MORGANTOWN — What were you thinking about when you were 12 years old?
Consider these brow-furrowers, taken on by a quartet of students from Suncrest Middle School, precisely that age, and in a pretty big arena:
… There’s “Oliver,” who suffered a traumatic brain injury as a toddler that left him with significant cognitive limitations and other issues.
As a child he was irritable and prone to tantrums. He was developmentally late and often struggled in school. Now, as a teen, his anger issues have gotten more violent and darker, and his mother is frightened.
So she agreed to have a deep-brain stimulation device implanted, which is basically an emotional seismograph that knows when the next mind-quake is coming. The device is more than that, however.
It can actually send out electrical pulses to the areas of Oliver’s brain that generate and govern behavioral and emotional responses — thus neutralizing any outbursts before they can happen.
The operation is a success. Or is it? Oliver is calmer, but now he has chronic insomnia and is losing interest in sports and most of his other hobbies. Headaches, too. Is he being “controlled” by the device in brain?
His mother can’t help but wonder. Could — should — the procedure be reversed, so that Oliver now might be able to control his behavior through meditation or breathing exercises without the device in his brain? Oliver doesn’t want that, and now she’s more scared than before.
Or this one, perhaps:
… “Nikola” is a recently decommissioned officer in a high-tech assault force that turned her into a literal fighting machine by way of technology similar to Oliver’s procedure.
A cerebral implant mandated by the military governed her brain with encrypted radio signals that overrode her central nervous system in combat — especially combat. Hormones linked into battle formation and salvos of adrenaline were fired.
The implant wasn’t deployed to do its work in just times of skirmishes with the enemy. Nikola’s commanding officers also kicked it in any time she and her platoon needed to bust the hard-work detail required of any soldier, high-tech or no.
The device is now too embedded in her brain tissue to be safely removed, but it has been deactivated. Or has it?
The stress of looking for work and trying to reintegrate into civilian life is leaving her with blinding headaches and off-the-chart stress. Last week, she jaywalked into heavy traffic without even thinking about the possibility of being struck.
As she was rehearsing the new questions she had for her doctors, a bolt of pain shot across her temple. “Huh,” she thought. “What was that about?”
And there’s this:
… “Ricardo” was never one to give up, and he’s not about to start now — especially after the accident.
He’s fascinated by his new, robotic hand that took the place of his actual one, lost. He waggles the fingers — pretty good — and tries to snag a set of chopsticks from the table. Not so good. The sushi will have to wait.
All the while, that electroencephalogram headband he’s wired to is “reading” his thoughts. Move those fingers, he thinks. Done. Let me see those chopsticks. Almost.
Like a 21st century smartphone, however, his therapist tells him that his robotic hand is already on the way to being outdated — and he hasn’t even had it that long. He doesn’t know if his insurance will continue paying for the physical therapy.
Brain-computer interfaces (and other tech-cell therapies) are the next wave, the therapist says. The futuristic warehouse Ricardo works for already tells him what time to be there and how to be more productive — on top of constantly monitoring his vital signs through various external smart-devices he’s required to wear and use.
What if the company makes him put something in his brain that starts watching more than that?
Houston, we have a problem?
The above (paraphrased) scenarios, if you’re of a certain generation, could bring to mind Philip K. Dick — the speculative, science fiction-styled writer who worried in his novels and short stories about technology becoming the new master of reality.
The real-reality, is that all the above is a reflection of the rudiments of neurotechnology, which is already employing the brain-computer interface models, in the basics.
Neurotechnology is helping to help treat Parkinson’s disease and insomnia. It’s being used to help people recover from strokes or serious accidents involving brain trauma.
It was also one of the topics addressed in this year’s Future Problem Solving Program International competition, which challenges students from all grade levels to do some intellectual time-traveling, as it were.
The idea, through science and the arts, is to explore the ramifications of what might work — and what might not — in the next 50 or 100 years.
Paul Torrence, a psychologist and professor at the University of Georgia, launched the enterprise in 1974, to tie in with his research on creativity and problem-solving.
Visit https://www.fpspi.org/ to find out more about the nonprofit program, headquartered in Melbourne, Fla.
Just counting the 2000s, more than 250,000 students, from 37 U.S. states and 14 countries have taken the future problem-solving challenge.
Enter 2021, and say hello to Lucille Dahle, Sama Sattout, Pranav Sure and Caden Yao.
Morgantown, the world over
Lucille, Sama, Pranav and Caden are the aforementioned students from Suncrest Middle — 7th-graders — who delved into the above scenarios to offer practical, on-the-ground suggestions to once-and-future aspects of life that are cautionary tales at worst and enhancements to quality of life at their best.
In the end, they were among the best in the world, placing seventh, in fact.
Yep, seventh. In the world.
“Yeah, I was going through all the results and I kept seeing the Suncrest kids,” Robyn Addie, the affiliate director of West Virginia’s Future Problem Solving chapter, said.
“We’ve had individual students do really well, but I’m not sure we’ve ever had a team in the Top 10 in the world,” said Addie, who also teaches at neighboring Mountaineer Middle.
“I mean, they were beating out teams from China, Australia, New Zealand. I emailed Molly, and I said, ‘Are you seeing the same thing I’m seeing?’ ”
That’s Molly Gregory, her former colleague at Mountaineer Middle who is now on the faculty at Suncrest Middle, where she helped the Fantastic Four ready for the competition.
Not that she’s taking credit. Preparations started when the school district was on full remote-learning, due to the pandemic.
The global competition was in June — it was held virtually — and that meant lots of solitary work, Gregory said.
Each topic has 16 steps that have to be worked through, Gregory said, which mean 16 separate papers also had to be drafted, addressing each.
That means lots of creative deconstructing, Gregory said, similar to the assignment where an engineering student builds a roller coaster in his head — while simultaneously conjuring every case of catastrophic failure he can imagine.
“You start talking neurotechnology, and you’re automatically going to get into all the bioethical issues,” she said.
“These aren’t little ‘exercises’ the kids are doing. This is what they’re going to be living with, when they have kids and grandkids of their own.”
Packing the suitcase, for the future trip
Addie said the lasting reward for the Suncrest Middle students will be what they forever carry in their brains: The respect for research, collaboration and, above all, critical thinking.
“And that’s invaluable. That’s theirs. That goes with them, no matter what they do in life.”
Pranav Sure, who right now is considering going into either biology or engineering, can’t stop thinking about what “Nikola” is carrying in her head, in the one scenario.
He can’t stop thinking about what happens when technology outpaces human thought.
And when it doesn’t, consider what happens when actual people are involved — be they the creators or the recipients.
“She isn’t a soldier anymore, but she’s got the device in her brain that says she still is. So, what do we do about that?”
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