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Living In a Virtual World Requires Less Brain Power
sciencehabit writes "If you were a rat living in a completely virtual world like in the movie The Matrix, could you tell? Maybe not, but scientists studying your brain might be able to. Today, researchers report that certain cells in rat brains work differently when the animals are in virtual reality than when they are in the real world. In the experiment, rats anchored to the top of a ball ran in place as movie-like images around them changed, creating the impression that they were running along a track. Their sense of place relied on visual cues from the projections and their self-motion cues, but they had to do without proximal cues like sound and smell. The rodents used half as many neurons to navigate the virtual world as they did the real one."
Perhaps this explains why those who spend too much time playing computer games always seem a few bricks short of a wall.
Smivs on the intertubes!
...that by using half the senses you use half the neurons? Next thing you'll be telling me water is wet and earth is round!
"Hello, IT... Have you tried turning it off and on again? Yeah... No problem."
As the human species evolves and our technology advances, our ability to be a "jack of all trades" decreases. More time must be spent learning especially focused tasks to the point of expertise. I think this is just more example of that. Yes, a digital world probably requires less overall brain power, but also enables a much higher degree of specificity of focus not possible in the real world. Yes. its probably all being used up on porn.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
This just shows that living in a poor virtual world, with less sensory input, requires less brain power. That may be an interesting result, but it's hardly what the headline says.
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Am I missing something? "Less input, less activity" seems incredibly obvious. There is value in confirming even the obvious but this seems a bit too far. Plus, the summary is way off since the tested 'virtual world' was nothing of the sort. The Matrix was a full sensory experience, not just a movie.
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Running on a ball with a panoramic screen around you is not the same thing as having full virtual sensory input.
In other news, scientists prove once and for all that apples really aren't oranges. More mind-numbing Slashdot articles at 11.
So what conclusions can we draw if those same scientists also say that we use a small fraction of our total brain power?
HEADLINE: Scientists Fail to Make Realistic Virtual World! News at 11...
by removing vision as well.
Virtual worlds teach us LOTS of valuable stuff. How else would you learn that life is a series of staged enemy encounters and occasional boss fights?
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
The things you don't notice... Gravitational forces, balance, centripetal forces, air flow and pressure, sound differences, reduced visual detail, changes in smell, and who knows what else they/we experience in the real world that doesn't translate to a movie and a treadmill.
Up next, getting shot in a FPS is less painful than getting shot in the real world.
Duhhhhhhhhh
It's could also due to a low-rez environment, increase the resolution to 4K or more, and see what happens! (Just Kidding)
www.Buy-Proxy.com - A "buyer-driven" global marketplace.
That explains how some folks here on the Internet are capable to exist.
bad news: in the future google glass will make clandestine recordings of people. :(
good news: google glass owners will have devolved to ass-scratching mouth-breathing imbeciles incapable of understanding what the recording, connectivity, battery life, or funny headgear actually means at all.
bad news: most of my friends will have become too stupid to understand my VAX jokes
Good people go to bed earlier.
Well, the world is surely a better place now we know that and a load of rats suffered to tell us. Unbelievable.
I'm not against animal experiments in general, they may certainly be acceptable if they help us defeat cancer, Alzheimer or malaria. But this time I pass. This does not seem like the kind of research for which expensive rats for laboratories ought to be used.
Certainly it seems that the cerebellum would atrophy in such a virtual world since you would not move your appendages much (if at all).
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
If some parts of the brain under-develop due to virtual reality, perhaps other parts of the brain could develop more. Perhaps people with this new brain composition could do some things more easily than those with old brains!
At this moment, I just can't think of anything that the new brains could do better...
While it makes sense that at least initially you would probably use less brain power due to the lack of some stimulus in VR, I think they're also missing another interesting fact. In humans, when we lose one sense, it tends to amplify the abilities we have left. Take a blind person for example. Some folks who are blind develop the ability to echo locate (sonar) so accurately that they can walk around blind and identify objects entirely from the sound bouncing off of them. The brain also rewires itself to handle sound processing more than visual.
Also when I was younger, I use to play on the text based social MUD VR like systems. Despite being text-based however, they used your imagination to fill in the gaps and if you got into it, it could almost be real. I compared it to reading a very good book with yourself as the main character. I know that before that point in my life, my reading and writing skills were no where near what they are now. What eventually amazed me even more was the ability to pick up on real-life traits based on the things people wrote in their VR character profiles. While I can't claim to be perfectly accurate, I was a little surprised myself when I outright guessed a few details about some folks online before I asked them about it to double-check.
I would bet that in that situation my brain activity probably would start out low but due to our intelligence (or imagination) that we have over rats, it could potentially amplify with time.
...is that rats play more immersive video games than we do. When do we get to see affordable omnidirectional virtual walking environments?
Define "virtual world".
If we could replicate all the elements necessary to provide a convincing analog of reality (like in The Matrix, hinted at in the article), then surely there is nothing different for the brain to process.
I hereby posit a theory that asnosmic animals also don't activate the parts of their brain related to smell, nor those in a smell-free environment.
However, if we could create a virtual analog of smell that stimulated the smell's senses, chances are the brain patterns would be strikingly similar to "real" smell.
Like "virtual" servers - we don't have a 100% perfect analog, but we get closer all the time. However, the article summary appears to draw the conclusion that this means we'll never have The Matrix (or similar) because we'd always be able to tell we were in a virtual environment because there's no smell (for instance).
What we're basically saying is "a rat in a box but with fake images whizzing past it's eyes can smell that it's not in the 'real' world". Which is a bit obvious, and quite misleading to then extrapolate to large things. I imagine any amount of other senses will also give it away too (not least proprioception, temperature sensing, air pressure sensing, etc.).
What are we supposed to draw from the article? That virtual worlds won't be perfect until we do that? Or that we can't ever have a virtual world that's perfect (which seems nonsense even if it's not possible yet)? Or that scientists conduct experiments where the conclusion is a sure-gone conclusion before you even start and don't bother to compensate (e.g. introducing smells in synchronicity with the virtual world)?
Rats have poor eyesight and navigate by smell and tactile (whiskers.). the real story here is that they used any brain power at all.
In matrix you could least feel, taste, smell and die. If there is a true "feature complete" virtual world, I doubt your brain would require any less processing power.
The virtual world that rat was placed in was not a true representation and doubtless lacked all sorts of things the rat's senses expected.
The conclusion here could rather be that the simulation wasn't very good... not that the rat needs less brain power in ANY simulation.
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This is a poor title to this article.
The findings really say that a virtual stimulus of visual cues only doesn't get the same 'place cell' reaction as the real world. A higher level way of interpreting it -- if we want our virtual reality to feel more realistic, we need to engage more senses than simply visual flow.
But how do the scientist know that they and the subject are not in a virtual world? Even if they would find out that you use less brain power since you are living in a virtual world they would have no way of comparing it with the real world since they themselves are in the virtual world and hence their measurement of normal brain power would equal that of the virtual world.
Stupidest article summary ever!
If you were living in The Matrix, the scientists "studying your brain" would be pretty well tipped off by the MASS OF WIRES attached all through your brain and the giant interface port connected to them.
It stimulates the senses!
This also might be due to quantum effects. If the brain uses quantum effects in processing and nerve activation is affected by quantum probabilities, there are less possible outcomes in a simulation then in real life. So that might cause less nerve activation when processing for a simulation... There is the idea that the consciousness may be a quantum effect in the brain, basically in neurons there are molecule pockets that act like switches but may be in a quantum both "on and off" state until their state collapses. These Schrödinger's cat like molecular formations may act like data switches that are in an unresolved quantum state which collapses when they reach a threshold, with clusters eventually resulting in decisions possibly resulting in the process of consciousness. Consciousness or not, anesthetic gases target these molecule formations in such a way that they are likely forcing a collapse of their quantum state. So based on features of structures used for processing it's likely that the brain uses quantum effects for some parts of processing... In quantum physics the real world might be considered to be a negotiation of quantum possibilities, what ifs that may or may not happen. There is also the more far fetched idea that these Schrödinger's cat like quantum states in neurons could be weighted by quantum what if possibilities in the world around us. Maybe this could result in partial nerve activations for what ifs that only have a probability of happening. If so, the real world is very complex and filled with true randomness and quantum butterfly effects... If the brain uses quantum processing and if it is effected by quantum probabilities, then reduced nerve activation in simulations might be expected. So if there are Schrödinger like interactions with the real world by neurons that affect activation weighting and thus processing, then these partial activations would happen much less when interacting with a nonrandom virtual world. Less quantum possibilities affecting conscious processing might result in less nerves being active, no matter how detailed the graphics or sensory input in the simulation... I've been reading Stuart Hameroff lately, he has some good lectures reprinted by the MIT press. This isn't something he's said regarding simulations, but I'm reading between the lines and taking some liberties with my own interpretation here.
Funny- most life forms have filters to *ignore* vast amounts of sense data. That's what most of the neurons are doing. The virtual worlds we implement are just way more parsimonious... that's why these rats (and marketing people) can get away with using so few neurons.
Is this why I feel stupid well playing Minecraft?
I don't need someone hacking my soul.
Does that mean we can learn from sleeping? :S
Maybe it is a good way to force a kid to do homework in their dream. They can't run off and skip classes, just show them math exercise in power point format.
Hope they sleep well
The film makers said they wanted the unused brains to be part of the computer and that humans were being used for their excess brainpower. That was decided to be too complex for (American?) audiences so they went with the battery explanation which is so stupid some people would just think of it as a metaphor.
The brain interprets it's senses; you don't get input like a computer, you interpret the input you have. They could provide you less input for life and you'd not know the difference and would learn to interpret with what you had. During your development, I think it is possible that the input could be tuned down slowly so that you interpret the same thing using less of your senses. People who have laser damage to their eyes don't see a blank spot in their vision, the brain fills in the gap and they don't notice - only until the damage is too great do they start to notice blurry spots in their vision and it's still not black spots reflecting the reality of it (but then light does glow hitting cells in a way CCDs do not) - it takes even more severe damage before blackness sets in. Audio can be severely limited and still be fully functional - as long as the person never knew any better-- just a double pitches of clicking would still allow a language and a form of music to develop...
One might find out that the mice born into this become smarter in other ways as they have free brain power to develop to other tasks.
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