This week, we're playing a quiz called Secret Ingredient.

So scientists have been exploring a variety of different methods to integrate plants into our potential cyborg future by using their internal biology and chemistry to create all sorts of cool things. So not a cyborg human, but a cyborg plant. This work is still very much in progress. So a lot of what they're making are just proofs of concept that might help us understand more of how we might combine plants and electronics. So for today, we're going to be playing

secret ingredient where I will describe a cyborg plant technology, but I'm going to leave out a key ingredient and you will have to guess of three options, which that key ingredient is. Okay. And you will have to guess of three options which that key ingredient is. Okay. Round number one. In 2015, researchers at the Linköping University in Sweden, I'm sure that's how it's pronounced, demonstrated the ability to add electronic functionality to a plant by assembling simple circuits that combined the rows with electronic materials.

What was the secret ingredient behind their methods? Was it A, an electrode that is activated by the puncturing of horns? Horns? Thorns? B, they don't have those. Roses don't have horns. B, genetically engineered protein that amplifies voltage. Or C, a polymer electrolyte mixture that assembles inside the xylem of the plant. But why? But why what, Sam? Why are they doing this?

I said it's a proof of concept. We don't know yet what we're going to do with it. Maybe we're going to make the rose do a little dance for the one that you love. That would be nice. You know, it's like Jurassic Park. It's like it's about if you could not if you should yeah movie definitively proved that every time you should just keep doing well i'm gonna pick the xylem one because i see that's a word i know yeah xylem sounds like you could fit something

inside there it seems like the most specific to me. So I think there's the most thought there. So I'm going to go with C. Okay. The Thorin one sounds fake. I don't know what you'd do with puncturing Thorins. Yes. So I'm going to go with B just for the heck of it. You just want to add a little variety, a little spice.

Yeah. Well, Sarah, you should not have because the answer is C. So scientists incorporated electronic components into a rose by submerging the stem in a solution of a conducting polymer called a P-dot. The P-dot goes into the xylem. It's just sucked in via capillary action, and it creates wires that run through the rose. The scientists then tested the xylem wires out by cutting bits of the stem and seeing how they performed in different circuits. So, boom, rose wires. Why are we doing it?

Don't ask questions. Okay. All right, awesome. That makes sense because that's how they make roses like fake different colors. You know, the ones in the grocery store that you see that are like bright blue. They just like put them in food coloring like that.

One of the other things that they did is they used a different polymer and when they run a voltage through that polymer, it changes color. So maybe that's what they're going to do. Coming to a flower shop near you, color-changing roses if you plug them in. Round number two, everybody. Scientists at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore created a soft electrode that

would allow them to monitor a plant as well as send electric signals to the plant to control its movement using a smartphone. To prove this concept would work, how did the team test out their system? Did they, A, turn a Venus flytrap into a set of pliers that can grab on to little tiny wires, or B, construct a braided structure out of grapevines by controlling the movement of the vines, or C, pull a lever connected to a sunflower

by controlling the plant's bending. Plants can move and now we can make them move because we can't control ourselves. Yeah, but why? Yeah. Oh my gosh. See, it was super cool in theory, but now that we have like a practical application,

I don't like it as much. It's creepy. Yeah. So my first thought when you said moving plants was sunflowers, because I know they move pretty dramatically to follow the sun and like even watching them in our yard, like they rotate throughout the day. That's really cool. So I'm going to just go with that one because I've seen them move and seeing is believing. Really, I have no idea. And I was just trying to make a reasoning behind the guess. Grapevines are really flexible in the way that you can like weave them around things. Yeah. Like any sort of viney plant is. And Venus

flytraps already have the little mouth that opens and closes. And I just imagine it would be harder to pry it back open but if you understood what electrical impulses or like what mechanism closed it i imagine you could open it as well well yeah it must be somewhat similar ish to like being able to electrode like your arm right oh no i was i was kind of solid in my answer. Now I don't know anymore. But I'm just going to guess B because it just felt right at the time when I heard it. I don't think a Venus flytrap would be very helpful in any situation with little wires. So I'm going to also say B. Well, Sam, it doesn't matter whether or not it's useful.

You just do it because you're a scientist. Because it turns out the answer is indeed A. So many plants, it turns out, have really irregular surfaces, and that makes it hard to attach electronic devices to them. But hydrogel electrodes, similar to what are used in EEGs, are easier to attach. And to test out whether these electrodes could work at controlling a plant, scientists connected them to a Venus flytrap

and then sent electrical pulses through, like, Bluetooth or the smartphone or something to get it to close the leaves. Now, did they get them to open them back up? I don't know. That's not in my notes. Probably not. But that's the thing. I guess not.

Then they connected the plant to a robotic arm and they were able to get it to pick up a little wire. And look, it's just so you can get a headline out of it. That's the whole point. I guess so. Yeah, fair. And finally, round number three. Scientists at MIT in the U.S. connected electrodes to the stems, leaves, and ground of a potted plant,

using the plant's own internal chemistry to send signals to a robot attached to the pot. The robot has a key part that allows it to respond to what the plant is feeling. What is that part? Is it A, a set of wheels that moves the pot when the plant senses light, B, a heated wall that turns on when the plant gets cold or c an arm that transports water to the plant when it is thirsty okay that's cute it's one of those and regardless it's awesome cool maybe robots and plants can be friends yeah oh my gosh could you imagine how much it would help people that just cannot keep a plant alive? It's like, that's in the robot's hands now. I got it. I got it.

A heated wall sounds so boring. that would probably be the first place that like you know if i was smarter and a scientist i would try to make that work i think it's safe they're all very plausible though what's it do the first one what was a a was a set of wheels that moves the pot when the plant senses light maybe wouldn't you want it to move when the plant wasn't sensing light? Well, that's like maybe the thing is if it's not at the right level of light, then the wheels wheel it to get the right level of light. The answer was, though, I believe when the plant is sensing light, right? Oh, we're going into technicalities. It moves the pot when the plant senses light.

Hmm, suspicious. I think it's the watering one. suspicious i think it's the watering one i think it's the watering one too just because that feels like plants sense that really obviously but the other thing that they sense really obviously is light oh no oh no and look i don't know why they had the plant move when it sensed light i guess just because they could because they couldn't figure out how to do it when it didn't sense light. Exactly, yeah. Or if a plant isn't sensing light,

it just drives itself around forever. Like a robot. Yeah. It's like just searching, searching. I love this so much. Maybe it moves toward the light. I don't know. I don't think it does.

I think it just moves when it senses light. But there's a name for this system. It's called the Elowan, E-L-O-W-A-N. So it sounds very elvish. Yes. And I, yes, I, anytime, I just plant just driving itself around. It makes me really happy.

Someday plants will have cars. That is a little more scary. I like the little tiny pot of little cars. That's cute. Yeah. Yeah. Someday plants will have cars little more scary i like the little tiny potted little cars though that's cute yeah yeah someday someday plants will have cars and they will just drive faster and faster as long as there is sun yeah it's like i love this so much and they just crash into each other and that's the thing that finally stops us and gets us on trains again yeah just shove a bunch of sunflowers on the

autobahn and let them go exactly well means that overall, none of you did particularly well. But no one as poorly as Sari. The scores are Ashley with one point, Sam with one point, and Sari with zero Hank bucks. Next, we're going to take a short break, and then it will be time for another game. Welcome back, everybody. It's time for Tricerfay. Contact lenses have a long history, including one contraption proposed in 1637 by Rene Descartes that involved filling a tube with water and placing the tube in contact with your eye.

No, don't do it. Not in that time. Yeah, come on, Descartes. I thought you were smart. Fortunately, scientists and doctors have come up with a lot of advances since then and many of us have been able to correct our vision thanks to the lenses that we put directly onto our eyes which i haven't done since high school because i just didn't like how it felt but of course technology continues to advance and scientists have developed ways to integrate electronics

into our contact lenses so that they can do more than just correct our vision the following are three stories of cyborg contact lens advancement for medical purposes, but only one of them is real. Which one of them is it? Are you ready? I think so. Maybe. Fact number one, scientists have invented a contact lens that monitors changes in the

shape of your eyeball, collecting data and sending it wirelessly to a device so that doctors can diagnose potential disease. Or is it fact number two? Scientists have invented a contact lens that clears persistent floaters from your eyes using small vibrations that are programmed so that when worn, the contact lens will shake the floaters and clear them away.

Windchill wipers. Yeah, basically. For your eyeballs. Windshield wipers. Yeah, basically. Or your eyeballs. Eyeball wipers. Or fact number three, scientists have invented a contact lens that helps reduce eye strain by using light-sensitive materials

that trigger the muscles in your eyes to temporarily relax when you've been staring at a screen for too long. That sounds dangerous. Look, we've just gone over the fact that scientists are making plant cars and we're all going to die. I feel like the most useful one is the first one.

It would be like monitoring that kind of nonsense, which is helpful. People are very into this, just like covering our body in sensors so that we can always know when we are experiencing or not experiencing disease. Just put the whole doctor business out of business. Well, there's like this, yeah, this increasing push towards personalized medicine that's also like a surveillance state that I don't know how to feel about because I'm not smart enough. Apple's like, I know how firm your eyeballs are. Yeah, it's like, you know how many steps I took,

you know my sleep patterns, and you know my eyeball firmness. Is that good because you can tailor my care? Maybe. Is it bad because, I don't know, you can market me things based on my eyeball firmness? Oh, my gosh. Are we going to have like a Tempur-Pedic eye firmness scale? I've never worn contacts. i'm terrified of them i do not like touching my eyes no i hilariously enough i've worn glasses since i was like in sixth grade but in high school

instead of you know normal contact lenses with a prescription i wore colored contacts and then my glasses just to really make my life hell for a while. Yeah. Sounds very high school. Yeah. Sounds eye infection-y. Didn't do it for very long, so thank God. Yeah, I stopped wearing contact lenses when I went to a Warped tour and I lost them both in a mosh pit.

Oh, no. And I had to call my mom to pick me up. Oh, you loser. It was a loose mosh pit. Oh, no. And I had to call my mom to pick me up. Oh, you loser. It was a loose mosh pit. There were not very many people in the audience, but there was one man who put me in a headlock and then raked his whole arm across my eyes and extracted both of my contact lenses.

Ew. Oh, that is way too much eyeball contact for my liking. How did you keep your eyes open through that whole process? I don't know. It was very intense. You were scared. Mosh pits, man. You can't close your eyes.

You never know what's going to happen. I guess so. Wow. Yeah. Oh, my Lord. Do you guys want to hear them again? They're written down. I'm still going to go with number one.

Yeah. You've got your your wireless eyeball shape monitoring contact lens your vibrating floater clearing uh contact lens or your light sensitive muscle relaxing contact lens do your eyeballs change shape yes yeah they do i guess when you squint you're making a much different shape huh well like even when you focus on things so this is another cool part i read an interview with a guy who made up the term cyborg, and he's like, we already kind of are because, like, we get muscle feedback. This is a cool tangent I wanted to work in an episode, so I'm glad you asked. Oh, you look so excited.

We get muscle feedback. So if you think, like, oh, I want to clench my fist, you can, like, feel that and, like, see the consequences of that. and like see the consequences of that. But the control of the lens in our eyes happens not quite subconsciously, but like without that kind of motor feedback. We just like think about what we want to focus on, whether it's at a distance or up close and our eye lenses and our eye muscles adjust that for us.

And like the feedback is that we see the thing that we want to see more clearly, but we don't like feel those muscles move necessarily. And I sat after reading that and thought about it for 10 minutes because it's just like, I don't know. I couldn't tell my lens while I'm focused on something up close to focus far away or focus at a different distance. focus at a different distance, I can make it either blurry or not, but not with the precision that my eyes and brain do without me consciously thinking of it. Yes. Eyes are very much surprisingly out of our control. And also the information we get from them is surprisingly not what we think it is. It's a kind of illusion oftentimes. I will still never get over just thinking about like the cones in our eyes and how different animals have so much more.

Like I have no idea what we don't see in the world. And that is an uncomfortable thing to think about. The light sensitive muscle relaxing thing. What if you forget that you have a in and you're driving down the street and all of a sudden you're like, is that what happened? Man, I don't know. I don't think that dramatically, probably.

I hope not. That sounds too dangerous. So I'm going to go with number one also. Okay. Okay, I'm going to just try to be different and it hasn't worked out for me so far. I'm going to go with the muscle relaxing one just because uh i don't know i'm gonna keep you all guessing a little bit and let you know

that sari was wrong but but was close because scientists have been developing contact lenses with artificial irises that respond to light for people who have damaged irises so if you aren't able to contract your own iris anymore scientists are working on a thing that responds to light for people who have damaged irises. So if you aren't able to contract your own iris anymore, scientists are working on a thing that responds to light and contracts an artificial iris. So you are right that it is a thing, but it was not that thing that I said that it was. It was close, but not quite there.

Now, did the other two people get it right? You, in fact, did. Yay! Good job. So, yeah, this soft contact lens has a microprocessor in it and an antenna in it and a strain gauge, a device that measures the amount of strain the lens is experiencing. And it's used to measure intraocular pressure, which is a major risk factor for glaucoma. And you can do this when you go into the eye doctor.

Sometimes they like shoot a puff of air at your eye. And that will give you that moment's intraocular pressure. But those measurements don't capture the variation that can happen over the course of a day. So that contact lens, which is made by a Swiss manufacturer, Sensamed, it's called the Triggerfish, which is a lovely name. which is made by a Swiss manufacturer, Sensamed. It's called the Triggerfish, which is a lovely name. And it's designed to be worn over the course of 24 hours, during which time it will take 300 strain gauge readings over 30 seconds every five minutes,

producing 86,400 data points over 24 hours. And that is then just sent to a recorder on the patient. And the data then gets into a computer where the doctors can assess your patient's eye health so that we can know for sure how your glaucoma is doing. Okay, so do you always wear this or is this like when you're doing a sleep test? Yeah, it's like you just get monitored for 24 hours

because they might, probably only if there was some sign that things aren't ideal. Yeah. And they'd be like, oh, you're sort of at the edge of the range, let's wear this for 24 hours. Is the windshield wipers real? Same. Windshield wipers are real. They go on cars, but there isn't a good way to break up the floaters that you have in your eyes. Okay. Ashley, do you have a science background or are you just a science genius?

Oh, I wouldn't call me a genius, but I honestly, I just have been super into science for like a hot minute. Fun fact, mostly because of Crash Course, I've just been really kind of into science. And it's just been one of those things where the Internet is vast and you have access to so much knowledge. So sometimes I go on deep dives. Doesn't bode well that you just beat the con like the content the main editor of crash course at a science i edit the content i don't need to generate it i hire experts to generate it and i've been deep in organic chemistry which which is not cyborg-related at all.

I can tell you about Aldol and Claeson reactions. I can push electrons around. I've basically spent two years taking two semesters of organic chemistry and I'm ready to take the MCAT now. Oh my God. And never again will you have to think

about an owl doll but thank you for that very important work it has not, as we say, helped you and you have been punished for not snapping for my poem with zero Hank bucks at the end of the episode whereas Ashley and Sam have tied for the win!

See, that's what we get for snapping for the poem that's what it is Now it's time for Ask the Science Couch where we've got listener questions for our couch of finely honed scientific minds. This question is from at Giant Bonsai. How is the mind able to send pulses to technology to control it like our actual body in the parts that require conscious voluntary control? How do the signals know where to go? the parts that require conscious voluntary control. How do the signals know where to go?

So this is a thing that we're seeing now with some prosthetics where you can actually think about moving a prosthetic and the prosthetic will move, which is wild and new to my life. It did not exist when I was a teenager and now does. I don't know the answer to this question, though. Sari, do you have any idea? I do. I'm being punished by having to do more work for this podcast, as always. But yeah, so there are multiple kinds of prosthetics, like you said. Some are just cosmetic, like filling in the missing space on the body. Some of them are muscle controlled and provide structural support through like a harness or cables attached. And then now we are venturing into the expensive myoelectric prosthetics. Myo

is like for muscle and then electric is electric, that work together with the electrical impulses from the nervous system and like the muscular system and have rechargeable batteries and other electronic components. And basically what it does is it takes advantage of the fact that our bodies system and like the muscular system and have rechargeable batteries and other electronic components. And basically what it does is it takes advantage of the fact that our bodies are powered by electricity and our muscles already use electricity to move. Neurons and muscle cells can use membrane potentials to generate electrical signals. They generally at resting state, have a negative charge inside and a positive charge outside. And then when they want to send an electrical signal or when your brain tries to send an electrical signal, then sodium channels or like different ion channels open so that the charges can rush in. And then when they reach a certain threshold, that creates an electrical impulse.

And so neurons signal other neurons. And then neurons can also signal muscle cells. And that's what causes the muscle cells to start contracting. And in myoelectric prostheses, it's not as simple as changing a light fixture. So our bodies don't have wires, and we don't understand the nervous system that much. So in the way that you know what you're going to see when you pull a light off the wall, like you'll have a ground, you'll have a positive and a negative, and maybe like a fan cable, your arm doesn't have those hookups. So it's like you don't have like this finger nerve goes here.

We know where the muscles are, but when we're building a prosthesis that hooks up electrically, there are electrodes that sit over working muscles or active nerve areas that still do generate that electrical impulse. And that changes from person to person because different people have different kinds of nerve damage and different working areas of their body. When they move certain muscles in a certain way, and like they try and place the electrodes and program the response to the arm or leg or whatever limb is being replaced in such a way that when they flex certain muscles that mimic what they would have done with a biological limb, the microprocessor and the motors in the electronic prosthesis mirror that. If, for example, you had a prosthetic arm and you flexed a muscle that you typically would to clench your hand, then that would send a signal to the robot arm to clench. And it's very difficult to do, and a lot of them don't work very well. And people don't trust them super well because it's like everyone's body is different. And there's often like a really delayed reaction time where like if you think about clenching your hand, it's almost instantaneous. And when that doesn't happen instantaneously with a prosthetic, that becomes really discouraging for folks who are doing these like motor tests. for folks who are doing these motor tests. And so there's a whole bunch of literature,

not just about how they work, but how they work not well enough to be mass produced or very usable for people because they get frustrated or feel out of sync with it. To me, that seems like it might be a pretty hard problem to overcome as well. It's just hard to... the nervous system is not electronics. And so that interface where you've got this like cool metal arm, like forearm sticking out of your elbow does seem a bit of a ways away. How does the nerve impulse get through this skin? Is it just very close to the skin? Yeah, I think it's very close to the skin in the way that you can kind of like, like with a defibrillator, you can put patches on the outside of the skin and restart a heart. I think the skin is conductive enough to transmit the electrical signal or transmit enough of an electrical signal to be read. Yeah. Because in like, you know, science fiction, comic book cyborgs, it's just like the flesh just fuses into,

but that is not how this works. We have to contain the body. It has to stay on the inside. Otherwise, there's going to be a lot of issues. I think that part is definitely, I don't know, we've sort of explored that territory and I didn't research pacemakers

and things like that. There is separate research into technology explored that territory and i didn't research uh pacemakers and things like that there there is separate research into technology that integrates with organs right safely uh-huh but that is it's not necessarily controlled it like can help control the electrical impulse of the organ so like a pacemaker helps you regulate your heartbeat but is not in turn controlled by your heart like you're not thinking about it it's just a battery that is that's taking along one day at helps you regulate your heartbeat, but is not in turn controlled by your heart. Like you're not thinking about it. It's just a battery that is ticking along.

One day at a time, science. I have faith in you. But the bad news is I will die probably before you finish that job. Wow. Put your brain in a jar and then put wheels on it and then it'll drive toward the light.

Yeah. Yeah, there you go. If you want to ask the science couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShowTangents, where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Thank you to at Judah Kras, at Mala Monster, and everybody else who tweeted us your questions for this episode. Ashley, thank you so much for joining us. If you want more Ashley Roboto, where can they go for that? Thank you so much for having me. It was an absolute pleasure to be here.

Oh my gosh. I am just buzzing with excitement that I was even here with y'all. It was a great time. If y'all want more of my content, I stream Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday on Twitch at twitch.tv slash Ashley Roboto. And just at Ashley Roboto

is where you can find me anywhere. Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, all those. I'm everywhere. Thank you so much, Ashley. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's super easy to do that. You could subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you're new and you were just coming to listen to Ashley, you can also go to patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents and become a patron and get access to things like our newsletter and our bonus episodes of our show. Second, you can leave us a review wherever you listen. That helps us know what you like about the show

and helps other people know how great we are. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Sam Schultz. I've been Ashley Roboto. Hi! SciShow Tangents is created by all of us

and produced by Caitlin Hoffmeister and Sam Schultz, who edits a lot of these episodes. Our social media organizer is Paola Garcia Prieto. Our editorial assistant is Taboki Chakrabarty. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. And we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you! And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled,

but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. But one more thing. In the mid-2000s, Ged Galvin of Yorkshire, England, was in a terrible motorcycle accident in which he suffered severe internal injuries. As a result of the accident, he needed to use a colostomy bag. But in 2009, he underwent an experimental surgery to build him a new colon. removed a muscle from his leg, molded it into a sphincter, and filled it with remote control electrodes that allowed his sphincter to open and close with the push of a button on a cell phone-sized remote control that he carries with him.

Oh my God. And since he is British, many of the articles about Ged's new sphincter call it a bionic bottom. So polite. Holy, what? Why don't i know about that button operated too it's just like i'm no straining to poop just i want to poop now open that chute