HARD WIRED BRAIN NET

A recent story in WIRED shows how close science is to science fiction. And the sci-fi is the Star Trek collective mind think called the Borg.

The premise is simple. Brains work better than computers. They’re faster, more creative, and can store a vast amount of accessible memory. So computer science has tried to emulate the brain to create faster, better and near human computers. One way to do this is to network brains.

Researchers at Duke University announced they have wired animal brains together so they could collaborate on simple tasks. Network monkeys displayed motor skills, and networked rats performed computations.


Lead researcher,  Miguel Nicolelis, is a neurobiologist who has been wiring animal brains to machines since 1999, when they connected a rat to a robot arm, says this is the first time that anybody has directly wired together multiple brains to complete a task—a so-called brain-to-brain interface.

To build the monkey network, Nicolelis’ team first implanted electrodes in rhesus macaque brains, positioned to pick up signals from a few hundred neurons. Then they connected two or three of the macaques to a computer with a display showing a CG monkey arm. The monkeys were supposed to control the arm, directing it toward a target like a boat crew rows forward. When the monkeys got the arm to hit the target, the researchers rewarded them with juice. The monkeys don’t think “move my arm” and the arm moves—they learn what kind of thinking makes the arm move and keep doing that—because monkeys want the juice reward.

The rat study was even weirder as it involved the transfer of data.  The neuroscientists directly wired four rats’ brains together—using the implants to both collect and transmit information about neural activity—so one rat that responded to touch, for example, could pass on their knowledge of that stimulus to another rat. Then the researchers set the rats to a bunch of different abstract tasks—guessing whether it might rain from temperature and air pressure data, for example, or telling the difference between different kinds of touch-stimuli. The brain collectives always did at least as well on those tests as an individual rat would have, and sometimes even better.

The goal of the research is see if networking brains might help accelerate medical rehab in people who have neurological damage such as relearning motor skills after a stroke or brain injury. Normally, this rehabilitation is a long, painstaking process. Nicolelis wants to learn if a healthy person’s brain could help a stroke patient re-learn how to move a paralyzed leg faster than current therapies do.

A few LOST theories speculated that the real premise of the show was a vast neuro-network linking various individuals together in a vivid, digital universe like Ghost in the Shell. Memories, emotions, experiences, goals, aspirations, fears and knowledge combine to be one's ghost in an alternative, cyber-reality.

If the main characters were not "real" in the sense of being humans surviving a plane crash on a mysterious island but virtual selves caught up in an illusion of surviving a plane crash on an island filled with the collective memories, emotions, experiences, goals, aspirations, and fears - - - that could create a very real looking, complex world. It would also explain how certain continuity errors, mistakes and criss crossed fantasy, science and sci-fi elements could co-exist in the same main story line.

The idea that the characters are actually institutionalized individuals connected by brain electrodes is not a new theory. Some speculated that this set up would be found in a mental institution (where Hurley went) or a medical research facility (like DHARMA) or even a prison hospital ward where illicit medical experimentation on mental patients used to be performed in secret. 

If this was the true premise, sedated or coma patients were linked together to share their dreams and nightmares in shared space, would this make the show experience any different to you? Would the ending make more sense to you?