I Became a Savant For a Day
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Here's the news page of the "Centre for the mind" (but it's mostly about media coverage): http://www.centreforthemind.com/newsmedia/WHATSHOT/index.cfm
And Wikipedia on the technology (with no mention of temporary savantism): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulati...
That sounds just like a pre-supervillain scenario in just about every superhero movie I've seen.
Is that about whiskey, isn't it? =)
* https://www.medwow.com/item.php?search_results=&sale_id=...
In theory any sufficiently powerful EM field could kill a person. However it's fortunate that magnetic fields diminish significantly with distance, so the primitive parts of our brain that control bodily functions are relatively protected so I wouldn't be surprised if they start researching ways to use this as a stun weapon.
Handled unproperly they can trigger epileptic seizure.
Furthermore, the effect depends on the brain area you target and the frequency of the stimulus. If you can't aim precisely, you won't get the expected results. For precise aiming, you need to coregister your stimulator with an MRI of your brain.
The research has already been done; I've been reading about this for a couple of years now. It's not fringe science. Cutting-edge, maybe, but not fringe.
In the world outside the machine and his experiments, I like how this statement ties in with Zen/meditation/Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's concept of Flow. I think we can all think of times when we've just been totally aware and immersed. But those are few compared to the too-many times when I've been thinking too much, worrying, and not being aware.
It's unfortunate that most people give up drawing at a young age when the fundamental difficulty of "seeing" properly is conflated with manual dexterity issues.
"The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards.
Has glowing testimonials like: "I have a degree in commercial art and learned more about drawing from this book than I did in four years of undergraduate instruction. If you practice everyday what Ms. Edwards teaches you will be drawing as good as any professional artist in six months. This really is the best book on drawing ever published!"
http://www.amazon.com/New-Drawing-Right-Side-Brain/dp/087477...
It strikes me that different people need different approaches to learn how to make the mental shift. The very fact that it's a right-brained thing means it's impossible to give someone a process. You can explain it at a meta-level, but I think the only thing that really produces the desired result is some sort of suggestive technique--like a koan.
I am starting to believe him. Since I do fantasize about being able to pull out a sketchpad in a public park and draw convincingly and/or do caricatures, I've ordered the book. I feel like I can be open to a non-traditional approach.
Just ordered the book along with another book I've always wanted to get 'Impro by Keith Johnstone'
Contrary to the expectations of most people, life drawing is largely a mechanical process that can be learned. It is very much a matter of learning to "turn off" the part of the brain that interprets images so that you can concentrate on relatively unimportant lower-level visual details, such as the angle at which the contour of a nose intersects the contour of the cheek behind it. The exercises in the book -- copying upside-down pictures, copying pictures in a grid, concentrating on negative space shapes, etc. -- all help do this.
The physical left/right brain distinction, by the way, is speculation on the part of the author; apparently people with damaged right brains are also capable of learning life drawing. It does serve as a useful metaphor, however.
In brief, the neocortex has layers. Inputs from senses arrive at the lowest layer, and the data is propagated upwards through the layers to the top, where inputs from different senses are combined and - simplifying my already simple understanding massively - decisions are made. At the lowest layer of the hierarchy, if it is a visual input, it could be a fragment of a line. This could be combined with neighboring inputs to be an eye, and with more inputs, even further up the hierarchy, to be the face you're looking at.
Importantly, data runs down the hierarchy too. This is your brain making predictions of what to see, hear, feel, etc. Suppose someone says "my hands are cold so I'll put on my dloves" (not a typo). Say this to an English speaker and they will hear "gloves"; their mind has predicted the word "gloves" from context and experience (some Eastern European speakers won't be fooled, since their languages do have the "dl" sound). Or if you're listening to a song, your mind is primed to hear the next note at the right time. If I understand it correctly, cortical columns in some regions basically transmit the signal "song going as expected" - just passing up a summary, not the details. If you hear a wrong note, the prediction fails, and the details get passed up to the next layers instead.
It occurs to me that some of the abilities described might be the result of impairing the prediction mechanism. Qualities of autistic people/savants/TMS-enhanced people were mentioned in the article: -Being unable to recognize the same area when subtle details like shadows were altered. -Being able to draw accurately -Being able to count hundreds of matchsticks.
As mentioned in other comments, accurate drawing requires us to not use the mental categorization we're so used to. Without the prediction mechanism, maybe the details of the inputs propagate higher in the hierarchy, closer to what we might consider consciousness. Similarly, counting matchsticks might require us not to group a heap of matchsticks into "a heap of matchsticks" but instead still see each individual matchstick.
But I Am Not A Neurologist.
...and really that's unavoidable. Absent aspiration, the difference between the /k/ of "sick" and the /t/ of "sit" is not contained in the /k/ or /t/ itself (almost no sound is being emitted during that time) but rather in the offglide of the vowel.
I've often wondered whether it would be possible to temporarily re-engineer myself into a tool for solving a specific hard problem.
I'm just re-reading On Lisp, and I'm struck by the similarity to the bottom-up programming paradigm. You build the language up to your problem, as well as breaking the problem down to your language.
This reminds me of the Focused in Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky. In that case, they were no better than slaves, but one could imagine voluntary focusing. Like the book's protagonist, I was at once horrified by the conditions of the subjects, but thrilled by the prospect of human automation.
The book is full of surprises, of which that's one of the least. Oh, did I say too much?
In any case, I'd be more interested in discussions of my main points.
I feel like I just read a 3a.m. infomercial.
A simple experiment would be a large sample of people do the drawings, all are hooked up to the machine, but it's only turned on for half. Of course, the subjects and the experimenters themselves don't know which ones get the machine actually turned on.
*I am aware that that would not meet the typical definition of singularity. I'm referring more to a leap in technology, then technology inventing itself.
I could find the double 'the' at first sight - am I a savant or what?
"I'm not sure I see how TMS can actually alter the way your brain works" Thats a renown scientist apparantly. Has he not read about the experiments that the main scientist has been doing. WHy can he not see how TMS can alter the way our brain works. How can these renowned scientists not believe the work that the times is reporting, whats wrong with it, why is the times not saying anything about the seemingly contradictory reporting of the views of these scientists?
isn't cannabis works the same way?! =)