The American neuroscientist on the brain and free will,literature, science and humanity and the opportunity of space travel in digital formThe Brain investigates ways we might hack” our neural hardware to substitute and add senses. Can you give an illustration?
In my lab weve developed a Vest [Variable additional-Sensory Transducer] that’s covered with miniature vibratory motors so that we can pass new kinds of data streams to the brain as moving patterns on the skin. And what weve already been able to demonstrate is that we can circumvent deafness by capturing sound and converting it to patterns on the torso so that a deaf person can come to understand the auditory world. For a deaf person their only option is a cochlear implant, and which is $40000 (£26311) and an invasive surgery. This Vest costs less than $1000,and that opens it up as a global solution.
You underscore how miniature conscious control we have over our decisions – will science eventually rule out free will altogether?
There’s a lot of debate approximately this. There are many neuroscientists who feel that we probably don’t have free will because fundamentally it’s all pieces and parts interacting and it’s difficult to see where you could slip the ghost into the machine.
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Source: theguardian.com