Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: The vault door is open. Will you go in? That's right,
Speaker 1: It's it's a perfect day to say, rewatch David Cronenberg
Speaker 1: Scanners or listen to this episode on Technotal Epathy in
Speaker 1: which we reference scanners probably way too many times now.
Speaker 1: One thing I do want to clarify because people have
Speaker 1: been asking about this. Some people are like, hey, why
Speaker 1: are you doing reruns lately? Aren't you doing new episodes?
Speaker 1: We should be clear. I hope you're getting all of
Speaker 1: the new episodes we're releasing just as many original episodes
Speaker 1: as always. That has not changed. Uh. These Saturday Vault
Speaker 1: selections are in addition to our regular lineup, so you
Speaker 1: are not missing out on any new stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind content. If you're not getting our new regular
Speaker 1: episodes on Tuesday and Thursday, check your feed or use
Speaker 1: a different way of getting to them. Yeah, and by
Speaker 1: all means note the original publication date because you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of these topics do involve scientific stories and
Speaker 1: scientific findings, but in general, if there's something major that
Speaker 1: has changed, we will either not rerun it, or we'll
Speaker 1: make sure to clue you into what has occurred, or
Speaker 1: we'll be oblivious and hear about it from you later exactly,
Speaker 1: and then we'll just that's just part of the fan conversation.
Speaker 1: So it's all good either way. So this episode was
Speaker 1: originally called Brain to Brain The Science of Techno Telepathy,
Speaker 1: and it aired on December twenty two, so it's a
Speaker 1: couple of years old now, but I think this one
Speaker 1: still holds up. It's still an interesting and developing topic
Speaker 1: in neuroscience and neuro technology, and I especially would like
Speaker 1: to revisit this idea sometime in the future with reference
Speaker 1: to the ideas of neuro security that we discussed in
Speaker 1: in another episode from a while back. So anyway, I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy the Science of Techno Telepathy. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to blow your mind from housetop works dot com.
Speaker 1: I would like to scan all of them in this room,
Speaker 1: one at a time. I must remind you that the
Speaker 1: scanning experience is usually a painful one, sometimes resulting in nosebleeds,
Speaker 1: ear aches, stomach cramps. Wait, wait, joke, You can't just
Speaker 1: scan everybody in the room. Well why not? Will did
Speaker 1: you get everyone to sign those consent forms? I figured
Speaker 1: they show up for a press conference, they must be
Speaker 1: game for a little till episode. But they might have
Speaker 1: pre existing health conditions. I mean, you just warned them
Speaker 1: that they might get cramps and nose bleeds, you know,
Speaker 1: mild nosebleeds. I mean, we're not gonna catch anybody on
Speaker 1: fire or any What about their mental health? What about
Speaker 1: their privacy, the right, the right of freedom of thought
Speaker 1: and the deliberate communication. Well, that's not what this experiment
Speaker 1: is about. And that doesn't even touch on the fact
Speaker 1: that you can scan their smartphones and laptops with your mind.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's not quite as bad as peering into
Speaker 1: their private thoughts, dreams, and bears. But nobody wants that either. Geez, Robert,
Speaker 1: I was really looking forward to this, and I have
Speaker 1: to report that you are now being a major buzz kill. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I knew you are. I know you are
Speaker 1: a bit of migraine forming here. Okay, I'm good. That
Speaker 1: was a close one. Hey, you welcome to stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And if you haven't guessed already today we're
Speaker 1: going to be talking about telepathy scanning, as it's often
Speaker 1: called in the literature. Yes, yes, I imagine a number
Speaker 1: of you identified our homage there to uh to David
Speaker 1: Cronenberg's sci fi classics Scanners. You know, what I found
Speaker 1: out just this week is that Scanners has a huge,
Speaker 1: uh catalog of sequels I was unaware of. I knew
Speaker 1: there was a Scanners too that's got some corrupt police
Speaker 1: commissioner with an army of Scanners, but there's a Scanners
Speaker 1: three that has a scene where a woman makes a
Speaker 1: pigeon blow up with her mind. And then I had
Speaker 1: no idea about this until you told me. But there's
Speaker 1: a spinoff series called Scanner Cop Scanner Top one and
Speaker 1: then Scanner Cop two, which is also sometimes essentially Scanners four,
Speaker 1: depending on which a version of the at least you're
Speaker 1: looking at. You know. One of the funny things about
Speaker 1: the development of the Scanners series, at least as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, I haven't watched all of the movies,
Speaker 1: that the most of the sequels look quite bad. But
Speaker 1: there is a sort of slow development or escalation of
Speaker 1: the powers that are attributed to Scanners. I can remember
Speaker 1: in the first movie, you can read somebody's thoughts, and
Speaker 1: you can also sort of I think, plant implant thoughts
Speaker 1: to a certain extent um, And then of course you
Speaker 1: can cause the resident frequency cascade that makes their head
Speaker 1: blow up, right, and I think you can make fire,
Speaker 1: and you can you can well then also there's at
Speaker 1: least um I don't want to give too many spoilers,
Speaker 1: but it's at least mentioned that you might be able
Speaker 1: to absorb another individual's mind state into your own. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's pretty goadline. It's getting pretty weird even in
Speaker 1: the first movie. But later on you add what would
Speaker 1: conventionally be called telekinesis where you're throwing things around, you
Speaker 1: throw people across the room, So you're just generally developing
Speaker 1: psychic powers. Yeah, it goes into that realm of essentially
Speaker 1: magic pan psychic sorcery. But telepathy is something that I
Speaker 1: can understand why that happens, because it's a concept that
Speaker 1: I thought. I think it's been interpreted in various ways
Speaker 1: that are often quite vague. So as much as I
Speaker 1: hate to go to the dictionary at the beginning of
Speaker 1: a discussion, I do think it's helpful to get a
Speaker 1: specified common definition on the table for telepathy, and I
Speaker 1: want to go with one included in Miriam Webster, which
Speaker 1: it just says communication from one mind to another by
Speaker 1: extra sensory means. So I think that's what we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about today. It's sharing ideas. It's communication without
Speaker 1: using any of the senses, because we're using our our
Speaker 1: senses and our our language abilities or vocal abilities right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're engaging in a in in in a communication, in
Speaker 1: a communal thought process. Yeah, like right now, a man
Speaker 1: walks into a bar and there's a duck on the bar.
Speaker 1: I just put that image into your head. I just
Speaker 1: put that image into everyone's head. I essentially use my
Speaker 1: scanner powers on everyone listening to this podcast. But there
Speaker 1: was a fidelity copying problem there because when I pictured
Speaker 1: in my brain, what I pictured was a swan. And
Speaker 1: that sort of gets to the basic problem of communication.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons we often imagine the idea of
Speaker 1: telepathy as we defined it for the purpose of this
Speaker 1: episode communication without words or any of the normal sensory means,
Speaker 1: is that those normal canonical means of communication are highly flawed,
Speaker 1: like our ability to use them is far from perfect.
Speaker 1: Just think how often there's a conflict in your life
Speaker 1: because somebody took something that you said or wrote the
Speaker 1: wrong way, or because or because you don't know how
Speaker 1: to interpret what somebody has said or wrote. If only
Speaker 1: you could truly understand what their intentions and feelings about
Speaker 1: the subject really were without everything being garbled through this
Speaker 1: language transmission mediator, then then things would seem to be
Speaker 1: a lot easier, right, Yeah. I mean there's a study
Speaker 1: that came out earlier this year talking about how there
Speaker 1: I think they were mainly looking at, you know, situations
Speaker 1: between spouses where individuals have known each other for an
Speaker 1: extended period of time. They've they have this this this
Speaker 1: long relationship and this collaboration going on, and you would think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: they're they've been they've been together so long, they totally
Speaker 1: understand each other. They can totally read each other's intents,
Speaker 1: and they know what the other person wants in values.
Speaker 1: But this particular study found there's kind of the the
Speaker 1: opposite in many cases, because you end up having an
Speaker 1: idea in your head of what that other individual wants
Speaker 1: and needs and it may not actually be accurate, but
Speaker 1: you're no longer feeling it out as much anymore, because
Speaker 1: it's you feel like it's written in stone. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: everything you say, because I know you, I'm interpreting through
Speaker 1: the lens of what I think about Robert. So even
Speaker 1: though all you said was hey can you can you
Speaker 1: grab a cup of coffee from the kitchen, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: why is he asking for a Satanic ritual? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just so much that can that can become lost
Speaker 1: and ambiguous and just misinterpreted entirely. Of course, most of
Speaker 1: us are familiar with telepathy from fiction. That's when we
Speaker 1: started off with an example from a fictional sci fi
Speaker 1: horror movie. Uh and and certainly fiction gives us plenty
Speaker 1: of wonderful, rich examples uh and some more thoughtful than others. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, there's like the shining in the Shining, you know,
Speaker 1: the title of The Shining refers to this this uh
Speaker 1: sort of telepathic ability, though it seems to extend beyond
Speaker 1: just communication. Telepathy is more just like we've mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: the general psychic awareness, being able to sense things that
Speaker 1: are beyond what we can normally see with our see
Speaker 1: or here since is, yes, they have a sensory it's
Speaker 1: like they have a sensory ability that everyone has, but
Speaker 1: there's this amped up to an incredible level, so they're
Speaker 1: constantly bombarded with the signals. You can finally hear the
Speaker 1: red rum resolve from the background noise. Yeah. Another one
Speaker 1: that comes to my mind is I assume you've seen
Speaker 1: The Dark Crystal, right, and do you remember the guelf
Speaker 1: Lin dream Fast in that vaguely? That's uh, that's when
Speaker 1: Jin and Kira, I believe, the two gelf Liings meet
Speaker 1: and the sort of they kind of have this mind
Speaker 1: meld moment where they share visions of their childhood, right,
Speaker 1: they share their memories. It seems like it's been a
Speaker 1: while since I've seen the movie, but it is a
Speaker 1: great movie. And what I remember is that they just
Speaker 1: sort of download their memories directly from one another, so
Speaker 1: you can suddenly remember the other one's life. Another one,
Speaker 1: of course, is Box Vulcan mind meld in Star Trek,
Speaker 1: and that seems also kind of like the dream Fast
Speaker 1: from what I recalled that it's not just like a
Speaker 1: single coded message being traded between minds, but it's like
Speaker 1: I've got your consciousness in me now. Yeah? Is that
Speaker 1: is that pretty much? Right? Yeah? I believe. So it's
Speaker 1: it's it's been Hanstin's I've seen any trek with actual
Speaker 1: mind melding moments. But yeah, alright, well a few that
Speaker 1: came to my mind. Well, first of all, uh, I
Speaker 1: was wondering, do you think that the spice orgies and
Speaker 1: doone count? There's it's not directly mentioned as I recall that,
Speaker 1: and I could be wrong on this, that there's a
Speaker 1: telepathic link, And certainly I think the spice is going
Speaker 1: to affect individuals and you know, varying levels. Well, this
Speaker 1: is a problem I've read about in some of the
Speaker 1: skeptical literature on telepathy is that it's difficult to tell
Speaker 1: the difference between different types of extra sense reperception that
Speaker 1: people have claimed. So how can you tell the functional
Speaker 1: difference between telepathy and precognition, or telepathy and clairvoyance? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean so I think that comes through in Dune.
Speaker 1: Our trouble here may just be that there's general psychic
Speaker 1: hyper awareness. Can you tell the difference between am I
Speaker 1: reading your mind or am I standing atop the dune
Speaker 1: viewing the great order of the universe? And one of
Speaker 1: the things I gain awareness of is what you would
Speaker 1: be thinking or saying yes, yeah, A good point. Another
Speaker 1: one that comes to mind, This one's hot on uh
Speaker 1: in my memory since I just watched the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But then the Marvel Netflix series Jessica Jones has the
Speaker 1: villain Purple Man Zebediah Killgrave and fabulous, uh, fabulous villain
Speaker 1: that uses mind control. What he but what he commands
Speaker 1: you to do you want to do. You don't just
Speaker 1: turn into a zombie. They use a nice exploration of
Speaker 1: this to where if he puts an impulse in your mind,
Speaker 1: like that the thing you want. So that's not just communication,
Speaker 1: that's full online control. Yeah, but it's it kind of
Speaker 1: leaks into some of the stuff we're gonna talk later,
Speaker 1: and that he kind of it's kind of I get
Speaker 1: the impression that kill Grave he's kind of temporarily thinking
Speaker 1: with your brain. And so he's thinking with your brain
Speaker 1: and giving you, you know, something to to want, something
Speaker 1: to believe in that you know or desire that you
Speaker 1: normally would not. Well, that blurs a line that will
Speaker 1: become important later in this episode when we talked about
Speaker 1: scientific studies. Yeah, indeed and uh. And another thing about
Speaker 1: kill Grave is that you know it raises the question
Speaker 1: that if there's an outside force making you want or
Speaker 1: believe something temporarily, and then that a force eventually you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's influence is gone, how does that affect what
Speaker 1: you're going to believe or want in the long term?
Speaker 1: You know, like, how does that memory and form? Can
Speaker 1: you remember that you wanted something but recognize that it
Speaker 1: was not original to your mind? Yeah? Indeed, so I
Speaker 1: thought that was a There was some some excellent explorations
Speaker 1: of that in that particular show um in the vampire
Speaker 1: in the vampire novel by John Steckley Vampires where the
Speaker 1: s is a dollar sign, which was adapted into John
Speaker 1: Carpenter's movie. But believe me, the book is so Yeah
Speaker 1: that the book is really really frightening and terrifying and
Speaker 1: the just hideous. Yeah. But the vampires in the book
Speaker 1: they engage in in mind control that's very similar to
Speaker 1: to kill Gray and from the world of Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 1: I feel like I need to mention just a couple
Speaker 1: of species real quick. There's of course the meld communal
Speaker 1: meditation of the fungal my conid species. You know, shambling
Speaker 1: fungus people benevolent that live in the under Dark, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they engage in a kind of communal meditation. And then
Speaker 1: also they're the hive mind college colonies of the alipid
Speaker 1: mind flares, and there of course just catastrophically evil uh beings,
Speaker 1: and they're using all a bit just about every shade
Speaker 1: of of psychic power and telepathic power to to work
Speaker 1: their evil schemes. The under Duck they strike terror just
Speaker 1: by directly transmitting the pages of the Monster Manual to
Speaker 1: feature them into your brain. Yeah, and and they also
Speaker 1: it's like a whole host of under dark creatures in Dungeon.
Speaker 1: Dragons are are weird and twisted and horrible because the
Speaker 1: mind players use their abilities to enslave their species in
Speaker 1: a in an earlier times. So yeah, it seems to
Speaker 1: me that in all these different conceptions of telepathy from fiction,
Speaker 1: you can basically break them down into two different categories
Speaker 1: of communication, linguistic and non linguistic. So even the linguistic version,
Speaker 1: of course, is not involving written or spoken words, but
Speaker 1: it's silent internal brain to brain communication without the senses
Speaker 1: that still somehow seems to be mediated through language, Like
Speaker 1: you hear a voice inside your head communicating with you
Speaker 1: through words or some other type of structured coded message.
Speaker 1: Then there's non linguistic telepathy, and that's commune mucation that's
Speaker 1: not mediated by language. And I think this is more
Speaker 1: difficult to represent in fiction, but it's the kind we
Speaker 1: see more often because it's the kind that's even stranger
Speaker 1: to to to reality. You know, it's one thing to
Speaker 1: send a message into somebody's brain. You could accomplish almost
Speaker 1: the same thing by them just having a tiny earpiece,
Speaker 1: you know, and talking into a microphone. But it's a
Speaker 1: different thing to download somebody's memories or to uh or
Speaker 1: to experience uncoded conceptual thought like the guelf link dream
Speaker 1: fast I was talking about. And that second kind, I
Speaker 1: think is it may end up introducing some conceptual problems
Speaker 1: with the concept of telepathy that we can talk about
Speaker 1: more once we look at the science. But so today
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking primarily about technologically enabled brain to
Speaker 1: brain communication or technologically enabled telepathy, because we we should
Speaker 1: at least give a brief nod to the concept of
Speaker 1: paranormal telepathy. I don't think we need to spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time on this because I think by and large,
Speaker 1: our listeners are are scientific skeptics of one kind or another. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there have been studies into paranormal telepathy, of course,
Speaker 1: and we could go through all all those here today,
Speaker 1: but I think we pretty much decided that this would
Speaker 1: this would take time away from the more pressing studies
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss regarding technological telepathy. Yes, so we'll
Speaker 1: just say very briefly that the scientific community has not
Speaker 1: been convinced that there's ever been any good evidence of
Speaker 1: telepathy from properly controlled studies. Lots of people have claimed
Speaker 1: to find evidence of telepathy, but usually when you look
Speaker 1: at these studies, they're not double blinded, they're not being
Speaker 1: carried out with the kind of strict rigor you expect
Speaker 1: if you want to get a scientific result that that
Speaker 1: you can feel confidence in. Yeah. So, so, by and large,
Speaker 1: we have not seen any convincing evidence that paranormal telepathy exists.
Speaker 1: There doesn't seem to be any known mechanism of action
Speaker 1: for that, so we will leave that to the side
Speaker 1: for today. Yeah, because when it comes to brain to
Speaker 1: brain communication, we have all of these other wonderful systems
Speaker 1: and and equally, I mean even more mind blowing than
Speaker 1: than than brains sending little waves because we're communicating with language.
Speaker 1: We're communicating with all the various expressions and micro expressions
Speaker 1: that are that are rippling across this facial communication ray
Speaker 1: that we all have. Yeah, it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that's uh, it can seem kind of silly to say
Speaker 1: it now, but really just take a second and try
Speaker 1: to step back from human experience and feel the weirdness
Speaker 1: of language. It's language is totally normal to us because
Speaker 1: we use it all the time. But just try to
Speaker 1: pretend you're not a creature that uses language, and look
Speaker 1: at this from the universe's perspective. What a bizarre thing
Speaker 1: we're doing. We're taking electrical patterns in our brain and
Speaker 1: then infecting other people with copies of those patterns by
Speaker 1: making waves in the air. It's freaky. So, setting aside
Speaker 1: any kind of naturally occurring, you know, brain wave telepathy
Speaker 1: situation going on, we're talking about using technology, using the
Speaker 1: technology that we've created and have access to, to serve
Speaker 1: as a bridge between one mind and the next. So
Speaker 1: you might be thinking like, well, wait a minute, how
Speaker 1: could you do this? Let us tell you a story.
Speaker 1: So for years now, scientists have been developing lots of
Speaker 1: different technologies for brain to computer interfaces, or they're often
Speaker 1: known as b C I S brain computer interfaces. And
Speaker 1: in physical terms, it makes sense that you can do
Speaker 1: this because the brain is an electrochemical machine. Things are
Speaker 1: happening inside the brain when you're thinking thoughts, when you're
Speaker 1: performing behaviors, whenever your brain is doing something, there's electrical
Speaker 1: activity going on inside it that is allowing that activity,
Speaker 1: that external activity, or that conscious thought to happen, and
Speaker 1: its activities are expressed in ways for this reason, that
Speaker 1: are detectable by machines that are sensitive to electromagnetism. You
Speaker 1: have to get outside of this idea that your your
Speaker 1: mind is this magical soul or that lives in a
Speaker 1: little meat house in your skull um and just start
Speaker 1: thinking about the meat house itself as as being the thing,
Speaker 1: you know, taking a very uh uh, you know, direct
Speaker 1: approach to what what what is going on with our mind? Yeah,
Speaker 1: not to not to downgrade the beauty and mysteriousness of consciousness,
Speaker 1: which is a wonderfully powerfully strange thing, but when there's
Speaker 1: something happening in your brain, there is electricity concurrent with that,
Speaker 1: and so if you can figure out how to measure
Speaker 1: that electricity, you can somehow represent it as data that's
Speaker 1: usable by technology. So what I've just been talking about
Speaker 1: is neuroimaging, various forms of neuroimaging to take what's going
Speaker 1: on in the brain and understand that with a computer,
Speaker 1: say okay, there's some electrical spiking in this part of
Speaker 1: the brain. Here's here's what's going on with the action
Speaker 1: potentials in in this cortical region, and then stimulate that
Speaker 1: same region in another individual's brain being. So in a sense,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like peeking behind one puppet theater, you know,
Speaker 1: out on the street, like a punch and judy thing, right,
Speaker 1: seeing what what manner of physical manipulations that puppet that
Speaker 1: puppet master is making, and then transmitting or relating those
Speaker 1: exact manipulations to a puppet here within a second puppet theater.
Speaker 1: So that's a great analogy because it encapsulates both what
Speaker 1: you're trying to do and the limitations we have when
Speaker 1: we try to do this. And we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: the limitations at the end. But notice that that what
Speaker 1: you just said would only really make sense if both
Speaker 1: puppet theaters were exactly the same size and had exactly
Speaker 1: the same puppets and the same type of puppets, and
Speaker 1: then to the exact same method of manipulation, which is
Speaker 1: not necessarily the case for the brain, but maybe you
Speaker 1: can get some kind of approximation. You know, your brain
Speaker 1: isn't the exact same as somebody else's brain. Your puppet
Speaker 1: theater is different, but there are some general all rules
Speaker 1: that operate in both puppet theaters that you can exploit.
Speaker 1: So let's look at some of the technologies here. What
Speaker 1: what actual technology would you use if you want to
Speaker 1: scan somebody else's brain and see what's happening inside there. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the most powerful methods we would have would
Speaker 1: be implanted electrodes. You can implant directly into somebody's brain,
Speaker 1: cortical microelectrode arrays which are capable of of recording what's
Speaker 1: going on in the brain. And also what's known as
Speaker 1: intracortical micro stimulation or i c m S, And this
Speaker 1: means you can get both input and output with the brain,
Speaker 1: so you can read the electrical activity to find out
Speaker 1: what's going on, and if you want to stimulate parts
Speaker 1: of the brain, you can provide little bits of electric
Speaker 1: current through these two light up that part of the brain.
Speaker 1: You can also use electro corticography, which is electrodes on
Speaker 1: the exposed surface of the brain. If you want to
Speaker 1: be really weird at out, google pictures of this. Uh.
Speaker 1: But if you don't want to cut your skull open,
Speaker 1: and I think most of us would prefer that method.
Speaker 1: There there are still other ways you can scan what's
Speaker 1: going on in the brain. I think typically they're not
Speaker 1: going to be as sensitive, so there's a drawback. The
Speaker 1: advantages you don't have to go through brain surgery. The
Speaker 1: advantage or the disadvantages you're not gonna get quite as
Speaker 1: much precision with the signals you're receiving. But you can
Speaker 1: use f m r I, so that's functional magnetic resonance imaging,
Speaker 1: So it's like an m r I, except you detect
Speaker 1: real time activity in the brain by mapping blood flow
Speaker 1: to different parts of the brain. There's magneto encephalography, which
Speaker 1: is great. Google pictures of this also. I love telling
Speaker 1: people to Google pictures of things. I think I do
Speaker 1: that pretty often, but this this one is worth it
Speaker 1: because it's a It's a system that detects magnetic field
Speaker 1: fluctuations caused by electrical activity in the brain, and it
Speaker 1: looks like you're wearing a hat the size of a car.
Speaker 1: You're you're kind of like you get in like the
Speaker 1: space jockey scene from Alien and then you put it
Speaker 1: on a hat that's as big as a van with
Speaker 1: tons of the wires and stuff. Yeah, it's gigantic and
Speaker 1: it just goes over your head. And I guess it's
Speaker 1: got to be very sensitive to to detect what's going
Speaker 1: on with these tiny little electrical currents in your brain,
Speaker 1: but it does it. Yeah, And all of these are
Speaker 1: methods that I'm sure that you've heard mentioned on this
Speaker 1: podcast before or in other science podcasts, in science literature,
Speaker 1: these are standard means of looking at the brain and
Speaker 1: figuring out what's going on. Yeah, and then this very
Speaker 1: last one is gonna be crucial. And some of the
Speaker 1: studies we're talking about it's electro and cephalography or e
Speaker 1: E G. You've probably heard of this one before, but
Speaker 1: this one is very appealing because you don't have to
Speaker 1: get into a chair with a hat the size of
Speaker 1: the car. You just put some electrodes on your scalp,
Speaker 1: and the electrodes they go on the skin on your head.
Speaker 1: They're really really sensitive to electricity enough that they can
Speaker 1: read some of the electrical activity in your brain through
Speaker 1: your scalp, though obviously, like we said, it's not nearly
Speaker 1: as sensitive as implanted electrodes um And then of course
Speaker 1: if you want to go so that's all the ways
Speaker 1: we can read what's happening inside your brain. Imagine we
Speaker 1: want to switch to input on the brain. How can
Speaker 1: we put things directly into your brain without the use
Speaker 1: of your senses. Well, of course, like we said, you
Speaker 1: can implant electrodes, So just put some get some brain surgery,
Speaker 1: put those stimulators in your brain and give you little shocks.
Speaker 1: When we want you to experience something, you can use
Speaker 1: focused ultrasound, and that's high frequency sound waves targeted at
Speaker 1: specific parts of the brain. That's experimental. It's been used
Speaker 1: in animals, but I think it's it's not super cool
Speaker 1: to use this in humans yet. And I should throw
Speaker 1: into like most people are familiar with with ultrasound, probably
Speaker 1: from you know, hearing about it, you know, us sort
Speaker 1: of witnessing participating in its use to look inside an
Speaker 1: individual and see what's going on in there inside, particularly
Speaker 1: to look at a at at a grilling fetus, right,
Speaker 1: And that just underlines that that ultrasoience sound, depending on
Speaker 1: the frequency, can be used for something as as pain
Speaker 1: us and mundane is that, or it can be used
Speaker 1: at higher frequencies, much higher frequencies to actually destroy tissue
Speaker 1: in the body, like in cancer. So this is a
Speaker 1: more middle ground where we can use it to stimulate
Speaker 1: but not harm. Little middle ground that's comfortable middle ground
Speaker 1: when you're talking about your brain. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 1: stimulate the tissue. We're not just gonna look at it,
Speaker 1: but we're also not going to just not enough to
Speaker 1: melt it, we promise. And then of course the last
Speaker 1: one we're going to mention is another one that's going
Speaker 1: to be important in the studies we talk about, which
Speaker 1: is transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS. And this is where
Speaker 1: you put a nice friendly electro magnet against your skull,
Speaker 1: carefully aligned over the scalp to target a particular part
Speaker 1: of the brain, and it pulses with electromagnetism to stimulate
Speaker 1: electrical activity in the targeted region in your brain. And
Speaker 1: this is of course the domain of the god helmet
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, countless studies out there anytime we're
Speaker 1: looking at at you know, what's physically going on into
Speaker 1: brain versus what the experience of reality is. You often
Speaker 1: see this technology employed. Yeah, and so for more than
Speaker 1: a decade now, we've seen experiments using methods like this
Speaker 1: to send messages to and from to and from brains,
Speaker 1: between brains and computers. These are brain computer interfaces or
Speaker 1: b C guys. So you can get people to, say,
Speaker 1: control a robot arm with their minds, or control a
Speaker 1: computer cursor with their minds. This is now pretty much
Speaker 1: conquered ground and science. We're still getting better at doing
Speaker 1: it and better at doing it with less invasive procedures,
Speaker 1: but it's a thing we can comfortably do in science
Speaker 1: and technology. Monkey moves a robot with its brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what if instead of communicating with a robot arm
Speaker 1: or with a computer, you just substituted another brain. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: That's where it gets kind of difficult to comprehend. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: stuff is going from inside your brain through a computer
Speaker 1: to another brain and then back the other way. That
Speaker 1: sounds like you have suddenly discovered a technological basis for
Speaker 1: telepathy sharing the contents of our brains, or at least
Speaker 1: some form of brain activity, without talking, without text, without
Speaker 1: any external communication of any kind. It's brain to brain communication.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's let's launch into the studies. We'll
Speaker 1: get more into discussion of what this would be like,
Speaker 1: what the experience of molving your mind via technology would
Speaker 1: consist of. First Let's yeah, let's just launch into some
Speaker 1: of the studies, most of them pretty recent studies dealing
Speaker 1: with technological telepathy. How about some rat to rat brain communication.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm talking about, rat telepathy. It's my favorite.
Speaker 1: How many are there any good novels about rat telepathy?
Speaker 1: They've got to be is that in secretive nim who
Speaker 1: you know? There there are some rats in dungeons and
Speaker 1: dragons where and I love these guys because they're called
Speaker 1: off hand. But each individual rat has a rat intelligence, right,
Speaker 1: but they have a certain amount of of psychic ability.
Speaker 1: So you get two rats together close together, and their
Speaker 1: minds melt and they have the intellect of like a
Speaker 1: double deck or rat brain. But you know, rats, eventually
Speaker 1: they form large groups. Two's company three is Willard, right,
Speaker 1: So you end up with a huge swarm of rats.
Speaker 1: But they their brain powers all pooled together into a
Speaker 1: powerful intellect that's capable of launching uh, you know, psychic
Speaker 1: attacks attack patterns. Yeah. Well, and also just like the
Speaker 1: mental energy, like we have so much mental power, they
Speaker 1: actually have paranormal abilities. Well maybe the people who created
Speaker 1: those for the Dungeons and Dragons manual went ahead and
Speaker 1: a time machine to read about this study that was
Speaker 1: published in Nature called a brain to brain interface for
Speaker 1: real time sharing of sensory motor information. So I'm not
Speaker 1: going to get too much into the details in the
Speaker 1: study because it was very long. In the multiple experiments
Speaker 1: described in the study with lots of different aspects to
Speaker 1: them that we're all individually interesting but kind of technical,
Speaker 1: So I'll give you the broad overview. There's several different experiments,
Speaker 1: and the basic idea is that you've got two rats,
Speaker 1: an encoder rat and a decoder rat. So you take
Speaker 1: both your rats and you train them on a task.
Speaker 1: For example, an led light comes on over one of
Speaker 1: two levers, either a left lever or right lever, and
Speaker 1: then you pick that lever, You pick the correct lever,
Speaker 1: and you get a reward. Now, once the rats have
Speaker 1: been trained on the basic task enough to to be
Speaker 1: good at it, you split them up into encoders and decoders.
Speaker 1: These rats get electrodes implanted in their brains with wires
Speaker 1: running out of their heads, so this probably is not
Speaker 1: an experiment you want to try on your friends at home.
Speaker 1: But the encode rat has a micro electrode array that
Speaker 1: can read its neuronal activity, so essentially it's measuring the
Speaker 1: electrical patterns between cells in the AND like we're talking
Speaker 1: about earlier. And the decode rat also has electrodes and
Speaker 1: implanted in its brain for intracortical micro stimulation or i
Speaker 1: c MS like we mentioned earlier, So the encoder rat
Speaker 1: gets the same familiar stimulus. For example, the the l
Speaker 1: E ed over the left lever lights up, and then
Speaker 1: it goes to press the correct lever to get its reward.
Speaker 1: It presses the left lever, but then the decoder rat
Speaker 1: gets its turn and it doesn't get a clear visual signal.
Speaker 1: Instead of the LED just popping up over the left lever,
Speaker 1: the LED lights come on over both levers instead. What
Speaker 1: happens is that the micro electrode array measures the first
Speaker 1: rats brain activity, then it runs that data through some
Speaker 1: analysis and amplification and sends the output straight down the
Speaker 1: wire into the I i c m S equipment in
Speaker 1: the decoder rats brain. Then the decoder rats brain lights
Speaker 1: up in patterns correlated with the behavior of the encoder rats,
Speaker 1: so that the decoder rat goes to choose a lever
Speaker 1: and the translation was on a perfect It didn't get
Speaker 1: it right every time, but it did a good bit
Speaker 1: better than chance. So, through implanning electrodes in the brain,
Speaker 1: one rat teaches another rat which button to push from
Speaker 1: a separate room. This is rat to rat education with
Speaker 1: no external communication required. It's rat brain to rat brain
Speaker 1: teaching you how to get a reward, all right, and
Speaker 1: you only have to throw out the stimulus once. You
Speaker 1: only have to flip the switch once. It's like it's
Speaker 1: like each rat is a string of Christmas lights and
Speaker 1: you've just connected them together. Yeah, and so note that
Speaker 1: this study was complex. It involved a bunch of other
Speaker 1: interesting stuff as well, like UH commentary on the rats
Speaker 1: as a cooperative di AD computing team, and then UH
Speaker 1: stuff about feedback from one rat to the other, like
Speaker 1: the encoder rat also getting positive feedback a reward for
Speaker 1: when the decoder rat did things right. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: this is is the creation of a rat to rat
Speaker 1: brain to brain interface, which they called a bt b I,
Speaker 1: and this is a pretty cool study. One of the
Speaker 1: things I found very interesting is they said, quote, it
Speaker 1: remains to be explained how the brain simultaneously integrates information
Speaker 1: generated by direct I c MS and by natural stimuli,
Speaker 1: for example, real whisker stimulation. And that's referring to a
Speaker 1: second test they did where the rats were supposed to
Speaker 1: judge real versus virtual width of an opening by by
Speaker 1: touch on the whiskers. Okay, because they're essentially incorporating both
Speaker 1: natural stimuli and this new you know, unnatural stimuli, you
Speaker 1: will into into their single experience. Right, So how does
Speaker 1: the rat like what's imagine you are the rat, and
Speaker 1: how does the rat differentiate between between stimulation coming in
Speaker 1: through the brain that's just like the brain being electrically
Speaker 1: stimulated and the real sensory information it's getting from its
Speaker 1: eyes and its whiskers. Can it tell the difference? How
Speaker 1: how does that information get put together? We don't really
Speaker 1: know because we have not done such experiments on humans
Speaker 1: for obvious reasons, So we don't know what the experience
Speaker 1: is like for the rat. But it's at least powerful
Speaker 1: enough that the rat can perform tasks based on this
Speaker 1: incoming brain information. But you know rat to rat is
Speaker 1: one thing. Yeah, I think we need to do some
Speaker 1: cross species telepathy. Yeah, we want to get a little
Speaker 1: Willard E here and talk about human to rat mind control.
Speaker 1: And this study tattled non invasive brain to brain interface
Speaker 1: establishing functional links between two brains is from April and Uh.
Speaker 1: In this particular study, a US South Korean team investigated, uh,
Speaker 1: that classic question how might a human wag a rat's
Speaker 1: tale using only their brain and brain to brain interface
Speaker 1: system that shockingly requires no surgical implantation. So in this
Speaker 1: particular experience of how it went down, First, the human
Speaker 1: controller is hooked up to to that e G. Based
Speaker 1: brain computer interface. Again we're talking electro in cephalography. Um,
Speaker 1: it's in this the monitoring system. Generally it's based on
Speaker 1: scout based electrodes to record electrical activity of the brain.
Speaker 1: Then they hooked the rat up to a focused ultrasound
Speaker 1: based computer to brain interface and uh, these again have
Speaker 1: high frequency sound waves uh that are that are going
Speaker 1: into the tissue. Uh, not enough to do any damage. Next,
Speaker 1: they hit the human with some visual stimulation to invoke
Speaker 1: a little uh steady state visually evoked potential. So we're
Speaker 1: talking strobe light flashes here. The researchers were then able
Speaker 1: to identify the same burst frequency in the humans brain. Okay,
Speaker 1: then the humans b c I detects this and then
Speaker 1: transfers that that same pattern to the focused ultrasound based
Speaker 1: cb I on the rat, targeting the region of the
Speaker 1: rat's brain that controls its tail, and this causes the
Speaker 1: tail to move with the same frequency that's flashing through
Speaker 1: the humans mind, the same frequency this flashing on the
Speaker 1: strobe lights. Creepy, yeah, and the rat. Yeah. These six
Speaker 1: different humans and six different rats in this experiment with
Speaker 1: success rate. So, I mean, there's a lot of these experiences.
Speaker 1: They may not seem all that amazing when you break
Speaker 1: it down into these simple parts, but you really have
Speaker 1: to look at what's being done, and most importantly, what's
Speaker 1: being done completely non evasively. If it seems simple, that's
Speaker 1: because the experiment breaks down thought and action into simple components,
Speaker 1: which is always kind of both overwhelming and underwhelming at
Speaker 1: the same time. When you when you see something that
Speaker 1: we think of as magical, like thought, broken down into
Speaker 1: the physical actions that constitute it, it just kind of
Speaker 1: seems like really that's all there is, all right, So
Speaker 1: what's next on the plate. Then we've gone we've gone
Speaker 1: rat to rat, we've gone human to rat. What's next, Oh,
Speaker 1: we gotta go human to human? Okay, okay? So here
Speaker 1: was another study came out in ten called conscious Brain
Speaker 1: to brain Communication and Humans using Noninvasive Technologies, published in
Speaker 1: Plos one. And here are the basics. You've got a
Speaker 1: cinder in India and recipients in France. So here we're
Speaker 1: we're the cinder wears an e G cap like we're
Speaker 1: saying stuff on the scalp to text electrical activity in
Speaker 1: the brain, and the recipients sit under a different thing
Speaker 1: than we've seen before, one of those transcranial magnetic stimulation
Speaker 1: coils or TMS coils. And uh and like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: what this does is it generates an electromagnetic field, so
Speaker 1: it stimulates the brain with electrical activity at the sender's end.
Speaker 1: There are some code words, so the sender with the
Speaker 1: e G cap gets code words chow and o lah
Speaker 1: a couple of different kind of European hellos and had
Speaker 1: to translate them into binary code. So that's ones and
Speaker 1: zeros are on and off switches, and then the sender
Speaker 1: had to think about different actions to represent each one
Speaker 1: and zero in the string to spell the word. So
Speaker 1: for example, thinking about moving your hands could be a
Speaker 1: one and thinking about moving your feet could be a zero,
Speaker 1: and then they thought out the binary string. So if
Speaker 1: to spell a law, it would be like, you know,
Speaker 1: zero one, zero, you have to think about feet and
Speaker 1: then think about moving your hands, and then think about
Speaker 1: moving your feet, but on and on as you would
Speaker 1: have to do to spell the whole word. So the
Speaker 1: e G measured those different electrical patterns, sent them to
Speaker 1: the computer, and then that was sent five thousand miles
Speaker 1: over the Internet to the recipients t MS coils. The
Speaker 1: TMS coils caused the recipients to experience this is great
Speaker 1: phosphenes or vision of lights. So you're sitting under this coil,
Speaker 1: you're sitting in the chair, and suddenly you might see
Speaker 1: dots or lines sort of visual light hallucination patterns pop
Speaker 1: up in your vision. And it's caused by when the
Speaker 1: pulses of electromagnetism come through the t M S coil,
Speaker 1: and so different kinds of visions translated into ones and zeros,
Speaker 1: of code, and once you got your string of ones
Speaker 1: and zeros from the t MS code, you could translate
Speaker 1: that back into text from the binary code. And thus
Speaker 1: brain to brain communication of coded messages in language was
Speaker 1: achieved over five thousand miles. You see some of the
Speaker 1: media reports, it sounds like they're kind of gushing over
Speaker 1: the fact that it was five thousand miles, like the
Speaker 1: distance matters a lot when it comes down to the
Speaker 1: use of the Internet, you know, yeah, exactly. To me,
Speaker 1: maybe there's something I didn't understand, but to me that
Speaker 1: the distance didn't really seem to matter. I mean, once
Speaker 1: you've got a decoded brain signal on the Internet sent
Speaker 1: to somebody else and then reek aded back into the
Speaker 1: message it was supposed to be, it's the Internet, And
Speaker 1: why does it matter if it's one mile or a
Speaker 1: hundred miles or a thousand miles. Yeah exactly. But anyway
Speaker 1: that that that's some human to human text communication. But
Speaker 1: then there's another one, and this one got some interesting
Speaker 1: media attention. I actually wrote about this last year for
Speaker 1: a forward Thinking video, but it was also published in
Speaker 1: Plos one, and it was called a direct brain to
Speaker 1: brain interface and humans. And this involves a video game.
Speaker 1: So it's it's cooperative gaming. No, it didn't sound like
Speaker 1: a very good video I'm looking at the image right now.
Speaker 1: It's one of these video games. Yeah, it sounded like
Speaker 1: I think it was one of those free video games. No,
Speaker 1: it may have been designed purposefully for this study. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It looks it looks kind of boring. Yes, So,
Speaker 1: researchers at the University of Washington published this study showing
Speaker 1: they were they were able to establish a non invasive
Speaker 1: brain to brain interface between pete which allowed them to
Speaker 1: cause movements in a different person's body without speech across
Speaker 1: the internet to play the game. So it works this way.
Speaker 1: One person sits in a room with the ability to
Speaker 1: look at a screen. The screen has the game on it,
Speaker 1: and what you see on the game is that there's
Speaker 1: a pirate ship launching rockets at a city, and you've
Speaker 1: got control of a cannon that can shoot down the
Speaker 1: rockets if you time the cannon shot right. So you've
Speaker 1: got to wait until the pirate ship shoots a rocket,
Speaker 1: and then when it does, you shoot your cannon to
Speaker 1: shoot the rocket and knock it out of the sky.
Speaker 1: Pretty simple, right, But the problem is you can't press
Speaker 1: a button. The only person who has a controller to
Speaker 1: control the game is in a different room across the campus,
Speaker 1: different buildings, like exactly right. So you are sitting there
Speaker 1: watching the screen of the game with an e G
Speaker 1: cap on your head. And when you see that it's
Speaker 1: time to press that button to shoot down the rocket,
Speaker 1: you think, move my hand. You don't move your hand,
Speaker 1: You just think move my hand. The e G cap
Speaker 1: records that and says, oh, okay, it's time. Since that
Speaker 1: information across the internet to the room which has the
Speaker 1: other person sitting in it. Now, this person cannot see
Speaker 1: the screen that the game is being played on, but
Speaker 1: this person has the ability to press the button to
Speaker 1: fire the rocket. And when the when the timing is right,
Speaker 1: when the signal arrives, it activates a t MS coil
Speaker 1: that causes their hand to jerk. And when that causes
Speaker 1: their hand to jerk, they press a button that says
Speaker 1: fire the rocket. That signal goes back to the game
Speaker 1: and fires the rocket. So you have to so neither
Speaker 1: one can play the game alone. They have to cooperate
Speaker 1: to play the game, and they can't talk about it.
Speaker 1: It's just thought to thought to action, all right. I
Speaker 1: think that makes that makes sense. I think everybody's falling
Speaker 1: along with that. So so what was the success rate? Like,
Speaker 1: how did that? How did these uh weirdly conjoined individuals
Speaker 1: um perform in this simple game? So there were three
Speaker 1: pairs of subjects and they correctly identified and destroyed eighty
Speaker 1: three point three percent, twenty five percent, and thirty seven
Speaker 1: point five percent of the rockets, respectively during the the
Speaker 1: experimental games, and then they had a zero percent success
Speaker 1: rate during control games. So they did better in the
Speaker 1: experimental games where real information was being transmitted than in
Speaker 1: the control games when it wasn't. So there are several
Speaker 1: takeaways from this. One of the things that I think
Speaker 1: is interesting about this is that the receiver's action is
Speaker 1: not conscious. They're not thinking, they're not getting a message
Speaker 1: that they're decoding. They're just being caused to jerk, all right.
Speaker 1: So they're not hearing a voice in their head that's
Speaker 1: saying saying, shoot it now, push the button, now, push
Speaker 1: the button now. It's just happening. No, they're they're getting
Speaker 1: some magnetism that says, uh, Suddenly their hand moves and
Speaker 1: they press a button. Uh. There are three takeaways that
Speaker 1: the authors of the study came up with. So they said,
Speaker 1: one of the takeaways from the study is that we've
Speaker 1: got the technology now that's sufficient to develop devices for
Speaker 1: rudimentary brain to brain communication. So that's one of the
Speaker 1: things they say. They've demonstrated it's already here. We can
Speaker 1: do it now, though it is rudimentary. The second thing
Speaker 1: they point out is that working brain to brain interfaces
Speaker 1: can be built out of non invasive technologies. Neither person
Speaker 1: here required a brain implant. Uh, they it was e g.
Speaker 1: To the transcranial magnetic stimulation. And then the third thing
Speaker 1: they point out is that this is very rudimentary, but
Speaker 1: the fact that it can be done at all means
Speaker 1: we need to start having a conversation between atist neuroscientists
Speaker 1: and regulatory agencies on the ethical, moral, and societal implications
Speaker 1: of b b I. S Uh. They're they're talking. They're
Speaker 1: about the ones that could grow in the future out
Speaker 1: of the rudimentary technologies that are being developed now. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: setting the stage for the whole world of neural security, right,
Speaker 1: neuro security protecting our our our thoughts and emotions and
Speaker 1: true feelings from all those technologically enhanced scanners out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now there's an even more recent study on this, right,
Speaker 1: there was one that came out just in September of
Speaker 1: this year in September, where it was not exactly the
Speaker 1: same group, but most of the same scientists, uh, some
Speaker 1: of the same authors from that that previous one published
Speaker 1: again in p o OS one a study called Playing
Speaker 1: twenty Questions with the Mind Collaborative problem solving by humans
Speaker 1: using a brain to brain interface. And it was a
Speaker 1: set up a lot like the last one. It was
Speaker 1: pretty much just the same with cinder with the g
Speaker 1: and a receiver using a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil. But
Speaker 1: instead what they did here, instead of playing a video
Speaker 1: game together, they got them to trade coded messages in
Speaker 1: order to play a game of twenty questions without talking. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is communication that goes beyond merely just push
Speaker 1: that button, push that button, right, and but it's still
Speaker 1: one of the things worth pointing out is that it
Speaker 1: is still coded communication. Now that they had a pretty
Speaker 1: high success rate, the setup is a is a whole
Speaker 1: lot like the last experiment. You've got to you've got
Speaker 1: a cinder wearing an e G cap to read their brain,
Speaker 1: and you've got a receiver under a t MS coil
Speaker 1: to uh to give them information. Except what's different here
Speaker 1: is that instead of the t MS coil giving somebody
Speaker 1: a jerk hand movement in the hand, it gives them
Speaker 1: what we were talking about earlier, a phosphene of vision,
Speaker 1: and they can use that to decode information sent by
Speaker 1: the person in the e G cap. And by trading
Speaker 1: information back and forth this way, by being able to
Speaker 1: answer yes or no questions by sending them a phosphene
Speaker 1: or not, these people can ask and answer questions to
Speaker 1: play a game of twenty questions to guess an object
Speaker 1: without any words or language. So the basic ideas say
Speaker 1: you have a parakeet in mind, the person asks a
Speaker 1: question that they select from a square from a screen,
Speaker 1: like can this thing fly? And then the person in
Speaker 1: the e G cap gives a stimulus by looking at
Speaker 1: two different lights to answer yes or no, And then
Speaker 1: that goes back to the person who answered the question
Speaker 1: and they get They get a sense of whether the
Speaker 1: answer is yes or no by whether or not they
Speaker 1: get this vision of light from the from the coil,
Speaker 1: and by going back and forth this way they can
Speaker 1: solve the puzzle and eventually figure out what the object is.
Speaker 1: And this set up allowed the people in the experimental
Speaker 1: group to win seventy two percent of the games. And
Speaker 1: so there's a control group where no genuine information was
Speaker 1: being traded back and forth, and only eight percent of
Speaker 1: those participants were all to correctly identify the object. So
Speaker 1: pretty cool. This is twenty questions without words. Well, actually
Speaker 1: know there were words because you had to select the
Speaker 1: questions to go back and forth, but the answers didn't
Speaker 1: require words. It was just coded brain signals, the flashes
Speaker 1: of light in the mind. Yeah, okay, So the authors
Speaker 1: themselves point out a couple of limitations at the end.
Speaker 1: One of them is that the kind of obvious thing
Speaker 1: is that this doesn't necessarily provide any better communication than talking, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's it feels very hamstrong that you're having to
Speaker 1: to to rely on this convoluted method of flashes, where
Speaker 1: when really we have far better means of communication and artists,
Speaker 1: it would be much easier to play the game by
Speaker 1: by text messages or just by talking. But they point
Speaker 1: out how well, even something like this could probably help
Speaker 1: in somebody who has UH, for example, the inability to
Speaker 1: move or speak if it broke as aphasia or something
Speaker 1: like that, um or if it's being played between people
Speaker 1: who don't speak the same language. So so that that's
Speaker 1: possibly a good point. But then they also point out
Speaker 1: that this is just sort of a proof of concept
Speaker 1: for technologies that could become much more power and powerful
Speaker 1: and sensitive in the future, and that's the real question. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing they point out is a
Speaker 1: limitation of their own study, is that it doesn't allow
Speaker 1: bi directional transfer of information. The information is going from
Speaker 1: one person to the other, but it would be very
Speaker 1: interesting to hook up both the sender and the recipient,
Speaker 1: or both people at least with both capabilities. So you've
Speaker 1: got an e G and a t MS coil and
Speaker 1: you can send information back and forth both ways, which
Speaker 1: is when things would really start getting creepy. All right,
Speaker 1: So there's a taste of where we are with the type,
Speaker 1: with the with the research and the technology where and
Speaker 1: in an idea of where we may be going. So
Speaker 1: how do we prepare for and what's it gonna be
Speaker 1: like as these more advanced telepathic technologies become available and
Speaker 1: even become a part of our life. Well, I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting because it's a question whether these have really
Speaker 1: changed that concern we brought up at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the episode about linguistic versus non linguistic telepathy. Um, if
Speaker 1: it's just saying that you will be able to send
Speaker 1: coded messages like like this kind of binary morse code
Speaker 1: type thing we were talking about earlier between brains, that's
Speaker 1: one thing. If it were to somehow become the case
Speaker 1: that you could send something more complex and difficult to quantify,
Speaker 1: like a non encoded thought or memory or something like that,
Speaker 1: that would be very interesting. But I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's even possible, because, like we talked about with our
Speaker 1: puppet theater analogy, your puppet theater is not exactly the
Speaker 1: same as somebody else's puppet theater. They can't just put
Speaker 1: electrodes in your brain and say, well, I'm going to
Speaker 1: share this, uh, this image by lighting up exactly the
Speaker 1: same neurons in your brain that are lit up in
Speaker 1: somebody else's brain. You don't have the same neurons as them.
Speaker 1: Everybody's brain is going to be a little bit different.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure how that would even work without
Speaker 1: some kind of encoding back and forth. And this is
Speaker 1: something that's been pointed out in some of the criticism
Speaker 1: of these studies and the supposed implications of it, Again,
Speaker 1: they are just sending coded messages, right, It's still basically language.
Speaker 1: It's not emotions. Ideas thoughts though the one about making
Speaker 1: the hand jerk or making the tail wag is kind
Speaker 1: of interesting because that's motor control. But for the most
Speaker 1: part of these situations where you could still lie, it's
Speaker 1: not like it's so this direct, you know, unfiltered communication system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what would that be like that? That's the thing
Speaker 1: I keep coming back to, what would what would it
Speaker 1: be like to have this communal mind experience with someone else?
Speaker 1: And in researching this, I came across a really cool
Speaker 1: u A in magazine article by Peter Watt's titled Hive Consciousness.
Speaker 1: And in this he points out that the brain that
Speaker 1: makes us who we are, you know, essentially, it quotes,
Speaker 1: spreads across two cerebritl hemispheres connected by the corpus colossum,
Speaker 1: a fat, meaty pipe more than two hundred million accents thick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this sort of the idea that you've already got two
Speaker 1: brains in a way, and in fact, he points out
Speaker 1: that if you were to cleave these hemispheres in two
Speaker 1: and that's indeed a last ditch surgery that sometimes a
Speaker 1: uh SEE employee to deal with to deal with certain
Speaker 1: forms of epilepsy, each half would go its own way,
Speaker 1: developing its own taste and beliefs. And to support this,
Speaker 1: he points to uh a talk that was given by
Speaker 1: noted neuroscientist Villano Ramaschandren at the two thousand six Beyond
Speaker 1: Belief Conference, and you can find video of this on YouTube.
Speaker 1: I'll try and link to the clip on the landing
Speaker 1: page for this episode of Stuff to Boil Your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. But Ramachandren points the he shares an account
Speaker 1: of a split brain patient with a Christian hemisphere and
Speaker 1: an atheist one UH and they have to end up
Speaker 1: having to teach the hemispheres to communicate with each other.
Speaker 1: So the the general idea here, I think was that
Speaker 1: he's saying that the corpus colosum helps uh homogenize the
Speaker 1: two different brains. It creates the conscious illusion that your
Speaker 1: hemispheres are in accord with one another. But if you're
Speaker 1: able to sever them and you don't have this high
Speaker 1: bandwidth connection between them, they're very much two different minds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not a gradual separation either. It's not like
Speaker 1: a musical duo breaking up and then each struggles for
Speaker 1: years to find their own solo identity. You know, this
Speaker 1: side of the brain eventually becomes atheists, and this side
Speaker 1: eventually becomes a believer. No, scientists can actually induce hemispheric
Speaker 1: isolation chemically in the brain, just shutting it down uh
Speaker 1: and uh and then watching just without any delay that
Speaker 1: the undrugged hemisphere sort of coming into its own, becoming
Speaker 1: the primary decider, developing a whole new personality right there
Speaker 1: in front of so, Like I I a neesthetize your
Speaker 1: left brain and I suddenly see your right brain evil
Speaker 1: twin emerges the dominant personality, which was really only half
Speaker 1: of you before. Yeah, it reminds me of a character
Speaker 1: in the Culture book by Enim Banks consider Flibus. There's
Speaker 1: a character name uh Craiklin who has enhanced hemispheric task
Speaker 1: division in his brain, but basically he sleeps with one
Speaker 1: eye open. He can use a uni hemispheric sleep much
Speaker 1: like a you know, like many animals out there that
Speaker 1: never completely put their brain under uh. So, one third
Speaker 1: of the time, one half of his brain sleeps and
Speaker 1: he's a bit dreamy and vague. Another third of the
Speaker 1: time he's all logic in numbers and doesn't communicate all
Speaker 1: that well. And only one third of the time is
Speaker 1: he fully awake with both sides of his brain making
Speaker 1: up who he is. That's pretty cool, yeah, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's it's interesting to think of it in terms
Speaker 1: of Ramachandren's example. He he jokingly pointed out, what happens
Speaker 1: if this individual dies? Does half his brain go to
Speaker 1: heaven and one half go to hell? And uh? And
Speaker 1: it makes us ask some difficult questions about consciousness itself,
Speaker 1: because consciousness remains something of a mystery and when we
Speaker 1: have a hell of a time unraveling and as author
Speaker 1: our Scott Backer points that, we're trying to explain the
Speaker 1: magic of a coin trick, right, but we're in a
Speaker 1: horrible position because we are the magic that we're trying
Speaker 1: to understand. We're trying to explain consciousness. You mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: with consciousness and then but ultimately with any any time
Speaker 1: time we try and tackle our you know, our our
Speaker 1: cognition and our and our brain activity, and certainly we
Speaker 1: try to translate it into another being or try to
Speaker 1: bring two of them together. We have to we have
Speaker 1: to unravel the magic of the human experience. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we mentioned this earlier. I mean, when you start under
Speaker 1: understanding consciousness for some reason, that's kind of a scary thing.
Speaker 1: Like we we like this magical illusion of the unified
Speaker 1: self to to persist. And when you start separating consciousness
Speaker 1: in to constituent parts or understanding I mean we I'm
Speaker 1: not saying we fully understand consciousness, but even understanding little
Speaker 1: bits that might inform how it comes together, it's a
Speaker 1: little alarming. You don't like the idea that your consciousness
Speaker 1: can be explained via, you know, a combination of different
Speaker 1: processes in the brain. But one of the scary things
Speaker 1: here is is the implication, going back to brain to
Speaker 1: brain interfaces, that what if combining different brains with technology
Speaker 1: in different skulls will become just as seamless as combining
Speaker 1: the two hemispheres of your brain via the corpus colossum. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's such that maybe our producer Null and our
Speaker 1: other co host, Christian would link their brains up via
Speaker 1: computer and it wouldn't feel like they were two different
Speaker 1: brains connected. It would just feel like they were one brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like essentially would be like you know, like a Vultron
Speaker 1: scenario or or or like an assemblage of of keywords.
Speaker 1: So like, oh, we we need somebody who's really good
Speaker 1: at maritime law, but we also need somebody who really
Speaker 1: it's really tuned into pop culture and we need to
Speaker 1: go out and speak. Well, what can we do? Well,
Speaker 1: let's just take these two individuals, hook them up together
Speaker 1: and make them manifest a new individual who is a
Speaker 1: perfect uh you know, convergence of those two uh skill sets. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: now again, I want to say, who knows if such
Speaker 1: a thing as possible? We don't want to get to
Speaker 1: uh to hype heavy here and suggest that we we've
Speaker 1: now demonstrated that it's possible to link brains up in
Speaker 1: a way that they seamlessly combined. But just the mere
Speaker 1: possibility of that is a very like human experience changing proposition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and what are the legal ramifications? So if if me,
Speaker 1: if you and I, if we conjoined our brains with
Speaker 1: some fancy helmets and essentially became this different mind state,
Speaker 1: and in that mind state broke a law or invented something,
Speaker 1: you know, who owns that invention? Who's responsible for that crime.
Speaker 1: And then it gets even weirder if you look at
Speaker 1: our own brains and think of it as two halves
Speaker 1: of brains that are connected together. It's like which individual
Speaker 1: has the right to exist and even his personhood that
Speaker 1: the Joe Robert being Joe Robert or the two halves
Speaker 1: of Joe in your head and the two halves of
Speaker 1: Robert in mind. I mean, do you think it's possible
Speaker 1: for one hemisphere of your brain to conspire to kill
Speaker 1: the other one? Yeah, or sue it, or or get
Speaker 1: out of some sort of a neural divorce. We will
Speaker 1: be all right, brain from now on. Uh yeah. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: if we've got you worried about this based on this
Speaker 1: final discussion, it is a good thing to consider in
Speaker 1: the long run. But please do remember that these these
Speaker 1: experiments we've been talking about in this episode don't indicate
Speaker 1: anything like that yet. Like we we certainly don't want
Speaker 1: to get into the overhype machine that the types of communication,
Speaker 1: not the overhype machine, but maybe the over dream machine.
Speaker 1: You like, take these and run wild with the possibilities,
Speaker 1: But don't you know, this is still super super rudimentary communication.
Speaker 1: Like we said, it's it's very coded, It requires extremely
Speaker 1: bulky and difficult and expensive equipment, and it's it's it's
Speaker 1: impressive in one sense that it can be done at all,
Speaker 1: But what can be done with it is not that
Speaker 1: impressive yet. Indeed, who knows how impressive it will be
Speaker 1: or is impressive the right word? Who knows how daunting
Speaker 1: and uh and mind bending it will be? Yeah? Game changing? Alright. Well,
Speaker 1: there you have it, a little exploration into technological telepathy
Speaker 1: and some of the possible near future and far future ramifications.
Speaker 1: Before we head out here, I just want to remind everyone, Hey,
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