Science is on the verge of broadcasting Twitter directly into your brain.
Data streams will soon be transferred directly to our brains, which will allow us to take a fresh look at the world.
Do not want to add yourself a new variety of sensations ? This idea requires clarification. The main thing to understand is that our brain is sharpened in silence and darkness inside the skull. All he has with electrical and chemical signals transmitted between nerve cells, he sees nothing, does not hear and does not concern. Regardless of whether information comes in the form of compressed air waves of a symphony being played, light waves reflected by a snow sculpture, molecules of volatile substances evaporated from an apple pie, or pain from a wasp sting, all this is represented in the brain cells by electrical impulse flows. And in the first approximation, everything looks the same.
This leads to a question that still remains unanswered in neuroscience: why are visual sensations so different from sound or taste? Why do you never confuse the beauty of a pine swinging in the wind with a taste of feta cheese? Or the feeling of sandpaper on your finger tips with the smell of fresh espresso?
It can be assumed that this is somehow related to the structure of the brain: the areas associated with hearing differ from those associated with tactile sensations. But on closer examination, this assumption does not work . Blind areas of the brain, which we call the “visual cortex,” are captured by touch and hearing. Considering the “reflashed” part of the brain, it is difficult to say that there is something fundamentally connected with visual sensations in the “visual” cortex.
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Based on this, another assumption arises: the subjective experience of sensation, known as “qualia,” is determined by the structure of the data themselves. In other words, the information coming from the two-dimensional surface of the retina has a different structure than the one-dimensional signal from the eardrum, or from the multidimensional receptor fields of the fingertips. As a result, they all feel differently.
This may indicate that if we could submit a new data stream directly to the brain, for example, data from a mobile robot or the status of your spouse's microbiome or infrared radiation from the environment, this will result in a new qualification. It will not be like sight or hearing, taste or touch, smell or any other sensation, but will be something completely different.
It is hard to imagine what this new feeling will be like. In fact, it is impossible to imagine. By analogy, try to imagine a new color. This seems like a simple task, but it is impossible.
But next year we will be able to experience new feelings first-hand by feeding new data streams to the brain. This can be a real-time stream of data from the drone, such as its speed, yaw, roll, direction and orientation. This may be an activity on an enterprise, on Twitter, or on the stock market. As a result, the brain will have a direct perception of the drone, the production process, hashtags or the state of the economy of the entire planet in real time.
This seems like a pure fantasy, but now we are finally at the point where technology allows us to test this idea.
There are two ways to do this. The first is invasive - by implanting electrodes directly into the brain, or using nanorobots in cells or the circulatory system of the brain. The second is to transmit signals to the brain non-invasively. My Neuroscience Laboratory and my NeoSensory company have together created wearable devices that create spatial distributions of vibrations on the skin. Imagine wearing a bracelet with several vibration motors that stimulate different places around your wrist to represent the flow of data. When we establish a clear mapping between the received information and tactile sensations, we can easily learn how to respond to new data - and this ultimately leads to the emergence of a completely new qualia.
Qualia develops over time. This is the brain's ability to summarize large amounts of data. Think about how babies “learn” to use their ears by clapping or mumbling something, and catching feedback in their ears. At first, air compression waves are simply transformed into electrical activity in the brain, and only with time does it begin to be perceived as sound. Such training can also be observed in people born deaf and installed cochlear implants as adults. The first experience of using a cochlear implant is not at all like sound sensations. My friend described it as a painless electric shock in her head - she did not feel that it was somehow related to the sound. But about a month later, a “sound” appeared, albeit disgusting, like a metallic and distorted sound of a radio. It probably looks like the same process that happened with each of us when we learned to use our ears. We just don't remember that.
If the ability to create new sensations turns out to be possible, then the surprising effect will be that we cannot explain a new feeling to someone else. For example, to understand what purple is, one must have experience in perceiving purple; no amount of academic descriptions will allow color blindness to the color blind. Similarly, it is useless to try to explain the visual perception of one who was born blind. To understand the visual sensations, you need to go through them.
The same will happen with the development of new sensations. We will have to test them in order to understand what they are; and the only way to do this is to experience the effects of data streams on our brain. Fortunately, in 2019 we will be able to connect to find out.
David Eagleman is an adjunct professor at the Department of Psychiatry and Behaviorism at Stanford University and the author of The Brain: The Story Of You.
Afterword of the author of the translation
A few notes and additions to the translation.
1. The motive for the translation of this particular article was some coincidences of one's own views on the nature of the origin of sensations with the views of the author of the publication. However, at a higher than the author’s level, associated with the introduction of wearable devices. We are talking about epistemology, the role of sensory perception in the process of cognition, and the limitations associated with the evolutionary conditionality of this perception. In order not to repeat the argument, I will provide a link to a thread of comments in one of the topics.
2. Perhaps due to the brevity of the article, the author did not mention the sense organs in animals that are different from the set that a person has and that are related to perception in other electromagnetic radiation (IR and UV), electroreception, magnetoreception, sound sonars, etc. there is an evolution to solve these problems if it was necessary, why can't a person? There are people with enhanced perceptions, such as shades of colors, or synesthesia , a cat. noted the lack of existing concepts to describe their perception.
3. The author of the article uses the concept of qualia to describe the emergence of a new type of sensation. For those who are not familiar with this concept, I recommend this article . Primarily, however, the feeling as information synthesis. About the hypothesis of its occurrence can be found in the works of A. Ivanitsky , video . Also the feeling is not only subjective, but relatively, see this publication .
4. An attentive reader of the article may notice the author's trick with the substitution of themes. Initially, he describes the emergence of a new type (new modality) of sensation by transmitting information about the stimulus directly to the brain, passing through other senses, which seems theoretically correct. But in the future it goes on to describe the transmission of information using the developed devices that convert the incoming information into tactile sensations. It is unlikely in this case we can talk about the emergence of a truly new type of sensation, it will probably be a subclass of tactile. This does not diminish the importance of the development of the author’s interface, a cat. can be used in various fields, including VR applications.
However, at the moment there is a study, a cat. In a somewhat different way, tests the hypothesis of the emergence of a new sensation, see this article .
1. The motive for the translation of this particular article was some coincidences of one's own views on the nature of the origin of sensations with the views of the author of the publication. However, at a higher than the author’s level, associated with the introduction of wearable devices. We are talking about epistemology, the role of sensory perception in the process of cognition, and the limitations associated with the evolutionary conditionality of this perception. In order not to repeat the argument, I will provide a link to a thread of comments in one of the topics.
2. Perhaps due to the brevity of the article, the author did not mention the sense organs in animals that are different from the set that a person has and that are related to perception in other electromagnetic radiation (IR and UV), electroreception, magnetoreception, sound sonars, etc. there is an evolution to solve these problems if it was necessary, why can't a person? There are people with enhanced perceptions, such as shades of colors, or synesthesia , a cat. noted the lack of existing concepts to describe their perception.
3. The author of the article uses the concept of qualia to describe the emergence of a new type of sensation. For those who are not familiar with this concept, I recommend this article . Primarily, however, the feeling as information synthesis. About the hypothesis of its occurrence can be found in the works of A. Ivanitsky , video . Also the feeling is not only subjective, but relatively, see this publication .
4. An attentive reader of the article may notice the author's trick with the substitution of themes. Initially, he describes the emergence of a new type (new modality) of sensation by transmitting information about the stimulus directly to the brain, passing through other senses, which seems theoretically correct. But in the future it goes on to describe the transmission of information using the developed devices that convert the incoming information into tactile sensations. It is unlikely in this case we can talk about the emergence of a truly new type of sensation, it will probably be a subclass of tactile. This does not diminish the importance of the development of the author’s interface, a cat. can be used in various fields, including VR applications.
However, at the moment there is a study, a cat. In a somewhat different way, tests the hypothesis of the emergence of a new sensation, see this article .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/434654/
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