THE NEXT STEP

Another twist on our discussion of brain patterns, personality and ability to transfer data between human beings (to network them like computers). A new movie, Self/Less, has the premise of fully memory and personality transfer of human consciousness.

When business tycoon Damien Hale (played by Ben Kingsley) faces death from cancer in Self/Less, in theaters today, he doesn’t go gently into that good night. Instead, he undergoes a radical underground medical procedure called “shedding” that allows him to transfer his mind into another, younger, healthier, lab-grown body (Ryan Reynolds’s body, to be exact) and start a whole new life with a new identity.

For now, this is science fiction—but, says Charles Higgins,  a neuroscientist at the University of Arizona, it could one day happen. “We cannot yet conceive of a machine that could scan the brain to the extent required to do what is in the movie,” he tells mental_floss. “But 100 years ago we could not conceive that in our pockets we would carry what are, essentially, supercomputers and communicators that we can talk to anyone on the planet with.”

Studying the brain is Higgins's business. “I’m interested in the interface between the mind and the brain and quantifying things that are normally unquantifiable, like depression, mood, consciousness, and self,” he says. Among the things he and his team are working on in his research laboratory: grabbing electrical signals from insect brains to build high-tech robots with excellent vision; figuring out how cognition works by creating a simulated, computerized rat that wanders around a digital maze; and gathering data on human sleep with a device he built. So though he didn’t consult on Self/Less during production—the studio brought him on afterward—he’s an excellent source to talk to about the film’s science.

According to Higgins, there are huge hurdles to jump before we transfer consciousness from one body to another. For one, there’s a lot we don’t understand about how the brain—and consciousness in particular—work. “If you ask 100 different experts to list what the brain does, you’ll get 100 different answers,” Higgins says. “The brain definitely regulates your life support. Sometimes we use the word cognition—is that what the brain does? It’s a memory system as well. You could go on and on.”

Once we understand the brain in the same way we understand the heart or a computer, Higgins says, “we’ll be able to see how brains are related and understand what the important details we need to get out of the brain are.”

Another challenge: Computers have software, but the brain isn’t quite so simple. “The software and the hardware are all [together],” Higgins says. “So what details of the brain structure do I need to read out?”

Some people, he says, think we need to go down to a quantum level. Others think it might be unnecessary to go subatomic to scan consciousness: “You could go just to the level of of neurons and other connections,” Higgins says. “But we don’t really know.”

Even if we did know where consciousness was found, we don’t have the technology to transfer it. In Self/Less, the company Phoenix Biogenic uses what looks like a souped-up fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to access and transfer consciousness from one body to another. Higgins says this is “the right idea, although at this point fMRI technology does not allow us to get down to sub-neuron resolution.”

Computers use electromagnetic markers to store and access data. The human brain uses biochemicals and proteins to make connections to organic synapses. Science does not know how the brain encodes memories, emotions and data for storage and later retrieval. Medical science does not know why in the aging process, people begin to lose memories. Rehab therapists have trained patients to mentally use artificial, mechanical limbs. 

The next step in research is to find how a person's mind interacts with his or her organic materials in the brain. 

SPIRIT ANIMALS

Otherkin are people who identify as partially or entirely non-human. Some say that they are, in spirit if not in body, not human.

This is explained by some members of the otherkin community as possible through reincarnation,   having a nonhuman soul, ancestry, or symbolic metaphor. Some scholars categorize this identity claim as "religious" because it is largely based on supernatural beliefs.

Otherkin largely identify as mythical creatures, with others identifying as creatures from fantasy or popular culture. Examples include: angels, demons, dragons, elves, fairies, sprites, aliens and cartoon characters.  Many otherkin believe in the existence of a multitude of parallel/alternative universes, which would explain the existence and the possibility to relate to fantastical beings and fictional characters.

Many of these themes like life, death, demons, monsters, souls, reincarnation, heaven and hell, are embodied in the LOST mythology. Why were the Others called "the Others."  Was this a clue to their origin, as otherkin (not human but spirits)? That would put a different spin on the island and the show's premise, being more underworld than real world.

Another realm of otherkin is the bonding of humans with spirits. Self-identification with another person, community or lifestyle helps mold a person's character and personality. Otherkin is essentially another manifestation of this phenomenon, which has its roots deep in human psychology; in other human tribes, it's perfectly acceptable to identify with a spirit animal and to take on traits and fetishes relating to that creature. 

What would be the spirit animals for each main character "Candidates?"

Hurley: Turtle. Slow, steady, nonthreatening, loner.

Kate: Rabbit. Fast, on the run, avoids people and danger, cute, adorable.

Sawyer: Snake. Lies low, stalks prey, strikes when least expected, deadly.

Sayid: Scorpion. Shifts with the sand, dangerous quick strike ability, deadly.

Jack: Horse. Strong, steady, a hard worker.

Locke: Lone Wolf. Seeker, follower, trying to find own path.

Jin: Shark. Always on the move, looking for opportunity, advantage, willing to hunt in pack.

WHY MOTHERHOOD WAS CRAZY

It cannot be coincidence that so many mothers were crazy.  Really, crazy.

From Locke's child common law wife mother who went institutional crazy after abandoning her child in the 1950s, to Claire's "Rousseau's Walk" into the dark side of the jungle, LOST's writers painted a real bleak picture of motherhood.

Almost a tortured representation of the divine gift of life.

Juliet was kidnapped so Ben and the Others could find an answer to why their pregnant women were dying in the third trimester. Why would the island, as the alleged place of "life, death and rebirth" continually kill expectant mothers and their unborn children?

Jacob and MIB's mother gave birth on the island, but she was killed by another crazy woman, whom we think was a smoke monster (by the aftermath of her wiping out the Roman camp). She had been alone so long that she was crazy. Crazy dangerous.

Rousseau also gave birth on the island, to Alex. They survived but were separated by the Others (who apparently could reproduce or keep children alive. Perhaps there was a social stigma against any woman except those worshipping Jacob.) Rousseau saw the violence of the smoke monster killing her shipmates, which led her to kill their reincarnated corpses in order to protect her unborn baby. For her honor, she was to live a lonely, hardscrabble life in the jungle - - - under constant threat of attack, real and imagined.

Even the surrogate mothers were crazy. Kate was no Ms. Housekeeping when she took charge of Aaron. Kate's background was a homicidal runaway. Eloise, Daniel's mother, thought nothing of throwing her son or step-daughter, Penny, to the flames of hell in order to maintain control over the island and its secrets.

There clearly is an undertone of anti-motherhood in the series.

There is no explanation for it.  Yes, bad mothers could infuse psychotic traits in their children. But the vast majority of mothers who had children were crazy, alcoholics (Jack's mother) or totally out of the picture, strangers to their own children.

Was the undertone a subliminal message for mass contraception, zero population growth, or an oddity of male dominated showrunner excess?

TRANSFORMATION

Transformation is a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance:  such as:
• a metamorphosis during the life cycle of an animal.
• Physics the induced or spontaneous change of one element into another by a nuclear process.
• Mathematics & Logic a process by which one figure, expression, or function is converted into another that is equivalent in some important respect but is differently expressed or represented.
• Linguistics a process by which an element in the underlying deep structure of a sentence is converted to an element in the surface structure.
• Biology the genetic alteration of a cell by introduction of extraneous DNA, esp. by a plasmid.
• Biology the heritable modification of a cell from its normal state to a malignant state.


Many consider LOST a trans formative series.


It created new format (back back and flash forward) of editing stories together. It revived a large core cast of main characters in a drama series (which was usually reserved to mini-series). It was one of the rare series that had both critics and viewers fanatical show worshippers. It was one of the first series to have a large, devote internet fan community dissecting the show in near real time.

The major transformations in the series may have been large, but its meanings light.

For example, the island's big transformation was it disappearance after the freighter explosion. How can an island just vanish? This was after the set-up by Daniel Faraday that his experiments showed that the island was actually in motion, moving away faster from the freighter than the rocket.  Since we know that islands are stationary objects anchored miles below on the ocean floor, it is not physically possible to make one disappear or move. The only other explanation would be that the island was not an island but a spacecraft or floating object. Such an explanation would put a different spin on what the show was really about. Since we don't have a fleet of floating islands on Earth, was it alien technology. Was the manipulation of time (time travel arc) and space (the island vanishing) the real key?

In many religions, a person on Earth will be transformed upon death into a secondary being. There are a few theorists who now believe that ancient cultures aligned their pyramid observatories to the heavens in order to possibly open star gates to the center of the Milky Way, believed to be the origin place of everything. If the human body is merely a bio-chemical machine operated by an unknown spirit, upon the end of the useful life of the machine, the spirit would be released into his natural form (energy?) Such a release (or perhaps "awakening" in the jargon of the series) is what the final transformation is the creator's vision of ourselves. We go on as ourselves in the after life. The only change we take with us is our memories.