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Weak Electrical Field Found To Carry Information Around the Brain (eurekalert.org)
Zothecula writes: In a development that could lead to improved understanding of memory formation and epilepsy, scientists have discovered a new way information may be traveling throughout the brain. The team has identified slow-moving brainwaves it says could be carried only by the brain's gentle electrical field (abstract), a mechanism previously thought to be incapable of spreading neural signals altogether. "Although the electrical field is of low amplitude, the field excites and activates immediate neighbors, which, in turn, excite and activate immediate neighbors, and so on across the brain at a rate of about 0.1 meter per second."
What's that in decimeters/second?
What's the point in having lots of prefixes defined if you're then going to ignore them and use extra 0's and decimal points instead?
Sorry, pet peeve rant over.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Does this mean the scifi trope of using a machine to put knowledge in your head and getting years of education in matter of moments might actually be feasible?
I have to wonder if this isn't a path to telepathy, either natural or mediated by technology.
At least it would have been if my brain's electrical field wasn't so weak.
The idea that cell phones 'heat up your brain' or cause direct brain damage is pretty ridiculous, given the energies involved.
This would seem to suggest that while actual BRAIN damage is still impossible, it's perhaps not impossible that such EMF may interfere with these just-discovered slow-moving signals and whatever they do.
Interesting data on the variety and strength of EMF we encounter daily is here;
http://www.who.int/peh-emf/abo...
Hopefully someone with a better understanding of how these compare to the "2.5â"5 mV/mm" quoted in the abstract can comment.
-Styopa
People laugh when they see me wearing my colander but it helps me focus and the aliens cannot read my mind. -Fact.
Almost the exact same thing was demonstrated with evolovable hardware in the 90s:
http://www.damninteresting.com...
Programmable circuits were trained through an evolutionary process to perform certain tasks. At the end of the process they performed the tasks perfectly, but the actual circuits that were produced were not understandable or functional under the normal rules of circuit design, using roundabout methods for the components to effect each other that were dependent on the exact design of the model of programmable circuit they were using. Try to implement the same circuit design using other hardware and it would just fail to do anything at all.
Evolution will "make use" of anything it can, even and perhaps especially factors that no intelligent designer would ever consider.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
"Although the electrical field is of low amplitude, the field excites and activates immediate neighbors, which, in turn, excite and activate immediate neighbors, and so on across the brain at a rate of about 0.1 meter per second."
Ahhhh, body thetans. At last we have found you!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
may have some meaning. The slower brain signals must be the more thought out brain signals. How much bandwidth does each signal send? Are they coherent thoughts or just random pulses?
If this does prove to be a mechanism used by organic nervous systems to move information around the neural network (something akin to bias in an old-style electronic circuit?), we will need to create and understand a similar mechanism for silicon-based computing platforms as a necessary step towards creating true machine intelligence.
Does this have any implications for electromagnetic fields produced by power lines? Just a thought.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
This may lend support to electromagnetic theories of consciousness.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Meh, this doesn't seem like it's news yet.
Headline: "Weak Electrical Field Found To Carry Information Around the Brain"
Link: "The only explanation left is an electrical field effect."
They haven't actually measured or proven it yet, and it seems to conflict with existing evidence that electromagnetism doesn't influence thought.
have they factored in caffeine?
how do we approximate this new (slow) method of data distribution within a computational system?
Raise and lower activation thresholds (or the bias nodes that you are using to mimic a dynamic threshold.)
"His name was James Damore."
I was wondering if it maybe actually lends credence to people who claim they have allergies to various types of EM.
I was wondering the same thing. Last year I was involved in the construction of a large (4 meter cube) copper-screened Faraday cage for 100Kv partial discharge testing. When we buttoned it up, I went inside and closed the door. It was oddly quiet - even though it was simply screen. At the time, I wondered if there was something to the idea that our brain was susceptible to RF energy. It was strangely peaceful and enjoyable.
Place nail here >+
Just thought I would inform you of that. It is my pubic service.
EM sensitive people are crazy because ... (regurgitates current scientific knowledge). There never seems to be any acknowledgement here that our knowledge of how the world works has changed throughout history, and will continue to change in the future.
The correct answer is "we don't know for sure", not "ha ha EM sensitive people are crazy, lulz".
Were you really born in the first period of human history when there were no significant scientific discoveries left to make? The brain is at best very poorly understood. We shouldn't dismiss the notion just because "I like wifi and smartphones".
Although the electrical field is of low amplitude, the field excites and activates immediate neighbors, which, in turn, excite and activate immediate neighbors, and so on across the brain. The Field is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.
If the explanation includes midichlorians, I'm outa here.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned that Brain Waves (eg Beta, Alpha, Theta, Delta) were discovered at the beginning of the 20th century.
Different brain wave frequencies have long been associated with different mental states.
Building Brain Wave Detectors was all the rage amongst hobbyists many years ago.
Brain Waves are normally detected using electrodes on the scalp, but they also generate very weak fields which can be picked up by non-contact methods in a screened room.
Surely this is simply an extension of that research?
I always thought Transcranial magnetic stimulation was something of a quacky gimmick. I've been to a clinic where they offer this kind of treatment, for unrelated reasons. It makes the clinic much less credible in my opinion, but maybe there is something to it after all.
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
If you ever visited a sports game, you will remember the times that the crowd took you over.