IUBio

Is it possible to read someone's mind?

Theophilus Samuels theophilus.samuels at btinternet.com
Thu May 10 06:21:20 EST 2001


> On the other hand, the "mechanisms" that enable us abstract thinking
> came from evolution, which is slow.  which means that they could be
> simple and few in number.

Not necessarily.

> Like the immune system that can generate
> huge combinations of antibodies, the brain's mechanisms could be
> similar.

Sure, given that the immune system uses a template to generate billions of
different antigen recognising complexes, this also implies that the system
is static, in the respect that during our entire lifetime this creative
process never changes. In the brain however, one must always remember the
word 'subjectivity', i.e. what may be 'very painful' to someone may only be
'painful' to another.

> So it might be possible to identify a *particular* brain state with
> the exact group of neurons (or glia for that matter) associated with
> it.

If we were to consider a basic construct for the sensation of pain, in the
beginning (i.e. neonates) then there might be some way of recognising this
sensation by 'reading the mind' (I'm not saying that there is!), but as time
passes this construct could, in essence, evolve into something completely
different from the original because of the subjective experiences of the
individual. In which case, if you wanted to read someones mind then you
would have to possess every single 'neural reading' for that individual,
i.e. it's probably impossible to use any form of template to read the mind
of any individual picked at random from the population unless their specific
contructs were known [agreeing with your last statement, but with a
different reason].

T.L.S.

'If everybody could read everybody elses mind, then society would probably
collapse'

yan king yin <y.k.y(at)lycos(dot)com> wrote in message
news:9dbev1$snm2 at imsp212.netvigator.com...
> (sorry.. "word wrap" messed up my post)
>
> "Richard Vickery" <Richard.Vickery at unsw.edu.au>
>
> > The EEG is an averaged response from many millions of neurons.  What is
lost
> > in the averaging is all the detail like what the person is thinking, the
EEG
> > just tells you WHETHER they are thinking  (their brain state: asleep,
relaxed
> > etc)
> >
> > In principle you really would need to know what each neuron is doing -
fMRI
> > has time and space resolution problems, EEG has space resolution
problems. It
> > is not inconceivable that new technology could allow us to
simultaneously
> > monitor the activity of billions of neurons, but to interpret the role
of each
> > of the neurons would probably take more than thelifetime of each
individual
> > that you tried to analyse.
>
> I think someone experienced with fMRI can tell, from looking at brain
> activation patterns, what state of mind the subject is in (roughly).
> The same with EEG, it depends on how many samples you want to provide
> with it.
>
> Brain development is dependent upon a person's life history and each
> ones brain is different.  The number of samples required to train an
> Artificial Neural Net must, therefore, be comparable to a whole lifes
> experience. So you are right.
>
> On the other hand, the "mechanisms" that enable us abstract thinking
> came from evolution, which is slow.  which means that they could be
> simple and few in number.  Like the immune system that can generate
> huge combinations of antibodies, the brain's mechanisms could be
> similar.
>
> So it might be possible to identify a *particular* brain state with
> the exact group of neurons (or glia for that matter) associated with
> it.  Moreover, once that mechanism is fully understood then it might
> be possible to transfer the information from one substrate (cells)
> to another (silicon?).
>
> To answer the original poster: before such mechanisms were elucidated,
> it would be anyones guess how long it would take.  I agree that it is
> at present, impossible.
>
>
>





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