The Future of the Mind summary

It’s fairly common knowledge that the brain is split into a left and right hemisphere, and that each hemisphere has specific functions: in muscle control, for example, the left side of the brain controls the muscles on the right side of the body, and vice versa.

Another difference is that the left hemisphere houses the brain’s language capabilities, whereas the right side contains areas responsible for spatial awareness.

In the previous blink, we learned that the left hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of the body and vice versa. This is hardly a new discovery: one German doctor already figured that out in 1864 while treating soldiers with wounds to the brain; whenever he touched one side of the brain, the opposite side of the body would move.

What’s more, since the 1930s, scientists have also had a fairly accurate idea of which part of the human cortex controls which part of the body. In fact, Dr Wilder Penfield, a brain surgeon, produced a remarkably accurate “brain-to-body” map by stimulating his patients’ brains with an electrode and observing which muscles twitched.

Since the 1990s, the technologies scientists use to explore and understand the brain have taken great leaps forward.

One major area of technological development is brain imaging, which has allowed researchers to actually look inside the brain. Perhaps the most influential of these advancements is functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), where powerful magnetic fields are used to measure the flow of blood to various parts of the brain. Because neurons require more blood when they’re active, increased blood flow indicates which neurons are active when.

In the previous blink, we looked at some of the technological advances in studying and manipulating the brain. These advances have opened the door to possible applications that may sound like science fiction.

First of all: telepathy. Scientists have found that individual words produce distinguishable neuronal activation patterns in the brain. This means that by monitoring a person’s brain as words are read aloud to them, scientists can compile a “dictionary” that shows which neuronal patterns are related to which words.

Another area of the brain’s functioning that has been illuminated by advances in brain imaging technology is memory. In this area, too, recent progress has been very promising.

First of all, neuroscientists have found a way to erase specific memories in mice using chemicals. When this method is perfected for humans, it could well be used in therapy to erase painful memories.

Though advances in brain-imaging technology have opened the door to many applications, there is still a lot of fine-tuning to be done. As this happens, there’s no doubt that our understanding of the brain will greatly increase.

One such ambitious project on this front is the BRAIN initiative, intended to map all the neurons and their connections in the human brain. Having and deciphering such a map would be of great help in many of the applications already discussed, but also the one we have yet to touch on: artificial intelligence (AI).

In the previous blink, it was mentioned that current AI technology falls short of human intelligence in certain ways. Indeed, in order for AI to truly be human-like, it will need to emulate many fundamentally human traits.

For one, it would need to be able to properly behave in the extremely wide range of situations we encounter in everyday life. This requires a value system: robots with AI would need to be told how everything in life is ranked in importance, like an ethical guideline. This is, in effect, what we humans do, too. But while it may take us a lifetime to refine our ethical system, the poor robot would probably need to have its own system completely figured out before leaving the factory due to safety concerns.

The key message in this book:

Advances in brain imaging technology are opening or have opened the door to many futuristic-sounding technologies, like controlling computers with thoughts, artificial memory boosts and downloading memories.