MadSci Network: Anatomy
Query:

Re: BioMechanical Human alterations and New Brain waves?

Date: Wed Aug 9 10:50:47 2000
Posted By: Uncle Al Schwartz, Organic synthetic chemist
Area of science: Anatomy
ID: 964763295.An
Message:

Biofeedback has hawked "voluntary brain wave control" for 25+ years.  The 
military entertains hallucinations of soldiers and pilots thinking to their 
equipment.  Psychology and psychiatry worship the EEG, spewing paradigms 
and statistical correlations summing to nothing - douse the patient in 
mind-numbing drugs or fry his brain with electroshock.  Where promises of 
harnessing brain electrical potentials fail to snare the really big grant 
monies, brain magnetic fields (via SQUIDS - superconducting quantum 
interference devices) take up the slack, including input.  Nothing.

The Earth has a fundamental electromagnetic resonance - rings like a bell - 
at lightspeed divided by the ionosphere's circumference, the Schumann 
resonance.  Oddly enough, this is the frequency band credited with normal 
human attentive wakefulness.  Pump noise into a signal and it is called 
"jamming."

The only demonstrated successful brain/device interfaces have been cochlear 
implants for the profoundly deaf.  Given a correlated signal input, the 
brain learns to make some sense of it.  Interfaces between amputated limbs 
and powered prostheses mediated by peripheral nerves have also had some 
success.

Search engines!
"Schumann resonance"  701 hits
"brain interface"     582 hits
"cochlear implant" 10,100 hits

If you want to play man-machine games either as a cyborg (cybernetic 
organism - assembled after the fact) or as an android (born to the 
interface) you will have to invent the field from scratch.  As the first 
one in the stadium, at least you don't have to go through mind-numbing 
piles of scholarly literature.  But remember... if you succeed the mob will 
celebrate you with torches and pitchforks (e.g., genetically engineered 
crops). 



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