Friday, October 17, 2014

I can see your thoughts..... I think.

The article that I chose to write about deals with the concept of telepathy, or the transmission of information through other means than our known senses. This topic comes up in the very first chapter of The Ravenous Brain book and deals with the issue of whether the mind is separate from the brain. Telepathy research has been done in the past but was limited by the technology available at the time. With the recent emergence of new technologies, recent findings published by Harvard Medical School scientists in the PLoS ONE journal have found that brain to brain communication can be conducted through non-invasive technologies over large distances. 

In this study two individuals, one in France and the other in India, were able to communicate through electromagnetic signals through a method called electroencephalography, or EEG. By thinking of the word "hola", which is "hello" in Spanish, one person's brain generated the electromagnetic signals that were picked up by the EEG which was then translated by a computer program into binary code and then send via the internet to the receiver at the other site. Although the person at the receiver end was not able to "see" the word "hola", they did notice flashes of light in their peripheral vision. These brief flashes of light indicate that there was information sent from one individual to the other via electromagnetic signals picked up by the EEG. 

Figure 1 Brain-to-brain (B2B) communication system overview.
Information processing process

Figure 2 View of emitter and receiver subjects with non-invasive devices supporting, respectively, the BCI based on EEG changes driven by motor imagery (left) and the CBI based on the reception of phosphenes elicited by a neuronavigated TMS (right) components of the B2B transmission system.
Pictures of emitter and receiver subjects

As explained in the book The Ravenous Brain by Bor, technological telepathy could be used by physicians or researchers to communicate with patients who have suffered injuries that has degraded their motor controls and their abilities to effectively communicate. Bor also states, based on his experience as a guinea pig for a friend who was conducting experiments using fMRI scanners to communicate with patients, that "the mind is nothing more than the brain". While this study conducted by the Harvard scientists and Bor's colleague seem to support this idea, there is still more research that needs to be done and data that needs to be collected to decide whether the concept of the mind can be truly fundamentally explained by a series of electrical signals.

These recent research findings may not only help physicians and researchers to find ways to communicate with patients with brain injuries who cannot physically speak but also help us in our quest to understand of whether the mind is truly separate from the brain. This of course brings up a lot of questions in many areas of study, including ethics, and biology including of whether it is okay for scientists, physicians, and researchers to use this type of technology to communicate against patients and extract information which may be taken with or without their consent. As stated before, this area of neurobiology needs to be further research and exploration before any concrete solid based answers based on scientific findings can be given.

Bor, Daniel. The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning. Basic, 2012. Print.

Darin, P. (2014, September 12). Harvard’s long-distance telepathy experiment succeeds in sending simple message. Retrieved October 14, 2014, from http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/952554-harvards-long-distance-telepathy-experiment-succeeds-in-sending-simple-message/


Grau, C., Ginhoux, R., Nguyen, T., Chauvat, H., Amengual, J., Pascual-Leone, A., & Ruffini, G. (2014). Conscious brain-to-brain communication in humans using non-invasive technologies. PLoS ONE, 10(1371). Retrieved October 14, 2014, from http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0105225

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