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Ready for the mind eraser? + Man who could read letters but not numbers

#1
C C Offline
Science Is Inching Closer To Modifying Our Memories – Are We Ready For The Mind Eraser?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalv...nd-eraser/

INTRO: What if you had access to a technology with the power to short-circuit negative memories before they formed – would you do it? We may not be far away from this science-fiction concept becoming reality, because the technology is already here. It’s called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and a new study just showed how it can be used to disrupt memory formation and potentially help treat conditions linked to negative memories, like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). TMS already has a long list of studies backing it as a treatment for depression, usually when nothing else works. It’s noninvasive (no electrodes in brain tissue needed) and uses magnetic fields to stimulate targeted nerve cells in the brain to trigger a response. In the latest study, TMS was used to interfere with memory consolidation in the prefrontal cortex, seat of our brain’s executive functions... (MORE)



The mysterious case of man who can read letters—but not numbers—exposes roots of consciousness
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/...plex-roots

EXCERPTS: In the video, the man sounds creeped out. “This is too strange for words,” he mutters. He’s holding a plate-size, green foam 8. When upright, it looks to him like an incoherent jumble. But when he rotates it 90°, the shape snaps into focus; it looks like “a mask.” He begins to rotate the numeral back and forth, watching it melt and cohere over and over. He finally hands it to a nearby scientist, saying, “You gotta take that away.”

This man, known as RFS [...] RFS can read words and letters just fine. But as researchers report this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he cannot see numerals at all -- at least not consciously. His amazingly specific deficit could help neuroscientists understand how conscious awareness arises in the brain. “What it tells me,” says Christof Koch, a neuroscientist at the Allen Institute who specializes in consciousness, “is that … you can get dissociation between cognition and consciousness.”

RFS [...] discovered that he had a disease called corticobasal syndrome, which kills off brain cells. Then, numbers began to look strange to RFS. The 4 on a clock might flip backward, for instance. Eventually, numerals deteriorated into messy, unrecognizable “spaghetti” blobs -- a disaster for someone who did math all the time. ... Yet he could still do mental arithmetic and perform other mathematical operations. And strangely, although the digits 2 through 9 were scrambled, 0 and 1 looked normal ... perhaps because they have associations with deep concepts such as absence and unity, which might allow his brain to process them. He eventually mastered an entirely new digit system...

[...] tests also revealed that RFS’s deficit is not a simple visual malfunction. After all, he could see the foam 8’s shape clearly in certain orientations. Rather, the deficit depended on his interpretation: As soon as his unconscious brain circuits registered a number, everything went haywire. That he could still interpret letters, Schubert says, lends support to the idea that the brain has a specialized module for processing numbers. ... Perhaps more important, RFS’s deficit could shed light on how conscious awareness arises. In another test, the JHU scientists showed him large numbers and letters with tiny drawings of faces embedded inside them. When viewing the letters with embedded faces, RFS reported seeing both... (MORE - details)
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#2
Syne Offline
No, that won't tell us how "conscious awareness arises in the brain". It could tell us how the brain translates external stimuli, but that's a far cry from conscious awareness. It's like comparing the interpretation of light in the optic center to the subjective interpretation of abstract art.
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