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Researchers find major clue to consciousness

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We still don’t know what “consciousness” actually means. But in a new study, researchers have used the equations of quantum mechanics to determine a brain’s “criticality,” a measure which allows them to separate waking brains from sleeping ones. I think they’re onto something. Let’s take a look.

Paper: https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract… Check out my new quiz app ➜ http://quizwithit.com/ 💌 Support me on Donorbox ➜ https://donorbox.org/swtg 📝 Transcripts and written news on Substack ➜ https://sciencewtg.substack.com/ 👉 Transcript with links to references on Patreon ➜ / sabine 📩 Free weekly science newsletter ➜ https://sabinehossenfelder.com/newsle… 👂 Audio only podcast ➜ https://open.spotify.com/show/0MkNfXl… 🔗 Join this channel to get access to perks ➜ / @sabinehossenfelder 🖼️ On instagram ➜ / sciencewtg #science #sciencenews #consciousness.

🤓 Check out my new quiz app ➜ http://quizwithit.com/
💌 Support me on Donorbox ➜ https://donorbox.org/swtg.
📝 Transcripts and written news on Substack ➜ https://sciencewtg.substack.com/
👉 Transcript with links to references on Patreon ➜ / sabine.
📩 Free weekly science newsletter ➜ https://sabinehossenfelder.com/newsle
👂 Audio only podcast ➜ https://open.spotify.com/show/0MkNfXl
🔗 Join this channel to get access to perks ➜
/ @sabinehossenfelder.
🖼️ On instagram ➜ / sciencewtg.

#science #sciencenews #consciousness

A Musician’s Brain Matter Is Still Making Music—Three Years After His Death

American composer Alvin Lucier was well-known for his experimental works that tested the boundaries of music and art. A longtime professor at Wesleyan University (before retiring in 2011), Alvin passed away in 2021 at the age of 90. However, that wasn’t the end of his lifelong musical odyssey.

Earlier this month, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, a new art installation titled Revivification used Lucier’s “brain matter”—hooked up to an electrode mesh connected to twenty large brass plates—to create electrical signals that triggered a mallet to strike the varying plates, creating a kind of post-mortem musical piece. Conceptualized in collaboration with Lucier himself before his death, the artists solicited the help of researchers from Harvard Medical School, who grew a mini-brain from Lucier’s white blood cells. The team created stem cells from these white blood cells, and due to their pluripotency, the cells developed into cerebral organoids somewhat similar to developing human brains.

Your cells can ‘hear’: Uncovering the relationship between life and sound

There’s a sensation that you experience—near a plane taking off or a speaker bank at a concert—from a sound so total that you feel it in your very being. When this happens, not only do your brain and ears perceive it, but your cells may also.

Technically speaking, is a simple phenomenon, consisting of compressional mechanical waves transmitted through substances which exist universally in the non-equilibrated material world. Sound is also a vital source of environmental information for living beings, while its capacity to induce physiological responses at the cell level is only just beginning to be understood.

Following on from previous work from 2018, a team of researchers at Kyoto University have been inspired by research in mechanobiology and body-conducted sound—the sound environment in —indicating that transmitted by sound may be sufficient to induce cellular responses.

Motion artifact–controlled micro–brain sensors between hair follicles for persistent augmented reality brain–computer interfaces

Modern brain–computer interfaces (BCI), utilizing electroencephalograms for bidirectional human–machine communication, face significant limitations from movement-vulnerable rigid sensors, inconsistent skin–electrode impedance, and bulky electronics, diminishing the system’s continuous use and portability. Here, we introduce motion artifact–controlled micro–brain sensors between hair strands, enabling ultralow impedance density on skin contact for long-term usable, persistent BCI with augmented reality (AR). An array of low-profile microstructured electrodes with a highly conductive polymer is seamlessly inserted into the space between hair follicles, offering high-fidelity neural signal capture for up to 12 h while maintaining the lowest contact impedance density (0.03 kΩ·cm−2) among reported articles. Implemented wireless BCI, detecting steady-state visually evoked potentials, offers 96.4% accuracy in signal classification with a train-free algorithm even during the subject’s excessive motions, including standing, walking, and running. A demonstration captures this system’s capability, showing AR-based video calling with hands-free controls using brain signals, transforming digital communication. Collectively, this research highlights the pivotal role of integrated sensors and flexible electronics technology in advancing BCI’s applications for interactive digital environments.

Mapping study pinpoints key brain regions for reasoning skills

A team of researchers at UCL and UCLH have identified the key brain regions that are essential for logical thinking and problem solving.

The findings, published in Brain, help to increase our understanding of how the human brain supports our ability to comprehend, draw conclusions, and deal with new and novel problems—otherwise known as reasoning skills.

To determine which are necessary for a certain ability, researchers study patients with brain lesions (an area of damage in the brain) caused by stroke or . This approach, known as “lesion-deficit mapping,” is the most powerful method for localizing function in the human brain.

How ‘mind-uploading’ stands to shake the core of humanity | Steven Kotler

We’re closer than ever to being able to upload our minds and become “digitally immortal.” But should we?

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What if our minds could live after our bodies have died? What if mortality became obsolete? Steven Kotler, award-winning journalist and executive director of the Flow Research Collective, has studied these seemingly sci-fi ideas, and it turns out that they’re not so fictional, after all. In fact, mind-uploading technology is expected to be available as early as 2045.

“Digital immortality” would have its upsides; we could preserve the minds of modern geniuses and have their guidance through future conflicts. Or, alternatively, things could get dark, as we have never before interfered with such complex evolutionary processes. Kotler explains that the ability to store human personalities and consciousness on computers poses profound ethical and societal questions.

By developing and using this mind-uploading technology, we are simultaneously redefining what it means to be a human being, pushing the boundary between life, death, and whatever is in between. It seems, whether we’re ready or not, that it is going to happen soon.