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[Bruce Klein]

Savant for a Day

http://www.nytimes.c...?pagewanted=all


The research of a test in which a research subject was asked to draw a picture of a dog four times, at different stages of his exposure to transcranial magnetic stimulation.

By LAWRENCE OSBORNE

In a concrete basement at the University of Sydney, I sat in a chair waiting to have my brain altered by an electromagnetic pulse. My forehead was connected, by a series of electrodes, to a machine that looked something like an old-fashioned beauty-salon hair dryer and was sunnily described to me as a ''Danish-made transcranial magnetic stimulator.'' This was not just any old Danish-made transcranial magnetic stimulator, however; this was the Medtronic Mag Pro, and it was being operated by Allan Snyder, one of the world's most remarkable scientists of human cognition.

Nonetheless, the anticipation of electricity being beamed into my frontal lobes (and the consent form I had just signed) made me a bit nervous. Snyder found that amusing. ''Oh, relax now!'' he said in the thick local accent he has acquired since moving here from America. ''I've done it on myself a hundred times. This is Australia. Legally, it's far more difficult to damage people in Australia than it is in the United States.''



Hooked up to the Medtronic Mag Pro, a test subject begins the series of tests to show the effect of transcranial magnetic stimulation.

''Damage?'' I groaned.

''You're not going to be damaged,'' he said. ''You're going to be enhanced.''

The Medtronic was originally developed as a tool for brain surgery: by stimulating or slowing down specific regions of the brain, it allowed doctors to monitor the effects of surgery in real time. But it also produced, they noted, strange and unexpected effects on patients' mental functions: one minute they would lose the ability to speak, another minute they would speak easily but would make odd linguistic errors and so on. A number of researchers started to look into the possibilities, but one in particular intrigued Snyder: that people undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, could suddenly exhibit savant intelligence -- those isolated pockets of geniuslike mental ability that most often appear in autistic people.

Snyder is an impish presence, the very opposite of a venerable professor, let alone an internationally acclaimed scientist. There is a whiff of Woody Allen about him. Did I really want him, I couldn't help thinking, rewiring my hard drive? ''We're not changing your brain physically,'' he assured me. ''You'll only experience differences in your thought processes while you're actually on the machine.'' His assistant made a few final adjustments to the electrodes, and then, as everyone stood back, Snyder flicked the switch.

A series of electromagnetic pulses were being directed into my frontal lobes, but I felt nothing. Snyder instructed me to draw something. ''What would you like to draw?'' he said merrily. ''A cat? You like drawing cats? Cats it is.''

I've seen a million cats in my life, so when I close my eyes, I have no trouble picturing them. But what does a cat really look like, and how do you put it down on paper? I gave it a try but came up with some sort of stick figure, perhaps an insect.

While I drew, Snyder continued his lecture. ''You could call this a creativity-amplifying machine. It's a way of altering our states of mind without taking drugs like mescaline. You can make people see the raw data of the world as it is. As it is actually represented in the unconscious mind of all of us.''

Two minutes after I started the first drawing, I was instructed to try again. After another two minutes, I tried a third cat, and then in due course a fourth. Then the experiment was over, and the electrodes were removed. I looked down at my work. The first felines were boxy and stiffly unconvincing. But after I had been subjected to about 10 minutes of transcranial magnetic stimulation, their tails had grown more vibrant, more nervous; their faces were personable and convincing. They were even beginning to wear clever expressions.

I could hardly recognize them as my own drawings, though I had watched myself render each one, in all its loving detail. Somehow over the course of a very few minutes, and with no additional instruction, I had gone from an incompetent draftsman to a very impressive artist of the feline form.

Snyder looked over my shoulder. ''Well, how about that? Leonardo would be envious.'' Or turning in his grave, I thought.


As remarkable as the cat-drawing lesson was, it was just a hint of Snyder's work and its implications for the study of cognition. He has used TMS dozens of times on university students, measuring its effect on their ability to draw, to proofread and to perform difficult mathematical functions like identifying prime numbers by sight. Hooked up to the machine, 40 percent of test subjects exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental skills. That Snyder was able to induce these remarkable feats in a controlled, repeatable experiment is more than just a great party trick; it's a breakthrough that may lead to a revolution in the way we understand the limits of our own intelligence -- and the functioning of the human brain in general.

Snyder's work began with a curiosity about autism. Though there is little consensus about what causes this baffling -- and increasingly common -- disorder, it seems safe to say that autistic people share certain qualities: they tend to be rigid, mechanical and emotionally dissociated. They manifest what autism's great ''discoverer,'' Leo Kanner, called ''an anxiously obsessive desire for the preservation of sameness.'' And they tend to interpret information in a hyperliteral way, using ''a kind of language which does not seem intended to serve interpersonal communication.''

For example, Snyder says, when autistic test subjects came to see him at the university, they would often get lost in the main quad. They might have been there 10 times before, but each time the shadows were in slightly different positions, and the difference overwhelmed their sense of place. ''They can't grasp a general concept equivalent to the word 'quad,''' he explains. ''If it changes appearance even slightly, then they have to start all over again.''

Despite these limitations, a small subset of autistics, known as savants, can also perform superspecialized mental feats. Perhaps the most famous savant was Dustin Hoffman's character in ''Rain Man,'' who could count hundreds of matchsticks at a glance. But the truth has often been even stranger: one celebrated savant in turn-of-the-century Vienna could calculate the day of the week for every date since the birth of Christ. Other savants can speak dozens of languages without formally studying any of them or can reproduce music at the piano after only a single hearing. A savant studied by the English doctor J. Langdon Down in 1887 had memorized every page of Gibbon's ''Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'' At the beginning of the 19th century, the splendidly named Gottfried Mind became famous all over Europe for the amazing pictures he drew of cats.

The conventional wisdom has long been that autistics' hyperliteral thought processes were completely separate from the more contextual, nuanced, social way that most adults think, a different mental function altogether. And so, by extension, the extraordinary skills of autistic savants have been regarded as flukes, almost inhuman feats that average minds could never achieve.

Snyder argues that all those assumptions -- about everything from the way autistic savants behave down to the basic brain functions that cause them to do so -- are mistaken. Autistic thought isn't wholly incompatible with ordinary thought, he says; it's just a variation on it, a more extreme example.

He first got the idea after reading ''The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,'' in which Oliver Sacks explores the link between autism and a very specific kind of brain damage. If neurological impairment is the cause of the autistic's disabilities, Snyder wondered, could it be the cause of their geniuslike abilities, too? By shutting down certain mental functions -- the capacity to think conceptually, categorically, contextually -- did this impairment allow other mental functions to flourish? Could brain damage, in short, actually make you brilliant?

In a 1999 paper called ''Is Integer Arithmetic Fundamental to Mental Processing? The Mind's Secret Arithmetic,'' Snyder and D. John Mitchell considered the example of an autistic infant, whose mind ''is not concept driven. . . . In our view such a mind can tap into lower level details not readily available to introspection by normal individuals.'' These children, they wrote, seem ''to be aware of information in some raw or interim state prior to it being formed into the 'ultimate picture.''' Most astonishing, they went on, ''the mental machinery for performing lightning fast integer arithmetic calculations could be within us all.''

And so Snyder turned to TMS, in an attempt, as he says, ''to enhance the brain by shutting off certain parts of it.''

''In a way, savants are the great enigma of today's neurology,'' says Prof. Joy Hirsch, director of the Functional M.R.I. Research Center at Columbia University. ''They exist in all cultures and are a distinct type. Why? How? We don't know. Yet understanding the savant will help provide insight into the whole neurophysiological underpinning of human behavior. That's why Snyder's ideas are so exciting -- he's asking a really fundamental question, which no one has yet answered.''

If Snyder's suspicions are correct, in fact, and savants have not more brainpower than the rest of us, but less, then it's even possible that everybody starts out life as a savant. Look, for example, at the ease with which children master complex languages -- a mysterious skill that seems to shut off automatically around the age of 12. ''What we're doing is counterintuitive,'' Snyder tells me. ''We're saying that all these genius skills are easy, they're natural. Our brain does them naturally. Like walking. Do you know how difficult walking is? It's much more difficult than drawing!''

To prove his point, he hooks me up to the Medtronic Mag Pro again and asks me to read the following lines:


A bird in the hand
is worth two in the
the bush

''A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,'' I say.

''Again,'' Snyder says, and smiles.

So once more: ''A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.'' He makes me repeat it five or six times, slowing me down until he has me reading each word with aching slowness.

Then he switches on the machine. He is trying to suppress those parts of my brain responsible for thinking contextually, for making connections. Without them, I will be able to see things more as an autistic might.

After five minutes of electric pulses, I read the card again. Only then do I see -- instantly -- that the card contains an extra ''the.''

On my own, I had been looking for patterns, trying to coax the words on the page into a coherent, familiar whole. But ''on the machine,'' he says, ''you start seeing what's actually there, not what you think is there.''

Snyder's theories are bolstered by the documented cases in which sudden brain damage has produced savant abilities almost overnight. He cites the case of Orlando Serrell, a 10-year-old street kid who was hit on the head and immediately began doing calendrical calculations of baffling complexity. Snyder argues that we all have Serrell's powers. ''We remember virtually everything, but we recall very little,'' Snyder explains. ''Now isn't that strange? Everything is in there'' -- he taps the side of his head. ''Buried deep in all our brains are phenomenal abilities, which we lose for some reason as we develop into 'normal' conceptual creatures. But what if we could reawaken them?''


Not all of Snyder's colleagues agree with his theories. Michael Howe, an eminent psychologist at the University of Exeter in Britain who died last year, argued that savantism (and genius itself) was largely a result of incessant practice and specialization. ''The main difference between experts and savants,'' he once told New Scientist magazine, ''is that savants do things which most of us couldn't be bothered to get good at.''

Robert Hendren, executive director of the M.I.N.D. Institute at the University of California at Davis, brought that concept down to my level: ''If you drew 20 cats one after the other, they'd probably get better anyway.'' Like most neuroscientists, he doubts that an electromagnetic pulse can stimulate the brain into creativity: ''I'm not sure I see how TMS can actually alter the way your brain works. There's a chance that Snyder is right. But it's still very experimental.''

Tomas Paus, an associate professor of neuroscience at McGill University, who has done extensive TMS research, is even more dubious. ''I don't believe TMS can ever elicit complex behavior,'' he says.

But even skeptics like Hendren and Paus concede that by intensifying the neural activity of one part of the brain while slowing or shutting down others, TMS can have remarkable effects. One of its most successful applications has been in the realm of psychiatry, where it is now used to dispel the ''inner voices'' of schizophrenics, or to combat clinical depression without the damaging side effects of electroshock therapy. (NeuroNetics, an Atlanta company, is developing a TMS machine designed for just this purpose, which will probably be released in 2006, pending F.D.A. approval.)

Meanwhile, researchers at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke found that TMS applied to the prefrontal cortex enabled subjects to solve geometric puzzles much more rapidly. Alvaro Pascual-Leone, associate professor of neurology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston (who, through his work at the Laboratory for Magnetic Brain Stimulation, has been one of the American visionaries of TMS), has even suggested that TMS could be used to ''prep'' students' minds before lessons.

None of this has gone unnoticed by canny entrepreneurs and visionary scientists. Last year, the Brain Stimulation Laboratory at the Medical University of South Carolina received a $2 million government grant to develop a smaller TMS device that sleep-deprived soldiers could wear to keep them alert. ''It's not 'Star Trek' at all,'' says Ziad Nahas, the laboratory's medical director. ''We've done a lot of the science on reversing cognitive deficiencies in people with insomnia and sleep deficiencies. It works.'' If so, it could be a small leap to the day it boosts soldiers' cognitive functioning under normal circumstances.

And from there, how long before Americans are walking around with humming antidepression helmets and math-enhancing ''hair dryers'' on their heads? Will commercially available TMS machines be used to turn prosaic bank managers into amateur Rembrandts? Snyder has even contemplated video games that harness specialized parts of the brain that are otherwise inaccessible.

''Anything is possible,'' says Prof. Vilayanur Ramachandran, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California at San Diego and the noted author of ''Phantoms in the Brain.'' Snyder's theories have not been proved, he allows, but they are brilliantly suggestive: ''We're at the same stage in brain research that biology was in the 19th century. We know almost nothing about the mind. Snyder's theories may sound like 'The X-Files,' but what he's saying is completely plausible. Up to a point the brain is open, malleable and constantly changing. We might well be able to make it run in new ways.'' Of those who dismiss Snyder's theories out of hand, he shrugs: ''People are often blind to new ideas. Especially scientists.''


Bruce L. Miller, the A.W. and Mary Margaret Claussen distinguished professor in neurology at the University of California at San Francisco, is intrigued by Snyder's experiments and his attempts to understand the physiological basis of cognition. But he points out that certain profound questions about artificially altered intelligence have not yet been answered. ''Do we really want these abilities?'' he asks. ''Wouldn't it change my idea of myself if I could suddenly paint amazing pictures?''

It probably would change people's ideas of themselves, to say nothing of their ideas of artistic talent. And though that prospect might discomfort Miller, there are no doubt others whom it would thrill. But could anyone really guess, in advance, how their lives might be affected by instant creativity, instant intelligence, instant happiness? Or by their disappearance, just as instantly, once the TMS is switched off?

As he walked me out of the university -- a place so Gothic that it could be Oxford, but for the intensely flowering jacaranda in one corner and the strange Southern Hemisphere birds flitting about -- and toward the freeway back to downtown Sydney, Snyder for his part radiated the most convincingly ebullient optimism. ''Remember that old saw which says that we only use a small part our brain? Well, it might just be true. Except that now we can actually prove it physically and experimentally. That has to be significant. I mean, it has to be, doesn't it?''

We stopped for a moment by the side of the roaring traffic and looked up at a haze in the sky. Snyder's eyes contracted inquisitively as he pieced together the unfamiliar facts (brown smoke, just outside Sydney) and eased them into a familiar narrative framework (the forest fires that had been raging all week). It was an effortless little bit of deductive, nonliteral thinking -- the sort of thing that human beings, unaided by TMS, do a thousand times a day. Then, in an instant, he switched back to our conversation and picked up his train of thought. ''More important than that, we can change our own intelligence in unexpected ways. Why would we not want to explore that?''

[Lazarus Long]

I want to see the results of these methods refined and correlated. I have long suspected that we are looking at a qualitiatively different type of computer than most people understand and I believe these experiments will shed a lot of light on this question.

Peter and many others are doing fantastic work on creating a precise and elegant interface for neurons that is essentially a "hard wire" method, I have long argued that we needed to also examine the possibility of using a "wireless” approach if we could create a non destructive field that would essentially trigger synaptic responses in the lobes of the brain without requiring a direct interface. In this I am more “old school” in that I am reluctant to allow foreign bodies into the tissue.

But, and this goes way back to a variety of other topics like "where is the mind?, is there a physiological clock?, What defines death? Is the brain by itself the computer? What defines life? And more than a few others that should concern our group.

Here is an overview of my hypothesis for review. What if the mind is a function of a coherent energy field (a low level highly organized plasma) that is interfaced spatially with the brain as the medium and method of translation for the cognitive operation of this quantum field, such that the mind does not exist as a merely physical entity but also a dynamic plasma field?

First off we would not necessarily find any "new" type of energy to identify as life force and second until we had become sophisticated enough to precisely map holographically (not merely topographically) all the reactions as they transpire and relate these to all (or at least many) simultaneous functions, all we would observe is a lot of "noise" instead of something that we could clearly identify.

But there is something else if this idea were to pan out; we would have to understand that it could be the collapse of this field which leads to “death” as we actually define it and not the mere cessation of bodily function because it may be the case that much of memory that defines experience isn’t simply in “hard” chemical memory storage but in complex polarized spatial memory storage the way a bubble or cloud chamber memory can holographically store information.

The brain's convolutions can thus be seen in two very important yet distinct aspects, the first as a means of maximizing the number or volume of computational junctions (like thinking of a 3 dimensional CPU) and as a way of maximizing the surface area possible for the relational interface of a “coherent dynamic plasma field” to the physical switches (neurons) it would need to operate inorder to maintain control over the complex biomechanical organism.

I propose this “duality” because it suggests that we are looking at different kind of computer than we are normally accustomed to examining, one that is subtle enough to have eluded our perception while literally under our very noses all this time.

I am just scratching the surface of why I believe this to be the case and also as to the support I can provide but I will explain one interesting aspect, it could explain linear temporal perception and why that is a function not only of memory storage but of “experience”.

You see the identity comes into existence with a type of BIOS clock necessary for the computer to function that we call the mind, the mind gathers memory in a complex manner and stores that information in a variety of ways, some hard wired for “reflexive” behaviors and some filtered to more transient memory programs “operating memory.”

But if this hypothesis is correct then when that field collapses at death our "total experience of identity" is lost, and reanimating the body would only be analogous to a reboot after a computer crash, all the working memory of experience would be lost. The body would be back, and it could even acquire a "new" identity, one very similar with some aspects of the former self in place, but the me that dies would be lost UNLESS the holographic coherency of the "plasma field" were captured (recorded) and stored as well, such that upon reanimation the brain's electrochemical physiology were realigned with the same coherent plasma field as existed prior to death but if such a capture, or transfer of data were possible to a secondary external substrate then so would uploading of consciousness be possible by that means. How that uploaded conscious would then interface its new possible physical manifestations would be an entirely different cognitively adaptive question after that.

This also implies there may exist a more complex program language than the ones we have discovered operating mere physiological function, a program language that is the essential quality of "self awareness" as the level of the mind and exists as the operating system of that theoretical quantum computer working as an electrodynamic plasma field interfaced with and maintained by the organ known as the brain.

This is only a vague overview of what I am suggesting but I am very seriously looking forward to having a discussion on this issue when together at the conference, in particular with Peter.

While I think the "Krell Machine" quality being suggested by the article is exciting in itself; what fascinates me much more is the possibility of going "wireless" with our interface to the brain and identifying the true relationship of the mind/brain duality and its precise integration with our bodies.

[Discarnate]

Admittedly, the machine mentioned in the article's application is fascinating, and from what little I've been able to dig up so far, seems to be helping a lot of people.

However, the potential abuses of such a device scare the living crap out of me.

Being able to enhance or reduce the activity of portions of the brain (as it seems the article indicates happens) is potentially a very big step towards brain control. And, unlike most other such procedures, is 'invisible' - no chemical residue, and takes place fairly quickly (minutes, as compared to days/weeks for modern brainwashing).

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader how you might be able to do this. It's really quite simple. Think wireheading, or droud.

-Discarnate

[Utnapishtim]

I love this Bruce L. Miller quote.

''Do we really want these abilities?'' he asks. ''Wouldn't it change my idea of myself if I could suddenly paint amazing pictures?''

Don't you love these types of types of rhetorical 'We' questions?

Why not be honest and ask instead

'Do I really want others to have access to these abilities? Wouldn't it change my idea of myself if others could suddenly paint amazing pictures.'

And note how easily he assumes that what others do to their brains is his business.

The implicit assumption here is that arbitrary state-control as answer to this question is not only legitimate but probably appropriate.

Highly respected academics coming out against cognitive enhancement
sickens me just as much as a naturally beautiful models attacking plastic surgery as wrong and shallow.

Edited by Utnapishtim, 22 June 2003 - 05:08 PM.

[ocsrazor]

Very interesting article BJ. Thanks for posting - I caught the paper version this morning in the times. I'm not suprised at the results based on what we are seeing in the dish. Local electric field stimulation will induce synchronized firing of many neurons at once. This is caused by depolarizing (charging) the membranes of any cell that can "feel" the pulse. Snyder's device is probably causing this same sensitization in the brain. These type of field effects have been implicated in learning and memory processes, but the story still isn't clear.

The flip side of the story is that although in some instances this can be beneficial, I would bet it can also inhibit normal brain activity. When you send out a wide field pulse, as they are doing with this device, you lock in a large number of neurons to the frequency of the stimulation - in some instances you will cause a network that works well under synchrony to be stimulated, but sometimes you will have synchronized neurons that aren't normally in the same network, which could be detrimental. Critical to making a device like this useful will be figuring out how to get the resolution and direction control worked out so you can stimulate as small an area as possible to get the effect you are looking for (not to mention we still don't have a real clear picture of what much of the brain is doing, so targeting is difficult).

Laz your objections to implants are probably a non-starter for robust communication with the brain, because getting the resolution and localization to stimulate something on the inside of the cortex is going to be extremely difficult to overcome - you have to stimulate through hair, skin, bone, the meninges, blood vessels, and six layers of cortex (without stimulating anything unnecessarily), and have enough signal to hit a very specific target. Much simpler to put in an ultra-fine wire directly into your target network, where you know you can get down to single neuron resolution. I doubt you will see wireless communications with the brain of a very fine resolution without a significant advance in control of EM radiation, and even if you did have that technology, the complexity of the wireless signalling array necessary to say anything interesting to a brain would be on the order of the brain itself. Large scale performance changes, general mood reading or alteration, lie detection, etc. are likely to be possible with external electrodes though.

We are beginning to have a pretty good idea of the field effect in the brain. I would argue that it is not a coherent energy field. Star Trek aside, energy fields are usually very low information denstiy structures- you need matter to really create interesting information dynamics. Electric field effects are limited in scope in the brain, usually 2-3 cm max. In addition chemical fields of steroids and neuromodulators play a larger role than electric fields in long range communication. But you are right to stay the mind is much more than a physical process Laz, because it incorporates single neuron behavior, local electric fields, biochemical fields, the physical wiring structure (which is actually quite dynamic at the small scale, it is constantly changing) and maybe some things we haven't thought of yet. It is the organization of these many dynamic processes that creates a mind.

When you argue that reanimating someone is likely to be a different person, the critical point you need to consider is that you are really speaking in degrees Laz. The mind is a completely dynamic process and is a very different entity every second we are alive. It is not a plasma field that you would need to record to capture those dynamics, but the positions and vectors of motion of every single atom in the brain, and all electric and chemical gradients. The closer you get that collection of information, the more closely you model the brain in question. My current task is figuring what of that information can be ignored and what is critical.

Best,
Peter

[Lazarus Long]

You are thinking too two dimensionally Peter I am looking forward to our face to face chat on this. I happen to agree with everything you have said, not withstanding two aspects, one the answer to the question; is the energy field a mere consequence or is it coherent such that what we are perceiving is also interfacing the neurosynaptic triggering system?

You are absolutely correct about the importance of this very diverse and complex relationship of the various nervous and neurotransmitter subglandular systems, but I am suggesting a lot of that is "periferral" to "personality." That it relates to metabolic function directly as part of how the brain control the body. It must be remembered that a major part of the body's total function is to provide sustenance and protection to the brain along with motility and adaptive behavioral interactivity. But Why is the brain different than a notochord?

We will get to this, but I suggest its concentration of neurons possible in this manner is only part of the reason, I think shape has a lot to do with the field and the electrolytic battery called a brain is supporting more than simple charge in a gel pack.

I am not proposing Star Trek fantasy, and I am not talking about something that requires very large voltage to exist as a "polarized bisymetric field" surrounding a complex electrolytic gel that also just happens to be hard-wired to every major system of the body.

I think memory/identity is tied in because this would allow a significantly higher degree of data storage than simple electrochemical storage would. And field storage would exlpain our ability to store and access over very large time periods a significant amount of trivial yet highly complex data. But deterioration of the neurons would also represent destruction of this localized interface so there is no inconsistency from my perspective with anything modern neurophysiology has already discovered, in fact I would expect disagreement, regarding the physical side of the interface. It is whether we can understand a level that correlates to "optical circuitry" occuring as an aspect of that field.

Second, the same mathematical modelling that allows the reading of mMRI can provide the outline of the stereotactic projection a holographic array would have to control. The projection would be multidimensional and the wave interaction would provide on the point stimulation to trigger response not a linear transmission. And the software would have a learning mapping phase as well a constant telemetric readback to refine the ability to control neurological function.


Changing the subject; Social risks are not as high as the potential benefit from my reading of the application. Is there a risk?

Absolutely, but there is already a drug war, this is just another potential example of the extremes allsides might go to. ON the other side of the coin is the real possible treatments to so many neurological dysfunctions I can't even begin to mention them all along with this very interesting "Krell Machine" effect.

I am also not particulary terrified of the run away ego/id battle. I think a group monitor and proper candidates for the attempt would prevent some of the risks from being excessive. But I am fascinated by the level of concurrent discovery and design coming into simultaneous play.

It is a wonderful age of discovery to be alive in and a direct refute of the argument that Casanova was making in the other thread. There is tremendous creativity right now, it is just more scientific than was previously artistic but that will change with new mediums like designer genes for dragons and uplifted familiars.

Sorry I couldn't resist a plug )

[ocsrazor]

Hi Laz,

I have to think in 60 dimensional spaces every day, so it is kind of suprising to have someone tell me I'm thinking 2D

Seriously though - I'm having some trouble with your use of jargon Laz. I'm pretty familiar with all of the physical sciences, but I'm not picking up on what you are trying to say in many passages here.

The electric fields in the brain (eeg waves) carry information to the extent that they provide local timing information to neurons within a 2-3cm range by making their membrane voltages fluctuate together. This synchronization probably provides mechnisms that help local networks function as coherent units. Beyond that, long distance information is carried on single channels by conduction down axons or chemically through neuromodulators which spread over large areas of the brain. (I'm not sure what you mean by "subglandular system")

The multiple levels of interaction I mentioned above are not present in notochords. High complexity of connections, neuromodulators, more density of receptors on neurons - these things are not found in primitive nervous systems. Use of electric fields has not changed much though. Biologically speaking, electric fields are a very primitive method of communicating information and do not have very dense information carrying ability and storage costs are extremely high.

The field storage you are talking about is the patterns of neuron firing that are played out in networks by a combination of the physical connections, chemical fields, and electric fields. Storage capacity of information is tremendously lower in electric fields alone, not higher.

Essentially, I think you are violating Occam's Razor here Laz. You are creating a unnecessary level of complication that is not needed to explain the functioning of biological brains.

On the use of wave interaction for inducing neurons to fire - this is what I was hinting at. These are called mulit-photon systems, where you send in two or more photons of lower energy that interact at a specific point to create a higher energy interaction. The difficulty being, these systems are slow, don't have great resolution, and inducing thousands to millions of targeted local (micrometer resolution) voltage changes on the order millivolts and on a time scale of microseconds would require an array of staggering complexity. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it is time and cost prohibitive. A physical connection is many orders of magnitude simpler.

Best,
Peter

[kevin]

Original Link: http://www.abcnews.g...t_040529-1.html
Combined Page Link: http://www.kevsplace.....er Genius.htm

Here's another article on the continuing studies of Allan Snyder.

---

Finding Your Inner Genius
Experiment Tries to Tap Brain's 'Savant' Qualities

By Bob Brown
Correspondent Bob Brown has magnetic pulses fired into areas of his brain to heighten creative skills. (ABCNEWS.com)

May 29, 2004

Is this going to fry my brain?
That was one of the first questions I had for Dr. Allan Snyder when I visited his lab at the University of Sydney in Australia. I had gone there to participate in an experiment with mind-numbing potential. Literally.

Snyder peered over the circular lenses of his glasses and smiled. "In Australia we have very strong mental health guards before we're allowed to do this on anybody," he said. "And … I don't want to hurt you at all."


Tapping Into Genius-Like Abilities

In fact, I felt pretty safe knowing that Snyder himself and dozens of volunteers, including the famed neurologist Oliver Sacks, had gone through the same procedure — having magnetic pulses fired into targeted areas of their brains in an experiment designed to tap into the genius — like abilities that savants possess in art, music, and math.

The experiment actually inhibits some brain activity to afford — in its premise, at least — heightened access to the parts of our brains that collect raw information before the data is filtered into concepts.

"We have these severely brain-impaired people who are performing what seems ostensibly to be a miracle," Synder said, referring to the extraordinary powers displayed by savants who otherwise have difficulting coping with everyday life. "It must be something that's in us all, and we can't access. They can."

Amid the Gothic architecture of the University of Sydney in Australia, Snyder directs a place called The Centre for the Mind. Even in winter, the slightly-built American-born scientist begins each day with an Olympic-sized swim to get his own brain working, and he is a bit of an eccentric — some say a wizard.

Original Link: [URL=http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/SciTech/2020/2020_autistic_savant_040529-1.html]

[eternaltraveler]

where can i buy one of these devices? that is the question I want to know

[eternaltraveler]

I came across this link http://www.centreforthemind.com/

This is the direct link to website of Allan Snyder

[ocsrazor]

Hi cosmos and elrond,

You should definitely read my commentary above on why this device is most likely not going to be particularly useful. Its just too nonspecific.

Best,
Peter

[randalf3]

I wonder if magnetic stimulation could be used to increase the likelihood of developing more synaptic connections in the individuals brain who is engaged in mentally challenging activities, by stimulating certain areas of the brain that these activities work.

If the neural plasticity concept is correct and the brain can form new neural connections based on environmental stimulus then perhaps tms could be used in combination with cognitive training programs to stimulate lasting changes in the brain.