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From: yann@dagobah.fdn.org (Yann Lechelle)
Subject: Re: neural to neural interfaces
Message-ID: <1994Sep18.203207.2006@dagobah.fdn.org>
Sender: yann@dagobah.fdn.org
Reply-To: yann@dagobah.fdn.org (Yann Lechelle)
Organization: Individual
References: <1994Sep16.164338.940@figmnt.tayloru.edu>
Date: Sun, 18 Sep 1994 20:32:07 GMT
Lines: 42

srothroc@flair7 writes
> 
> Hello, I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts
> about how one could hook up two human minds.
> Something like this:
> link two people's visual cortecies.
> So that the patterns from one person's are
> sort of promoted on the other person's.
> Then would they not experience the same images?`
> Or is each brain unique in what pattern produces
> what image?
> And does anyone have ideas about how one gets
> the spatial time varying pattern from one brain
> to another?
> I've always been interested in this sort of thing
> so I would love to hear anyone's ideas or speculations, etc.

assuming that some link is operational, I doubt the two minds would be  
able to 'see' or 'interpret' the other's visual patterns... it would take  
some time to train a 'conversion' layer.

But don't forget that brains see only what they want to see... when people  
recall a scene, the process usually involves remembering parts of the  
actual image combined with other sensory information and put together with  
the help of conceptual memory:
i.e. when you see the image of a house with a tree in the yard, you will  
concentrate on ornaments of the windows for example. When recalling the  
scene, your mind will remember the tree as 'a tree as concept and  
collection of many others trees you've seen'... chances are that the only  
image will be the ornaments...

my conclusion: we need a lot more than a single visual cortex link to  
share complete visual patterns...

But hey, why don't you try... a 50-threads SCSI cable could do ! ;-)

Interesting thougths though... keep wondering and let us know.

-- 
\ Yann Lechelle                     (Paris, FRANCE) /
/ yann@dagobah.fdn.org               Email/NeXTmail \
\ "grep me no patterns and I'll tell you no lines." /
