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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."
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.