CRACKING THE THOUGHT CODE

Researchers have made interesting inroads into the human brain thought process.

The BBC reported that brain neurons function by sending bursts of electric pulses to parts of the brain, which in turn form the basis of thoughts and memories. Scientists have begun to use these pulse patterns to make algorithm or formulas to determine how the brain functions.

They have used probed rats to run mazes to record the thought patterns of the subjects.


While the rat runs the maze researchers record where it is, and simultaneously how the cells in the hippocampus are firing. The cell firing patterns are thrown into a mathematical algorithm which finds the pattern that best matches each bit of the maze. The language of the cells is no less complex, but now science believes it has  a Rosetta Stone against which scientists can decode the thought process. Researchers  then test the algorithm by feeding the freshly recorded patterns back into the subject, to see if it correctly predicts where the rat was at the point that pattern was recorded.

It doesn’t allow a complete code crack, because scientists still don't know all the rules, and it can’t help them read the patterns which aren't from this bit of the brain or which aren't about maze running, but it is still a powerful tool. For instance, using this technique, the research team was able to show that the specific sequence of cell firing repeated in the brain of the rat when it slept after running the maze (and, as a crucial comparison, not in the sleep it had enjoyed before it had run the maze).

Fascinatingly, the sequence repeated faster during sleep – around 20 times faster. This meant that the rat could run the maze in their sleeping minds in a fraction of the time it took them in real life. This could be related to the mnemonic function of sleep; by replaying the memory, it might have helped the rat to consolidate its learning. And the fact that the replay was accelerated might give researchers a glimpse of the activity that lies behind sudden insights, or experiences where our life “flashes before our eyes”; when not restrained, our thoughts really can retrace familiar paths in “fast forward”. 

This new scientific research plays very well in the LOST universe.

Look at the key reference points: flashes before our eyes, flash forwards, mazes, sleep and memory. These were all critical components in the story lines. So much so that it brings us to a new theory based on this science. 

When one is asleep, one can have vivid dreams. Dreams so vivid that they seem absolutely real. And once one wakes up, these vivid dreams seem like actual memories.

When one is in a dream state, the mind processes information 20 times faster than in one's waking state. This tends to give dreamers the impression that their dreams may last for hours, but in reality the REM sleep was only for minutes. This is a illusion of time displacement in one's mind.

What Daniel's Oxford experiment was similar to was the thought researchers experiment about a lab rat learning a maze. In Daniel's case, learning it before it ran it. But in a certain way, Daniel "programmed" his rat, Eloise, to run the maze by imputing the maze algorithm while at the subject was asleep. Eloise "learned" the maze in a dream state so vivid that she thought it was a real memory when she was put at the starting gate.

And this segment of the story line, glossed over by many viewers, is probably the key to unraveling a better explanation for the series sci-fi foundation. For if one takes the confusing "time travel" and "time skip" elements of the story lines and realize that they are merely metaphors for "thought coding" dreams, then LOST takes a whole different road to understanding.

In all the time travel segments, if one substitutes the fact that no real time travel happened - - - that it was all thought code imparted into a character's mind, then things start to make better sense.

Dharma was a research group looking into various components of mental applications. Room 23 was clearly a mind control chamber. But there is other evidence of mind and thought control. If one imparts new memories into polar bears that they are actually tropical animals, the bears would be more quickly adapt to their new environment. If Dharma found the way to implant new memories into human beings, then that control would be extremely important - - - and possibly a military weapon.

So the island vanishing and time skipping to the 1970s never really happened; the characters merely thought it did because their brains were re-wired with those adventures. The main characters were actually lab rats in some grand experiment on human beings. Perhaps Jacob was not the immortal demigod, but the guardian of the process in which he fed various events into his subjects to determine whether he could actually change a person's free will, good or evil personality or behavior patterns. Or whether those long term personality traits would "corrupt" the new mental programming which would lead to failure (or death). Instead of remembering the actual programmed events, the character's minds could short circuit and take those memories and turn them into twisted nightmares by merging with older memories. 

It also gets back to the unexplained big clue that the characters had to "awaken" in order to move on or be free. Awaken from what? The dream and thought experiments? 

What better way to treat a mental health patient than creating a new, better personality for him or her. For example, Hurley was destined to be a lonely, semi-skilled fast food worker filled with anxiety, self-worth issues and manic depression. But if he was re-programmed to be a lottery winner, a person with new found confidence, a business owner success, could that really change his life? If not, would the programmers ramp up the thought conversion process to shock his mind with an extreme plane crash island survival story in order to "cure" Hurley's mental state? 

It is a good theory but not a complete one because the sideways world makes a mess of most theories. Since the sideways world is death, plain and simple, then which memories are actually the "true" ones? One could say the reason the characters met in the church was that there one great shared experience that bonded them together was the collective thought control experiments - - - which led to actual deaths. But those strong memories were so vivid and clear, that it was those imprints on the characters' souls that matter most in the after life. 

Trouble real characters + failed thought control experiments with fake island events = death = sideways world reunion of souls bonded together by the memories from their experiments.