A soul? Haha, suck this assholes!!

[Asimov]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4715327.stm

 

'Thoughts read' via brain scans 

 

The researchers monitored activity in the brain

Scientists say they have been able to monitor people's thoughts via scans of their brains.

Teams at University College London and University of California in LA could tell what images people were looking at or what sounds they were listening to.

 

The US team say their study proves brain scans do relate to brain cell electrical activity.

 

The UK team say such research might help paralysed people communicate, using a "thought-reading" computer.

 

  We are still a long way off from developing a universal mind-reading machine

 

Dr John-Dylan Haynes, University College London

 

In their Current Biology study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, people were shown two different images at the same time - a red stripy pattern in front of the right eye and a blue stripy pattern in front of the left.

 

The volunteers wore special goggles which meant each eye saw only what was put in front of it.

 

In that situation, the brain then switches awareness between both images, sometimes seeing one image and sometimes the other.

 

While people's attention switched between the two images, the researchers used fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) brain scanning to monitor activity in the visual cortex.

 

It was found that focusing on the red or the blue patterns led to specific, and noticeably different, patterns of brain activity.

 

The fMRI scans could reliably be used to predict which of the images the volunteer was looking at, the researchers found.

 

Thought-provoking?

 

The US study, published in Science, took the same theory and applied it to a more everyday example.

 

They used electrodes placed inside the skull to monitor the responses of brain cells in the auditory cortex of two surgical patients as they watched a clip of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly".

 

They used this data to accurately predict the fMRI signals from the brains of another 11 healthy patients who watched the clip while lying in a scanner.

 

Professor Itzhak Fried, the neurosurgeon who led the research, said: "We were able to tell one part of a scene from another, and we could tell one type of sound from another."

 

Dr John-Dylan Haynes of the UCL Institute of Neurology, who led the research, told the BBC News website: "What we need to do now is create something like speech-recognition software, and look at which parts of the brain are specifically active in a person."

 

He said the study's findings proved the principle that fMRI scans could "read thoughts", but he said it was a very long way from creating a machine which could read anyone's mind.

 

But Dr Haynes said: "We could tell from a very limited subset of possible things the person is possibly seeing."

 

"One day, someone will come up with a machine in a baseball cap.

 

"Then it really could be helpful in everyday applications."

 

He added: "Our study represents an important but very early stage step towards eventually building a machine that can track a person's consciousness on a second-by-second basis.

 

"These findings could be used to help develop or improve devices that help paralyzed people communicate through measurements of their brain activity.

 

But he stressed: "We are still a long way off from developing a universal mind-reading machine."

 

Dr Fried said: "It has been known that different areas of the temporal lobe are activated by faces, or houses.

 

"This UCL finding means it is not necessary to use strikingly different stimuli to tell what is activating areas of the brain."

[MrSpooky]

Oh snap!

[Antihero]

I'm interested in the results that say you can see when specific items are being focussed on (especially in the Good, Bad and Ugly experiment), and that the thoughts of one person about a specific subject are so similar to another's. I would have thought that there would be too many thoughts occuring at any one time to properly serparate them... or maybe I just think too much.

[Xenoce]

Oh gods... I just read 1984. I'm a little freaked at this.

 

1984 was already the scariest book I've ever read, scarier then any movie/show I've watched. And now I read this.

[Mr. Neil]

I'm almost salivating to hear Paul Manata's reaction to this.

[boyinasuitcase]

yep..."thoughts are things" known it for awhile.  and IF thoughts in any way can effect external reality this would be a scientific basis to study such a phenomenon...since thoughts can now in some way be quantified as REAL THINGS.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I thought "thoughts" (hehe) were processes of our brains. By real things, do you mean that thoughts can be some kind of material, tangible substance?

[Antihero]

I thought "thoughts" (hehe) were processes of our brains. By real things, do you mean that thoughts can be some kind of material, tangible substance?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I think they are. All "thoughts" are a combination of specific neural connections, chemical states, etc [whatever else our amazingly complex brain needs to make thoughts] of the brain. You could, if you knew enough about how they form and opperate, manipulate them.

[boyinasuitcase]

I think they are.  All "thoughts" are a combination of specific neural connections, chemical states, etc [whatever else our amazingly complex brain needs to make thoughts] of the brain.  You could, if you knew enough about how they form and opperate, manipulate them.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well, I don't think thoughts themselves are tangible or material things. Rather, the ideas alone that result from our thinking turn into material things, e.g., houses, cars, boats, books, libraries, Beethoven's Ninth, radios, the game of chess, NINTENDO!, etc.

[boyinasuitcase]

define what you mean by tangible substance...there are many definitions for "tangible"

 

By tangible are you referring to things that can be touched? 

 

Sorry, yes, I meant something that can be touched. Since thoughts are processes of our brains, then of course it's possible they can be touched. But thinking and consciousness involve so many different processes of our brains, it's kind of hard to pinpoint where exactly you could find these "thoughts."

 

IF thoughts in any way can effect external reality

 

Of course they do. By external reality, I assume you mean our immediate human environment. Memes travel from brain to brain, faster than the speed of light.

[SpaceMonk]

Here's a couple of interesting quotes on the subject:

 

Investigating near death experiences:

http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=609&id=999952003

"The significance of this is that after a cardiac arrest you lose consciousness within eight seconds; within 11 seconds the brain's rhythms become flat, and within 18 seconds there is no possibility of the brain creating a model of the world - so the brain is down," said Dr Fenwick.

  "Yet whenever we asked people when their near-death experiences occurred, they said it was during unconsciousness. If that's true, their experience was occurring when there was no blood flowing through the brain - and consciousness would appear to exist outside the brain."

  It could be argued that their experiences occurred in the few seconds between brain functions being restored and the return of consciousness. But recent research on a patient in the United States, where traces of electrical activity in the brain were closely monitored, suggested this was not the case.

"That study and other evidence points to the mind and brain not being identical, and it seems that the mind may operate in part outside the brain as a sort of field which works in the same way as a TV receiver receives programmes through the airwaves," said Dr Fenwick.

 

A man with no brain:

http://www.alternativescience.com/no_brainer.htm

When Sheffield’s campus doctor was treating one of the mathematics students for a minor ailment, he noticed that the student’s head was a little larger than normal. The doctor referred the student to professor Lorber for further examination.

 

The student in question was academically bright, had a reported IQ of 126 and was expected to graduate. When he was examined by CAT-scan, however, Lorber discovered that he had virtually no brain at all.

 

Instead of two hemispheres filling the cranial cavity, some 4.5 centimetres deep, the student had less than 1 millimetre of cerebral tissue covering the top of his spinal column. The student was suffering from hydrocephalus, the condition in which the cerebrospinal fluid, instead of circulating around the brain and entering the bloodstream, becomes dammed up inside.

 

...The functions of the brain have been mapped comprehensively and although there is some redundancy there is also a high degree of specialisation—the motor area and the visual cortex being highly specific for instance...

 

[MrSpooky]

I want to see MRI scans of hydrocephalus-boy.

 

It's not that you "don't need a brain" to be conscious, it's that your brain contains a lot of flexibility and adaptive capability early in life, so that any brain damage incurred as a child can easily be compensated for by your remaining neocortex. It is common to see kids who have HALF of their brain removed and they recover being perfectly fine and functional.

 

Also, in the case of hydrocephalus, the brain matter is compressed by fluid pressure. How much in this case, I don't know. I want to see his actual case file instead of a bullshit web article that doesn't take into account even basic cognitive neurology.

[Brother Jeff]

The mind is what the brain does:

 

http://www.reverendatheistar.com/the_mind_..._brain_does.htm

 

A man with no brain:

http://www.alternativescience.com/no_brainer.htm

 

Interesting for sure, but consider the source - a journalist's website, and one that is clearly biased against mainstream science and its conclusions. In fact, the man devotes much time to attacking Darwinism. Check out his "How Dare You" page:

 

http://www.alternativescience.com/evidence-for-darwinism.htm

 

I would take anything said at the "Alternative Science" website with an enormous grain of salt.

 

The brain is the seat of consciousness. The mind is what the brain does. No brain, no mind, no consciousness.

[MrSpooky]

Mr. "Alternative Science," as I've said before, smells suspiciously of bullshit.

 

EDIT: Oh joy.

 

http://skepdic.com/refuge/altscience.html

[SpaceMonk]

I do take these claims with a grain of salt, as I do anybody else's (including skepdic's).

 

I know the website that article came from would be the main argument against the claims it makes, but aside from that yes, I also would like to see the MRI scans of hydrocephalus boy.