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Robot Makes People Feel Like a Ghost Is Nearby
sciencehabit writes: In 2006, cognitive neuroscientist Olaf Blanke of the University of Geneva in Switzerland was testing a patient's brain functions before her epilepsy surgery when he noticed something strange. Every time he electrically stimulated the region of her brain responsible for integrating different sensory signals from the body, the patient would look behind her back as if a person was there, even when she knew full well that no one was actually present. Now, with the help of robots, Blanke and colleagues have not only found a neurological explanation for this illusion, but also tricked healthy people into sensing "ghosts," they report online in Current Biology (abstract). The study could help explain why schizophrenia patients sometimes hallucinate that aliens control their movements.
Why are so many people so adamant about the notion that consciousness can't come from the physical brain?
I might be able to answer that for you, if you can explain to me what you understand consciousness to be.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
What doesn't make sense to me is the synchronized motion part is really the trick here - that our brain will automatically figure out we're causing a sensation, even though the mechanics don't make sense or it's something we haven't experienced before. The fact that that or subconscious does not automatically assimilate those motions that are no longer synchronized is to be expected. There IS a ghost behind the person touching them, in the form of a robot
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think this sentence is very important here (emphasis mine):
When the robot finger at the back of a healthy person is in sync with their own finger they can't tell a robot is there, it literaly feels like they're poking themselves directly in the back. Sensation 1 (from their finger) perfectly matched up with sensation 2 (the robot at their back), so the rest of the brain thinks "I'm poking myself directly in the back with my own finger".
When the robot is out of sync, however, sensation 1 isn't matched up with sensation 2. The part of the brain in healthy people which normally matches sensations thinks "these aren't in sync, therefore they don't stem from the same source, so something which isn't me is touching me!".
In people where this brain region is damaged their sensations maybe aren't going to sync at times, so maybe their own behaviour then triggers the sensation of a second person being present. Because the damaged brain doesn't realise two things are synced and therefore all down to themselves, the brain interprets it as a "second person". Suddenly an intrusive thought which a normal person would put down to their own brain seems to be coming from someone else directly into their brain, hence a schizophrenics' sensation that they're being mind controlled.
Because success within their social group depends on shared beliefs, many of those beliefs are dependent on dualism, and being right about dualism has very few practical non-social consequences.
Ha.
No I don't.
Familiarity with the history of biblical archeology(how many Noah's Arks have they found now? 12?), translation(hey this version of the inerrant truth means something completely different than this version of the inerrant truth), history, and exegisis is exactly why I dismiss them.