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If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

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Re: If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

#81

Post by dahart »

hexo wrote: post #44
bamboozled wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any actual science behind binaural beats? They do nothing in my experience…

go visit a doctor. edit: lol. downvotes on friendly reminder, what a classic. my friend was not sure what everyone sees on 3d TVs. then got rid of it. later it turned out it was because of eye cancer. take care.

FWIW, your first line by itself does not come off as a friendly reminder at all. If that’s all that was there before your edit, I can understand why it inspired some reactions. The edit suggesting it’s everyone else’s fault isn’t going to help either, but I will take your comment as well intentioned and vote it up, it sucks your friend had eye cancer, and it’s a good idea to get preventative checkups.

Even as a friendly reminder, an implication of your first line is that binaural beats should work, and that if it doesn’t something is wrong. Did you mean to imply that? If so do you have an answer to the question about scientific support?

Re: If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

#82

Post by dahart »

bamboozled wrote: post #36
RobotToaster wrote: post #28

Reminds me of a study I read once on binaural beats[0], that found the effect disappeared when they used pneumatic (non-magnetic) headphones. [0]the theory that playing a different tone in each ear, that when superpositioned by the brain to produce a low frequency, would entrain the brainwave frequency to the modulated frequency.

Is there any actual science behind binaural beats? They do nothing in my experience…

Quick google search… from Popular Science:

“Among the 14 studies reviewed, five supported the idea, eight contradicted it, and one ended with mixed results.”

They talk about a few studies with positive results, but then share this:

“not every study shows positive effects. One 2023 study of 1,000 people found that listening to binaural beats at home while taking a test reduced their performance, while silence or listening to other sounds had no impact.”

(Here’s the study referred to: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372220600_Reverse_e...)

https://www.popsci.com/science/do-binaural-beats-work-focus/

WebMD has no clear results either, summarizing:

“Some early research suggests they may affect your brainwaves in ways that may help with attention, anxiety, sleep, and more. But other studies found unclear and mixed results. There aren't scientifically proven guidelines for how best to use binaural beats, or whether they can improve your mental health and thinking.”

It also mentions “they didn’t stop attention from declining over time.”

https://www.webmd.com/balance/what-are-binaural-beats

When asked if binaural beats work, Google’s AI answer confidently starts with the word “Yes”, but fails to back it up with scientific references. And I found some commercial sales listicles (e.g., Ohm Store) and YouTube videos that strongly claim binaural beats are amazing, but also have little to back it up.

My personal experience listening to binaural beats is it helps with focus on coding about the same amount as listening to color noise or rain & thunder or other non-musical audio tracks. Listening to anything masks office chatter and distracting noises.

Re: If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

#83

Post by griffzhowl »

Two main reactions:

The Meta paper, as well as other studies which have been interpreted as rudimentary "mind-reading" have measured activity in sensory cortex correlated with direct sensory inputs. There's a fairly close mapping between the initial layers of sensory cortex and patterns of activation in the sense organs. e.g. the optic nerve from each eye projects onto the initial layer of visual cortex in a way that closely preserves the geometry of the retinal image, so it's not that difficult to correlate information in the stimulus and these parts of cortex. Making sense of activity in deeper areas of cortex which isn't as closely correlated with immediate sensory stimulation is a much harder task.

Secondly, the idea seems to be that the brain could make use of a "lossy image" of its own overall functioning. This part seemed very handwavy to me. The brain already contains the information about its own functioning, by definition, so it's not clear to me what functions would be served by the brain's being able to "sense its own magnetic field". It's known that the brain integrates information from distant regions through the patterns of neuronal connectivity. It's not clear that something similar can be done with magnetic fields, because these would mostly affect very nearby areas of the brain, and long-distance effects would be scrambled with all the other activity going on in other parts of the brain.

The idea to look at the effects of the electromagnetic fields in brain functioning is interesting though. The general idea has been around for a long time[0]. The dificult part is making a detailed proposal for how it would actually work and finding experimental evidence for that.

[0] Burr, Northrop (1935) The Electro-Dynamic Theory of Life

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/394488

Re: If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

#84

Post by andrewflnr »

skeledrew wrote: post #68
andrewflnr wrote: post #15

This feels just north of conspiracy theory logic. It's proven that humans can just barely sense large-scale magnetic fields, so how about if they can also sense extremely finely detailed fields in a way that solves long-standing philosophical and medical problems? Here are some supporting coincidences that have any number of alternate explanations, but it would sure be cool if this whole tower of conjecture was true,…

It does sound pretty fantastic. What parts in particular to you find invalid, and why?

Mainly there's not remotely enough evidence to justify the claims. I don't even know if the hypothesis is impossible (though it certainly needs to explain why consciousness survives exposure to strong magnetic fields, etc), but the idea of long range, detailed internal communication in the brain by magnetic fields needs much, much more evidence to be taken seriously. And that's putting it gently.

Re: If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

#85

Post by andrewflnr »

xattt wrote: post #62
andrewflnr wrote: post #15

This feels just north of conspiracy theory logic. It's proven that humans can just barely sense large-scale magnetic fields, so how about if they can also sense extremely finely detailed fields in a way that solves long-standing philosophical and medical problems? Here are some supporting coincidences that have any number of alternate explanations, but it would sure be cool if this whole tower of conjecture was true,…

There was a comment years/decades ago on slashdot about someone walking under a malfunctioning ceiling-hung security CRT TV, and feeling like they were hit on the head when they walked under it. The assumption was that the TV had an abnormally large magnetic field (or the person was particularly sensitive). I’ve tried to replicate it, but my chances have become slim-to-none with CRTs going out of fashion.

The "malfunctioning" part is probably critical to replication.

Re: If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

#86

Post by rdgthree »

jodrellblank wrote: post #79
rdgthree wrote: post #75

If you're interested in my personal chain-of-thought on the subject: This was where I started pulling this thread (October 2025): https://1393.xyz/writing/could-the-root-cause-of-alzheimers-... And this is an even further ancestor of the ideas (December 2023): https://1393.xyz/writing/are-we-only-conscious-while-were-le... I'm operating off of my own subjective experience, and this idea lines up tightly with System 1…

Then how can we exist around large magnetic fields without them affecting us mentally - no forgetting, no dropping unconscious, no trippy psychedelic experiences - seemingly nothing at all? How come our mains electricity does not not act on our minds analogously to a blowtorch on our skin, or a hydraulic press on our bones? MRI machines at 3 Tesla field strength are 100,000x stronger than the Earth's magnetic field,…

The whole argument hinges on the idea of tuned resonance: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-07988-2

Re: If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

#87

Post by rdgthree »

neuah wrote: post #80
rdgthree wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily - I think it works like Daniel Kahneman's System 1 and System 2. Your conscious system is System 2 - when it's not working correctly, you just fall back to System 1. Independently, since the whole idea relies on resonance, it may be the case that an fMRI doesn't actually interfere with the "stochastic resonance" mechanic quite like TMS (transcranial magnetic simulation) seems to. If you model the brai…

You know the mechanism of TMS is not mysterious. It requires no magnetoreception or "stochastic resonance". It is simply inducing electrical currents to modulate neural activity. Its effects are consistent with the known laws of physics, known properties of neurons, and decades of neuroscience research.

Of course!

But also:

> Although the biology of why TMS works isn't completely understood, the stimulation appears to affect how the brain is working.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/transcranial-mag...

I think it's reasonable to assume there's room to sharpen our understanding of it quite a bit.

Re: If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

#88

Post by neuah »

rdgthree wrote: post #87
neuah wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know the mechanism of TMS is not mysterious. It requires no magnetoreception or "stochastic resonance". It is simply inducing electrical currents to modulate neural activity. Its effects are consistent with the known laws of physics, known properties of neurons, and decades of neuroscience research.

Of course! But also: > Although the biology of why TMS works isn't completely understood, the stimulation appears to affect how the brain is working. https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/transcranial-mag... I think it's reasonable to assume there's room to sharpen our understanding of it quite a bit.

I think you're conflating one question with another. The "why" in question is why altering neural activity in that way results in clinical effects. It is not the "why" TMS alters neural activity.

Re: If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

#89

Post by Teever »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #76
RobotToaster wrote: post #28

Reminds me of a study I read once on binaural beats[0], that found the effect disappeared when they used pneumatic (non-magnetic) headphones. [0]the theory that playing a different tone in each ear, that when superpositioned by the brain to produce a low frequency, would entrain the brainwave frequency to the modulated frequency.

My hypothesis for both this and most of the things stated in the article: the EEG machine itself is picking up the fluctuations in its EM environment. I mean, what's more likely - that the binaural beats retune brain, or that someone forgot that any straight-ish piece of wire is a radio antenna, and the signal being seen comes straight from headphones? Using pneumatic headphones would make it go away too.

I wonder if they tested by running the experiment without a human in to get a baseline measurement.

Re: If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

#90

Post by rdgthree »

neuah wrote: post #88
rdgthree wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course! But also: > Although the biology of why TMS works isn't completely understood, the stimulation appears to affect how the brain is working. https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/transcranial-mag... I think it's reasonable to assume there's room to sharpen our understanding of it quite a bit.

I think you're conflating one question with another. The "why" in question is why altering neural activity in that way results in clinical effects. It is not the "why" TMS alters neural activity.

I appreciate that you feel this way, but the mechanisms behind exactly which neural circuits are activated by TMS are simply not yet fully understood.

From 2024:

> Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive, FDA-cleared treatment for neuropsychiatric disorders with broad potential for new applications, but the neural circuits that are engaged during TMS are still poorly understood.

[0]https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371%2F...

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