7 replies to this topic

[eternaltraveler]

In multiple instances for reasons dealing with neurological problems it has been necessary to cut the connection between a person's right and left hemispheres of their brain.

This has resulted in two separate people residing in the same body. One person sees with one eye, and hears with one ear. The connection between them, the corpus callosum, formerly combined these two people as one.

Now, my point is this; connecting two or more minds together could be a relativly simple feat of conecting their corpus callosums together. You wouldn't have to connect every part of their brains, only this one part which is a natural device for the connecting of minds.

[eternaltraveler]

actually my point was that it might be possible to connect two or more people together forming one will utilizing the corpus callosum as the means of connection.

[eternaltraveler]

No, I do find it interesting. It does show that damaging the corpus callosum does seem to disasciaote one mind into more than one (on some level even if one mind only gets a hand). A similar kind of brain injury, caused on purpose by neuro surgeons, has been used to disconnect the two hemispehers of the brain. Essecially forming two minds in some cases. This lead me to my idle conjeture that it might be possible to use the corpus callosum as a means to interface with the brain directly that is already built into it. The reason I put under brain computer interfacing is that the corpus callosum seems to me to be the ideal interface to connect a human brain too.

Lets hope Oscrazor finds this thread. I to would like to see his input.

[Lazarus Long]

The first time some coach told me there is no *I* in team I responded:

"Yes that is true but there is a *me.*

Needless to say he wasn't pleased.

*Me* wasn't on the team for long as being right isn't always what it is cracked up to be.

Blending consciousness is either a team effort or it is a competition and as it reflects reality for our experience, the likelihood is that it is both.

As a team of *me,* the entity of merged selves, like a team, is a "sum greater than the whole". There can be star players and bench warmers but the team exists as an *entity* onto itself; a blending of merged personalities with a common purpose.

When most teams experience the internecine struggles of egos they implode and become *uncompetitive*. However some teams compete for sport and others for power yet the most common *team,* that pack animal of human tribal clan origin called the family, competes for survival.

Blending consciousness will be a question of degree but it functions on a level of existential dualism. Not too dissimilar in certain respects to modern mysticism except it will belief in sensory experience that drives the merger of self. If you and I or any other person began to share a common number of memories then at some point who claims to be the original?

The merger of consciousness is only an extension of sexual bonding reflecting a concept derived of haploid recombination based on individual selectivity. At some point when this selection process reaches a state of total rapport the next level is like the team an entity all onto itself.

If you want to call this the Borg you would be mistaken but not far wrong either. The question becomes: To what degree the individual participation is voluntary versus obligatory?

[Lazarus Long]

For example, on the dark side of nefarious compulsory mental shareware try reading this issue. This belongs in politics but like so much of the physics of society it is relevant here too. Sort of.

FCC to Regulate Home Computers

PDF Report
http://scrawford.net.....FCC Brief.pdf

Topic Discussion Blog

Edited by Lazarus Long, 17 November 2004 - 02:58 AM.

[ocsrazor]

Hi gang. Unfortunately elrond, the information stream in the corpus callosum is highly preprocessed and we have no idea what the cortical code in the CC represents, so interfacing to that area will be a long while yet. Even just providing a straight connection electronically would require massively invasive surgery, huge numbers of tiny electrodes, and a lot of upstream and downstream filtering.

If you really wanted to stretch it (pun intended) you could literally grow neurons through mechanical stretching, and surgically attach them to create artificially constructed siamese twins. But once again, massively invasive and number of surgeries required would probably be prohibitive. Sounds a little Gigeresque too - ewwww

Also, this type of interfacing would probably be very likely to cause some form of mental instability if done in an adult brain. Those type of dense interconnectivities probably have to develop over an extended period to be dynamically stable. Suddenly interfacing two extremely complex systems with no transition is probably not going to turn out the way you would hope.

Seriously, the best bet for interfacing in the near future is the sensory systems because the coding is fairly straightforward (as compared to the cortex) and the interface devices are already well underway. Nobody has any idea how to get information directly into the cortex yet, except through the sensory systems - the way it gets in naturally. Midrange (25-50 years) you will probably see the hippocampal interfaces start to come into play. Just shared sensory experience at light speed is going to offer quite a bit of opportunity for group-think if that is what your after.

Best,
Peter