On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 9:21 PM, Brad Paulsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
I happened to catch a program on National Geographic Channel today
entitled "Accidental Genius." It was quite interesting from an AGI
standpoint.
One of the researchers profiled has invented a device that, by sending
electromagnetic pulses through a person's skull to the appropriate spot
in
the left hemisphere of that person's brain, can achieve behavior similar
to
that of an idiot savant in a non-brain-damaged person (in the session
shown,
this was a volunteer college student).
That's Snyder's work.*
http://www.wireheading.com/brainstim/savant.html
http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/index.php/rTMS
Re: savantism,
http://heybryan.org/intense_world_syndrome.html
DIY rTMS:
http://transcenmentalism.org/OpenStim/tiki
(there's a mailing list)
http://heybryan.org/mailing_lists.html
Before being "zapped" by the device, the student is taken through a
series
of exercises. One is to draw a horse from memory. The other is to read
aloud a very familiar "saying" with a slight grammatical mistake in it
(the
word "the" is duplicated, i.e., "the the," in the saying -- sorry I can't
recall the saying used). Then the student is shown a computer screen full
of
"dots" for about 1 second and asked to record his best guess at how many
dots there were. This exercise is repeated several times (with different
numbers of dots each time).
It's not just being zapped, it's being specifically stimulated in a
certain region of the brain; think of it like actually targetting the
visual cortex, or actually targetting the anterior cingulate, the left
ventrolateral amygdala, etc. And that's why this is interesting. I
wrote somewhat about this on my site once:
http://heybryan.org/recursion.html
Specifically, if this can be used to modify attention, then can we use
it to modify attention re: paying attention to attention? Sounds like
a direct path to the singularity to me.
The student is then zapped by the electromagnetic pulse device for 15
minutes. It's kind of scary to watch the guy's face flinch
uncontrollably
as each pulse is delivered. But, while he reported feeling something, he
claimed there was no pain or disorientation. His language facilities were
unimpaired (they zap a very particular spot in the left hemisphere based
on
brain scans taken of idiot savants).
Right. The DIY setups that I have heard of haven't been able to be all
that high-powered due to safety concerns -- not safety re: the brain,
but safety when considering working with superhigh voltages so close
to one's head. ;-)
You can watch the episode on-line here:
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/tv-schedule. It's not scheduled
for
repeat showing anytime soon.
Awesome. Thanks for the link.
That's not a direct link (I couldn't find one). When you get to that Web
page, navigate to Wed, May 7 at 3PM and click the "More" button under the
picture. Unfortunately, the "full-motion" video is the size of a large
postage stamp. The "full screen" view uses "stop motion" (at least i did
on
my laptop using a DSL-based WiFi hotspot). The audio is the same in both
versions.
- Bryan
* Damien Broderick had to correct me on this, once. :-)
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