What's the Deal with All Those Neuromorphic Scientists in the White Tyvek Jumpsuits?

Amidst exploding hot dogs, gyrating men in black, and cascading candy, a clump of neuroscientists paraded down Main Street in Telluride's 4th of July Parade last Wednesday, masquerading as a model of a nervous system.
Since 1994 the annual Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop, hosted by the Telluride Academy, attracts 60 some-odd scientists each year for a three-week research retreat. These graduate students, post-docs, professors, and even a few representatives of industry, hail from such American institutions such as Cal Tech, MIT, and John Hopkins, and from places as distant as England, Spain, Japan, Scotland, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. Here in mountain paradise, they spend all hours of the day and night in a make-shift lab at the Elementary School, probing the biological and engineering mysteries of the brain. Serious folks, doing serious thinking, in Telluride?
"If this were the real West, the sheriffs would have run them out of town by sundown. I'm surprised to see them on the street," remarked one long time local, tongue-in-cheek of course, as the scientists paraded past him carrying a gargantuan paper tongue flapping from cardboard lips. "This could undermine our way of life in Telluride," the banker continued, not realizing that the size of the passing body parts (giant tongue, smallish hands) mimicked the cortical representation of our senses (lots of neurons for our tongues, fewer for our sense of touch, etc.).
"Who are those guys?" was as common an aside as, "What are they supposed to be?" Marching largely in anonymity, some parade gazers recognized the repeat performance of the annual Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop scientists: "I love them. They're the parade highlight. I appreciate their creativity," a local enthused. "But do I know what it means? No."
Not unlike the subtleties of neuromorphic engineering - a new field marrying the principles of neurobiology and engineering - the conceptual meaning of the walking-model escaped many of this year's spectators. With varying degrees of accuracy, guesses by curb sitters ranged from: "A face"; "The blood system; "Internal synapses"; "Axioms of the brain"; "A neuromorphic motor;"A simulated brain."; "Gray matter"; "The nervous system." And in a curious contrast between the observed (serious Neuromorphic engineers focused on the brain) and the observing (a local musician barely awake):"I don't know what I think. I try not to think."
One flag waver surmised, "It was a clean room. All the scientists were in their scrubs. Isn't that what they wear everyday?" The white, protective, Tyvek jumpsuits, donned by the scientists led another to conjecture that the model simulated "a nuclear experiment gone wrong." One tourist guessed that they were rocket scientists -- not all together incorrect: three are. One helped make the Mars Pathfinder expedition a success.
But most of these researchers are neuro scientists or engineers, here to learn the principles of each other's disciplines, informally by sharing lab space, or formally in their daily, lecture-style presentations.
Most of the scientists arrived on Sunday of this week, some on Monday, so with regret, this group which aspires to win an parade award some year, had only one day to prepare for this year's march. Lacking time and the usual creative collaboration (and much appreciated art supplies) of Telluride artist Pamela Zoline (who is away in England), the team recycled some materials from past years and added a few new flourishes -- most notably, the Stem Cell Kid. The three-year-old son of one of the scientists stole the show. "He was so cute, I couldn't concentrate on the rest of the group so I can't tell you what they were supposed to represent," a parade goer admitted, or perhaps conveniently sided stepped the issue of interpreting the white-clad humans, connected by gray tubing, carrying organ placards, with aluminum foil head gear. The little Stem Cell Kid, who to the scientists represented not only the germ of all cells, but a "little piece of neuro development," led his elders down Main Street.
As a "stem cell," the little boy was surprisingly recognizable by many parade watchers -- perhaps because embryonic stem cell research has become such a controversial and persistent issue, with President George Bush lining up with abortion foes against federal funding of the research, and scientists, including dozens of Nobel Laureates, lining up for it.
But the lesson here for these scientists is that if they want to win first prize next year, perhaps they should add more toddler stem cells, or heed the advice of one local: "They should have showed more skin. I have always wanted to see a neuro scientist naked."
However, that would belie the serious nature of their work. Sitting for lectures in one of the third-grade classrooms of the elementary school, with the cursive alphabet, days of the week, and grammar lessons as a backdrop, these scientists are at the forefront of blending powerful technologies which are posed to change the world. In the short run, their research has led to the creation of an artificial cochlea (inner ear), artificial retina, vision chips, and more. In the long run, these technologies will create other artificial organs, no doubt helping to extend the average life-span of humans. But these technologies will also be applied to "living machines," "humanoids," "robots," and "artificial intelligence" - or whatever word is the flavor of the moment in the development of these technologies.
For now, the dual purpose of this annual workshop, according to one of the organizers Avis Cohen, a neuromorphic engineer and professor at the University of Maryland at College Park, is to one, help create a new discipline: neuromorphic engineering, and two, teach scientists from a host of disciplines what this new field is all about, and meanwhile create fruitful collaborations. "Basically the purpose is to wed (in the best sense - a happy union) neuro-science and engineering," explained Cohen. "Bringing the principles of biology to engineering and the principles of engineering to biology," defines the field of neuromorphic engineering, says Cohen. But like all technologies, the social implications of this new science is far reaching.
Rodney Brooks, director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab wrote recently in an email, "We are not seeing all the incredibly difficult issues that will arise when engineering becomes bio-based. Our whole manufacturing and technology infrastructure will include our own bodily basis as a subset. There won't be technology, on the one hand, and human genetic modification, on the other -- as separate issues. It's going to be all tied up together." Explaining further, he wrote, "Deciding against messing with the human genome in 50 years, to use an analogy, will be equivalently controversial as us deciding today that we are going to keep all our current technology except decide that humans will not move about under anything but their own walking power-no cars, trains, busses, planes, ships, or even bicycles. As if we could decide today that it is immoral to use any of these devices and enforce the ban worldwide. I'm not saying that the moral position today is to decide against human genetic modification, or for it, but this is the level of difficulty we are going to face."
Serious folks, doing serious work in Telluride. How refreshing. Let's hope they're not run out of town, but instead begin to make their mark on Telluride's culture.