Caltech neuroscientist Christof Koch is interviewed by The Scientist this week on his decade long discussion with Francis Crick about the nature of consciousness:
Koch states that he and Crick have revised their earlier proposition that synchronous neuronal oscillations might be at the heart of consciousness. They originally believed that this theory might be the solution to the so-called binding problem: How do differently processed aspects of an object bind together into one percept--red + round + shiny = apple, for example. "Unfortunately, the evidence is slim for a direct relationship," Koch says. "What's much more plausible now is that synchronized firing activity in the 40-Hz range may be necessary to resolve competition (among separate neural circuits competing for conscious attention)... There's quite a bit of evidence that oscillations might be involved in biasing the selection, but once I'm fully conscious of [the percept], it's unclear whether [the oscillations are really needed.]"
As visual scientists, Koch and Crick are primarily defining consciousness as differences in visual attentiveness. Although this reductionist approach may be moving the ball forward a bit, consciousness will remain an elusive concept for years to come.
Yesterday's New York Times magazine piece, Savant for a Day, describes how transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is not only being tested as a potential treatment for mental illnesses like depression but also as a way to enhance human cognition.
Allan Snyder, Chair of the Centre for the Mind has performed "TMS dozens of times on university students, measuring its effect on their ability to draw, to proofread and to perform difficult mathematical functions like identifying prime numbers by sight. Hooked up to the machine, 40 percent of test subjects exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental skills."
Like most emerging neurotechnologies, TMS shows promise but there is a long road ahead.
This month's IEEE Spectrum has an excellent article, Neurotechnology: Bioethics and the Brain, that describes how rapid advancements in brain imaging technologies will have significant implications for society in the relative near future.
To make their point, the authors describe how one of their colleagues has recently used fMRI scans to show highly significant correlations between lying and truth telling and the metabolic activity in the region of the brain important to paying attention and monitoring errors.
The article highlights several important neuroethical issues:
Neurotechnology will never be 100% deterministic but it will provide some very powerful predictive information, much more than most people currently want to believe.
Later this week I will be joining the Gruter Institute for its annual neuroethics conference. The first day includes the following talks:
I look forward to exploring the above issues and extending the discussion to include the societal implications of human performance enhancing neuroceuticals.
Bill McKibben's brave new book, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age explores (excerpt) how human genetic technologies will soon give scientists the ability to re-engineer our children, undermining our common humanity, and leading to a 'posthuman' future.
The human germ-line engineering debate continues to capture the popular imagination, sitting at the core of bioethics debates, while neurotechnology quickly slips into existence.
It is my firm belief that neurotechnology's ability to provide tools that can temporarily influence human emotional, cognitive and sensory states via neuroceuticals will have more profound implications for humanity, in a much nearer time frame, than genetic engineering for several reasons:
Humans will perform germ-line engineering on other organisms on vast scale, but human germ-line engineering won't become widely accepted until significant experimentation with less permanent tools helps people learn exactly what traits they would want their progeny to exhibit.
Moreover, as neurotechnology becomes more precise and flexible, it may indeed turn out that humans will choose neurotechnology over genetic engineering to enhance themselves and their offspring. Instead of debating the bioethics of germ-line engineering, we really should be focusing on the neuroethics of neurotechnology.
Neurotechnology is the set of tools that influence the human central nervous system, especially the brain, to achieve a desired effect. The Economist defines neurotechnology as any "technology that makes it possible to manipulate the brain."
Instruments and techniques that are used to in developing neurotechnology include -- brain imaging systems (fMRI, PET, EEG), biochips (DNA microarrays, protein chips, RNA chips), genetic engineering techniques, cellular implantation, electronic stimulation
Products of neurotechnology include -- pharmaceuticals (psychopharmaceuticals), psychological conditioning, neurofeedback, magnetic stimulation
Technological trends making neurotechnology possible -- nanotechnology, information technology, biotechnology, neuroscience