Wouldn't you expect MRI scan to alter your working memory? When I had my MRI scan, I felt no change whatsoever in my train of thoughts.
Electric fields, not individual neurons, may hold information in memory: study
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Re: Electric fields, not individual neurons, may hold information in memory: study
#72this reminds of a brain fart I had long time ago back when I was taking an EE course about electromagnetic compatibility & interference. how resilient is the brain and it's surrounding casing to outside electromagnetic interference ? can there one day be some jamming tool strong enough to just crash a brain without doing physical damage first ? where it would just brick a human, but a physician examining it would fin…
I read a paper a long time ago that recorded the brain waves from one person doing a skilled task and then played that recording to an unskilled person as they performed the same task. They replayed the electromagnetic field of the skilled person on the outside of the skull of an unskilled person. They found that there was an improvement in skill levels in the untrained person. Intriguing.
That sounds extremely suspicious. If that worked, the applications are obvious and very high value.
If you find the article, please post a link.
But very likely it does not replicate, or is a lot less impressive than tge headline makes it sound.
Re: Electric fields, not individual neurons, may hold information in memory: study
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is interesting because I recently read of a theory that clinical depression is actually an altered state of consciousness, like dreaming or being under the influence of psychedelic drugs. It seems to explain a lot about depression as well as posing the question what other things might be an altered state of consciousness. I predict if we're successful in creating general AI and/or artificial consciousness, we'll…
I could say a lot more about this, but this would slip into what people would consider as woo. So without treading there, I am just going to say, I think this field-effect of neurons will lead to discoveries about field-effect of all cells, not just neurons; that consciousness is not exclusive to neurons; and how acupuncture (at a mechanical level) might work.
There is quite a good deal of literature out there suggesting that acupuncture operates via electricity, FWIW.
Re: Electric fields, not individual neurons, may hold information in memory: study
#74This may be too meta for this forum, but I would like to point out that the brain theory as a whole has become so incomprehensibly complex that I am beginning to think that the brain has little to do with intention and memory storage . Point in fact: as we are now hundreds of years into medical research and we still can't figure out how the brain stores memory. Or what physical structure a memory even is. And I am su…
There’s no upward development of life. We think we’re super clever and advanced for building cars and lightbulbs and such, but there’s nothing beyond us saying that’s good or praiseworthy. Looking at our impact on biodiversity, the atmosphere, and the oceans, and throw in a huge dose of micro plastics and rogue hormones in the water supply and we don’t look so clever. Evolution improves fitness for reproduction, ther…
> There’s no upward development of life.
Disagree. Look at our solar system or any other planet. There is no life anywhere. This beautiful blue planet is brimming with life.
Yes we are screwing our planet but that is because we as collective have not become fully conscious about it. There were horrific things done in past by humanity but once a sufficient amount of population reached that point of consciousness where we recognise something is bad we shutdown those things.
I know we are screwing this planet bad but life on this planet continues and it's been this way for millions of years.
Re: Electric fields, not individual neurons, may hold information in memory: study
#75This paper makes a lot of sense. As a doc, I've seen literally several hundred patients with portions of their brain removed or damaged, some of them very extensive (>20% of the brain). Yet many are completely asymptomatic, and many others regain full function and memory with time and physical therapy. It's led me to conclude that the function of the brain isn't tied 1:1 to the structure of the brain as we had all be…
Couldn't it be that the brain has an extremely good redundancy setup? Memories stored in several parts of the brain, and recoverable if a part gets damaged?
There are many people who did have permanent memory loss from various TBI (traumatic brain injury), especially gunshot wounds, and many who recovered theirs slowly.
Kind of like restoring data from an archive, or rebuilding a RAID array, as an analogy.
Re: Electric fields, not individual neurons, may hold information in memory: study
#76Wouldn't you expect MRI scan to alter your working memory? When I had my MRI scan, I felt no change whatsoever in my train of thoughts.
Or instead of storing memories, electric fields are used for fast transfers between parts of the brain.
An MRI scan could affect it depending on the frequency? Perhaps a minor, temporary, drop in cognition/memory recall?
You would have to conduct a study specifically for that.
Re: Electric fields, not individual neurons, may hold information in memory: study
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is interesting because I recently read of a theory that clinical depression is actually an altered state of consciousness, like dreaming or being under the influence of psychedelic drugs. It seems to explain a lot about depression as well as posing the question what other things might be an altered state of consciousness. I predict if we're successful in creating general AI and/or artificial consciousness, we'll…
I could say a lot more about this, but this would slip into what people would consider as woo. So without treading there, I am just going to say, I think this field-effect of neurons will lead to discoveries about field-effect of all cells, not just neurons; that consciousness is not exclusive to neurons; and how acupuncture (at a mechanical level) might work.
Electric potential across other cells and also single-cell organisms is well known and not new.
This is new though (and revolutionary): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XheAMrS8Q1c
Regarding consciousness, I don't get why people who submit to consciousness being everywhere in the universe have problem with simply calling it the universe. It seems to make discussions much more productive.
Re: Electric fields, not individual neurons, may hold information in memory: study
#78There was a story I heard about the autistic guy who volunteered for transcranial magnetic stimulation. Those have been known to temporarily shift someone autistic into a consciousness state that is more neurotypical. In his case (and it is the only documented case), it was permanent. He wrote a book about it. His marriage ended because of it (he had been a reliable emotional support for his wife while autistic), but…
This is interesting because I recently read of a theory that clinical depression is actually an altered state of consciousness, like dreaming or being under the influence of psychedelic drugs. It seems to explain a lot about depression as well as posing the question what other things might be an altered state of consciousness. I predict if we're successful in creating general AI and/or artificial consciousness, we'll…
I would certainly hope that an AI would be void of emotions, which I consider to be a relic of our primitive past.
Well, it's not really a relic since it's actually the driving force behind our daily lives and society as a whole, sadly. They do more harm than good in a modern society with billions of individuals.
Re: Electric fields, not individual neurons, may hold information in memory: study
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spoiler: They weren't
Why are you so confident? It seems a fair number of experts have well justified doubts based on studies of already deployed lower energy radiation. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-have-no... > Citing this large body of research, more than 240 scientists who have published peer-reviewed research on the biologic and health effects of nonionizing electromagnetic fields (EMF) signed the International…
Yeah, it is certainly possible that it affects health. However, since we decided to live with such technology as a society, we'll have to deal with it.
People living in cities (or anywhere really) don't complain much about the massive amount of exhaust from cars, which is definitely proven to be bad for everyone's health despite all attempts at reducing it. It's just there, we won't give up cars, so everyone just kind of ignores it.
Re: Electric fields, not individual neurons, may hold information in memory: study
#80If this is correct, might it explain how and why electroconvulsive therapy works and how it can lead to the loss of memory. Presumably it would completely disrupt the stable memory field, even if it left the physical structures intact. The brain woul be reconstructing the field from first principles.
Whether or not this is true, ECT memory loss is not hard to believe. I don't mean that the mechanism is obvious (it isn't), but only that the result is not very surprising.
Neurons communicate via electric signals. There are multiple reasonnable ways to implement a memory based on that substrate, but the interface is almost certainly going to be through axons.
There must be a way, whatever it may be, to query and to alter the brain's memory through its interface. We don't have to know precisely how the system works to predict that fuzzing the interface might result in adverse effects.
That remains true whether the underlying storage is in the field, in synapses, a more complicated change in gene expression, or some other property of the cell.