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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.
So, essentially, a computer is an extension of my body?
Concievably, input, output, and expected responses could be considered an extension, but what about thought process? Is this similar to the human body considering a crutch as an extension of the body while walking?
Somehow, I sense that "tool" is too broad of a word, or perhaps too distorted of a definition, to be used when referring to, well, tools. If I give a thousand monkeys one typewriter each, does that typerwriter become considered as an extension? I can understand a pair of pliers being considered a mechanical extension to the hand, but what about the actually pressing of keys?
I've met some people who really are tools! Fortunately, they're usually marketing.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
It's interesting to have scientific confirmation of this. I've often considered how it is that humans are so well adapted to controlling vehicles. (e.g. driving a car, flying a plane, etc.) It didn't take much consideration to come to the conclusion that the vehicle becomes an extension of the driver. You stop thinking in terms of your physical body's size and start thinking in terms of your vehicle's size. You stop paying attention to the sensations on your skin and start paying attention to the vibrations and force feedback that are transmitted through the vehicle. Even your visual patterns change as you begin checking various mirrors, gauges, windows, and other situational monitoring devices.
Perhaps nothing is more telling than the data published on crashes. I don't have the figures in front of me right now, but I recall that you're significantly more likely to survive a crash if you're sitting on the driver's side (either the driver himself or the passenger in the back) than if you're sitting in the passenger seat. When this was investigated, it was found that the natural (and often unconcious) reaction in a crash situation is for the driver to turn his side of the vehicle away from the situation in an attempt to protect himself. Sort of the vehicular equivalent of throwing up your arms to stop a blow to the face.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
So, physical tool use in primates is result of a trick of the mind... activating and training certain regions of neurons to perceive the new tool as part of the body... what does it mean that I use a computer which is a mental tool? Does that mean my psyche is extended into my computer? If so, it would explain a great many things...
I feel like I sort of knew this already. It make sense. In a video game I don't think about smashing "A", "B", or "X", "Y" I just think about the action I want to perform and I hit the right keys... after a learning period. Same with touch typing. I just think about characters and they come out of the keyboard. But, I can't think without a computer anymore... or at least if I don't have one I feel like part of my mind has gone missing. Perhaps it's the part that can spell? I mean I've got the firefox spell checker plugin or else this post would be full of badly spelled words.
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For years, I wore watches on my left wrist. (Nonstop, from 1996 to about 2004; also a lot of the time from 1990-1994.) It got to the point that I would look at my wrist for the time, even if I wasn't wearing the watch, and I would feel like a part of me was missing if I didn't have the watch on.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
What's a penius?
It should be no surprise that the brain treats tools as an extension of the body, because that's exactly what tools are.
There is nothing that we do which does not affect the outside world. And there is nothing we do which the outside world does not affect. The illusion is in the initial perception of separateness and not in the realization that it is part of us.
Treating the world as an extension of ourselves is a form of enlightenment, not trickery.
Wow! Where do I start? I think I'll just say that I have always considered my tool to be an extension of my body, but I do not think it's root is in my brain.
Sorry, I just could not resist.
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Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I guess we all agree that tools are indeed percepted as parts of our body. Even computers. I always marvel at the things I do with computers without even thinking about it. A few weeks ago I had to explain to my aunt, who had never used a computer or anything else then typing and browsing before, how to rip a CD and put it on het mp3 player. That was about as hard for me as explaining how to hold a pen and write with it. It comes so natural I don't even think about it. Our brains are miraculous things. How difficult would our lives be if we had to think about how to use the knife every time we want to make a sandwich!
BTW, is there anything known about diseases where people don't see tools as an extension of the body?
-- Cheers!
Yet I can still attempt a long jump or attempt to skid my car in the snow without the memorized steps. I won't be very good at either one my first time out, but I'll "get the hang of it" after a while.Hey, you try waking up the next morning a foot taller and 150 pounds heavier, and lets see how well you take your first steps, Mister!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
The problem is noone has performed this kind of quantative research before. Sure we all "knew" it, but there was a time when we all "knew" the world was flat. That's the point of rigorous scientific research. At least now we have a few words and pictures to point to and say, "see?" whenever we try to draw conclusions from their findings.
Crows, well some of them, are able to not only use tools as an extension of their body, but they can MAKE the tool first. How many primates can do that? Movie of crow making and using a tool here.
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
This reminds me of how I learned to hit a golf ball. For years, every time I tried it, it would just wizzle (is that a word?) along the ground for 15 or 20 feet.
Finally, one day, in frustration, I hit upon the answer--just think of it as a very low pitch baseball. I knew how to hit a baseball. Right then, I knew I had it and I tured to my friends and said, "watch this"--and sure enough it went flying.
It's all in the head.
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When you drive a car, the car becomes an extension of your body. For most people. Some people really struggle with the car and presumably it's more like trying to move around a prosthetic limb. Hey, at least we don't have nerve endings going through into the tires. Driving through the desert: "OW! OW! OW!"
Look back even further. Anthropologists have long dismissed the 2001-concept of primitive man suddenly discovering tools, preferring to suggest that there was no real "start" to the use of tools, that they merely evolved into being something recognizably manufactured. That being the case, one might well ask if the concept of a "tool" has much meaning, if it can (in principle) be traced back by continuous lineage to non-intelligent utilization of objects in their natural state.
On the other hand, we should consider whether that is always true. Are all tools manufactured by humans today merely descendants - direct but heavily evolved - of objects utilized by sea urchins (shell fragments for camouflage) or birds (just about anything to make nests)?
This is not a trivial question. We know crows can manufacture tools, we have extremely well-documented evidence under (quite literally) laboratory conditions. If we assume all tools have evolved from simpler tools, how do we explain the fact that even close relatives to the crows have only the vastly simpler proto-tools? Manufacturing is definitely not something we see a lot of in the avian world. Utilization, yes, manufacturing, no. This clearly isn't from a lack of intelligence, as studies on African Grey parrots show the avian brain to be quite capable of an impressive level of thought, including the abstract.
Nor do we see much evidence of tool manufacture in Chimpanzees. Studies appear to have shown rudimentary culture and primitive belief systems. We know Neanderthals had discovered stone tools and had gone at least as far as discovering music and the octave scale, long before anything recognizably human evolved. We know that chimps and gorillas are capable of learning sign language, so understand communication to a fairly advanced level. But neither has ever been seen to manufacture anything. Use, yes. Chimps use sticks to get at food all of the time, but using something that already exists is quite different from making something that would not otherwise have ever existed.
Are these evidence of a break in the chain? Evidence that there are actual leaps forward that must be made in their entirety or not at all? If so, then what these researchers have found is not enough. It's important, but it isn't enough. There is a gap, a gap between using and making that distinguishes the very few animals that have tools from everything else. That gap is what distinguishes tools from merely being an extension to the body, which all animals seem to be aware of and capable of using. If you don't explain the gap, then you have not really explained the human use of tools, you have merely explained the multi-cellular use of tools. A very different problem.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I came across this interesting example of a guy teaching his granny or someone what a driver is.
"Imagine that you suddenly acquired a new hand. but you dont know how to use it. So you read a book, and figure out how to deal with it. The new hand is the hardware, and the book is the driver"
Cool. But looking back, we intuitively knew this. When Neo was being fed those martial skills, we knew what exactly was happening. A tool(stick, nunchaku ) was made a part of his body. This is what is driving.
Fuck it, I say the reverse is true, our limbs and senses and other parts are just like other tools, just that we have them built in.. sort of a readymade kit, for the purpose of survival. I can go ahead and extend it, but that would become philosophy. But this is a cool new way of seeing things.
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Just ask any musician.
TFA mentions "mirror neurons" at one point. I guess that's why people who really enjoy boxing will find themselves ducking and dodging along with a match, and why some people feel so uncomfortable watching someone else drive a car.
I wonder what causes some people who are new to video gaming to try to move their physical body while attempting to navigate on the screen with a controller....
I've also been learning all the major and minor scales - there are twelve major and thirty-six minor scales, all played with different combinations of keys and fingering. I know all but a few of them now. All the ones I know well I can play just by thinking of their sound, without thinking of the keys or fingering.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
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
Here is a more familiar example. Try writing something large on a blackboard. Try writing something tiny. Your hadwriting style is probably recognizeable. However, you are probably using different muscles in each. When writing scles. When writing very large you may be using your arm and shoulder muscles too. When writing small, you may be using your fingertip muscles - perhaps holding the tool very tightly and using the balances of strains in the fingertips to move the tool. Nevertheless, it seems we have some learned kinematics, which we can rapidly map from one set of muscles to another, in a way we can't when trying to walk on our hands.
The example of 'feeling the pressure at the tip of the pencil' is not wrong, but most people when asked will claim they know they are pressing on the pencil all the time. Then again. most people will claim they are in concious control of their body. It is sometimes a bit of a shock to discover that different parts are doing complex stuff 'by themselves'.