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Tool Use Is Just a Trick of the Mind
TwistedOne151 writes to recommend a ScienceNOW article describing the work of a team of Italian neurobiologists who have found the roots of the capacity for tool use in the primate brain: the brain treats the tool as part of the body. The experiment as described is passing clever.
Seems to me that they solved some of the problem, but not the problem they were looking for. The F5 neurons in question appear to be the sort of task visualization center. As in, when you're operating a tool, from the remote crane on the space shuttle, to playing Super Mario Brothers, you imagine the task happening. If you're opening a ziploc bag, the opening task will be the same regardless of if you're using your hand, pliers, or reverse pliers (which close when they open and open when they close, according to the article) -- you imagine the ziploc bit getting prised apart. Apparently, since these neurons fire exactly the same way when they do their task, this is probably what they found.
The more important part, how the brain can sublimate operating complex machinery so that it doesn't require conscious thought to operate, isn't explained here. Shuttle operators are actually trained to treat the crane like an extension of their arm, video game players eventually move past the controls to directly control the player on the screen, experienced skiers just imagine themselves turning without consciously having to weight their skis or edge, etc. All of these tasks originally required a lot of conscious control and expenditure of brain power (and in the case of skiing, a lot of bruises). And as long as it stays at this level, it stays awkward and stilted. It is at the point in which you transcend the raw mechanics and are capable of controlling it at a higher level (which is what this study found), that the skier becomes graceful, the video game player can race through flaming rotating death traps in super mario brothers, and the space shuttle control can quickly and adroitly manipulate stuff.
The human brain really is a fascinating thing, and capable of really amazing feats, if you think about it.
Actually, this sort of thing is pretty easy to demonstrate.
This is the example I was taught in psych class. Use your finger to apply pressure to your table. You feel pressure in the tip of your finger. Now use a pencil to apply pressure to your table. You then feel pressure at the tip of the pencil, and not in your fingers where you hold the pen.
Note that, if you make an effort, you can feel the pressure on your fingers from the pencil. But the natural experience is to feel pressure in the pencil, as if it were part of your body. What this in fact proves is that the brain can make you 'feel' sensations anywhere, and not just in your body.
"BTW, is there anything known about diseases where people don't see tools as an extension of the body?"
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=678
Proprioception Deficit Disorder is a disease where people lose the ability to "feel" their body. People suffering from this rare disease can't do things that seems natural to us without a lot of focus.
1) I've got a problem with the way my brain or my hand function
2) your experiment is a different kind of psychological experiment: it's an experiment in suggestion:
The lecturer tells students that the natural (ie normal) response is to feel pressure "in the pencil", and because they trust him, they believe that all normal people feel this. Now if they try it themselves, the students delude themselves into thinking that they actually feel the pressure "in the pencil", because the alternatives are much less acceptable: a) that they are not themselves sufficiently normal people or b) that they can't trust what the lecturer teaches them.
The lecturer tells students that the natural (ie normal) response is to feel pressure "in the pencil", and because they trust him, they believe ...
:-)
It works for me, and I sure as hell don't trust anyone on Slashdot.
Try it with something longer, like a long kitchen knife, or a sword if you have one. You definitely don't think of the touch as occurring in your fingers, but in the tip of the blade. It probably helps when your entire hand is in contact with the handle, so that you can't localize the pressure on a single finger. It works!
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
A very good story ran on Wired a short while back, "Hacking our five senses", and what he described is part of the story:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp.html
Also check out
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/cyborg_mann_041012.html
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/03/50976
And the story on Slashdot itself
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/03/155204
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.