Perhaps with a metaphor so that I can understand it better? I'd be ever so grateful.

Chip in your brain helps you see things.

More specifically, its hardware dedicated to processing all that sensory input at once. Hearing, peripheral vision, sight, smells, sounds. Kind of like breathing, it never turns off, but sometimes you stop paying attention to it. Attention coprocessors fix that, by helping you multitask, and concentrate on what's going on around you.

So from a computing point of view, would you say then that it increases the speed at which you can cycle your attention from one thing to another to keep them more present in your awareness?

I'll need to reread it but i always had it pictured as something that goes through all that sensory data for you and highlights the good bits for your conscious attention.

From what I've read in how it works:

It enhances the Limbic System and Frontal Cortex of the brain. The modifications of the limbic system involves enhancements to the autonomic nervous subsystems that governs subconscious impulses that, I assume, tiddy up it up in order to reduce clutter. The other side to it involves modifying the dopamine levels that it doles out to the frontal cortex.

The relevant portion of the frontal cortex in this case with the tinkering is the part that governs attention which, with more attention from the limbic system's greater control of it's respective dopamine levels, grant better performance I assume.

In this case, it's not a real chip in your head that does processing for you but more like an computer-assisted brain chemistry regulatory system in the respective areas.

Probably the most common example of a coprocessor is a graphics card. It gives the graphics their own processor, which allows more sophicticated graphics (because there is a seperate processor just for the eye-candy) and at the same time frees resources for everything else you might want to do.

An attention coprocessor does basically the same, just with sensory input instead of visual output.

Don't try to find a scientifically possible explanation for how it works. You won't find one. Attention Co-processors are pure technobabble.

There's something wrong with trying to create more technobabble to help somebody understand? I mean, if we can't talk about technobabble, pretty much most of the game of SR is off limits.

Haha, I understand it really well: 'crazy big + to all Perception tests'.

No, nothing wrong with that at all. Hell, we play with magic! All I said was that he should not try to find a scientific explanation, because there won't be one. Just make up some more technobabble, if nescessary.

you could just say it helps you pay attention ALL the time, even to details your subconscious would often edit out as minutia.

I have to respectfully disagree. First, because some of the ideas already offered are perfectly feasible (tho I'm not so sure about mucking around with dopamine- too little causes Parkinsons and too much causes schizophrenia). But more to the point, SR is science fiction as much as it is fantasy. You can't just discount the science part because it's harder to handwave away. There is an obligation an author accepts when they invoke science to explain their "magic".

Besides, for some us thinking about the science is part of the fun of playing SR. I'm reminded of a quote by the famous skeptic Richard Dawkins that starts "Science is interesting..." I won't post the rest because I don't want to offend anyone. But it's quite funny.

And you are free to do so. It is a fact however, that a large chunk of the SR augmentations are nonsense, from a scientific perspective. And I am not talking about the obvious stuff (like genetech) but the classic technobabble, like "synaptic accelerators" or "reaction enhancers". Their entire premise is ludicrous, but we accept them as a part of the "suspension of disbelief" that makes the game fun for us.

There is no point in trying to figure out scientific explanations for things that are scientifically impossible.

BUT... Are they Scientifically Impossible, or has the science to do so just not been discovered yet?

It is an interesting question... Medical Science continuously discovers things that were thought to be initially impossible... in fact, just look at all the advancements over the last 100 years that were initially thought to be impossible... it is mind boggling...

What is to come in the next 70 years is going to be of great interest, to me at least... thoguh I will most likely not live to see it all...

Keep the Faith

No, absolutely not, otherwise you could take that increased cycling speed and instead of cycling between seeing and smelling cycle between casting a spell and fixing a bike.

This is it.

My vote goes towards impossible. A lot can happen in science and maybe I am proven wrong in a century, but the mere concept of "reaction ehancers" (to name an exemple) is flawed. You can't just "amp up" human reflexes to superhuman levels, without providing the nescessary framework (the body needs to be able to handle the increased speeds without damaging itself in the process). If you understand, how the human brain works, if you understand how perception and signal transmission work, you become aware of how unreasonable most of SR tech is, especially the attention co-processor.

And that's just Bioware and Cyberware. Genetech is a worse story all together.

Ahhhh... but there are drugs out there that do just that (and you could also argue that in times of extreme stress, there are natural body "drugs" that perform the same as well, endorphins, adrenalin, and others), at the expense of burning out the human body in the process (causing damage, sometimes irreperable)... all we need do now is figure out how to reinforce the body, as you put it, so that it is not detrimental...

Keep the Faith

Well, first off those aren't "superhuman" in the sense of a +3 modifier and secondly, they DO harm to your body.

It raises the interesting question of "cyber addiction", though.

I did agree that they did harm the body, the quest to make it non-damaging is ongoing I would imagine...

Indeed... a somewhat common flaw in our group it seems... I believe that 2 out of 6 have that Flaw... though not sure if one of them has the actual flaw, or they suffer the drawbacks without the flaw itself... the quest to upgrade is never ending it seems...

Keep the Faith

I wasn't talking about "augmentation addiction", actually. Augmentation addiction is a mental addiction, based on the perceived divinity of the augmented self. An overglorification that ties the self-image and self-esteem to superhuman performance. The result is a perpetual need to stay "ahead of the curve".

What I was talking about is the development of a physical addiction for a particular cyberware. Take the afore mentioned "reaction enhancers" (I hate strying from established excemples, hence I stick by it). They would result in a physiological reaction (on the very same physiological basis that allows for the perofmance enhancement). Similar to cocain, the user would feel a rush, potentially lead to augmentation addiction, but the reaction enhancers can be turned off. How does the body handle the different physiological states? Would it develop an addiction, similar to heroine addicts? How abut his noradrenaline levels?

I may have to think about that for a bit. It's definitely an interesting thought you inspired, though.

Reaction enchancers adds super conducting filaments to the spinal column, it WOULD increase reaction speed, but my about 1-2/100th of a second.

That's exactly the technobabble I was talking about. It sounds scientific, but it's bullshit.

actually it 'should' work, just not very well. To really enhance reaction times, You'd want to lace the brain with super conductors.

No.
I am not aware as to how much you know about neurophysiology or neurocognition, but lacing anything axon-related with superconductors wouldn't change a bit. I am curious, though: What do You think would happen?

Actually, it would work quite well. Nerve signals are fairly slow, electrical impulses travel rather fast. If you could replace nerve signals with electric wires (or do what supposedly happens in Shadowrun and put some electric wires in along with the normal nerves) then it should speed up those signals quite well.

I see what you are syaing now... interesting idea indeed... The body becomes reliant upon the equipment already installed ... has a few interesting ramifications I would believe...

Keep the Faith

I know it should not bother me, but I am appalled by the displayed understanding of our nervous system. Tell me, how exactly would superconductive materials help here? How would you replace neurons with electrical wiring? Do you know that they don't even touch each other?
Let alone that an electrical wiring woud completely ruin the concept of neurotransmitters. Do you think that neurochemistry is all just electrical impulses and that's it? I doubt that, but I am no longer certain at this point.

Just so that we are on the same page here, though: the "electrical impulses" are merely chemical shifts.

Funny, I like to think I know a thing or two about the human brain and its environs, and the more I learn about it the more I am able to conceptualize ways that SR's augmentations could make sense (given the game's level of technology, of course).

And for the record, the author of this paper says:
Emphasis mine. Sounds an aweful lot like an Attention Coprocessor to me. But he's just some dude that works for the Brain-Computer Interface Research and Development Program at Wadsworth Center; what would he know? They must be letting anybody publish in the Journal of Neural Engineering these days.

I would note that Reaction Enhancers do not increase Strength at all, so your assumption that they increase stress on the body does not seem logical. I will conceed that the discription for Reaction Enhancers is a little vague. They seem to imply that superconducting materials are grafted from the spine to the brain, but a motor reflex arch doesn't travel to the brain- it travels from the limb to the spinal cord and back. This reflex arch is routinely measured during EMG/nerve conduction studies as an objective measure of how well the nervous system is working and if the lower motor neurons in the spinal cord are intact. Presumably using materials that increase the velocity of nerve conduction (lowering latency times as measured on nerve conduction studies) would make one's reflexes faster. This is totally feasible. If you doubt my assessment, I'd be happy to ask my neurology attending tomorrow and get back to you.

Now I'm not arguing that you don't need a healthy dose of "disbelief suspension serum" to stomach the canon fluff for some augmentations. Believe me, if I had written some of them things would be different (I volunteered by the way, but Augmentation was already too far down the development pipeline). But to say none of it is feasible (again, given SR's level of technology) is a little unfair.

Deep Brain Stimulator? TENS unit? Cochlear Implant?

I remember reading a couple years ago about using gold micro wires to replace nerves, although it might only work for interneurons. Anyway, the closest I could find was this after a 5 minute Google search:

http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2010/0...rosthetics.html

So I think nerve replacement with higher conducting materials for reaction enhancement is completely feasible.

I'm going to have to head for an NLP seminar, so I can't address your post, yet. I will do that later today 8after I got a chance to read the paper, too). I would like to say, though, that I didn't claim none of the SR augmentations made sense. Some actually make a lot of sense. There are quite a few, however, that are simply unreasonable, reaction enahncers being one of them.

Also: when I was referring to "strength", I was referring to the tensile strength of your body's ligaments. They would still represent the upper limit of what is possible.

Thats cool. Work has a way of getting in the way of SR, but such is life. I'm curious to hear your take on that paper.

As far as tensile strength of muscles goes, again the Reaction Enhancers do not increase Strength so there is no reason to think that the muscles will generate more force. Unless of course you consider load per time (with a greatly decreased time) but then I would point out the autogentic inhibition reflex would also be faster with Reaction Enhancers.

I always thought the Transgenic stuff was, while basically impossible to do post-embryonic stage, full of interesting pseudo-science.

Yeah, of course -- electrically charged chemical shifts, though. However, some people think nerve pulses are actually sound pulses...