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Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from housetop works

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Speaker 1: dot com. I would like to scan all of them

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Speaker 1: in this room, one at a time. I must remind

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Speaker 1: you that the scanning experience is usually a painful one,

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Speaker 1: sometimes resulting in nosebleeds, ear aches, stomach cramps. Wait, wait, Joe,

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Speaker 1: you can't just scan everybody in the room. Well why not?

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Speaker 1: Well did you get everyone to sign those consent forms.

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Speaker 1: I figured they show up for a press conference, they

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Speaker 1: must be game for a little till epithy. But they

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Speaker 1: might have pre existing health conditions. I mean, you just

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Speaker 1: warned them that they might get cramps and nosebleeds, mild nosebleeds.

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Speaker 1: I mean, we're not gonna catch anybody on fire or anything.

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Speaker 1: What about their mental health? What about their privacy, the right,

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Speaker 1: the right of freedom of thought and the deliberate communication. Well,

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Speaker 1: that's not what this experiment is about. And that isn't

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Speaker 1: even touched on the fact that you can scan their

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Speaker 1: smartphones and laptops with your mind. I mean, that's not

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Speaker 1: quite as bad as peering into their private thoughts, dreams,

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Speaker 1: and fears. But nobody wants that either. Geez Robert, I

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Speaker 1: was really looking forward to this, and I have to

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Speaker 1: report that you are now being a major buzz kill. Hey,

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I knew you are. I know you are

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Speaker 1: a bit of a migraine forming here. Okay, I'm good.

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Speaker 1: That's a close one. Hey, you welcome to stuff to

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Speaker 1: blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm

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Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And if you haven't guessed already, today we're

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Speaker 1: going to be talking about telepathy scanning, as it's often

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Speaker 1: called in the literature. Yes, yes, I imagine a number

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Speaker 1: of you identified our homage there to uh to David

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Speaker 1: Cronenberg's sci fi classics Scanners. You know, what I found

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Speaker 1: out just this week is that Scanners has a huge

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Speaker 1: catalog of sequels that was unaware of. I knew there

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Speaker 1: was a Scanners too that's got some corrupt police commissioner

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Speaker 1: with an army of Scanners. But there's a Scanners three

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Speaker 1: that has a scene where a woman makes a pigeon

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Speaker 1: blow up with her mind. And then I had no

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Speaker 1: idea about this until you told me. But there's a

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Speaker 1: spinoff series called Scanner Cop Scanner Cop one and then

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Speaker 1: Scanner Cop two, which is also sometimes essentially Scanners forward,

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Speaker 1: depending on which a version of the release you're looking at.

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Speaker 1: You know, one of the funny things about the development

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Speaker 1: of the Scanners series, at least as far as I

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Speaker 1: can tell, I haven't watched all of the movies, that

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Speaker 1: most of the sequels look quite bad. But there is

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Speaker 1: a sort of slow development or escalation of the powers

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Speaker 1: that are attributed to Scanners. I can remember in the

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Speaker 1: first movie, you can read somebody's thoughts, and you can

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Speaker 1: also sort of I think, plant implant thoughts to a

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Speaker 1: certain extent um, and then of course you can cause

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Speaker 1: the resident for frequency cascade that makes their head blow up, right,

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Speaker 1: and I think you can make fire, and you can

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Speaker 1: you can. Oh well, then also there's at least a

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Speaker 1: um I don't want to give too many spoilers, but

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Speaker 1: it's at least mentioned that you might be able to

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Speaker 1: absorb another individual's mind state into your own. Okay, so

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Speaker 1: that's pretty godline. It's getting pretty weird even in the

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Speaker 1: first movie. But later on you add what would conventionally

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Speaker 1: be called telekinesis where you're throwing things around, you throw

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Speaker 1: people across the room, So you're just generally developing psychic powers. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it goes into that realm of essentially magic. Yeah, pan

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Speaker 1: psychic sorcery. But telepathy is something that I can understand

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Speaker 1: why that happens, because it's a concept that I thought.

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Speaker 1: I think it's been interpreted in various ways that are

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Speaker 1: often quite vague. So as much as I hate to

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Speaker 1: go to the dictionary at the beginning of a discussion,

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Speaker 1: I do think it's helpful to get a specified common

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Speaker 1: definition on the table for telepathy, and I want to

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Speaker 1: go with one included a mere Iriam Webster, which it

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Speaker 1: just says communication from one mind to another by extra

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Speaker 1: sensory means. So I think that's what we're gonna be

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Speaker 1: talking about today. It's sharing ideas. It's communication without using

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Speaker 1: any of the senses, because we're using our our senses

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Speaker 1: and our our language abilities or vocal abilities. Right now,

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Speaker 1: we're engaging in a in a communication, in a communal

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Speaker 1: thought process. Yeah, Like right now, a man walks into

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Speaker 1: a bar and there's a duck on the bar. I

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Speaker 1: just put that image into your head. I just put

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Speaker 1: that image into everyone's head. I essentially use my scanner

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Speaker 1: powers on everyone listening to this podcast. But there was

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Speaker 1: a fidelity copying problem there because when I pictured in

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Speaker 1: my brain, what I pictured was a swan there, and

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Speaker 1: that sort of gets to the basic problem of communication.

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Speaker 1: One of the reasons we often imagine the idea of

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Speaker 1: telepathy as we defined it for the purpose of this

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Speaker 1: episode communication without words or any of the normal sensory means,

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Speaker 1: is that those normal canonical means of communication are highly flawed,

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Speaker 1: like our ability to use them is far from perfect.

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Speaker 1: Just think how often there's a conflict in your life

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Speaker 1: because somebody took something that you said or wrote the

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Speaker 1: wrong way, or because or because you don't know how

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Speaker 1: to interpret what somebody has said or wrote. If only

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Speaker 1: you could truly understand what their intentions and feelings about

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Speaker 1: the subject really were without everything being garbled through this

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Speaker 1: language transmission mediator, then then things would seem to be

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Speaker 1: a lot easier, right, Yeah, I mean, there's a study

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Speaker 1: that came out earlier this year talking about how there

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Speaker 1: I think they were mainly looking at, you know, situations

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Speaker 1: between spouses where individuals have known each other for an

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Speaker 1: extended period of time, they've they have this this this

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Speaker 1: long relationship and this collaboration going on, and you would think, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: they're they've been they've been together so long, they totally

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Speaker 1: understand each other. They can totally read each other's intents,

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Speaker 1: and they know what the other person wants and values.

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Speaker 1: But this particular study found there was kind of the

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Speaker 1: the opposite into many cases, because you end up having

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Speaker 1: an idea in your head of what that other individual

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Speaker 1: wants and needs, and it need not actually be accurate,

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Speaker 1: but you're no longer feeling it out as much anymore,

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Speaker 1: because it's if you feel like it's written in stone. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like everything you say, because I know you, I'm interpreting

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Speaker 1: through the lens of what I think about Robert. So

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Speaker 1: even though all you said was, hey can you can

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Speaker 1: you grab a cup of coffee from the kitchen, I'm thinking,

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Speaker 1: why is he asking for a Satanic ritual? Yeah? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's just so much that can that can become lost

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Speaker 1: and ambiguous and just misinterpreted entirely. Of course, most of

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Speaker 1: us are familiar with telepathy from fiction. That's how we

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Speaker 1: started off with an example from a a fictional sci

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Speaker 1: fi horror movie. Uh uh, And and certainly fiction gives

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Speaker 1: us plenty of wonderful, rich examples uh and some more

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Speaker 1: thoughtful than others. Yeah. Yeah, of course, there's like the

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Speaker 1: shining in the Shining, you know, the title of the

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Speaker 1: Shining refers to this this sort of telepathic ability, though

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Speaker 1: it seems to extend beyond just communication telepathy. It is

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Speaker 1: more just like we've mentioned earlier, the general psychic awareness,

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Speaker 1: being able to sense things that are beyond what we

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Speaker 1: can normally see with our see or here since is, Yes,

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Speaker 1: they have a censury. It's like they have a sensory

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Speaker 1: ability that everyone has, but there's this amped up to

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Speaker 1: an incredible level, so they're constantly bombarded with the signals.

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Speaker 1: You can finally hear the red rum resolve from the

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Speaker 1: background noise. Yeah. Another one that comes to my mind

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Speaker 1: is I assume you've seen The Dark Crystal, right, and

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Speaker 1: do you remember the Guelfling dream fast in that vaguely?

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Speaker 1: That's uh, that's when Jin and Kira, I believe you

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Speaker 1: have the two Gelflings meet and I sort of they

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Speaker 1: kind of have this mind meld moment where they share

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Speaker 1: visions of their childhood, right, they share their memories. It's

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Speaker 1: seems like it's been a while since I've seen the movie,

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Speaker 1: but it is a great movie. And what I remember

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Speaker 1: is that they just sort of download their memories directly

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Speaker 1: from one another, so you can suddenly remember the other

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Speaker 1: one's life. Another one, of course, is box vol can

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Speaker 1: mind meld and start trek And that seems also kind

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Speaker 1: of like the dream fast from what I recalled that

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Speaker 1: it's not just like a single coded message being traded

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Speaker 1: between minds, but it's like I've got your consciousness in

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Speaker 1: me now? Yeah? Is that? Is that pretty much right? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: I believe so, it's it's it's been houstine. I've seen

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Speaker 1: any track with actual mind melding moments. But yeah, alright,

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Speaker 1: well a few that came to my mind. Well, first

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Speaker 1: of all, I was wondering, do you think that the

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Speaker 1: spice orgies and doone count There's it's not directly mentioned

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Speaker 1: as I recall that, and I could be wrong on this,

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Speaker 1: that there's a telepathic link. And certainly I think the

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Speaker 1: spice is going to affect individuals and you know, varying levels. Well,

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Speaker 1: this is a problem I've read about in some of

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Speaker 1: the skeptical rich you're on telepathy is that it's difficult

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Speaker 1: to tell the difference between different types of extrasensory perception

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Speaker 1: that people have claimed. So how can you tell the

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Speaker 1: functional difference between telepathy and precognition or telepathy and clairvoyance. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean so I think that comes through in Dune.

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Speaker 1: Our trouble here may just be that there's general psychic

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Speaker 1: hyper awareness. Can you tell the difference between am I

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Speaker 1: reading your mind or am I standing atop the dune

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Speaker 1: viewing the great order of the universe? And one of

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Speaker 1: the things I gain awareness of is what you would

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Speaker 1: be thinking or saying. Yes, Yeah, that's a good point.

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Speaker 1: Another one that comes to mind, This one's hot on

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Speaker 1: uh in my memory since I just watched the whole thing.

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Speaker 1: But then the Marvel Netflix series Jessica Jones has the

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Speaker 1: villain Purple Man Zebediah Killgrave and fabulous, fabulous villain that

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Speaker 1: used his mind control what he but what he commands

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Speaker 1: you to do, you want to do. You don't just

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Speaker 1: turn into a zombie. They just just a nice exploration

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Speaker 1: of this to where if he puts an impulse in

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Speaker 1: your mind, like that's the thing you want. So that's

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Speaker 1: not just communication, that's full online control. Yeah, but it's

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Speaker 1: it kind of leaks into some of the stuff we're

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Speaker 1: gonna talk later, and that he kind of it's kind

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Speaker 1: of I get the impression that kill Grave is kind

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Speaker 1: of temporarily thinking with your brain. And so he's thinking

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Speaker 1: with your brain and giving you, you know, something to

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Speaker 1: to want, something to believe in that you know or

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Speaker 1: or desire that you normally would not. Well, that blurs

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Speaker 1: a line that will become important later in this episode

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Speaker 1: when we talked about scientific studies. Yea indeed and uh.

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Speaker 1: And another thing about kill Grave is that, you know,

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Speaker 1: it raises the question that if there's an outside force

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Speaker 1: making you want or believe something temporarily, and then that

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Speaker 1: a force eventually you know, it's it's influence is gone,

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Speaker 1: how does that affect what you're going to believe or

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Speaker 1: want in the long term? You know, like, how does

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Speaker 1: that memory and form? Can you remember that you wanted

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Speaker 1: something but recognize that it was not original to your mind? Yeah? Indeed,

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Speaker 1: so I thought that was a There were some some

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Speaker 1: excellent explorations of that in in that particular show um

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Speaker 1: in the Vampire in the Vampire novel by John Steckley

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Speaker 1: Vampires where the s is a dollar sign, which was

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Speaker 1: adapted into John Carpenter's movie, But believe me the book,

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Speaker 1: So yeah, that the book is really really frightening and

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Speaker 1: terrifying and the just hideous. Yeah. But the vampires in

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Speaker 1: the book they engage in in mind control that's very

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Speaker 1: similar to to kill Gray and from the world of

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Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons, I feel like I need to mention

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Speaker 1: just a couple of species real quick. There's of course

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Speaker 1: the mild communal meditation of the fungal my conid species. Okay,

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Speaker 1: you know, shambling fungus people benevolent that live in the

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Speaker 1: under dark. But yeah, they engage in a kind of

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Speaker 1: communal meditation. And then also they're the hive mind colligue

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Speaker 1: colonies of the alipid mind flares, and there of course

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Speaker 1: just catastrophically evil uh beings spent and they're using all

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Speaker 1: of just about every shade of of psychic power and

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Speaker 1: telepathic power to to work their evil schemes in the

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Speaker 1: under dark. They strike terror just by directly transmitting the

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Speaker 1: pages of the monster manual that feature them into your brain. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and they also it's like a whole host of

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Speaker 1: under dark creatures in Dungeon and Dragons there are weird

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Speaker 1: and twisted and horrible because the mind players use their

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Speaker 1: abilities to enslave their species in a in an earlier times.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, it seems to me that in all these

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Speaker 1: different conceptions of telepathy from fiction, you can basically break

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Speaker 1: them down into two different categories of communication, linguistic and

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Speaker 1: non linguistic. So even the linguistic version, of course, is

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Speaker 1: not involving written or spoken words, but it's silent internal

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Speaker 1: brain to brain communication without the senses that still somehow

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Speaker 1: seems to be mediated through language, Like you hear a

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Speaker 1: voice inside your head communicating with you through words, there's

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Speaker 1: some other type of structured, coded message. Then there's non

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Speaker 1: linguistic telepathy, and that's communication that's not mediated by language.

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Speaker 1: And I think this is more difficult to represent in fiction,

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Speaker 1: but it's the kind we see more often because it's

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Speaker 1: the kind that's even stranger to to to reality. You know,

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Speaker 1: it's one thing to send a message into somebody's brain.

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Speaker 1: You could accomplish almost the same thing by them just

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Speaker 1: having a tiny earpiece, you know, and talking into a microphone.

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Speaker 1: But it's a different thing to download somebody's memories or

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Speaker 1: to uh or to experience uncoded conceptual thought like the

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Speaker 1: guelf link dream fast I was talking about. And that

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Speaker 1: second kind, I think is it may end up introducing

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Speaker 1: some conceptual problems with the concept of telepathy that we

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Speaker 1: can talk about more once we look at the science.

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Speaker 1: But so today we're gonna be talking primarily about technologically

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Speaker 1: enabled brain to brain communication or technologically enabled to empathy,

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Speaker 1: because we we should at least give a brief nod

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Speaker 1: to the concept of paranormal telepathy. I don't think we

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Speaker 1: need to spend a lot of time on this because

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Speaker 1: I think by and large our listeners are are scientific

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Speaker 1: skeptics of one kind or another. Yeah. I mean, there

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Speaker 1: have been studies into paranormal telepathy, of course, and we

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Speaker 1: could go through all of all those here today, but

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Speaker 1: I think we pretty much decided that this would this

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Speaker 1: would take time away from the more pressing studies we're

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Speaker 1: gonna discuss regarding technological telepathy. Yes, so we'll just say

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Speaker 1: very briefly that the scientific community has not been convinced

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Speaker 1: that there's ever been any good evidence of telepathy from

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Speaker 1: properly controlled studies. Lots of people have claimed to find

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Speaker 1: evidence of telepathy, but usually when you look at these studies,

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Speaker 1: they're not double blinded, they're not being carried out with

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Speaker 1: the kind of strict rigor you expect if you want

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Speaker 1: to get a scientific result that that you can feel

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Speaker 1: confidence in. Yeah. So, so by and large, we have

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Speaker 1: not seen any convincing evidence that paranormal telepathy exists. There

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Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be any known mechanism of action for that,

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Speaker 1: so we will leave that to the side for today. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because when it comes to brain to brain communication, we

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Speaker 1: have all of these other wonderful systems and equally, i mean,

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Speaker 1: even more mind blowing than than than brain sending little

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Speaker 1: waves because we're communicating with language. We're communicating with all

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Speaker 1: the various expressions and micro expressions that are that are

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Speaker 1: rippling across this facial communication ray that we all have. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's one of those things that's, Uh, it can seem

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Speaker 1: kind of silly to say it now, but really just

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Speaker 1: take a second and try to step back from human

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Speaker 1: experience and feel the weirdness of language. It's language is

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Speaker 1: totally normal to us because we use it all the time.

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Speaker 1: But just try to pretend you're not a creature that

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Speaker 1: uses language, and look at this from the universe's perspective.

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Speaker 1: What a bizarre thing we're doing. We're taking electrical patterns

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Speaker 1: in our brain and then infecting other people with copies

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Speaker 1: of those patterns by making waves in the air. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's freaky. So, setting aside any kind of naturally occurring

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Speaker 1: you know, brain wave telepathy situation going on, we're talking

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Speaker 1: about using technology, using the technology that we've created and

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Speaker 1: have access to, to serve as a bridge between one

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Speaker 1: mind and the next. Yeah. So you might be thinking like, well,

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Speaker 1: wait a minute, how could you do this? Let us

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Speaker 1: tell you a story. So for years now, scientists have

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Speaker 1: been developing lots of different technologies for brain to computer

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Speaker 1: interfaces or they're often known as b c I S

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Speaker 1: brain computer interfaces. And in physical terms, it makes sense

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Speaker 1: that you can do this because the brain is an

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Speaker 1: electrochemical machine. Things are happening inside the brain when you're

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Speaker 1: thinking thoughts, when you're performing behaviors. Whenever your brain is

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Speaker 1: doing something, there's electrical activity going on inside it that

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Speaker 1: is allowing that activity, that external activity, or that conscious

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Speaker 1: thought to happen, and it's at ativities are expressed in

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Speaker 1: ways for this reason, that are detectable by machines that

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Speaker 1: are sensitive to electromagnetism. You have to get outside of

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Speaker 1: this idea that your your mind is this magical soul

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Speaker 1: or that lives in a little meat house in your

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Speaker 1: skull um and just start thinking about the meat house

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Speaker 1: itself as as being the thing. You're taking a very uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, direct approach to what what what is going

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Speaker 1: on with our mind? Yeah, not to not to downgrade

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Speaker 1: the beauty and mysteriousness of consciousness, which is a wonderfully

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Speaker 1: powerfully strange thing. But when there's something happening in your brain,

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Speaker 1: there is electricity concurrent with that, and so if you

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Speaker 1: can figure out how to measure that electricity, you can

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Speaker 1: somehow represent it as data that's usable by technology. So

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Speaker 1: what I've just been talking about is neuroimaging, various forms

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Speaker 1: of neuroimaging to take what's going on in the brain

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Speaker 1: and understand that with a computer, say okay, there's some

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Speaker 1: electrical spiking in this part of the brain, here's here's

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Speaker 1: what's going on with action potentials in in this cortical region,

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Speaker 1: and then stimulate that same region in another individual's brain bingo.

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Speaker 1: So in a sense, it's kind of like peeking behind

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Speaker 1: one puppet theater, you know, out on the street, like

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Speaker 1: a punch and judy thing, right, seeing what what manner

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Speaker 1: of physical manipulations that puppet mat puppet master is making

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Speaker 1: and then transmitting or relating those exact manipulations to a

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Speaker 1: puppet here within a second puppet theater. So that's a

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Speaker 1: great analogy because it encapsulates both what you're trying to

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Speaker 1: do and the limitations we have when we try to

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Speaker 1: do this. And we'll talk more about the limitations at

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Speaker 1: the end. But notice that that what you just said

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Speaker 1: would only really make sense if both puppet theaters were

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Speaker 1: exactly the same size and had exactly the same puppets

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Speaker 1: and the same type of puppets, and then the exact

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Speaker 1: same method of manipulation, which is not necessarily the case

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Speaker 1: for the brain, but maybe you can get some kind

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Speaker 1: of a approximation. You know, your brain isn't the exact

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Speaker 1: same as somebody else's brain. Your puppet theater is different,

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Speaker 1: but there are some general rules that operate in both

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Speaker 1: puppet theaters that you can exploit. So let's look at

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Speaker 1: some of the technologies here. What what actual technology would

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Speaker 1: you use if you want to scan somebody else's brain

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Speaker 1: and see what's happening inside there. Well, one of the

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Speaker 1: most powerful methods we would have would be implanted electrodes.

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Speaker 1: You can implant directly into somebody's brain, cortical microelectrode arrays

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Speaker 1: which are capable of of recording what's going on in

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Speaker 1: the brain, and also what's known as intracortical micro stimulation

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Speaker 1: or i c MS, and this means you can get

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Speaker 1: both input and output with the brain, so you can

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Speaker 1: read the electrical activity to find out what's going on,

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Speaker 1: and if you want to stimulate parts of the brain,

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Speaker 1: you can provide little bits of electric current through these

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Speaker 1: two light up that part of the brain. You can

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Speaker 1: also use electro cortico bography, which is electrodes on the

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Speaker 1: exposed surface of the brain. If you want to be

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Speaker 1: really weird at out google pictures of this. But if

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Speaker 1: you don't want to cut your skull open, and I

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Speaker 1: think most of us would prefer that method, there are

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Speaker 1: there are still other ways you can scan what's going

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Speaker 1: on in the brain. I think typically they're not going

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Speaker 1: to be as sensitive, so there's a drawback. The advantages

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Speaker 1: you don't have to go through brain surgery. The advantage

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Speaker 1: or the disadvantages you're not going to get quite as

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Speaker 1: much precision with the signals you're receiving. But you can

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Speaker 1: use f m R I, so that's functional magnetic resonance imaging,

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Speaker 1: So it's like an m r I, except you detect

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Speaker 1: real time activity in the brain by mapping blood flow

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Speaker 1: to different parts of the brain. There's magneto encephalography, which

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Speaker 1: is great. Google pictures of this also. I love telling

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Speaker 1: people to Google pictures of things. I think I do

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Speaker 1: that pretty often, but this one, this one is worth

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Speaker 1: it because it's a it's a system that detects magnetic

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Speaker 1: field fluctuations caused by electrical activity in the brain. And

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Speaker 1: it looks like you're wearing a hat the size of

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Speaker 1: a car. You're kind of like you get in like

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Speaker 1: the space jockey scene from Alien and then you put

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Speaker 1: on a hat that's as big as a van with

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Speaker 1: tons of wires and stuff. Yeah, it's gigantic and it

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Speaker 1: just goes over your head. And I guess it's got

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Speaker 1: to be very sensitive to to detect what's going on

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Speaker 1: with these tiny little electrical currents in your brain, but

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Speaker 1: it does it. Yeah, And all of these are methods

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Speaker 1: that I'm sure that you've heard mentioned on this podcast

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Speaker 1: before or in other science podcasts and science literature. These

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Speaker 1: are standard means of looking at the brain and figuring

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Speaker 1: out what's going on. Yeah, and then this very last

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Speaker 1: one is gonna be crucial in some of the studies

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Speaker 1: we're talking about. It's electro and cephalography or e e g.

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Speaker 1: You've probably heard of this one before, but this one

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Speaker 1: is very appealing because you don't have to get into

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Speaker 1: a chair with a hat the size of the car.

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Speaker 1: You just put some electrodes on your scalp, and the

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Speaker 1: electrodes they go on the skin on your head. They're

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Speaker 1: really really sensitive to electricity enough that they can read

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Speaker 1: some of the electrical activity in your brain through your scalp,

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Speaker 1: though obviously, like we said, it's not nearly as sensitive

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Speaker 1: as implanted electrodes um And then, of course, if you

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Speaker 1: want to go so that's all the ways we can

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Speaker 1: read what's happening inside your brain. Imagine we want to

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Speaker 1: switch to input on the brain. How can we put

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Speaker 1: things directly into your brain without the use of your senses. Well,

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Speaker 1: of course, like we said, you can implant electrodes, So

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Speaker 1: just put some get some brain surgery, put those stimulators

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Speaker 1: in your brain and give you little shocks. When we

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Speaker 1: want you to experience something, you can use focused ultrasound,

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Speaker 1: and that's high frequency sound waves targeted at specific parts

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Speaker 1: of the brain. That's experimental. It's been used in animals,

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Speaker 1: but I think it's it's not super cool to use

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Speaker 1: this in humans yet. And I should throw into like

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Speaker 1: most people are familiar with with ultrasound, probably from you know,

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Speaker 1: hearing about it, you know, us sort of witnessing participating

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Speaker 1: in its use to look inside an individual and see

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Speaker 1: what's going on in their inside, particularly to look at

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Speaker 1: a at at a grilling fetus. Right, and that just

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Speaker 1: the lines that that ultrasience sound, depending on the frequency,

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Speaker 1: can be used for something as as painless and mundane

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Speaker 1: is that, or it can be used at higher frequencies,

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Speaker 1: much higher frequencies to actually destroy tissue in the body,

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Speaker 1: like being cancer. So this is a more middle ground

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Speaker 1: where we can use it to stimulate but not harm.

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Speaker 1: Little middle ground that's comfortable middle ground when you're talking

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Speaker 1: about your brain. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna stimulate the tissue,

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Speaker 1: We're not just gonna look at it, but we're also

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Speaker 1: not going through just not enough to melt it, we promise.

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Speaker 1: And then of course the last one we're going to

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Speaker 1: mention is another one that's going to be important in

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Speaker 1: the studies we talk about, which is transcranial magnetic stimulation

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Speaker 1: or TMS. And this is where you put a nice

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Speaker 1: friendly electro magnet against your skull, carefully aligned over the

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Speaker 1: scalp to target a particular part of the brain, and

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Speaker 1: it pulses with electromagnetism to stimulate electrical activity in the

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Speaker 1: targeted region in your brain. And this is of course

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Speaker 1: the domain of the god helmet. And uh, you know,

429
00:24:01,960 --> 00:24:05,399
Speaker 1: countless studies out there. Anytime we're looking at at you know,

430
00:24:05,640 --> 00:24:07,919
Speaker 1: at what's physically going on in the brain versus what

431
00:24:08,119 --> 00:24:12,680
Speaker 1: the experience of reality is, you often see this technology employed. Yeah,

432
00:24:12,760 --> 00:24:14,720
Speaker 1: and so for more than a decade now we've seen

433
00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:18,800
Speaker 1: experiments using methods like this to send messages to and

434
00:24:18,840 --> 00:24:22,720
Speaker 1: from to and from brains between brains and computers. These

435
00:24:22,760 --> 00:24:25,520
Speaker 1: are brain computer interfaces or b C guys. So you

436
00:24:25,560 --> 00:24:29,239
Speaker 1: can get people to say, control a robot arm with

437
00:24:29,400 --> 00:24:33,600
Speaker 1: their minds or control a computer cursor with their minds.

438
00:24:34,000 --> 00:24:36,720
Speaker 1: This is now pretty much conquered ground and science. We're

439
00:24:36,720 --> 00:24:39,080
Speaker 1: still getting better at doing it and better at doing

440
00:24:39,119 --> 00:24:42,040
Speaker 1: it with less invasive procedures, but it's a thing we

441
00:24:42,080 --> 00:24:45,159
Speaker 1: can comfortably do in science and technology. Monkey moves a

442
00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:49,840
Speaker 1: robot with its brain. Yeah, but what if instead of

443
00:24:49,880 --> 00:24:53,159
Speaker 1: communicating with a robot arm or with a computer, you

444
00:24:53,280 --> 00:24:59,320
Speaker 1: just substituted another brain m And that's where it gets

445
00:24:59,359 --> 00:25:04,560
Speaker 1: kind of difficult to comprehend. Yeah, so stuff is going

446
00:25:04,720 --> 00:25:08,680
Speaker 1: from inside your brain through a computer to another brain

447
00:25:09,560 --> 00:25:13,480
Speaker 1: and then back the other way. That sounds like you

448
00:25:13,560 --> 00:25:18,080
Speaker 1: have suddenly discovered a technological basis for telepathy, sharing the

449
00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:20,480
Speaker 1: contents of our brains, or at least some form of

450
00:25:20,520 --> 00:25:26,040
Speaker 1: brain activity, without talking, without text, without any external communication

451
00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:29,840
Speaker 1: of any kind. It's brain to brain communication. All right, Well,

452
00:25:29,920 --> 00:25:32,160
Speaker 1: let's let's launch into the studies. We'll get more into

453
00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:35,640
Speaker 1: discussion of what this would be like, what the experience

454
00:25:35,680 --> 00:25:39,560
Speaker 1: of melving your mind via technology would consist of. First

455
00:25:39,600 --> 00:25:42,040
Speaker 1: Let's yeah, let's just launch into some of the studies,

456
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:46,760
Speaker 1: most of them pretty recent studies dealing with technological teleopathy.

457
00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:50,439
Speaker 1: How about some rat to rat brain communication. That's what

458
00:25:50,480 --> 00:25:53,520
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, rat telepathy. It's my favorite. How many

459
00:25:53,840 --> 00:25:56,400
Speaker 1: are there any good novels about rat telepathy? They've got

460
00:25:56,400 --> 00:25:59,000
Speaker 1: to be is that in secretive nim You know, there

461
00:25:59,000 --> 00:26:01,919
Speaker 1: there are some rats in dungeons and dragons where and

462
00:26:01,960 --> 00:26:03,960
Speaker 1: I love these guys because they're called off hand. But

463
00:26:04,240 --> 00:26:08,240
Speaker 1: each individual rat has a rat intelligence, right, but they

464
00:26:08,240 --> 00:26:11,440
Speaker 1: have a certain amount of psychic ability. So you get

465
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:14,879
Speaker 1: two rats together close together, and their minds melt and

466
00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:17,280
Speaker 1: they have the intellect of like a double deck or

467
00:26:17,359 --> 00:26:22,360
Speaker 1: rat brain. But you know, rats, eventually they form large groups.

468
00:26:22,520 --> 00:26:25,159
Speaker 1: Two's company three is Willard, right, So you end up

469
00:26:25,160 --> 00:26:28,280
Speaker 1: with a huge swarm of rats. But they their brain

470
00:26:28,320 --> 00:26:31,760
Speaker 1: powers all pooled together into a powerful intellect that's capable

471
00:26:31,760 --> 00:26:36,679
Speaker 1: of launching uh, you know, psychic attacks attack patterns. Yeah. Well,

472
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:38,520
Speaker 1: and also just like the mental energy, like they have

473
00:26:38,560 --> 00:26:42,000
Speaker 1: so much mental power, they actually have paranormal abilities. Well

474
00:26:42,119 --> 00:26:45,119
Speaker 1: maybe the people who created those for the Dungeons and

475
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:48,560
Speaker 1: Dragons manual went ahead and the time machine to read

476
00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:52,480
Speaker 1: about this study that was published in Nature called a

477
00:26:52,560 --> 00:26:55,680
Speaker 1: brain to brain interface for real time sharing of sensory

478
00:26:55,720 --> 00:26:58,800
Speaker 1: motor information. So I'm not going to get too much

479
00:26:58,840 --> 00:27:00,840
Speaker 1: into the details in the study because it was very

480
00:27:00,880 --> 00:27:03,840
Speaker 1: long and there were multiple experiments described in the study

481
00:27:03,880 --> 00:27:07,000
Speaker 1: with lots of different aspects to them that we're all

482
00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:10,080
Speaker 1: individually interesting but kind of technical. So I'll give you

483
00:27:10,080 --> 00:27:13,480
Speaker 1: the broad overview. There's several different experiments and the basic

484
00:27:13,560 --> 00:27:17,240
Speaker 1: idea is that you've got two rats, an encoder rat

485
00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:20,800
Speaker 1: and a decoder rat. So you take both your rats

486
00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:23,600
Speaker 1: and you train them on a task. For example, an

487
00:27:23,720 --> 00:27:27,280
Speaker 1: LED light comes on over one of two levers, either

488
00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:30,000
Speaker 1: a left lever or right lever, and then you pick

489
00:27:30,119 --> 00:27:32,400
Speaker 1: that lever. You pick the correct lever, and you get

490
00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:35,399
Speaker 1: a reward. Now, once the rats have been trained on

491
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:38,439
Speaker 1: the basic task enough to be good at it, you

492
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:42,920
Speaker 1: split them up into encoders and decoders. These rats get

493
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:46,280
Speaker 1: electrodes implanted in their brains with wires running out of

494
00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:49,399
Speaker 1: their heads. So this probably is not an experiment you

495
00:27:49,400 --> 00:27:52,679
Speaker 1: want to try on your friends at home. But the

496
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:56,359
Speaker 1: encode rat has a micro electrode array that can read

497
00:27:56,400 --> 00:27:59,840
Speaker 1: its neuronal activity, so essentially it's measuring the electrical pattern

498
00:28:00,080 --> 00:28:02,760
Speaker 1: between cells in the brain like we're talking about earlier.

499
00:28:03,040 --> 00:28:06,640
Speaker 1: And the decode rat also has electrodes implanted its brain

500
00:28:06,720 --> 00:28:09,919
Speaker 1: for intracortical micro stimulation or i c MS like we

501
00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:15,440
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. So the encoder rat gets the same familiar stimulus.

502
00:28:15,680 --> 00:28:19,920
Speaker 1: For example, the the l e ed over the left

503
00:28:20,240 --> 00:28:23,879
Speaker 1: lever lights up, and then it goes to press the

504
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:27,200
Speaker 1: correct lever to get its reward. It presses the left lever,

505
00:28:27,640 --> 00:28:30,720
Speaker 1: But then the decoder rat gets its turn and it

506
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:33,640
Speaker 1: doesn't get a clear visual signal. Instead of the LED

507
00:28:33,840 --> 00:28:36,040
Speaker 1: just popping up over the left lever, the l E

508
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:39,720
Speaker 1: ED lights come on over both levers instead. What happens

509
00:28:39,760 --> 00:28:43,360
Speaker 1: is that the micro electrode array measures the first rats

510
00:28:43,560 --> 00:28:47,560
Speaker 1: brain activity. Then it runs that data through some analysis

511
00:28:47,560 --> 00:28:51,120
Speaker 1: and amplification and sends the output straight down the wire

512
00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:54,080
Speaker 1: into the I I C M S equipment in the

513
00:28:54,200 --> 00:28:58,760
Speaker 1: decoder rats brain. Then the decoder rats brain lights up

514
00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:01,680
Speaker 1: in patterns correl A did with the behavior of the

515
00:29:01,840 --> 00:29:05,080
Speaker 1: encoder rats, so that the decoder rat goes to choose

516
00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:08,480
Speaker 1: a lever and the translation was on perfect. It didn't

517
00:29:08,480 --> 00:29:11,080
Speaker 1: get it right every time, but it did a good

518
00:29:11,120 --> 00:29:15,960
Speaker 1: bit better than chance. So, through implanning electrodes in the brain,

519
00:29:16,160 --> 00:29:20,720
Speaker 1: one rat teaches another rat which button to push from

520
00:29:20,800 --> 00:29:25,080
Speaker 1: a separate room. This is rat to rat education with

521
00:29:25,120 --> 00:29:29,040
Speaker 1: no external communication required. It's rat brain to rat brain

522
00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:31,200
Speaker 1: teaching you how to get a reward, all right, and

523
00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:32,720
Speaker 1: you only have to throw out the stimulus once. You

524
00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:35,160
Speaker 1: only have to flip the switch once. It's like it's

525
00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:37,840
Speaker 1: like each rat is a string of Christmas lights and

526
00:29:37,920 --> 00:29:40,360
Speaker 1: you've just connected them together. Yeah, and so note that

527
00:29:40,400 --> 00:29:42,640
Speaker 1: this study was complex. It involved a bunch of other

528
00:29:42,680 --> 00:29:46,120
Speaker 1: interesting stuff as well, like uh, commentary on the rats

529
00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:50,080
Speaker 1: as a cooperative die AD computing team, and then uh

530
00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:53,520
Speaker 1: stuff about feedback from one rat to the other, like

531
00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:57,360
Speaker 1: the encoder rat also getting positive feedback a reward for

532
00:29:57,400 --> 00:30:00,479
Speaker 1: when the decoder rat did things right. But any so,

533
00:30:00,800 --> 00:30:04,400
Speaker 1: this is the creation of a rat to rat brain

534
00:30:04,520 --> 00:30:07,440
Speaker 1: to brain interface, which they called a bt b I.

535
00:30:08,360 --> 00:30:11,520
Speaker 1: And this is a pretty cool study. One of the

536
00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:14,400
Speaker 1: things I found very interesting is they said, quote, it

537
00:30:14,440 --> 00:30:19,120
Speaker 1: remains to be explained how the brain simultaneously integrates information

538
00:30:19,160 --> 00:30:23,120
Speaker 1: generated by direct I c MS and by natural stimuli,

539
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:26,480
Speaker 1: for example, real whisker stimulation. And that's referring to a

540
00:30:26,520 --> 00:30:29,480
Speaker 1: second test they did where the rats were supposed to

541
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:34,520
Speaker 1: judge real versus virtual width of an opening by by

542
00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:38,720
Speaker 1: touch on the whiskers. Okay, because they're essentially incorporating both

543
00:30:39,280 --> 00:30:43,480
Speaker 1: natural stimuli and this new you know, unnatural stimuli you

544
00:30:43,560 --> 00:30:46,720
Speaker 1: will into into their single experience. Right, So, how does

545
00:30:46,760 --> 00:30:51,280
Speaker 1: the rat, like, what's imagine you are the rat, and

546
00:30:51,920 --> 00:30:58,240
Speaker 1: how does the rat differentiate between between stimulation coming in

547
00:30:58,440 --> 00:31:02,640
Speaker 1: through the brain. That's just like the brain being electrically

548
00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:06,360
Speaker 1: stimulated and the real sensory information it's getting from its

549
00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:10,880
Speaker 1: eyes and its whiskers. Can it tell the difference? How

550
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 1: how does that information get put together? We don't really

551
00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:16,400
Speaker 1: know because we have not done such experiments on humans

552
00:31:16,960 --> 00:31:20,480
Speaker 1: for obvious reasons, So we don't know what the experience

553
00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:22,960
Speaker 1: is like for the rat. But it's at least powerful

554
00:31:23,120 --> 00:31:26,959
Speaker 1: enough that the rat can perform tasks based on this

555
00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:32,040
Speaker 1: incoming brain information. But you know, rat to rat is

556
00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:34,360
Speaker 1: one thing. Yeah, I think we need to do some

557
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:37,000
Speaker 1: cross species telepathy. Yeah, we want to get a little

558
00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 1: Willard e here and talk about human to rat mind control.

559
00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:45,200
Speaker 1: And this study saddled non invasive brain to brain interface

560
00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:50,760
Speaker 1: establishing functional links between two brains is from April and UH.

561
00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:56,080
Speaker 1: In this particular study, a US South Koreanan team investigated, UH,

562
00:31:56,240 --> 00:32:00,240
Speaker 1: that classic question how might a human wag a rat's

563
00:32:00,280 --> 00:32:04,280
Speaker 1: tail using only their brain and brain to brain interface

564
00:32:04,360 --> 00:32:10,440
Speaker 1: system that shockingly requires no surgical implantation. So in this

565
00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 1: particular experience of SID went down. First, the human controller

566
00:32:14,000 --> 00:32:18,440
Speaker 1: is hooked up to to that e G based brain

567
00:32:18,480 --> 00:32:23,240
Speaker 1: computer interface. Again, we're talking electro in cephalography. UM, it's

568
00:32:23,480 --> 00:32:26,000
Speaker 1: in this some monitoring system generally it's based on scout

569
00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:29,800
Speaker 1: based electrodes to record electrical activity of the brain. Then

570
00:32:29,840 --> 00:32:32,680
Speaker 1: they hooked the rat up to a focused ultrasound based

571
00:32:32,680 --> 00:32:36,880
Speaker 1: computer to brain interface and uh, these again have high

572
00:32:36,920 --> 00:32:40,160
Speaker 1: frequency sound waves. Uh that are that are going into

573
00:32:40,160 --> 00:32:43,640
Speaker 1: the tissue. Uh, not enough to do any damage. Next,

574
00:32:43,760 --> 00:32:46,760
Speaker 1: they hit the human with some visual stimulation to invoke

575
00:32:46,840 --> 00:32:50,840
Speaker 1: a little uh steady state visually evoked potential, so we're

576
00:32:50,840 --> 00:32:54,120
Speaker 1: talking strobe light flashes here. The researchers were then able

577
00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:58,920
Speaker 1: to identify the same burst frequency in the humans brain. Okay,

578
00:32:59,120 --> 00:33:01,320
Speaker 1: Then the humans b c I detects this and then

579
00:33:01,360 --> 00:33:06,160
Speaker 1: transfers that that same pattern to the focused ultrasound based

580
00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:08,720
Speaker 1: c b I on the rat, targeting the region of

581
00:33:08,760 --> 00:33:11,960
Speaker 1: the rat's brain that controls its tail, and this causes

582
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:15,240
Speaker 1: the tail to move with the same frequency, this flashing

583
00:33:15,240 --> 00:33:18,520
Speaker 1: through the humans mind the same frequency this flashing on

584
00:33:18,560 --> 00:33:23,640
Speaker 1: the strobe lights. Creepy. Yeah. And they used rat. Yeah.

585
00:33:23,840 --> 00:33:26,400
Speaker 1: They use six different humans and six different rats in

586
00:33:26,400 --> 00:33:31,840
Speaker 1: this experiment with success rate. So, I mean, there's a

587
00:33:31,840 --> 00:33:33,800
Speaker 1: lot of these experiences. They may not seem all that

588
00:33:33,920 --> 00:33:37,280
Speaker 1: amazing when you break it down into these simple parts

589
00:33:37,560 --> 00:33:39,040
Speaker 1: but you really have to look at what's being done,

590
00:33:39,040 --> 00:33:42,479
Speaker 1: and most importantly, what's being done completely non evasively. If

591
00:33:42,480 --> 00:33:45,480
Speaker 1: it seems simple, that's because the experiment breaks down thought

592
00:33:45,560 --> 00:33:50,200
Speaker 1: and action into simple components, which is always kind of

593
00:33:50,280 --> 00:33:53,360
Speaker 1: both overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time. When you

594
00:33:53,520 --> 00:33:56,400
Speaker 1: when you see something that we think of as magical,

595
00:33:56,560 --> 00:34:01,000
Speaker 1: like thought, broken down into the physical actions that constitute it,

596
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:03,280
Speaker 1: it just kind of seems like, really, that's all there is,

597
00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:05,880
Speaker 1: all right, So what's next on the plate? Then we've

598
00:34:05,920 --> 00:34:08,759
Speaker 1: gone we've gone rat to rat, we've gone human to rat.

599
00:34:09,160 --> 00:34:12,440
Speaker 1: What's next? Oh, we gotta go human to human? Okay, okay?

600
00:34:12,480 --> 00:34:15,680
Speaker 1: So here was another study came out in ten called

601
00:34:15,719 --> 00:34:19,919
Speaker 1: conscious Brain to brain Communication and Humans using Noninvasive Technologies

602
00:34:20,200 --> 00:34:24,719
Speaker 1: published in Plos one. And here are the basics. You've

603
00:34:24,719 --> 00:34:29,120
Speaker 1: got a cinder in India and recipients in France. So

604
00:34:29,200 --> 00:34:31,800
Speaker 1: here we're we're the cinder wears an e G cap

605
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:34,360
Speaker 1: like we're saying stuff on the scalp to text electrical

606
00:34:34,400 --> 00:34:37,600
Speaker 1: activity in the brain, and the recipients sit under a

607
00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:40,600
Speaker 1: different thing than we've seen before, one of those transcranial

608
00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:45,359
Speaker 1: magnetic stimulation coils or tms coils and uh and like

609
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:47,440
Speaker 1: I said earlier, what this does is it generates an

610
00:34:47,440 --> 00:34:51,360
Speaker 1: electromagnetic field, so it stimulates the brain with electrical activity

611
00:34:52,040 --> 00:34:55,560
Speaker 1: at the sender's end. There are some code words, so

612
00:34:55,600 --> 00:34:58,560
Speaker 1: the sender with the e G cap gets code words

613
00:34:58,920 --> 00:35:01,759
Speaker 1: chow and oh lah, a couple of different kind of

614
00:35:02,719 --> 00:35:07,200
Speaker 1: European hellos, and had to translate them into binary code,

615
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:09,760
Speaker 1: so that's ones and zeros are on and off switches.

616
00:35:10,239 --> 00:35:14,280
Speaker 1: And then the sender had to think about different actions

617
00:35:14,600 --> 00:35:18,160
Speaker 1: to represent each one and zero in the string to

618
00:35:18,239 --> 00:35:21,520
Speaker 1: spell the word. So for example, thinking about moving your

619
00:35:21,560 --> 00:35:24,399
Speaker 1: hands could be a one and thinking about moving your

620
00:35:24,440 --> 00:35:27,920
Speaker 1: feet could be a zero, and then they thought out

621
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:31,040
Speaker 1: the binary string. So if to spell o lah, it

622
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:34,040
Speaker 1: would be like, you know, zero one zero, you have

623
00:35:34,080 --> 00:35:38,560
Speaker 1: to think about feet and then think about moving your hands,

624
00:35:38,719 --> 00:35:41,680
Speaker 1: and then think about moving your feet, but on and

625
00:35:41,719 --> 00:35:43,200
Speaker 1: on as you would have to do to spell the

626
00:35:43,200 --> 00:35:47,520
Speaker 1: whole word. So the e G measured those different electrical patterns,

627
00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:50,680
Speaker 1: sent them to the computer, and then that was sent

628
00:35:50,920 --> 00:35:54,040
Speaker 1: five thousand miles over the internet to the recipients t

629
00:35:54,239 --> 00:35:57,719
Speaker 1: MS coils. The t M S coils caused the recipients

630
00:35:57,760 --> 00:36:01,799
Speaker 1: to experience this is great fast fiends or visions of lights.

631
00:36:01,800 --> 00:36:04,680
Speaker 1: So you're sitting under this coil, you're sitting in the chair,

632
00:36:05,040 --> 00:36:08,319
Speaker 1: and suddenly you might see dots or lines sort of

633
00:36:08,600 --> 00:36:13,239
Speaker 1: visual light hallucination patterns pop up in your vision. And

634
00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:17,040
Speaker 1: it's caused by when the pulses of electromagnetism come through

635
00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:19,640
Speaker 1: the t M S coil, and so different kinds of

636
00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:24,160
Speaker 1: visions translated into ones and zeros of code. And once

637
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:26,520
Speaker 1: you've got your string of ones and zeros from the

638
00:36:26,520 --> 00:36:30,279
Speaker 1: TMS code, you could translate that back into text from

639
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:34,359
Speaker 1: the binary code. And thus brain to brain communication of

640
00:36:34,480 --> 00:36:38,440
Speaker 1: coded messages in language was achieved over five thousand miles.

641
00:36:39,120 --> 00:36:41,200
Speaker 1: You see some of the media reports, it sounds like

642
00:36:41,239 --> 00:36:43,120
Speaker 1: they're kind of gushing over the fact that it was

643
00:36:43,160 --> 00:36:46,319
Speaker 1: five thousand miles, Like the distance matters a lot when

644
00:36:46,320 --> 00:36:48,840
Speaker 1: it just comes down to the use of the internet,

645
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:51,560
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, exactly. To me, maybe there's something I

646
00:36:51,600 --> 00:36:54,000
Speaker 1: didn't understand, but to me that the distance didn't really

647
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:57,040
Speaker 1: seem to matter. I mean, once you've got a decoded

648
00:36:57,080 --> 00:37:00,440
Speaker 1: brain signal on the Internet, sent to somebody else and

649
00:37:00,440 --> 00:37:03,600
Speaker 1: then recoded back into the message it was supposed to be,

650
00:37:04,440 --> 00:37:06,680
Speaker 1: it's the Internet. Why does it matter if it's one

651
00:37:06,719 --> 00:37:09,600
Speaker 1: mile or a hundred miles or a thousand miles. Yeah, exactly.

652
00:37:09,680 --> 00:37:12,879
Speaker 1: But anyway that that that's some human to human text communication.

653
00:37:13,160 --> 00:37:16,440
Speaker 1: But then there's another one, and this one got some

654
00:37:16,480 --> 00:37:19,879
Speaker 1: interesting media attention. I actually wrote about this last year

655
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:23,240
Speaker 1: for a forward thinking video, but it was also published

656
00:37:23,239 --> 00:37:25,760
Speaker 1: in Plos one and it was called a direct brain

657
00:37:25,800 --> 00:37:29,240
Speaker 1: to brain interface and humans. And this involves a video game.

658
00:37:30,560 --> 00:37:34,239
Speaker 1: So it's it's cooperative gaming. No, it didn't sound like

659
00:37:34,280 --> 00:37:37,520
Speaker 1: a very good video. I'm looking at the image right now.

660
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:39,839
Speaker 1: It's one of these video games. Yeah, it sounded like

661
00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:42,120
Speaker 1: I think it was one of those free video games. No,

662
00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:45,799
Speaker 1: it may have been designed purposefully for this study. I

663
00:37:45,840 --> 00:37:49,359
Speaker 1: don't know. It looks it looks kind of boring. Yes,

664
00:37:50,440 --> 00:37:55,240
Speaker 1: So researchers at the University of Washington published this study

665
00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:58,919
Speaker 1: showing they were they were able to establish a non

666
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:02,480
Speaker 1: invasive brain to brain an interface between people which allowed

667
00:38:02,520 --> 00:38:08,520
Speaker 1: them to cause movements in a different person's body without

668
00:38:08,640 --> 00:38:13,759
Speaker 1: speech across the internet to play the game. So it

669
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:18,719
Speaker 1: works this way. One person sits in a room with

670
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:22,239
Speaker 1: the ability to look at a screen. The screen has

671
00:38:22,320 --> 00:38:24,880
Speaker 1: the game on it and what you see on the

672
00:38:24,920 --> 00:38:28,200
Speaker 1: game is that there's a pirate ship launching rockets at

673
00:38:28,200 --> 00:38:31,480
Speaker 1: a city, and you've got control of a cannon that

674
00:38:31,560 --> 00:38:34,360
Speaker 1: can shoot down the rockets if you time the cannon

675
00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:37,040
Speaker 1: shot right. So you gotta wait until the pirate ship

676
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:39,680
Speaker 1: shoots a rocket, and then when it does, you shoot

677
00:38:39,680 --> 00:38:41,759
Speaker 1: your cannon to shoot the rocket and knock it out

678
00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:46,120
Speaker 1: of the sky. Pretty simple, right, But the problem is

679
00:38:46,280 --> 00:38:50,319
Speaker 1: you can't press a button. The only person who has

680
00:38:50,320 --> 00:38:53,120
Speaker 1: a controller to control the game is in a different

681
00:38:53,200 --> 00:38:59,799
Speaker 1: room across the campus, different buildings, like exactly right. So

682
00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:03,520
Speaker 1: you are sitting there watching the screen of the game

683
00:39:03,560 --> 00:39:06,279
Speaker 1: with an e G cap on your head, and when

684
00:39:06,320 --> 00:39:08,719
Speaker 1: you see that it's time to press that button to

685
00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:13,200
Speaker 1: shoot down the rocket, you think, move my hand. You

686
00:39:13,239 --> 00:39:15,840
Speaker 1: don't move your hand, You just think move my hand.

687
00:39:16,640 --> 00:39:20,080
Speaker 1: The e G cap records that and says, oh, okay,

688
00:39:20,120 --> 00:39:23,960
Speaker 1: it's time. Since that information across the internet to the

689
00:39:24,040 --> 00:39:26,640
Speaker 1: room which has the other person sitting in it. Now,

690
00:39:26,680 --> 00:39:29,920
Speaker 1: this person cannot see the screen that the game is

691
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:33,120
Speaker 1: being played on, but this person is the ability to

692
00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:36,360
Speaker 1: press the button to fire the rocket, and when the

693
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:40,239
Speaker 1: when the timing is right, when the signal arrives, it

694
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:45,080
Speaker 1: activates a t MS coil that causes their hand to jerk.

695
00:39:45,719 --> 00:39:48,240
Speaker 1: And when that causes their hand to jerk, they press

696
00:39:48,239 --> 00:39:51,719
Speaker 1: a button that says fire the rocket. That signal goes

697
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:55,480
Speaker 1: back to the game and fires the rocket. So you

698
00:39:55,560 --> 00:39:58,720
Speaker 1: have to so neither one can play the game alone.

699
00:39:59,160 --> 00:40:01,200
Speaker 1: They have to coh operate to play the game, and

700
00:40:01,239 --> 00:40:04,680
Speaker 1: they can't talk about it. It's just thought to thought

701
00:40:04,880 --> 00:40:07,960
Speaker 1: to action, all right. I think that makes that makes sense.

702
00:40:08,000 --> 00:40:11,239
Speaker 1: I think everybody's falling along with that. So so what

703
00:40:11,320 --> 00:40:13,600
Speaker 1: was the success rate? Like? How did how did these

704
00:40:14,040 --> 00:40:18,600
Speaker 1: weirdly conjoined individuals um perform in this simple game? So

705
00:40:18,680 --> 00:40:21,919
Speaker 1: there were three pairs of subjects and they correctly identified

706
00:40:21,960 --> 00:40:26,320
Speaker 1: and destroyed eighty three point three percent percent and thirty

707
00:40:26,360 --> 00:40:30,160
Speaker 1: seven point five percent of the rockets, respectively during the

708
00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:33,280
Speaker 1: the experimental games, and then they had a zero percent

709
00:40:33,360 --> 00:40:37,360
Speaker 1: success rate during control games. Uh so they did better

710
00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:40,640
Speaker 1: in the experimental games where real information was being transmitted

711
00:40:40,640 --> 00:40:43,640
Speaker 1: than in the control games when it wasn't. So there

712
00:40:43,680 --> 00:40:46,000
Speaker 1: are several takeaways from this. One of the things that

713
00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:48,320
Speaker 1: I think is interesting about this is that the receiver's

714
00:40:48,320 --> 00:40:52,320
Speaker 1: action is not conscious. They're not thinking they're not getting

715
00:40:52,320 --> 00:40:56,360
Speaker 1: a message that they're decoding. They're just being caused to jerk,

716
00:40:56,520 --> 00:40:58,000
Speaker 1: all right, So they're not hearing a voice in their

717
00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:00,399
Speaker 1: head that's saying saying, shoot it, now, push the button, now,

718
00:41:00,440 --> 00:41:03,439
Speaker 1: push the button now. It's just happening. No, they're they're

719
00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:07,760
Speaker 1: getting some magnetism that says, uh, Suddenly their hand moves

720
00:41:07,760 --> 00:41:10,759
Speaker 1: and they press a button. Uh. There are three takeaways

721
00:41:10,800 --> 00:41:13,160
Speaker 1: that the authors of the study came up with. So

722
00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:15,560
Speaker 1: they said, one of the takeaways from the study is

723
00:41:15,600 --> 00:41:19,800
Speaker 1: that we've got the technology now that's sufficient to develop

724
00:41:20,080 --> 00:41:24,759
Speaker 1: devices for rudimentary brain to brain communication. So that's one

725
00:41:24,800 --> 00:41:27,080
Speaker 1: of the things they say. They've demonstrated it's already here.

726
00:41:27,160 --> 00:41:30,200
Speaker 1: We can do it now, though it is rudimentary. The

727
00:41:30,239 --> 00:41:33,440
Speaker 1: second thing they point out is that working brain to

728
00:41:33,480 --> 00:41:36,600
Speaker 1: brain interfaces can be built out of non invasive technologies.

729
00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:40,880
Speaker 1: Neither person here required a brain implant. Uh. They it

730
00:41:40,960 --> 00:41:45,279
Speaker 1: was e g. To the transcranial magnetic stimulation. And then

731
00:41:45,400 --> 00:41:48,880
Speaker 1: the third thing they point out is that this is

732
00:41:49,040 --> 00:41:51,439
Speaker 1: very rudimentary, but the fact that it can be done

733
00:41:51,440 --> 00:41:54,200
Speaker 1: at all means we need to start having a conversation

734
00:41:54,280 --> 00:42:00,600
Speaker 1: between ethicis neuroscientists and regulatory agencies on the ethical, moral,

735
00:42:00,719 --> 00:42:04,520
Speaker 1: and societal implications of b b I. S Uh, they're

736
00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:07,120
Speaker 1: they're talking. They're about the ones that could grow in

737
00:42:07,200 --> 00:42:10,480
Speaker 1: the future out of the rudimentary technologies that are being

738
00:42:10,520 --> 00:42:13,959
Speaker 1: developed now. Yeah, yeah, setting the stage for the whole

739
00:42:13,960 --> 00:42:18,399
Speaker 1: world of neural security, right, neuro security protecting our our

740
00:42:18,480 --> 00:42:22,040
Speaker 1: our thoughts and emotions and true feelings from all those

741
00:42:22,239 --> 00:42:25,839
Speaker 1: technologically enhanced scanners out there. Yeah. Now, there's an even

742
00:42:25,880 --> 00:42:28,120
Speaker 1: more recent study on this, right. There was one that

743
00:42:28,160 --> 00:42:30,640
Speaker 1: came out just in September of this year in September,

744
00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:35,360
Speaker 1: where it was not exactly the same group but most

745
00:42:35,400 --> 00:42:38,040
Speaker 1: of the same scientists, uh, some of the same authors

746
00:42:38,040 --> 00:42:41,360
Speaker 1: from that that previous one published again in p OS

747
00:42:41,440 --> 00:42:45,560
Speaker 1: one a study called Playing twenty Questions with the Mind

748
00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:49,200
Speaker 1: collaborative problem solving by humans using a brain to brain interface,

749
00:42:49,440 --> 00:42:51,120
Speaker 1: and it was a set up a lot like the

750
00:42:51,200 --> 00:42:53,400
Speaker 1: last one. It was pretty much just the same with

751
00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:57,480
Speaker 1: cinder with e G and a receiver using a transcranial

752
00:42:57,520 --> 00:43:01,200
Speaker 1: magnetic stimulation coil. But instead what they did here, instead

753
00:43:01,239 --> 00:43:03,680
Speaker 1: of playing a video game together, they got them to

754
00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:07,480
Speaker 1: trade coded messages in order to play a game of

755
00:43:07,520 --> 00:43:11,520
Speaker 1: twenty questions without talking. Okay, so this is communication that

756
00:43:11,560 --> 00:43:15,160
Speaker 1: goes beyond merely just push that button, push that button right,

757
00:43:15,280 --> 00:43:17,680
Speaker 1: and but it's still one of the things worth pointing

758
00:43:17,680 --> 00:43:20,799
Speaker 1: out is that it is still coded communication. Now that

759
00:43:20,840 --> 00:43:23,520
Speaker 1: they had a pretty high success rate, the setup is

760
00:43:23,520 --> 00:43:25,680
Speaker 1: a is a whole lot like the last experiment you've

761
00:43:25,680 --> 00:43:27,719
Speaker 1: got to You've got a sender wearing an e G

762
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:30,400
Speaker 1: cap to read their brain, and you've got a receiver

763
00:43:30,600 --> 00:43:34,160
Speaker 1: under a t MS coil to uh to give them information.

764
00:43:34,440 --> 00:43:37,400
Speaker 1: Except what's different here is that instead of the t

765
00:43:37,560 --> 00:43:41,320
Speaker 1: MS coil giving somebody a jerk hand movement in the hand,

766
00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:43,840
Speaker 1: it gives them what we were talking about earlier, a

767
00:43:43,840 --> 00:43:47,759
Speaker 1: phosphene a vision, and they can use that to decode

768
00:43:47,880 --> 00:43:51,160
Speaker 1: information sent by the person in the e G cap

769
00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:54,719
Speaker 1: and by trading information back and forth this way, by

770
00:43:55,200 --> 00:43:58,400
Speaker 1: being able to answer yes or no questions by sending

771
00:43:58,440 --> 00:44:02,680
Speaker 1: them a phosphene or not, these people can ask an

772
00:44:02,719 --> 00:44:06,160
Speaker 1: answer questions, to play a game of twenty questions to

773
00:44:06,320 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 1: guess an object without any words or language. So the

774
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:14,080
Speaker 1: basic ideas, say you have a parakeet in mind, the

775
00:44:14,120 --> 00:44:17,120
Speaker 1: person asks a question that they select from a square

776
00:44:17,239 --> 00:44:20,399
Speaker 1: from a screen like can this thing fly? And then

777
00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:23,400
Speaker 1: the person in the e G cap gives a stimulus

778
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:26,040
Speaker 1: by looking at two different lights to answer yes or no,

779
00:44:26,640 --> 00:44:28,520
Speaker 1: and then that goes back to the person who answered

780
00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:31,080
Speaker 1: the question and they get they get a sense of

781
00:44:31,080 --> 00:44:33,120
Speaker 1: whether the answer is yes or no by whether or

782
00:44:33,120 --> 00:44:35,799
Speaker 1: not they get this vision of light from the from

783
00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:38,359
Speaker 1: the coil, and by going back and forth this way

784
00:44:38,800 --> 00:44:41,560
Speaker 1: they can solve the puzzle and eventually figure out what

785
00:44:41,640 --> 00:44:44,400
Speaker 1: the object is. And this set up allowed the people

786
00:44:44,440 --> 00:44:46,920
Speaker 1: in the experimental group to win seventy two percent of

787
00:44:46,960 --> 00:44:49,480
Speaker 1: the games. And so there's a control group where no

788
00:44:49,680 --> 00:44:52,600
Speaker 1: genuine information was being traded back and forth, and only

789
00:44:52,640 --> 00:44:56,200
Speaker 1: eight percent of those participants were able to correctly identify

790
00:44:56,280 --> 00:45:02,239
Speaker 1: the object. So pretty cool this twenty questions without words. Well,

791
00:45:02,280 --> 00:45:04,880
Speaker 1: actually know, there were words because you had to select

792
00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:07,759
Speaker 1: the questions to go back and forth, but the answers

793
00:45:07,800 --> 00:45:11,480
Speaker 1: didn't require words. It was just coded brain signals, the

794
00:45:11,480 --> 00:45:14,960
Speaker 1: flashes of light in the mind. Yeah, okay, So the

795
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:17,759
Speaker 1: authors themselves point out a couple of limitations at the end.

796
00:45:17,800 --> 00:45:21,440
Speaker 1: One of them is that the kind of obvious thing

797
00:45:21,520 --> 00:45:28,120
Speaker 1: is that this doesn't necessarily provide any better communication than talking, right,

798
00:45:28,120 --> 00:45:31,600
Speaker 1: it's it feels very hamstrong that you're having to to

799
00:45:31,600 --> 00:45:35,680
Speaker 1: to rely on this convoluted method of flashes, where when

800
00:45:35,920 --> 00:45:38,760
Speaker 1: really we have far better means of communication at artists,

801
00:45:38,960 --> 00:45:41,200
Speaker 1: it would be much easier to play the game by

802
00:45:41,239 --> 00:45:45,120
Speaker 1: by text messages or just by talking. But they point

803
00:45:45,160 --> 00:45:48,240
Speaker 1: out how well, even something like this could probably help

804
00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:51,759
Speaker 1: in somebody who has uh, for example, the inability to

805
00:45:51,840 --> 00:45:54,520
Speaker 1: move or speak if it broke as aphasia or something

806
00:45:54,560 --> 00:45:58,479
Speaker 1: like that, um or if it's being played between people

807
00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:01,439
Speaker 1: who don't speak the same language. So so that that's

808
00:46:01,440 --> 00:46:04,239
Speaker 1: a possibly a good point. But then they also point

809
00:46:04,280 --> 00:46:06,040
Speaker 1: out that this is just sort of a proof of

810
00:46:06,120 --> 00:46:09,480
Speaker 1: concept for technologies that could become much more power and

811
00:46:09,640 --> 00:46:14,279
Speaker 1: powerful and sensitive in the future, and that's the real question. Yeah.

812
00:46:14,280 --> 00:46:16,040
Speaker 1: And then the other thing they point out is a

813
00:46:16,080 --> 00:46:19,000
Speaker 1: limitation of their own study, is that it doesn't allow

814
00:46:19,160 --> 00:46:23,080
Speaker 1: bi directional transfer of information. The information is going from

815
00:46:23,160 --> 00:46:25,960
Speaker 1: one person to the other, but it would be very

816
00:46:26,000 --> 00:46:29,480
Speaker 1: interesting to hook up both the sender and the recipient,

817
00:46:29,600 --> 00:46:32,399
Speaker 1: or both people at least with both capabilities. So you've

818
00:46:32,440 --> 00:46:35,200
Speaker 1: got an e G and a t MS coil and

819
00:46:35,239 --> 00:46:38,759
Speaker 1: you can send information back and forth both ways, which

820
00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:42,200
Speaker 1: is when things would really start getting creepy, all right.

821
00:46:42,239 --> 00:46:44,759
Speaker 1: So there's a taste of where we are with the

822
00:46:45,040 --> 00:46:47,319
Speaker 1: with the with the research and the technology, where and

823
00:46:47,320 --> 00:46:49,760
Speaker 1: and and an idea of where we may be going.

824
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:52,080
Speaker 1: So how do we prepare for and what's it going

825
00:46:52,120 --> 00:46:57,160
Speaker 1: to be like as these more advanced telepathic technologies become

826
00:46:57,200 --> 00:46:59,680
Speaker 1: available and even become a part of our life. Well.

827
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:03,600
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting because it's a question whether these

828
00:47:03,640 --> 00:47:06,560
Speaker 1: have really changed that concern we brought up at the

829
00:47:06,600 --> 00:47:11,560
Speaker 1: beginning of the episode about linguistic versus non linguistic telepathy. Um,

830
00:47:11,880 --> 00:47:15,400
Speaker 1: if it's just saying that you will be able to

831
00:47:15,680 --> 00:47:19,680
Speaker 1: send coded messages like like this kind of binary morse

832
00:47:19,760 --> 00:47:23,239
Speaker 1: code type thing we were talking about earlier between brains,

833
00:47:23,280 --> 00:47:25,880
Speaker 1: that's one thing. If it were to somehow become the

834
00:47:25,880 --> 00:47:29,720
Speaker 1: case that you could send something more complex and difficult

835
00:47:29,760 --> 00:47:35,880
Speaker 1: to quantify, like a non encoded thought or memory or

836
00:47:35,920 --> 00:47:38,560
Speaker 1: something like that, that would be very interesting. But I

837
00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:41,839
Speaker 1: don't know if that's even possible, because, like we talked

838
00:47:41,840 --> 00:47:45,360
Speaker 1: about with our puppet theater analogy, your puppet theater is

839
00:47:45,400 --> 00:47:48,920
Speaker 1: not exactly the same as somebody else's puppet theater. They

840
00:47:48,960 --> 00:47:52,680
Speaker 1: can't just put electrodes in your brain and say, well,

841
00:47:53,040 --> 00:47:55,840
Speaker 1: I'm going to share this, uh, this image by lighting

842
00:47:55,880 --> 00:47:59,000
Speaker 1: up exactly the same neurons in your brain that are

843
00:47:59,040 --> 00:48:02,239
Speaker 1: lit up in somebody else's brain. You don't have the

844
00:48:02,280 --> 00:48:04,880
Speaker 1: same neurons as them. Everybody's brain is going to be

845
00:48:05,000 --> 00:48:07,880
Speaker 1: a little bit different. So I'm not sure how that

846
00:48:07,880 --> 00:48:11,160
Speaker 1: would even work without some kind of encoding back and forth.

847
00:48:11,680 --> 00:48:13,799
Speaker 1: And this is something that's been pointed out in some

848
00:48:13,880 --> 00:48:17,080
Speaker 1: of the criticism of these studies and the supposed implications

849
00:48:17,120 --> 00:48:20,640
Speaker 1: of it. Again, they are just sending coded messages, right,

850
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:25,279
Speaker 1: It's still basically language. It's not emotions ideas thoughts though

851
00:48:25,360 --> 00:48:27,600
Speaker 1: the one about making the hand jerk or making the

852
00:48:27,640 --> 00:48:31,200
Speaker 1: tail wag is kind of interesting because that's motor control.

853
00:48:31,360 --> 00:48:33,080
Speaker 1: But for the most part of these situations where you

854
00:48:33,080 --> 00:48:35,520
Speaker 1: could still lie, it's not like it's so this direct,

855
00:48:35,800 --> 00:48:39,920
Speaker 1: you know, unfiltered communication system. Yeah, but what would that

856
00:48:39,960 --> 00:48:42,080
Speaker 1: be like that? That's the thing I keep coming back to,

857
00:48:42,200 --> 00:48:44,040
Speaker 1: what would what would it be like to have this

858
00:48:44,120 --> 00:48:47,640
Speaker 1: communal mind experience with someone else? And in researching this,

859
00:48:47,760 --> 00:48:50,719
Speaker 1: I came across a really cool u A in magazine

860
00:48:50,920 --> 00:48:55,520
Speaker 1: article by Peter Watt's titled hive consciousness and UH. In

861
00:48:55,560 --> 00:48:58,680
Speaker 1: this he points out that the brain that makes us

862
00:48:58,719 --> 00:49:02,440
Speaker 1: who we are, you know, essentially it quotes, spreads across

863
00:49:02,520 --> 00:49:07,360
Speaker 1: two cerebral hemispheres connected by the corpus colossum, a fat,

864
00:49:07,400 --> 00:49:11,879
Speaker 1: meaty pipe more than two hundred million accents thick. Yeah.

865
00:49:11,880 --> 00:49:14,399
Speaker 1: This sort of the idea that you've already got two

866
00:49:14,480 --> 00:49:16,880
Speaker 1: brands in a way. Yeah. And in fact, he points

867
00:49:16,880 --> 00:49:19,080
Speaker 1: out that if you were to cleave these hemispheres in

868
00:49:19,120 --> 00:49:23,600
Speaker 1: two and that's indeed a last ditch surgery that sometimes

869
00:49:23,680 --> 00:49:26,000
Speaker 1: a uh see employee that deal with to deal with

870
00:49:26,000 --> 00:49:29,760
Speaker 1: certain forms of epilepsy, each half would go its own way,

871
00:49:29,800 --> 00:49:32,640
Speaker 1: developing its own taste and beliefs. And to support this,

872
00:49:32,680 --> 00:49:36,080
Speaker 1: he points to uh a talk that was given by

873
00:49:36,600 --> 00:49:41,200
Speaker 1: noted to neuroscientist Vilanio Ramachandren at the two thousand six

874
00:49:41,239 --> 00:49:43,560
Speaker 1: Beyond Belief Conference, And you can find video of this

875
00:49:43,719 --> 00:49:46,279
Speaker 1: on YouTube. I'll try and link to the clip on

876
00:49:46,320 --> 00:49:48,000
Speaker 1: the landing page for this episode of Stuff to Build

877
00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:51,400
Speaker 1: Your Mind dot Com. But Ramachandren points h he shares

878
00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:54,440
Speaker 1: an account of a split brain patient with a Christian

879
00:49:54,440 --> 00:49:57,880
Speaker 1: hemisphere and an atheist one. Uh, and they have to

880
00:49:57,960 --> 00:50:00,360
Speaker 1: end up having to teach the hemispheres to commune kate

881
00:50:00,920 --> 00:50:04,040
Speaker 1: with each other. So the the general idea here, I

882
00:50:04,080 --> 00:50:07,240
Speaker 1: think was that he's saying that the corpus colossum helps,

883
00:50:07,640 --> 00:50:12,840
Speaker 1: uh homogenize the two different brains. It creates the conscious

884
00:50:12,840 --> 00:50:16,360
Speaker 1: illusion that your hemispheres are in accord with one another.

885
00:50:16,640 --> 00:50:18,760
Speaker 1: But if you're able to sever them and you don't

886
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:22,520
Speaker 1: have this high bandwidth connection between them, they're very much

887
00:50:22,560 --> 00:50:25,960
Speaker 1: two different minds. Yeah, and it's not a gradual separation either.

888
00:50:25,960 --> 00:50:28,319
Speaker 1: It's not like a musical duo breaking up and then

889
00:50:28,360 --> 00:50:31,080
Speaker 1: each struggles for years to find their own solo identity.

890
00:50:31,120 --> 00:50:33,320
Speaker 1: You know, this side of the brain eventually becomes atheist

891
00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:36,359
Speaker 1: and this side eventually becomes a believer. No, scientists can

892
00:50:36,360 --> 00:50:40,440
Speaker 1: actually induce hemispheric isolation chemically in the brain, just shutting

893
00:50:40,440 --> 00:50:44,120
Speaker 1: it down U uh and uh and then watching, just

894
00:50:44,480 --> 00:50:49,080
Speaker 1: without any delay, the undrugged hemisphere sort of coming into

895
00:50:49,080 --> 00:50:53,600
Speaker 1: its own, becoming the primary decider, developing a whole new

896
00:50:54,320 --> 00:50:56,640
Speaker 1: personality right there in front of us. So like I

897
00:50:56,640 --> 00:50:59,920
Speaker 1: I anesthetize your left brain and I suddenly see your

898
00:51:00,200 --> 00:51:03,759
Speaker 1: brain evil twin emerges the dominant personality, which was really

899
00:51:03,800 --> 00:51:06,880
Speaker 1: only half of you before. Yeah, it reminds me of

900
00:51:07,239 --> 00:51:11,040
Speaker 1: a character in the Culture book by Enim Banks consider Flibus.

901
00:51:11,440 --> 00:51:16,719
Speaker 1: There's a character name uh Craikland who has enhanced hemispheric

902
00:51:16,760 --> 00:51:20,480
Speaker 1: task division in his brain, but basically he sleeps with

903
00:51:20,560 --> 00:51:23,040
Speaker 1: one eye open. He can use a uni hemispheric sleep

904
00:51:23,120 --> 00:51:25,759
Speaker 1: much like a you know, like many animals out there

905
00:51:25,800 --> 00:51:29,239
Speaker 1: that never completely put their brain under. So one third

906
00:51:29,280 --> 00:51:32,360
Speaker 1: of the time, one half of his brain sleeps and

907
00:51:32,400 --> 00:51:35,080
Speaker 1: he's a bit dreamy and vague. Another third of the

908
00:51:35,120 --> 00:51:37,759
Speaker 1: time he's all logic in numbers and doesn't communicate all

909
00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:40,080
Speaker 1: that well. And only one third of the time is

910
00:51:40,120 --> 00:51:43,520
Speaker 1: he fully awake with both sides of his brain making

911
00:51:43,600 --> 00:51:47,080
Speaker 1: up who he is. That's pretty cool, yeah, and uh yeah,

912
00:51:47,239 --> 00:51:48,680
Speaker 1: So it's it's interesting to think of it in terms

913
00:51:48,719 --> 00:51:51,360
Speaker 1: of rama Chandren's example. He he jokingly pointed out, what

914
00:51:51,400 --> 00:51:54,040
Speaker 1: happens to this individual dies? Does half his brain go

915
00:51:54,080 --> 00:51:56,600
Speaker 1: to heaven and one half go to hell? And uh

916
00:51:57,000 --> 00:52:00,000
Speaker 1: And it makes us ask some difficult questions about conscious

917
00:52:00,040 --> 00:52:03,759
Speaker 1: this itself, because consciousness remains something of the mystery and

918
00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:06,080
Speaker 1: when we have a hell of a time unraveling and

919
00:52:06,160 --> 00:52:09,480
Speaker 1: as author our Scott Backer points that we're trying to

920
00:52:09,560 --> 00:52:12,480
Speaker 1: explain the magic of a coin trick, right, But we're

921
00:52:12,480 --> 00:52:15,960
Speaker 1: in a horrible position because we are the magic that

922
00:52:16,040 --> 00:52:19,080
Speaker 1: we're trying to understand. We're trying to explain se consciousness.

923
00:52:19,120 --> 00:52:21,560
Speaker 1: You mean, yeah, with consciousness and then but ultimately with

924
00:52:21,560 --> 00:52:25,560
Speaker 1: any any time time we try and tackle our you know,

925
00:52:25,600 --> 00:52:29,160
Speaker 1: our our cognition and our and our brain activity, and

926
00:52:29,200 --> 00:52:31,680
Speaker 1: certainly we try to translate it into another being or

927
00:52:31,680 --> 00:52:34,440
Speaker 1: try to bring two of them together. We have to

928
00:52:34,880 --> 00:52:39,120
Speaker 1: we have to unravel the magic of the human experience. Yeah, well,

929
00:52:39,120 --> 00:52:42,480
Speaker 1: we mentioned this earlier. I mean, when you start under

930
00:52:43,040 --> 00:52:45,920
Speaker 1: understanding consciousness for some reason, it's kind of a scary thing.

931
00:52:46,600 --> 00:52:50,239
Speaker 1: Like we we like this magical illusion of the unified

932
00:52:50,280 --> 00:52:54,840
Speaker 1: self to to persist. And when you start separating consciousness

933
00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:58,600
Speaker 1: into constituent parts or understanding I mean we I'm not

934
00:52:58,640 --> 00:53:02,000
Speaker 1: saying we fully understand justousness, but even understanding little bits

935
00:53:02,040 --> 00:53:05,800
Speaker 1: that might inform how it comes together, it's a little alarming.

936
00:53:06,080 --> 00:53:09,000
Speaker 1: You don't like the idea that your consciousness can be

937
00:53:09,080 --> 00:53:13,040
Speaker 1: explained via, you know, a combination of different processes in

938
00:53:13,080 --> 00:53:16,080
Speaker 1: the brain. But one of the scary things here is

939
00:53:16,080 --> 00:53:19,080
Speaker 1: is the implication going back to brain to brain interfaces.

940
00:53:19,200 --> 00:53:24,920
Speaker 1: That what if combining different brains with technology in different

941
00:53:24,960 --> 00:53:29,600
Speaker 1: skulls will become just as seamless as combining the two

942
00:53:29,640 --> 00:53:34,359
Speaker 1: hemispheres of your brain via the corpus colossum. Uh. And

943
00:53:34,440 --> 00:53:40,399
Speaker 1: it's such that maybe our producer Null and our other

944
00:53:40,440 --> 00:53:43,880
Speaker 1: co host Christian would link their brains up via computer

945
00:53:44,280 --> 00:53:47,320
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't feel like they were two different brains connected.

946
00:53:47,440 --> 00:53:50,800
Speaker 1: It would just feel like they were one brain. Yeah.

947
00:53:50,920 --> 00:53:53,440
Speaker 1: Like essentially would be like you know, like a Vultron

948
00:53:53,480 --> 00:53:58,120
Speaker 1: scenario or um or or like an assemblage of of keywords.

949
00:53:58,160 --> 00:54:00,399
Speaker 1: So like, oh, we we need somebody who's really good

950
00:54:00,440 --> 00:54:04,080
Speaker 1: at maritime law, but we also need somebody who really

951
00:54:04,160 --> 00:54:06,600
Speaker 1: is really tuned into pop culture, and we need to

952
00:54:06,640 --> 00:54:08,080
Speaker 1: go out and speak Well, what can we do? Well,

953
00:54:08,120 --> 00:54:10,480
Speaker 1: let's just take these two individuals, hook them up together

954
00:54:10,920 --> 00:54:14,160
Speaker 1: and make them manifest a new individual who is a

955
00:54:14,200 --> 00:54:19,319
Speaker 1: perfect uh you know, convergence of those two uh skill sets. Now,

956
00:54:19,560 --> 00:54:21,719
Speaker 1: now again, I want to say, who knows if such

957
00:54:21,760 --> 00:54:23,719
Speaker 1: a thing as possible? We don't want to get to

958
00:54:24,040 --> 00:54:27,279
Speaker 1: uh to hype heavy here and suggest that we we've

959
00:54:27,320 --> 00:54:30,239
Speaker 1: now demonstrated that it's possible to link brains up in

960
00:54:30,280 --> 00:54:32,919
Speaker 1: a way that they seamlessly combined. But just the mere

961
00:54:33,000 --> 00:54:40,080
Speaker 1: possibility of that is a very like human experience changing proposition. Yeah,

962
00:54:40,160 --> 00:54:42,960
Speaker 1: and when what are the legal ramifications? So if if me,

963
00:54:43,080 --> 00:54:46,600
Speaker 1: if you and I, if we conjoined our brains with

964
00:54:46,640 --> 00:54:50,760
Speaker 1: some fancy helmets and essentially became this different mind state,

965
00:54:50,920 --> 00:54:54,880
Speaker 1: and then that mind state broke a law or invented something,

966
00:54:55,480 --> 00:54:59,160
Speaker 1: you know, who owns that invention, who's responsible for that crime?

967
00:54:59,480 --> 00:55:01,319
Speaker 1: And then it gets even weird. Or if you look

968
00:55:01,360 --> 00:55:03,040
Speaker 1: at our own brains and think of it as to

969
00:55:03,680 --> 00:55:06,560
Speaker 1: havels of brains that are connected together, it's like which

970
00:55:06,600 --> 00:55:09,480
Speaker 1: individual has the right to exist and even his personhood

971
00:55:09,800 --> 00:55:14,160
Speaker 1: the the Joe Robert being Joe Robert or the two

972
00:55:14,200 --> 00:55:16,439
Speaker 1: halves of Joe in your head and the two halves

973
00:55:16,440 --> 00:55:19,040
Speaker 1: of Robert in mind? Right, I mean, do you think

974
00:55:19,040 --> 00:55:21,920
Speaker 1: it's possible for one hemisphere of your brain to conspire

975
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:24,759
Speaker 1: to kill the other one? Yeah, or sue it, or

976
00:55:25,239 --> 00:55:28,040
Speaker 1: or get out of some sort of a neural divorce.

977
00:55:28,520 --> 00:55:33,840
Speaker 1: We'll be all right, brain from now on. Uh Yeah. Well, anyway,

978
00:55:33,880 --> 00:55:36,440
Speaker 1: if we've got you worried about this, based on this

979
00:55:36,520 --> 00:55:39,799
Speaker 1: final discussion, it is a good thing to consider in

980
00:55:39,800 --> 00:55:42,840
Speaker 1: the long run. But please do remember that these these

981
00:55:42,880 --> 00:55:46,320
Speaker 1: experiments we've been talking about in this episode don't indicate

982
00:55:46,440 --> 00:55:49,120
Speaker 1: anything like that yet. Like we we certainly don't want

983
00:55:49,120 --> 00:55:52,240
Speaker 1: to get into the over hype machine that the types

984
00:55:52,280 --> 00:55:54,920
Speaker 1: of communication, not the over hyph machine, but maybe the

985
00:55:55,000 --> 00:55:58,160
Speaker 1: over dream machine. Like take these and run wild with

986
00:55:58,200 --> 00:56:01,480
Speaker 1: the possibilities. But don't you know, this is still super

987
00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:05,600
Speaker 1: super rudimentary communication. Like we said, it's it's very coded,

988
00:56:06,160 --> 00:56:11,799
Speaker 1: it requires extremely bulky and difficult and expensive equipment, and

989
00:56:12,000 --> 00:56:15,480
Speaker 1: it's it's it's impressive in one sense that it can

990
00:56:15,520 --> 00:56:18,000
Speaker 1: be done at all, but what can be done with

991
00:56:18,040 --> 00:56:20,960
Speaker 1: it is not that impressive yet. Indeed, who knows how

992
00:56:21,000 --> 00:56:23,520
Speaker 1: impressive it will be or is impressive the right word?

993
00:56:23,560 --> 00:56:28,919
Speaker 1: Who knows how daunting and and mind bending it will be? Yeah?

994
00:56:29,040 --> 00:56:32,479
Speaker 1: Game changing? Alright, Well, there you have it, a little

995
00:56:32,520 --> 00:56:36,600
Speaker 1: explanation into technological telepathy and some of the possible near

996
00:56:36,680 --> 00:56:43,080
Speaker 1: future and far future ramifications. Oh, looks like we have

997
00:56:43,440 --> 00:56:45,640
Speaker 1: an update coming in. We don't have a lot of

998
00:56:45,640 --> 00:56:49,480
Speaker 1: these roll into the podcast, but here's the one right now.

999
00:56:51,560 --> 00:56:53,640
Speaker 1: All right, this is this has to do with our

1000
00:56:53,800 --> 00:56:58,080
Speaker 1: recent episode December sevent i believe grand theft genome gene

1001
00:56:58,080 --> 00:57:00,920
Speaker 1: steelers in the wild and which Joe and I explored

1002
00:57:01,120 --> 00:57:05,040
Speaker 1: several examples of horizontal gene transfer. Yeah, that's the process

1003
00:57:05,040 --> 00:57:09,160
Speaker 1: where genes from one organism travel into another organism that

1004
00:57:09,320 --> 00:57:13,280
Speaker 1: is not its direct offspring, but some other contemporary creature

1005
00:57:13,360 --> 00:57:16,200
Speaker 1: living at the same time. Yeah. And uh, one of

1006
00:57:16,200 --> 00:57:19,720
Speaker 1: the creatures we discussed is the tarte grade, the water bear,

1007
00:57:19,960 --> 00:57:25,120
Speaker 1: the moss picklet pernial favorite here. Yeah, yeah, very cool animal. Uh.

1008
00:57:25,120 --> 00:57:28,280
Speaker 1: And we were drawing on a November twenty third, two fifteen,

1009
00:57:28,360 --> 00:57:31,160
Speaker 1: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study. Uh, this

1010
00:57:31,240 --> 00:57:33,160
Speaker 1: is the one where they claimed that the Tartar grade

1011
00:57:33,160 --> 00:57:37,440
Speaker 1: possessed nearly one sixth or seventeen point five percent foreign DNA.

1012
00:57:37,560 --> 00:57:41,160
Speaker 1: That amounts to about six thousand, six hundred genes of

1013
00:57:41,560 --> 00:57:44,720
Speaker 1: pilfer genetic goodness. This is a remarkable claim that up

1014
00:57:44,760 --> 00:57:49,200
Speaker 1: to one sixth of of this organism's d NA came

1015
00:57:49,360 --> 00:57:53,000
Speaker 1: from foreign sources, so not from its parents or its

1016
00:57:53,040 --> 00:57:57,040
Speaker 1: parents parents, but other organisms that lived around it. And

1017
00:57:57,080 --> 00:57:59,560
Speaker 1: as we discussed in the episode, this hi it's a

1018
00:57:59,640 --> 00:58:02,040
Speaker 1: sort of using facts. So we pounced on it and

1019
00:58:02,080 --> 00:58:04,360
Speaker 1: it and it ties into this idea of the tartar

1020
00:58:04,360 --> 00:58:08,440
Speaker 1: grade is this ultrahardy organism that may have stolen some

1021
00:58:08,520 --> 00:58:12,800
Speaker 1: of its acquired some of its its hardiness from hardy

1022
00:58:12,800 --> 00:58:15,360
Speaker 1: bacteria or actually, to be clear on what I just said,

1023
00:58:15,400 --> 00:58:17,240
Speaker 1: that the idea was that it so it did get

1024
00:58:17,240 --> 00:58:19,600
Speaker 1: it from its parents and parents parents, but they got

1025
00:58:19,640 --> 00:58:22,520
Speaker 1: it from other organisms. It wasn't just a direct lineal

1026
00:58:23,200 --> 00:58:25,480
Speaker 1: passing along of genes in the same branch of the

1027
00:58:25,520 --> 00:58:28,400
Speaker 1: evolutionary tree. Yeah, so we weren't the only ones who

1028
00:58:28,440 --> 00:58:30,160
Speaker 1: were maained, but we weren't the only ones to to

1029
00:58:30,240 --> 00:58:33,040
Speaker 1: pounce on it because in the weeks that followed, a

1030
00:58:33,200 --> 00:58:36,240
Speaker 1: second team from the University of Edinburgh, who were also

1031
00:58:36,440 --> 00:58:39,840
Speaker 1: sequencing the tartar grade genome chimed In, reported that they've

1032
00:58:39,880 --> 00:58:43,480
Speaker 1: found very few horizontally transferred genes and the tartar grate

1033
00:58:43,680 --> 00:58:47,480
Speaker 1: between thirty six and five hundred and their charge is

1034
00:58:47,520 --> 00:58:52,400
Speaker 1: that thirty of the unc genome probably came from contaminating microbes.

1035
00:58:52,480 --> 00:58:55,800
Speaker 1: In other words, they think that the results were contaminated

1036
00:58:55,920 --> 00:58:59,120
Speaker 1: with random bacteria from the lab. Yeah, and this is

1037
00:58:59,160 --> 00:59:02,440
Speaker 1: a problem that course can happen when you're dealing with microbiology.

1038
00:59:02,520 --> 00:59:06,479
Speaker 1: Typically scientists do a lot to try to rule out

1039
00:59:06,560 --> 00:59:08,920
Speaker 1: these types of errors. And uh, and I think we

1040
00:59:08,920 --> 00:59:11,160
Speaker 1: can assume that the the U n C team was

1041
00:59:11,720 --> 00:59:14,040
Speaker 1: doing their best, like that they were doing good work,

1042
00:59:14,080 --> 00:59:18,080
Speaker 1: but at least this cross comparison of results shows that

1043
00:59:18,200 --> 00:59:21,400
Speaker 1: whatever measures they put in place, at some point they

1044
00:59:21,480 --> 00:59:24,240
Speaker 1: must have failed. Yeah, and you know, this is what

1045
00:59:24,280 --> 00:59:27,160
Speaker 1: we're observing here, ultimately is not This is not a

1046
00:59:27,160 --> 00:59:29,760
Speaker 1: soap opera. This is this is science working the way

1047
00:59:29,760 --> 00:59:33,480
Speaker 1: it's supposed to. If somebody makes mistake, if or may

1048
00:59:33,520 --> 00:59:36,400
Speaker 1: have made a mistake, then someone else can chime in

1049
00:59:36,480 --> 00:59:39,400
Speaker 1: and say, hey, our study says something a little differently.

1050
00:59:39,520 --> 00:59:43,080
Speaker 1: Let's let's see where the truth lies. Yeah, and hopefully

1051
00:59:43,120 --> 00:59:46,720
Speaker 1: by comparing and synthesizing the results of these two studies,

1052
00:59:46,760 --> 00:59:49,720
Speaker 1: we can figure out not just what the truth about

1053
00:59:49,720 --> 00:59:53,480
Speaker 1: the Tartegrade genome is and how much horizontal gene transfer

1054
00:59:53,480 --> 00:59:56,840
Speaker 1: has informed its lineage, but also help hone the types

1055
00:59:56,880 --> 01:00:00,560
Speaker 1: of procedures that these experimenters are using, because is you know,

1056
01:00:00,720 --> 01:00:02,880
Speaker 1: learning from our mistakes is one of the best ways

1057
01:00:02,920 --> 01:00:06,960
Speaker 1: to get better at doing science. Before we head out here,

1058
01:00:06,960 --> 01:00:08,520
Speaker 1: I just want to remind everyone head on over to

1059
01:00:08,560 --> 01:00:10,160
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your mind dot Com if you want

1060
01:00:10,200 --> 01:00:13,040
Speaker 1: to check out all the podcast episodes, all the videos,

1061
01:00:13,080 --> 01:00:15,560
Speaker 1: blog post links out to our social media accounts. It's

1062
01:00:15,600 --> 01:00:18,760
Speaker 1: all there. And in the meantime, how can they get

1063
01:00:18,800 --> 01:00:21,760
Speaker 1: in touch with us? How can they? How can they

1064
01:00:21,800 --> 01:00:26,080
Speaker 1: communicate the contents of their brain to our brains the

1065
01:00:26,760 --> 01:00:28,480
Speaker 1: magic of the Internet. Well, you can use some good

1066
01:00:28,480 --> 01:00:32,440
Speaker 1: old Stone age linguistic technology and type out an email

1067
01:00:32,480 --> 01:00:34,400
Speaker 1: and send it to us. That blow the mind. At

1068
01:00:34,400 --> 01:00:48,720
Speaker 1: how the Works dot for more on this and thousands

1069
01:00:48,760 --> 01:00:51,080
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot Com

1070
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Speaker 1: joined four point of part propo