[MURG] Cortex activity

[Joseph J. Strout]

At 2:11 AM -0400 9/18/03, Thomas Weber wrote:

>Following the MURG discussions I perceive insufficient
>distinction between the mind and the brain. If the the
>brain is the hardware - the mind is the software - the
>flow of information.

Something like that.  I see the mind as a process which is the result 
of the brain's operation, just like the result of the operation of a 
CD player may be music.

>Images of eye viewed objects can be observed on the
>occipital cortex. Could similiar images be observed if
>the person imagines - thinks of the object?

In theory, we think imagination goes all the way back to visual 
cortex, but the activity there is extremely weak.  During dreaming, 
when external inputs are surpressed at the thalamus, then the 
resulting activity in visual cortex is probably much stronger.  But I 
don't think anyone has come up with a way to confirm this 
experimentally.  I certainly can't think of one.

>If so then it would be possible to communicate our
>thoughts to a computer system  via the electrode mesh
>placed like a beret over the cortex.

For a suitably crude definition of "thoughts" perhaps.

>What would be the advantage of such communication as
>far as MU is concerned? The information would flow
>thought by thought from the brain to the computer.
>As the computer processes the information it can be
>fed back to the brain. Eventually the brain and the
>computer would learn to communicate coherently at an
>intimate level.

That's assuming a lot.  Probably it's true to some degree, just as by 
learning to read and type I can communicate semi-coherently with the 
computer now.  But this doesn't have much to do with uplooading.

>  The mind would operate at an enhanced
>efficiency in a binary system made of the brain and
>the computer. The computer would gradually take over
>and..... the mind is uploaded.

No.  I don't understand why this fallacy is so attractive lately. 
What you have described is just a slow, drawn-out way to kill a 
patient.  Much faster to just shoot him.  The things that define the 
patient's identity -- his memories, personality traits, hopes, fears, 
loves, hates, skills, etc. -- these exist in the structures of the 
brain (and not just the cortex, which is a tiny fraction of the 
brain!).  No amount of "communicating" with the brain is going to 
even scratch the surface of all that.  When the brain is destroyed, 
all that identity just goes down the drain, and the patient dies, no 
matter how much he's gotten used to having a computer peripheral.

Mind uploading is the process of creating a functional duplicate of 
the brain.  To do that, you have to capture the ultrastructure of the 
brain.  Nothing else will do.

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