Yes you are the only person and this ain't paranormal research
I'll come clean and say that I spent 4 enjoyable years studying "energy waves" from the brain, also known as EEGs (Electroencephalograph).
A MSc in Epileptology and a PhD in Clinical Neurophysiology later, my considered opionion is that there is a world of difference between "monitoring" activity in the brain and actually making sense of it. EEGs, MEGs and FMRIs can give you a world of data but the specifics you can attach to this are very limited. Even in epileptology, where EEGs have been used for over a hundred years (since 1897), the clinical power of EEGs is far less than a lay person could imagine.
To receive "useful" signals of peoples thoughts, there would have to be a series of breakthroughs in dipole modelling, brain function mapping, and a whole host of other technologies. Otherwise you are restricted to the gross/obvious signals such as alpha, beta and delta rhythms
Another point against pychic receptivity is that the receiving brain is also giving off its own signals at a far greater amplitude than the "transmitting" one; the equivalent of listening to someone whisper a foriegn language at the end of a football field in a howling gale while you bellow what ever is on your mind.
Congrats on the prognosis
From the comment, presumably the cyst was left posterior temporal lobe?
Much of what we know of functional brain mapping (knowing which bit does what) came from surgery where removal of portions of the brain led to unexpected functional deficits (the classic example is patient HM, whose surgery gave him severe anterograde amnesia in 1953 after a bilateral temporal lobectomy).
That is why medics are so careful of removing certain areas of the brain(qv amytal tests and memorey function in both temporal lobes).
I don't think that streaming music to remote locations (ie not your home) will ever be popular as the advances in datastorage densities will always make local mobile storage a better option.
Static data like music and movies will be stored in an iPod-like device, and how detailed does a real-time service like traffic info have to be to require this sort of data-rate?
I'm not decrying the advances made here, but rather questioning the commercial usages to which it can currently be put.
Then what was I watching for the 3 years of my PhD!
You're right in that pre-frontal lobotomies (a la "one flew over the cuckoo's nest") are no longer done but you will find that temporal lobectomies are common for medically-refractive temporal lobe seizures (espec. due to hippocampal sclerosis pathology) and even entire hemispheres (a hemispherotomy) for Rassmussens syndrome are still performed.
On a lighter note, the wonderfully named "Multiple SubPial Transections" has been shown to be very effective for Landau-Kleffner syndrome (where sufferers have extreme difficulty in speech), so you must be very relieved!
This is an interesting study but I'm not sure how relevant it is.
Humans have several areas of the brain where structure and therefore function differ vastly from other primates. Specifically the areas of the brain dealing with speech (Broca's and Wernicke's areas) and the connection between the two (arcuate fascicus). These areas have a definite correlation to handedness as a right-handed person has a 97% chance of having these speech structures on the left versus the right while in a left-handed person has a 50-50 chance of this (if my neuroanatomy is correct). This is why speech mapping must be performed on patients who will undergo neurosurgery near possible speech centres, for example in a temporal lobectomy.
But would you want to work for a company that was this stupid. Or a manager that relies on crude psychological evaluation from an unreliable and non-contextual source to excuse the fact that he can't find his arse with both hands and a map.
Not true! A small number of exceptional minds (such as Hawkins, Dawkins, Gell-Mann, Gosling, Gates... no scratch that last one) skew the average so poor shmucks like us are below the curve.
Looks like it's back to the crayons and finger-painting!
What you need is something secure by default! Or at least something that doesn't walk around with its trousers round its ankles and a big sign saying "Get it here!"
I can't remember the number of times I've been dragged out to a friends house because their computer has gone pear-shaped due to malware (on windows systems admittedly as the only other OS I know about is Solaris and you don't see many of those on home PCs!).
Then installing Firefox, ZoneAlarm, Ad-Aware, Stinger, an anti-virus and a reg-cleaner because my friends habit of clicking on everything within arms reach whilst having no firewall or AV. Frankly I blame the combination of clueless users and non-secure apps. It's up there with leaving petrol, matches and a pyromanic in a room for getting the worst.
A decent browser, good av software and a patched os will protect you from most things but the reality is that most people will click on the okay button of the "Can I please install malware on your computer" dialogue box!
Users are exposed to so many dialogue boxes during the day for puerile reasons, they become conditioned to mindlessly clicking on things to get to their destination. So that when one pops up for a decent reason, they click on the damn thing anyway.
Non-techies out there have no idea of cyber-hygiene, which in todays environment is the equivalent of not using a condom while you bang crack ho's while mainlining H from a shared needle (almost)!
I always assumed that these extended lists of keywords were a "wishlist" of what the company (and more importantly what the agent thinks the company) wants in a prospective employee.
I agree that most company don't have a clear idea what they need anyway. I'm currently at a blue-chip and they asked for experience in a DB that I've never used. Turns out during the interview that the DB was run by 2 gurus and no one got near it anyway, so I was hired (interestingly enough, mainly for my open source experience)!
If I see a job I like and have more than 75% of the listed skills, I go for it. Seems to have played out for me okay so far!
Slashdot Mirror
Yes you are the only person and this ain't paranormal research
I'll come clean and say that I spent 4 enjoyable years studying "energy waves" from the brain, also known as EEGs (Electroencephalograph).
A MSc in Epileptology and a PhD in Clinical Neurophysiology later, my considered opionion is that there is a world of difference between "monitoring" activity in the brain and actually making sense of it. EEGs, MEGs and FMRIs can give you a world of data but the specifics you can attach to this are very limited. Even in epileptology, where EEGs have been used for over a hundred years (since 1897), the clinical power of EEGs is far less than a lay person could imagine.
To receive "useful" signals of peoples thoughts, there would have to be a series of breakthroughs in dipole modelling, brain function mapping, and a whole host of other technologies. Otherwise you are restricted to the gross/obvious signals such as alpha, beta and delta rhythms
Another point against pychic receptivity is that the receiving brain is also giving off its own signals at a far greater amplitude than the "transmitting" one; the equivalent of listening to someone whisper a foriegn language at the end of a football field in a howling gale while you bellow what ever is on your mind.
Congrats on the prognosis
From the comment, presumably the cyst was left posterior temporal lobe?
Much of what we know of functional brain mapping (knowing which bit does what) came from surgery where removal of portions of the brain led to unexpected functional deficits (the classic example is patient HM, whose surgery gave him severe anterograde amnesia in 1953 after a bilateral temporal lobectomy).
That is why medics are so careful of removing certain areas of the brain(qv amytal tests and memorey function in both temporal lobes).
I don't think that streaming music to remote locations (ie not your home) will ever be popular as the advances in datastorage densities will always make local mobile storage a better option.
Static data like music and movies will be stored in an iPod-like device, and how detailed does a real-time service like traffic info have to be to require this sort of data-rate?
I'm not decrying the advances made here, but rather questioning the commercial usages to which it can currently be put.
Then what was I watching for the 3 years of my PhD!
You're right in that pre-frontal lobotomies (a la "one flew over the cuckoo's nest") are no longer done but you will find that temporal lobectomies are common for medically-refractive temporal lobe seizures (espec. due to hippocampal sclerosis pathology) and even entire hemispheres (a hemispherotomy) for Rassmussens syndrome are still performed.
On a lighter note, the wonderfully named "Multiple SubPial Transections" has been shown to be very effective for Landau-Kleffner syndrome (where sufferers have extreme difficulty in speech), so you must be very relieved!
This is an interesting study but I'm not sure how relevant it is.
Humans have several areas of the brain where structure and therefore function differ vastly from other primates. Specifically the areas of the brain dealing with speech (Broca's and Wernicke's areas) and the connection between the two (arcuate fascicus). These areas have a definite correlation to handedness as a right-handed person has a 97% chance of having these speech structures on the left versus the right while in a left-handed person has a 50-50 chance of this (if my neuroanatomy is correct). This is why speech mapping must be performed on patients who will undergo neurosurgery near possible speech centres, for example in a temporal lobectomy.
But would you want to work for a company that was this stupid. Or a manager that relies on crude psychological evaluation from an unreliable and non-contextual source to excuse the fact that he can't find his arse with both hands and a map.
Not true! A small number of exceptional minds (such as Hawkins, Dawkins, Gell-Mann, Gosling, Gates... no scratch that last one) skew the average so poor shmucks like us are below the curve.
Looks like it's back to the crayons and finger-painting!
What you need is something secure by default! Or at least something that doesn't walk around with its trousers round its ankles and a big sign saying "Get it here!"
I can't remember the number of times I've been dragged out to a friends house because their computer has gone pear-shaped due to malware (on windows systems admittedly as the only other OS I know about is Solaris and you don't see many of those on home PCs!).
Then installing Firefox, ZoneAlarm, Ad-Aware, Stinger, an anti-virus and a reg-cleaner because my friends habit of clicking on everything within arms reach whilst having no firewall or AV. Frankly I blame the combination of clueless users and non-secure apps. It's up there with leaving petrol, matches and a pyromanic in a room for getting the worst.
A decent browser, good av software and a patched os will protect you from most things but the reality is that most people will click on the okay button of the "Can I please install malware on your computer" dialogue box! Users are exposed to so many dialogue boxes during the day for puerile reasons, they become conditioned to mindlessly clicking on things to get to their destination. So that when one pops up for a decent reason, they click on the damn thing anyway. Non-techies out there have no idea of cyber-hygiene, which in todays environment is the equivalent of not using a condom while you bang crack ho's while mainlining H from a shared needle (almost)!
I thought it was the power companies "enron-ing" by withholding supplies and overcharging?! caag.state.ca.us
I always assumed that these extended lists of keywords were a "wishlist" of what the company (and more importantly what the agent thinks the company) wants in a prospective employee.
I agree that most company don't have a clear idea what they need anyway. I'm currently at a blue-chip and they asked for experience in a DB that I've never used. Turns out during the interview that the DB was run by 2 gurus and no one got near it anyway, so I was hired (interestingly enough, mainly for my open source experience)!
If I see a job I like and have more than 75% of the listed skills, I go for it. Seems to have played out for me okay so far!