[sdiy] brainwaves to CV :O)

[Scott Gravenhorst]

The animal brain did not evolve in an evironment in which the animal benefits from
signals that leave the brain for any reason.  Nor were there nor are there any challenges
provided by nature which encourage or ellicit such benefits.  However, animals did and do
benefit from the physical electrochemical connections to sensory organs and muscles.  

Human beings which are also animals have evolved in the same or similar way such that we
developed efficient connections from the brain to sensory organs and muscles.  The use of
the sensory organs and muscles provided advantages for (at least) feeding and breeding,
thus we prospered.  

The fact that some electrical signals can be detected by sensitive electrical equipment
is, in my opinion, merely a side effect, a curiousity.  The human brain certainly seems
capable of some amount of multitasking, such as walking while talking or playing a
musical instrument in which the limbs (and other parts) are doing something perhaps
related, but different.  

The connections for muscle control come from specific parts of the brain that evolved to
handle those specific functions effectively.  It may be more like multiprocessing than
multitasking.  Because of the lack of encouragement/reward from evolution for external
signal use (what in nature responds to such signals?) and because evolution did produce
advanced connections for limbs and sense, I would have to agree with Barry that the idea
of a mentally conducted piano concert will never be as good as one done with hands and
other parts, mainly because we have real evolutionary advantages in using our hands to
manipulate our physical world and we have no such advantages produced because of
electrical activity that eminates from the skull.  

I think that the technology to even approach something like playing a fugue from mental
electrical activity sensed by a machine are a very long way off.  Consider also that the
brain is a three dimensional object and connecting to it's exterior surface would at best
give only a blurred and distorted summing view of the multitude of individual signals
generated within.  Separation of specific signals seems required for such a task and at
present, the technology to do so doesn't exist.  (yes, I saw that "House" episode and I
thought the same way Barry did: No - it doesn't work like that)

I would not discourage experimentation in this regard, but I personally hold out little
hope for real success.

-- ScottG

________________________________________________________________________
-- Scott Gravenhorst
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