SHARED MEMORIES

One of the theories in LOST is that the main characters had some sort of "shared memory" even though they were strangers. Sci-fi aspects of this theory speculated that could have been done as a metaphor for a on-line game world, connected series of mental patient fantasies, or some mental/drug induced brain washing experiment.

But researchers are trying to implant memories into living beings.

Vulcan mind-melts and magic wands or hypnotism are ways in which people share memories in fictional films and TV shows.

But such fantastical ideas could soon become a reality, using electrodes implanted in the brain.

Neuroscientists have already begun trying implants that boost memory loss, and in the future they believe these implants could be used to replicate memories in the brains of others.

Research teams from the University of Southern California and University of Pennsylvania have been testing the technology on epilepsy patients.  These patients already have electrodes implanted in their brains, which means the experts didn't need to insert the prostheses in new patients through risky brain surgery.

The research centers on the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped part of the brain associated with the formation of memories. The hippocampus gathers sensory information that is then transformed into short-term memories, between 15 and 30 seconds.  These can then form more lasting memories, but only if they are accessed while the hippocampus is storing them. This seems to be the portal for long term memory creation.

People with significant memory deficits typically have a damaged hippocampus. Scientists are trying to restore memory loss to patients with a damaged memory center.

The USC team, led by brain implants expert Ted Berger, was interested in two particular areas of the hippocampus, called CA3 and CA1. Researchers thought that an electrical signal travelling from CA3 to CA1 was key to memory formation. Therefore, they tried to recreate a similar signal in order to restore the hippocampus' functionality. To do this, the researchers monitored the brain of 12 epilepsy patients performing a memory exercise that included memorising pictures to see how CA3 and CA1 interacted.

Eventually, they developed a mathematical model to predict the pattern of the signal CA3 would fire to CA1. The predictions were correct 80 per cent of the time. The USC team's idea is that brain implants could provide electrical stimulation resembling that key CA3 signal to improve memory in patients with hippocampus damage. 

Once scientists can create a connection to the hippocampus, and send signals that the patient can understand and remember, it is a logical conclusion that the signals can be enhanced to the point of adding visual and audio information. It would be like a direct imput of a VR movie straight into your memory banks.

The odd thing is that your brain will not realize that this is not "a real, personal memory."  And that is why LOST theorists think the complexity of the brain in creating real memories caused many continuity errors in the series because the "forced" new memories did not take or conflicted with real events.

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?

BRAIN WAVES

Despite all the physical poking and question &  answer probing, we really don't know how the human brain functions. We think it is like a hard drive, but we cannot download its information. We can test stimulation to see where electro-neurons fire in a brain CAT scan, but don't know how information is stored in a biochemical, electromagnetic or other way. It may be the most important and confusing organ in our bodies; it plays a central role in both our intellectual and emotional states. In fact, the overlap between intellectual and emotional is razor thin.

WIRED published a recent article on how science is trying to probe further into mental illness.

A brain surgeon begins an anterior cingulotomy by drilling a small hole into a patient’s skull. The surgeon then inserts a tiny blade, cutting a path through brain tissue, then inserts a probe past sensitive nerves and bundles of blood vessels until it reaches a specific cluster of neural connections, a kind of switchboard linking emotional triggers to cognitive tasks. With the probe in place, the surgeon fires up a laser, burning away tissue until the beam has hollowed out about half a teaspoon of grey matter. 

This is modern psychosurgery: ablating parts of the brain to treat mental illnesses. 

Instead of a big scalpel, it is a narrow focus beam of light that cuts away gray matter. This is the new lobotomy, which was once in favor in the 1930s to treat aggressive, demented, or otherwise affected people.

Removing parts of a person’s brain is always a dicey proposition. But for people who are mentally ill, when pills and psychiatry offer no solace, the laser-tipped probe can be a welcome relief. Physicians perform these procedures as a last resort only on people who’ve failed to respond to at least three types of medications, and for whom months on a counselor’s couch have had no effect. 

In the 1990s that physicians  brought them back to treat a mental illness: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Without any visible biomarkers, obsessive-compulsive disorder is difficult to treat with drugs. But neuroscientists have narrowed down the faulty wiring involved in the disorder to fewer than a half dozen places in the brain—some of which psychosurgery can target. Probably the best target is a region called the anterior cingulate cortex. Put your finger on your temple, then move it about an inch back. If you were to triangulate a point between your fingertip, the top of your head, and the center of your forehead, you’d land roughly on the right spot.

This may seem strange, but drilling a hole and inserting a fiber optic tube to fire a laser into your brain sounds science fiction like Ghost in the Shell. But since medical science is not at the Star Trek stage of being able to diagnose at the molecular level, physicians are still fishing with hand grenades.

One can easily see the road being built in this field of study. And the pit falls. If one can insert an optic thread into the brain to destroy, alter or control a person's mental state, why can't at some point pull out the brain's information to be placed in another vessel (like a computer core). That's very Max Headroom. And considering the whole field of cryogenics is to keep people alive forever, keeping their brain, consciousness or information stored on a hard drive seems to fall in a solid second place.

We don't know how a patient reacts when parts of his brain are being probed by psychosurgery. Does he hallucinate? Does he dream? Does he travel to a dangerous tropical island to fight smoke monsters (the subconscious representation of a laser burning brain cells to ash)? Science gives a plausible sci-fi foundation for many LOST mental illness premise theories.

MEMORY WIPES

One body of LOST theory is that the show's premise resides solely in the mind(s) of a character(s).

It is a tempting premise because it discounts any factual, scientific and memory errors in the actual story lines.

A few key clues in these theories were the fact that the Others (and Dharma) brain washing facility was known as Room 23. We got two references of this room. First, Walt was taken prisoner there and subjected to the high intensity film images. It seemed the sheriff used it as a punishment tool, for which Walt respected and therefore behaved himself. Second, we got an intense look at it when Ben put Karl in the room. We got the aspect of cult programming in that scene with early reference to "Jacob loves you."

23 was also the Number for Jack, which most believe was the central character of the story. Tying the two elements together, Jack was also subjected to mind control games at Hydra, and possibly at the Barracks (or Room 23 facilities) when he integrated himself in a game a football with Mr. Friendly.

The idea that LOST was a nightmare of Jack's subconscious has some merit. Because in the End of the series, Jack got the one thing that he wanted: a chance to see his father again. And Jack's mind rewarded his imaginary friends with happiness and a sense of belonging (especially with the couples).
But the one other big clue is that Aaron, who was born on the island, was also born later in the End. That can't physically happen. So it must be mental.

Jack's mind could have forgot about certain memories in the course of concluding his dream series.

And science backs up the notion that our brains "over write" memories when recalling other ones.

Forgetting certain memories while remembering others may be a normal part of brain function, new research shows. In short, the very act of remembering may cause people to forget other memories that are overridden in the retrieval process, according to the study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Researchers from the University of Birmingham and the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences unit in Cambridge, England, discovered that intentional memory recall isn’t as simple as mentally reawakening a memory. In fact, the act of remembering can actually trigger the brain to forget other competing experiences that interfere with memory retrieval.

“Though there has been an emerging belief within the academic field that the brain has this inhibitory mechanism, I think a lot of people are surprised to hear that recalling memories has this darker side of making us forget others by actually suppressing them,” study co-leader Maria Wimber, PhD, said.

While there are other studies on memory interference, researchers say this is the first to isolate the adaptive forgetting mechanism in the brain. It’s this mechanism by which remembering dynamically alters the aspects of our past that remain accessible. 

Researchers used MRI scans to monitor patterns of brain activity in study participants while they were asked to recall certain memories based on images they had been shown earlier. Over the course of several retrievals, participants were asked to recall a specific memory, which became more vivid with each trial. The results showed that competing memories were retrieved with more difficulty with each trial carried out.

The findings are not limited to specific memory types — semantic memory, episodic memory, and recently acquired short-term memories are all impacted. In fact, though people differ genetically, researchers say that it is thought that all brains are capable of inducing varying degrees of this forgetting mechanism.

There is a bright side to the study. “[Forgetting] can be incredibly useful when trying to overcome a negative memory from our past. So there are opportunities for this to be applied in areas to really help people,” Wimber says.

MIND OF ITS OWN MIND

Adding another post on the science of the mind.

BBC.com recently reported that several studies indicate that the old notion that a person "controls" their conscious mind (while some psychologists propose that we don't have full control over our subconscious) is wrong.

We feel that we are in control when our brains figure out puzzles or read words, says Tom Stafford, but a new experiment shows just how much work is going on underneath the surface of our conscious minds.

Trusting your instincts may help you to make better decisions than thinking hard, a study quoted in the BBC article. A common misconception is that we know our own minds. As we move around the world, walking and talking, we experience ourselves thinking thoughts. "What shall I have for lunch?," one may ask himself. Or, "I wonder why she did that?" and try and figure it out. It is natural to assume that this experience of "myself" is a complete report of my mind. It is natural, but wrong.

There's an under-mind, all psychologists agree – an unconscious which does a lot of the heavy lifting in the process of thinking. If you ask yourself what is the capital of France the answer just comes to mind – Paris! If you decide to wiggle your fingers, they move back and forth in a complex pattern that  you didn't consciously prepare, but which was delivered for my use by the unconscious.

The big debate in psychology is exactly what is done by the unconscious, and what requires conscious thought. Or to use the title of a notable paper on the topic, 'Is the unconscious smart or dumb?' One popular view is that the unconscious can prepare simple stimulus-response actions, deliver basic facts, recognise objects and carry out practiced movements. Complex cognition involving planning, logical reasoning and combining ideas, on the other hand, requires conscious thought.

A recent experiment by an Israeli research team scores points against this position. They used a neat visual trick called Continuous Flash Suppression to put information into participants’ minds without them becoming consciously aware of it. It might sound painful, but in reality it’s actually quite simple. The technique takes advantage of the fact that we have two eyes and our brain usually attempts to fuse the two resulting images into a single coherent view of the world. Continuous Flash Suppression uses light-bending glasses to show people different images in each eye. One eye gets a rapid succession of brightly colored squares which are so distracting that when genuine information is presented to the other eye, the person is not immediately consciously aware of it. In fact, it can take several seconds for something that is in theory perfectly visible to reach awareness (unless you close one eye to cut out the flashing squares, then you can see the 'suppressed' image immediately).

The  key experiment involved presenting arithmetic questions unconsciously. The questions would be things like "9 - 3 - 4 = " and they would be followed by the presentation, fully visible, of a target number that the participants were asked to read aloud as quickly as possible. The target number could either be the right answer to the arithmetic question (so, in this case, "2") or a wrong answer (for instance, "1"). The amazing result is that participants were significantly quicker to read the target number if it was the right answer rather than a wrong one. This shows that the equation had been processed and solved by their minds – even though they had no conscious awareness of it – meaning they were primed to read the right answer quicker than the wrong one.

The result suggests that the unconscious mind has more sophisticated capacities than many have thought. Unlike other tests of non-conscious processing, this wasn’t an automatic response to a stimulus – it required a precise answer following the rules of arithmetic, which you might have assumed would only come with deliberation. The report calls the technique used "a game changer in the study of the unconscious", arguing that "unconscious processes can perform every fundamental, basic-level function that conscious processes can perform."

These are strong claims, and the authors acknowledge that there is much work to do as we start to explore the power and reach of our unconscious minds. Like icebergs, most of the operation of our minds remains out of sight. Experiments like this give a glimpse below the surface.

This adds some context to the LOST use of Room 23. It may have been twisted into a mind control room by Ben and his minions. But originally, we don't know if the "light" experiments were similar to these recent studies on consciousness and behavior. If what can find the "unconscious" between the subconscious and conscious, and that is really the control center of a person, there are great ramifications to this finding. Our human beings just organic animals or is there an energy being using the bodies like space ships or robots to chemical process the world around it?

BRAIN SWITCHES

In the last post, we discussed certain dream theories.  One thing about the brain that is fascinating is that it is the most complex organ in the human body, and the least understood.

For example, did you know certain brain activities can be turned on and off like a light switch?

It has to do with stimulating or deactivating certain areas of the brain associated with a certain aspect of life.

Researchers know the control center for thirst is somewhere in the hypothalamus,  an almond-sized section of the human brain that regulates a number of our basic functions (hunger, sex drive, temperature). But recently, neuroscientists identified two specific populations of neurons in the hypothalamus of mice that control the impulse to hydrate, and they wanted to know what happens when they’re activated. By using a process called optogenetics,  they manipulated these cells to make them sensitive to certain wavelengths of light. Then, fiber-optic cables were implanted in the brains of mice that when illuminated, turned the corresponding neurons on or off. They found that one group of thirst neurons “evokes intense drinking behavior” when activated. How intense? Mice drank up to eight percent of their body weight in water when these neurons were switched on. That’s the equivalent of a human drinking a gallon and a half of water in ten minutes. The second group of neurons reduces the desire to drink, even when the animal is deprived of water.

Using the same optogenetics technique, scientists found the brain cells  that control hunger. When these cells are activated in mice, the rodents are compelled to stuff themselves well beyond the point of being full. But when they’re shut down, the mice ignore food, even when they should be hungry.
 
Consciousness and self-awareness are defining characteristics of human life. But these traits can be turned off and on like a light switch in a lab setting. At George Washington University, researchers accidentally flipped the switch while using electrodes to stimulate different parts of the brain in an epileptic woman.  When they stimulated a section called the claustrum,  the patient lost consciousness, but she didn’t pass out. Instead she sat motionless with a blank stare and showed no response to cues around her. She snapped out of her trance when the stimulation stopped, and had no memory of the lapse.

Other studies have shown the human brain may switch off self-awareness when we’re stressed, without any help from researchers. In 2006, neurobiologists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel observed that when humans are forced to focus on a difficult task (particularly under a strict deadline), the area of our brains associated with introspection, the cortex, becomes quiet, and we go into a sort of robotic mode until the task is done. This ability could have evolved for purposes of self-defense.

Pain can be eased with certain drugs, but many treatments come with side effects like dependency and tolerance. Saint Louis University researchers found a way to treat chronic pain caused by nerve damage, including the physical agony caused by chemotherapy and bone cancer. By turning on the “A3 adenosine receptor” in the brain and spinal cord, they were able to block pain caused by nerve damage in rodents, without any of the side effects associated with drug treatments.

Beyond just physical traits, researchers have looked into emotional components to brain activity. What if we could reduce the human urge to fight? New York University researchers  zoomed in on the hypothalamus, the previously-mentioned hub of bodily functions, to look at the specific neurons that fire during acts of physical violence. By stimulating those neurons using optogenetics, they were able to turn male mice into vicious fighters that attacked anything in their vicinity—including inanimate objects, and both male and female mice. But then the team could also calm them, quelling their violent urges by silencing these neurons. 

These vast different research projects tend to lend some real world perspective on the fictional forays into science with the DHARMA compounds. Turning on and off brain switches have vast potential and power to those who control it.

SMARTS

A BBC article indicates that medical research continues to focus in on using "smart drugs" to enhance brain function. Depending on the source, humans only use 10 to 20 percent of their brains. Some compare brains to supercomputers (even though human functions at faster speeds). In trying to tap the inner (and allegedly bigger) computing power of the human brain, chemical alteration is the research to increase cognition.

Cognition is a suite of mental phenomena that includes memory, attention and executive functions, and any drug would have to enhance executive functions to be considered truly "smart." Executive functions occupy the higher levels of thought: reasoning, planning, directing attention to information that is relevant (and away from stimuli that aren’t), and thinking about what to do rather than acting on impulse or instinct. You activate executive functions when you tell yourself to count to 10 instead of saying something you may regret. They are what we use to make our actions moral and what we think of when we think about what makes us human.

 In one respect, the last paragraph sums up many of the elements contained in the LOST story lines and companion theories. There was mental altering experiments, drug use, stress tests through various jungle missions, physical pain and emotional manipulations and the alleged "vaccine" that was given to various characters.

The idea that the characters were part of a group trial on a cognition "smart drug" protocol could help explain and tie in the various theories surrounding mental attributes such as hallucinations, fantasy, dreams or even game theories. No one knows what would happen if science unlocks the full potential of human brain power.

The trailers for the new movie, Lucy, portends that higher mental cognition would unlock and unleash the ability to alter gravity, magnetics and matter. A human with supernatural abilities (not unlike the powers of a smoke monster). This is not to say that this movie is a riff on LOST or its story elements.

But the power of the mind is an untapped potential which could lead an individual down a fictional  path that seems perfectly real and complex.  This powerful mental journey could explain either the jungle world or the sideways realm or both.

ALTERED REALITY STUDY

The BBC reported on a recent study that has LOST like aspects to altered reality, the observation of time and how certain people's brains may view time differently. It is something scientists refer to as "temporal trickery." The brain apparently freezes motion to make the world around you slow down.

The concept that certain people see things differently is not new. Professional athletes such as baseball players have keen eyesight and perception to pick up the spin and location of a 95 mph fastball within nanoseconds of release. Ballet dancers train their brain to allow them to perform pirouettes without feeling dizzy.

In a case reported in the NeuroCase journal, doctors recount the experience of a patient who one day had a headache, went to take a warm shower to relax but found himself staring at the water droplets hanging in mid air like something out of the Matrix movies. The patient said he could see each droplet hanging in front of him, distorted by the pressure of the air rushing past. The effect, he recalls, was very similar to the way the bullets travelled in the Matrix movies. “It was like a high-speed film, slowed down.”

The next day, the patient went to hospital, where doctors found that he had suffered an aneurysm. The experience was soon overshadowed by the more immediate threat to his health, but in a follow-up appointment, he happened to mention what happened to his neurologist, Fred Ovsiew at Northwestern University in Chicago, who was struck by the vivid descriptions. “He was a very bright guy, and very eloquent” says Ovsiew, who recently wrote about Baker in the journal article.

What authors, scientists, doctors and individuals observe in daily life is an assumption that time flows at the same rate for everyone; that time is a constant of nature and physics. But what if that assumption is wrong, or it has variables.

It’s easy to assume that time flows at the same rate for everybody, but experiences of the patient show that a person's continuous stream of consciousness is a fragile illusion, stitched together by the brain’s clever editing. By studying what happens during such extreme events, researchers are revealing how and why the brain plays these temporal tricks – and in some circumstances, they suggest, all of us can experience "time warping."

Although the journal's subject is the most dramatic case, a smattering of strikingly similar accounts can be found, intermittently, in medical literature. There are reports of time speeding up – so called “zeitraffer” phenomenon – and also more fragmentary experiences called “akinetopsia”, in which motion momentarily stops. Such experiences almost always accompany problems like epilepsy or stroke.

The question is why a person's condition affects time perception.  Some clues could come from studies that have attempted to pinpoint the regions responsible for our perception of time. Of particular interest is an area of the visual cortex, called V5. This region, which lies towards the back of the skull, has long been known to detect the motion of objects, but perhaps it has a more general role in measuring the passing of time. When Domenica Bueti and colleagues at the University Hospital of Lausanne, Switzerland zapped the area with a magnetic field to knock out its activity, her subjects found it tricky to do two things: they struggled to track the motion of dots on a screen, as would be expected,  but also found it hard to estimate how long some blue dots appeared on the screen.   One explanation for this double-failure is that our motion perception system has its own stopwatch, recording how fast things are moving across our vision – and when this is disrupted by brain injury, the world stands still. For the journal patient, stepping into the shower might have exacerbated the problem, since the warm water would have drawn the blood away from the brain to the extremities of the body, further disturbing the brain’s processing.

Another explanation comes from the discovery that our brain records its perceptions in discrete “snapshots," like the frames of a film reel. “The healthy brain reconstructs the experience and glues together the different frames,” saysresearchers at the French Centre for Brain and Cognition Research, “but if brain damage destroys the glue, you might only see the snapshots.” We may all experience the normal smooth picture breaking down occasionally. For starters, if you’ve ever looked at overtaking cars on the motorway, their wheels appear to be standing still.   This happens because the brain’s intermittent snapshots fail to capture the wheel’s motion fully. If, for example, it has made a full rotation between each “frame," it will seem to be in exactly the same position each snapshot, giving the illusion that it is stationary.

And users of LSD often report “visual trails” following moving objects, a bit like the trails of bullets in The Matrix movie. VanRullen suspects this might arise because the brain "overlaps" so sensory snapshots,   rather than refreshing its picture anew to capture the actual motion.
 
Reports of time standing still are also common during a life-threatening accident; in one survey of people who had skirted close to death, more than 70% reported the feeling that the event occurred in slow motion. Some researchers claim that they are simply an artifact of memory, since intense emotions led people to remember more details,  so that we believe that the event lasted for longer only in hindsight. But the descriptions certainly sound close to those reported by the neurological patients, suggesting there may be some overlap. In stressful situations,  many subjects also report abnormally quick thinking. As one pilot, who’d faced a plane crash in the Vietnam War, put it: “when the nose-wheel strut collapsed I vividly recalled, in a matter of about three seconds, over a dozen actions necessary to successful recovery of flight attitude."  Reviewing the case studies and available scientific research on the matter concludes that stress hormones trigger an automatic brain mechanism that may speed up the brain's internal information processing to help it handle a life or death situation.   “Our thoughts and initiation of movements become faster – but because we are working faster, the external world appears to slow down,” researchers says. It is even possible that some athletes havetrained themselves to create a time warp on demand;  surfers, for instance, can often adjust their angle in the split second it takes to launch off steep waves, as the water rises overhead.
 
For the journal subject, the experience was a one-off, and after surgery to remove the damaged blood vessels, he has now made a full recovery. The experience of time freezing around him, meanwhile, has given him new wonder at the fragility of our conscious experiences. “It was a really concrete example of how something very localised in brain can change your whole perception of the world,” he says. “One minute I was fine, the next minute I was in an altered reality.”

All of the elements of time warping, slowing down events in a life or death situation, and medical conditions affecting the brain and its processing, were part of the fabric of the LOST story. Real science has opened up the possibility that the altered reality that the main characters experienced "on the island" may have been caused or contributed by brain trauma, illness and/or massive stress hormones released by a person. So the show could have been set in the time altered illusion inside someone's mind during a major stressful event, such as a plane crash.

REBOOT EPISODES 45-48

POSTING NOTE: Due to work changes, I may not be able to post updates on Tuesdays after Monday night marathon G4 reruns, but updates will occur later in the week.

LOST REBOOT 
Recap: Episodes 45-48 (Days 63-66)

The second season begins to wind down with the build up of the confrontation with the Others.

Michael reveals secrets about the Others' camp to the survivors;  Hurley and Libby plan their first date. When Ana  is attacked by Ben, she begins to contemplate taking matters into her own hands. Meanwhile, Michael is reunited with his friends and tells them he wants to go back for Walt, which Ben said the Others would never give up. Michael takes matters into his own hands, and as a result he shoots Ana and Libby.

After Eko experiences unusual dreams, he asks Locke to take him to the “?” from the blast door map. They go out and find the Pearl Station. Michael must maintain his cool as he watches Libby die slowly. In the Hatch, the rest of the survivors  must come to terms with what just transpired and try to ease the suffering of a mortally wounded Libby.

As the survivors mourn the losses  Ana and Libby, Michael  continues to badger the 815ers to launch a rescue mission for Walt, an assault against the Others who are to blame for their current situation. Michael convinces Hurley, Jack, Kate and Sawyer  to ambush the Others.

Events come to a head as Michael  leads his friends across the Island to confront the Others. Meanwhile, Desmond returns to the Island on his sailboat, and he and Locke make a decision to see what happens if the Hatch countdown timer goes beyond zero.

Michael’s ambush party is seen by the Others; Michael is confronted by Jack. Sayid, Jin and Sun use Desmond’s boat to counterattack and to meet up Jack's crew. Locke and Desmond trick Eko from leaving the station during a Lockdown, in order to test whether something happens if one does not press the Hatch button.

Science:

Brain washing is a technique to make people do something against their natural will.
Scientific studies began in the 1950s including the spheres of cults, marketing, influence, thought reform, torture and reeducation.

The neurological basis for reasoning and cognition in the brain, and brings the point across that the self is changeable. The physiology behind neurological pathways which include webs of neurons containing dendrites, axons and synapses; and this explains that certain brains with more rigid pathways will be less susceptible to new information or creative stimuli. Neurological science to show that brainwashed individuals have more rigid pathways, and that rigidity can make it unlikely that the individual will rethink situations or be able to later reorganize these pathways.

Certain techniques in influencing and brainwashing others, including a restriction of individual freedoms, deception, and methods that conflict with one's decision-making processes. the techniques used by cults to influence others are similar to those used by other social groups, and compares similar totalitarian aspects of cults and communist societies. These techniques include isolating the individual and controlling their access to information, challenging their belief structure and creating doubt, and repeating messages in a pressurized environment.  cults emphasize positive aspects of the group over negative aspects of outsiders, endlessly repeat simple ideas in "highly reductive, definitive - sounding phrases", and refer to "abstract and ambiguous" ideas associated with "huge emotional baggage” according to neuroscientist Kathleen Taylor.

Improbabilities:

Inman, the American soldier in Iraq with Sayid, is now pushing button in Hatch with Desmond.

In the 13 day Island flashback, why would Jack and/or Locke trust anything Michael would say after Michael knocked out Locke and pulled a gun on Jack in the Hatch? Michael’s violence against his friends under the guise of finding his son would get more paranoid after his return when he wants to organize a small ambush party that Jack agrees Michael has a right to lead.

Mysteries:

How can Ben and the Others leave the Island, and Desmond in his boat could not?

Is the vaccine actually the sickness or merely another fake element to get people to do something that does not matter?

What is the four toe foot statue base represent? We will learn that it is the remains of the statue of Tawaret, an ancient Egyptian god of fertility and death.

Themes:

Life and Death. There is a fine line between life and death. To what ends will a father do to save the life of his son? Is it rational for Michael to murder two people under the anger that his group is not helping him enough to find his son?  At this point in the story, it is the plane survivors who act more like savages - - - killing three others and a few of their own people by gross negligence. But later on, we will be told that pales in comparison with Ben’s purge of Dharma.

Missions and Quests. The main characters are often viewed, from even within the secondary characters, as going off into the jungle on dangerous missions. Those roles are similar to those of characters in massive on-line games like Worlds of Warcraft.

Clues:

When Desmond returns on his sailboat, which floated back to the Island, he states "we are stuck in a bloody snow globe! There's no outside world, there's no escape."

Desmond finally asks Jack if they are "still pushing" to which Jack replies with a smile, "Yeah, we're still pushing it."  Locke later remarks that the “world’s still here,” for which Desmond responds “not so sure.”

Ben tells Ana, “you are the killers!” And when confronted with his lies, Ben knows his fate with the survivors or his own group by saying “I’m dead anyway.”

Desmond won’t read Dickens “Our Mutual Friend” until just before his death; but his copy is tattered and worn like it has been read a lot.

When Michael asks Eko if he is a priest, Michael says next that he must believe in Hell.

Eko tells the story of a boy who kills a dog to protect his sister. The boy wonders if he can go to heaven for his action, and Eko tells him he will be forgiven so long as he is sorry. But the boy is still afraid that he will to Hell and find the dog waiting there for him.

Eko pieces together the impossible facts to conclude the Island is a magical place because his brother’s plane crashes halfway around the world, his plane crashes in the same place, and that he and John have vivid dreams of his brother telling them what to do.

Eko sees the vision of bleeding/dead Ana, who tells Eko to help Jack, and to help Locke find the question mark.

Discussion:

“ Business demands faith, compels earnestness, requires courage, is honestly selfish, is penalized for mistakes, and is the essence of life. ”
— William Feather

“Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.”
--- Laurence J. Peter

“Love must not touch the marrow of the soul. Our affections must be breakable chains that we can cast them off or tighten them.”
---- Louise Erdrich

As the second season winds down, there was a huge event that should have answered several burning questions about the Island and the Hatch. When Desmond returns, he tells the survivors that they are never going back to their old life; that there is no escape from the Island. Desmond then begins to drink himself to death.

The other element of these episodes is Michael’s dissent into his personal hell. His incompetence as a father transforms him into an incompetent killer. He compounds his mistakes by blaming Ben for the shootings, and covers up the truth while his friends watch innocent Libby die. As a result of his misguided love for his son, Michael will forever chain his soul to the Island seeking answers to his misery, as a trapped whisper in the jungle, which in some respects is his purgatory.

We also begin to get clear understanding of the fears and motivations of the characters.

We also see continuing repetition of themes and situations between characters.
Christian and Ana “run away” from their problems to go to Australia much in the same way that Kate is running away from her past decisions. We see characters like Desmond having to prove himself but fails just like Hurley believes he failed Libby on his organization of their first date.

Desmond is called a coward by Widmore. In order to restore his honor, he decides to win a round the world boat race sponsored by Widmore in order to win Penny back. How that makes any sense when Penny is engaged to another man, and upset with Dez for not writing her while he was “away.” (It is noteworthy that she does not acknowledge his “prison,” but uses the word “away” which has one meaning of “to go toward nonexistence.”) So Desmond’s fate is to do something incredibly brave in order to restore his honor so he can reconnect with his love, Penny. As in the Wizard of Oz, courage can only be obtained by the tests along the way to the end.

We see Michael as a father who allowed his son to be adopted and taken away by another person be racked by guilt of his selfish decision to compound his mistakes in order to get Walt back. Michael’s incompetence continues in his role as a murderer, because he could not do that right when he shot Libby, who suffered an agonizing death in front of her friends.

Charlie has his own personal demon, drugs. It tears a part his personal relationships. It leaves him alone; he fears being alone. So in order to restore his friendship with Claire, he must break free from the hold that drugs has on his soul. He does so when Vincent shows him Sawyer’s stash. Charlie throws all the statues out to sea. Later, at the funeral of Ana and Libby, Claire holds his hand, re-connecting their bond.

Bonds appear to be an important element of Island survival. Sawyer admits to Jack that Jack is the closest thing he has to a friend. Friendship could be equated to Faraday’s concept of having “a Constant” to keep you mind frying during the time travel elements of the future story arc. The bonds of friendship are important facets of human life, of social order and social behavior. When Jack repeats his mantra, “Live Together, Die Alone,” he means that their group bonds are more important than self-centered, selfish goals. We will find that those who go it alone, such as Michael, will wind up with damnation as a trapped island whisper, believed to be a lost soul that has not or cannot be redeemed.

Magical/Supernatural/Elements:

Desmond sailing “due west” for three weeks and not finding Fiji, but the only land is his return to the Island, which he considers “a large snow globe.”

Dead people showing up on the island, like Eko’s brother and Ana, telling Eko what to do next. Spirits are guiding individuals along the path of Island existence, in the same way one could say angels may guide souls through the after life.

Last lines in episodes:

EP 45:
LIBBY: [appearing] Michael?!
[Michael, surprised, turns and shoots her twice. He opens the armory door. He and Gale stare at each other for a long moment. Michael shoots himself in the arm.]

EP 46:
JACK: Michael. He's okay. He made it, Libby. It's okay. It's alright.
[Libby gasps for air and dies. Jack closes her eyelids. Hurley cries. Kate cries and Sawyer comforts her. We hear the timer alarm start sounding. We see Eko and Locke walking through the jungle. We see Michael standing by himself in the armory. We see a close up of the prompt at the computer monitor.]

EP 47:
SUN: Boat. Boat!
[We see a sailboat coming in to shore.]

EP 48:
SAYID: We’re here.


New Ideas/Tests of Theories:

If one looks to what is actually said within the show as the answers and theories to the Island mysteries, this is what we have so far:

1. Dave’s explanation to Hurley that Hurley is still in the hospital, in a catatonic state, and that he has created all these characters and events in his own mind.

2. Desmond believes that they are no longer in “their world” after sailing for three weeks in a “bloody snow globe.”  The concept as the Island in a different dimension or realm is a compelling premise, even if the characters survived the plane crash and transported to a spirit world interacting with dead souls seeking redemption.

3. Sawyer believes satirically that the Others are aliens. This would infer that the survivors are alien abductees on a ship or other planet as test subjects, like the Star Trek episode The Cage.

4. Many characters have referenced the Island being Hell or the after life. Rose and Locke acknowledge their secret “miracles” after the plane crash, a crash a normal person would not have survived. Radinzky, Inman’s partner in the Hatch, puts on the blast door map reference to Cerberus, the guardian dogs of Hell. Through Michael’s guilt and cover up, he references a belief in Hell to Eko.

5. That the survivors are unfortunate castaways who have landed on a crazy island controlled by dangerous psychopaths who have built several scientific stations to monitor and test human behavior in a series of cruel lies.

6. Likewise, there is evidence that the inhabitants of the Island all have mental illness symptoms or traits, including parenting and social issues, criminal behavior and paranoia. The Island may be a symbolic view point of insane people receiving treatment in a mental institution in order to “change” their behavior. The ability to “change” one’s path is an important element in each person’s back story. When Ben yells at Ana that her group “are the killers,” there could be truth in that statement that everyone on the island is criminally insane, and being treated in an unconventional manner as part of their sentence on an isolated penal colony. All the 815ers came from Australia, which began its existence as a penal colony.

7. After Walt is captured and sees Michael briefly, he warns him that it is all “pretend.” The Others are pretending to be a band of shoddy hillbillies. But it is a lie. But to pretend in a child’s world is to dream and act out adventure stories with other children. The idea that there are no children around could infer that the children are present, but in the form of adults, acting out their own interconnected dramas. This could all be as simple as a game of pretend. It could be an on-line game, it could be a virtual world, or it could be a fantasy dream of a “special” child. Any form of dream state could explain away all of the inconsistencies, continuity, legal errors, medical errors and supernatural elements of the show. For in a dream you can do anything you want, including reviving the dead.


These episodes dynamically reinforce the science that mind control is at the heart of the Island characters survival.  Is it about mental illness in a person(s) that creates a fantasy world that the characters are trying to get through, via quests, religious ritual or missions of survival? Or is characters in a hospital setting getting treatment from real doctors for whom the patients turn into villains? The whole idea that Dharma, the Others, Widmore or any other group is using brain washing techniques to “change” a person’s behavior or beliefs is compelling when viewed from the point of the last eight episodes. Ben and Klug use spies, interviews, and data collection of the survivors, including capturing subjects, isolating individuals from their group, controlling their access to information, challenging their belief structure; creating doubt, and repeating messages in a pressurized environment of confinement or supernatural dangers. It seems that the Island structures are all available means to re-train a person’s mind or brain wash them to change.  It seems that some characters must reach their personal “rock bottom” in order to change, and in turn, in order to be saved from their personal demons.

Example, when Klug is interviewing Michael in the Other’s camp, she is asking questions like a physician would to a new patient. She gives Michael a list of names, similar to what Dr. Brooks did with Hurley at the mental institution. When Walt is given three minutes with Michael, Klug threatens Walt with “the room,” which is Room 23 at a station that was used by Dharma and the Others for brain washing individuals. But Walt warns Michael that “this is all PRETEND!!”  The whole scene leaves Michael an emotional wreck, willing to do anything asked of him to get his son back, including murder. The question is whether Klug is helping Michael “change” his maniac personality disorder, re-channel his emotional guilt of not being a good father to his son, or feeding Michael’s fragile emotional state to act on impulses of pure evil.