NeuroScience Fiction by Rodrigo Quian Quiroga

Author:Rodrigo Quian Quiroga
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781950665228
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.
Published: 2020-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

* Dick also wrote the story Blade Runner was based upon, as discussed in chapter two.

* Determinism was later set aside with the emergence of quantum mechanics in the early twentieth century. According to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle—one of the pillars of quantum mechanics—we cannot simultaneously know the exact position and speed of a particle. Therefore, the idea of Laplace’s demon is not possible, not due to a practical matter, but because it would violate the laws of physics, which limit our knowledge of the state of the particles that compose the universe. However, beyond this criticism of determinism, the arguments against free will continue to be valid, because the uncertainty in quantum mechanics happens at a microscopic scale, too small to influence the behavior of neurons.

The idea that quantum effects can explain the brain’s behaviors was, however, proposed by the acclaimed mathematician Roger Penrose in his book The Emperor’s New Mind (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989). Although this idea, stated without much scientific foundation—almost like saying if we don’t understand how the brain works, there must be a quantum effect—was, save for rare exceptions, unanimously rejected by the scientific community. For more information, see Christof Koch and Klaus Hepp, “Quantum Mechanics in the Brain,” Nature 440, no. 7084 (2006): 611–612.

* Figure adapted from: Wilder Penfield, “Some Mechanisms of Consciousness Discovered During Electrical Stimulation of the Brain,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 44, no. 2 (1958): 51–66.

* The consciousness that precedes our actions not only gives us the sense of being in control, but also offers us a veto mechanism to resist carrying out an action before executing it. See, for example: Marcel Brass and Patrick Haggard, “To Do or Not to Do: the Neural Signature of Self-Control,” The Journal of Neuroscience 27, no. 34 (2007): 9141–9145.

* A representation of the consequences of Tourette syndrome is portrayed in the 2008 movie Front of the Class (based on the book by the same title), which describes the problems that plagued Brad Cohen, a boy with Tourette’s who constantly faced discrimination at school. Cohen is currently a teacher, striving to be the kind of teacher he would’ve liked to have had.

* The use of these methods has been covered in several New York Times articles.

* Without going into specifics, but to be fair with the attributions, it is worth noting that the origins of chaos theory date back to French mathematician Henri Poincaré, in the early twentieth century. For a thorough and enjoyable introduction to chaos theory, see James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Viking, 1987).

* To be clear, mathematically speaking a complex system is not the same as a chaotic one, but in the context of this discussion, it is not worthwhile to delve into these technical distinctions, so I have used the terms interchangeably.

** The Lyapunov exponent determines the level of sensitivity to the initial conditions or, in other words, how quickly a chaotic system becomes unpredictable.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.