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Scientist to Implant Electrode in His Own Brain?
BartlebyScrivener writes to tell us the MIT Technology Review is reporting that even thought scientists know quite a bit about the brain, one researcher is trying to take it a step further towards understanding consciousness by implanting an electrode in his own brain. From the article: "Bill Newsome, a neuroscientist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA, has spent the last twenty years studying how neurons encode information and how they use it to make decisions about the world. In the 1990s, he and collaborators were able to change the way a monkey responded to its environment by sending electric jolts to certain parts of its brain. The findings gave neuroscientists enormous insight into the inner workings of the brain."
because running 20,000 volts through a monkey's testicles will not really give you any insight into the workings of the human mind.
Well perhaps some sociological research about people who find it funny vs. people who cringe .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
And since he will then be no longer in a position to make an objective observation, the monkeys will start making experiments with him.
But seriously, experiments like this will ultimately lead to a more inhuman society. Think of cops with satellite aided
vision or marines with remote controlled wapons. There should be an international law/treaty against it, like we have for certain biological wapons or nukes.
I can't believe we still know so little about how the brain works actually. It feels like all our attempts to understand it (PET, MRI, electrodes, etc), while amazing, as still at the caveman stage of development e.g. hit it with a rock until it does something. I would have thought there would have been far more interest into researching how the brain functions.
Well, I don't think you're giving enough credit to what we know, or how complex the brain is. We've identified regions of the brain that're responsible for different things, we've made blind people see through implanted electrodes (albeit a fairly primitive vision). On a smaller scale we know the brain operates on a neural network, works electro-chemically, and we have some understanding of what the neuro-transmitters do. And these are only the things I've read about in the popular press, as I've never taken a neuro-science class. It's not a lot, but I think it's beyond "hit with rock, see what happens".
AccountKiller
The scientist is from Stanford. The technology review that printed the article is from MIT.
We definatly have the visual system hammered.
But, much of neurology, to agree with the parent, is right now no more than staring at blotches on a computer screen, and loosly associating it with what the subject was asked to do. Thats why there is such a small amount of agreement between neuroscientists, as opposed to older, more established disciplines.
The brain is truly a complicated beast, even when ignoring the "neuron" level, and paying attention to the "structure" level. All of the hard, cut and dry (as presented in the pop-media) structures are really loose and fuzzy, and interact in many diverse ways on a per-function basis. The flexability also is problematic, since we can say "I see these splotches in the 'perfect brain', under x circumstance", but damaged, or structurally different brains still will display the same empheria in most cases.
In my brief stint in neurology (for psych) a glaring problem was the lack of transition between perceived, subjective, experience, and the empirical brain data. I can tell you what areas light up when you look at an apple (as opposed to a straight line), but as of yet know one (that I know of) has a plausable theory of how this translates into perception. Yes, we can say the process is the translation/perception, but this too is slightly problematic. Granted I'm not a neurologist, so I wouldn't mind be proven wrong.
The brain is sort of like genetics. At first everyone thought, given sufficient technology, that it would be rather easy to crack (height gene, complexion gene, eye color gene, ADD gene, schizophrenia gene, etc..) But it turns into a rather few simple structure performing more jobs, and interacting in odd ways. I over simplify, since the brain has always had a complex mystique, but you get the point.
Yes, we have many practical effects of modern neuroscience, but very little actual understanding. This will change as time goes on, I'm sure.
(though, at times, philosophically, I wonder how much about the mind can be expressed in reductionalist neuroscience... But that is neither here nor there)
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
A professor of mine once said, "If the human brain was simple enough for us to understand it, we would be too simple to understand the human brain."
Of course, the other question it seems to me is whether this was an actual perception, or just the experience of perception. For example, would the patient actually remember, if asked, the exact words his mother had used? Or did he simply have the experience that he knew. There are pretty weird studies of, eg, people are blind but don't know it, and who swear they are blind but have reflex actions based on sight.
from TFA:
Getting approval to do something like this would be difficult. Any human experiments in this country are under rigorous scrutiny. Lawyers and administrators at institutions take a dim view of this kind of thing because of the liability issues. And there is a definite slippery slope argument. I might be able to make a case for my own experiment, but it could set precedent for others for whom it would be more risky...Some young graduate student might see it as a way to get ahead in his career and decide to do it.
Would these regulators find it easier to approve of such things if this scientist were an idiot and merely did these things for fun? It seems like even an elementary respect for personal autonomy - which suffices to allow skydiving and elephant training and smoking - ought to allow someone to take risks that are far lower, for rewards that, at least to me, appear rather more noble and inspiring. In fact, I'd assume anyone who pierces their dick or forks their tongue or something faces long-term risks from injury or infection that much higher than anything this man's considering with (his own!!) head under controlled circumstances.
Don't get me wrong...I'm NOT arguing that any of the other things I mentioned ought to be more strictly regulated. I just think we're succumbing a bit too much to mad-scientist paranoia in treating this experiment differently.
OK, but what about if we are *exactly* smart enough to understand the brain?
That might seem snarky, but let me make a serious point. What you have said makes it seem like intelligence is a linear scale -- say, humans have a 'brain ability' of 50, but it takes a score of, say, 100 to understand a human brain. So anything understandable has some kind of ranking, so understanding dogs is lower on the scale than understanding people.
But what about qualitative intelligence, where instead of a numeric scale, there are different 'types' of understanding. So, in order to understanding, say, cloud formation, instead of having 'enough' intelligence, you just have to have the fluid dynamics module -- just as an example. You either understand it or you don't.
So if you buy the theory of qualitative intelligence, then it is possible that we are capable of understanding the human mind, so long as we have that capability.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso