Reality Crowd

Every morning I wake up, and I still feel like me. My conscious experience feels stable, natural, consistent, and singular (me). However, as Jill Bolte Taylor, our speaker and brain scientist describes, the two halves of our brains have distinctly separate experiences. They function very differently from one another and care about different things entirely. Having a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain and having left-brain functions individually shut down gave to her unique insight to her mind. She describes in vivid detail how her unaffected right hemisphere became more and more responsible for her entire conscious experience as her left-brain failed. She describes a profound awakening experience as she came to know pure right-brain thought and the hemisphere’s personal experience. She gives insights to the mind on a scientific level and even reaches into—dare I say—a spiritual realm offering her own words of hope for the experience of the human race.

Now for the fun part! Test your own hemispheres with this optical illusion.

We’ll explore this subject more in depth at a later date, but I thought that this clip from the This American Life TV series is really interesting food for thought about how cameras change things. We act differently when we know we are being filmed. How does that change our society when suddenly we are being filmed all the time? That article is for another day… for now enjoy this clip:

What do you think? Do cameras change people’s behavior?

Long the domain of science fiction and futurists, it seems that connecting the human brain to computers is coming sooner than you might think. We recently discussed scientists working on mapping a rat’s brain at the neuron level. They think they will have a working model of a human brain within a decade. On the hardware front, engineer Ted Berger at The University of Southern California has spent the past ten years designing a computer chip that can re-create thoughts. Using a needle hooked into a rat’s brain tissue and attached to a small silicone chip, the team of researchers has been able to send and receive electrical pulses from the brain. The chip is a huge first step toward implantable computers in our brains. Eventually, researchers hope to be able to help patients with all sorts of memory disorders, from Alzheimer’s to absent mindedness.

Some day you should be able to stop forgetting where you put your keys with a simple hardware upgrade. However, don’t get excited quite yet. Berger’s chip currently models about 12,000 neuron connections while the brain has an astounding 100 billion! Not to fear though, Richard H. Granger, Jr., a professor of brain sciences who leads the Neukom Institute for Interdisciplinary Computational Sciences at Dartmouth College states that:

Replicating memory is going to happen in our lifetimes, and that puts us on the edge of being able to understand how thought arises from tissue--in other words, to understand what consciousness really means.

Can’t wait a lifetime? Well, the BrainGate Neural Interface System is currently undergoing clinical FDA trials for approval. The System consists of a sensor that is implanted on the motor cortex of the brain and a device that analyzes brain signals. The principle of operation behind the BrainGate System is that with intact brain function, brain signals are generated even though they are not sent to the arms, hands and legs. The signals are interpreted and translated into cursor movements, offering the user an alternate “BrainGate pathway” to control a computer with thought, just as individuals who have the ability to move their hands use a mouse. Currently aimed at severely disabled people, the product is expected to be quickly ramped up for use on people with lesser disabilities.

Read the rest of this entry »

The frightening dark side of human nature--that of violence and hatred--is a facet of humanity pervasive throughout our entire history. The truth of human nature and the range of our destructive abilities play an immense role in shaping the reality in which we live. A recent attack in Baghdad shows one example of how vicious this human trait can be.

According to Iraqi officials, two women, described as “mentally disabled,” were strapped with explosives and sent into Baghdad markets where they were blown up by remote control. Though their particular disabilities were not made clear, it was noted by one of Gen. Qasim Atta’s aides that the women were unaware of the intention to detonate the devices. In the CNN article describing the incident they make reference to how U.S. sources described the event, clearly differing from the assertion of the Iraqi officials:

U.S. military officials referred to the two attacks as suicide bombings, saying both women detonated the explosive devices.

When trying to make sense of such an atrocity and considering the lives lost, the manipulation and murder of people with disabilities, and the cowardice of those who committed the act, one hopes for more consensus than what Iraqi and U.S. officials offer. Read the entire article by CNN here. Please post a comment, especially if you have more information clarifying the incident.

What would happen if people disappeared suddenly from the planet? Not in some kind of nuclear war or global warming gone wild kind of way, but simply disappeared? How long would the evidence of our existence stick around? Would the earth eventually heal itself? These thought experiments have inspired a book and now a special on the History Channel.

The book, The World Without Us by Alan Weisman examines all types of different ecological and human made systems, and how they would react if people were taken out of the equation. The results are often surprising. Weisman talks to scientists from all types of disciplines from foresters to nuclear physicists. It turns out that the things that we intuitively think of as permanent would be the first to go. Within a few years our massive infrastructure would start to crumble, and most of it would be gone within a few thousand. It’s the stuff that we don’t think of that often… like plastic, that would stick around the longest.

In addition to the book the History Channel has a special out called Life After People. Clearly inspired by Weisman’s book, the show uses special effects to help imagine what the landscape would look like and how different structures would react over time without the upkeep of people. Visit the History Channel site to see some previews.

Read on to see some videos from the History Channel and from “The World Without Us”
Read the rest of this entry »