Brain Upgrade
How to expand the capabilities of the brain
Mikhail Lebedev, Post-science
Neurotransmitters, neurointerfaces and new feelings that a person has not experienced before
Brain expansion is one of the main fantasies of our time. Many people want to use their brain 100% to be super productive and successful. However , Professor Skoltech and Mikhail Lebedev of the Higher School of Economics warns that such a desire is more likely to lead to epilepsy and violations of the fundamental mechanisms of the brain. The scientist told us about how the brain is stimulated now, what dangers exist and why neural interfaces are the inevitable future.
Superbrain — use 100% instead of the current 10%. Why is this a bad idea?
In 2011, the film "Regions of Darkness" was released, favorably received by the audience and nominated for a dozen different awards. The fantastic thriller exploited the incredibly tenacious myth that supposedly a person uses 10% of the resources of the brain and if you raise this bar to 100%, then the effectiveness of the person himself will grow accordingly. The persistence of this myth is explained by the fact that there is some truth in it. But everything, as always, depends on interpretations.
Mikhail Lebedev tells about the experience from personal practice, when they recorded the discharges of neurons of monkeys during a particular activity. Let's say the primate moved his hand, and the activity of neurons changed: some were turned on, others, on the contrary, were turned off. That is, the brain works economically, at each moment only a certain group of neurons is active, which is needed right now. A person has a similar situation: at any given time, his brain does not use all the existing neurons.
But attempts to accelerate your brain to 100% will not lead to anything good. There are inhibitory neurons in the cortex of the hemispheres, there are only 10% of the total number of these cells, and they perform a very important function — they inhibit the rest of the neurons. It is very important for a person that the brain not only conducts, but also filters information, removes unnecessary signals, noises and sounds. And in a red-hot system, a dysfunction of this inhibition may occur, which leads, for example, to epilepsy.
Even from general physiological considerations, it is clear that it is not necessary to load your brain 100%, since all physiological processes in the body are based on homeostasis, that is, the constancy of the internal environment of the body. All indicators in the body should work in the area of average capabilities. If one of these indicators is dispersed, the dynamic balance of the body will be disturbed, and the consequences will certainly be devastating for a person.
When they talk about expanding the capabilities of the brain, they most often mean attention, memory and overall performance. From all this, the real opportunity to improve brain function is attention training. Thanks to it, a person learns to focus on a specific task, cutting off unnecessary noise.
There is a widespread opinion that we are "smarter than the people of the past." Supposedly, we have a greater stock of knowledge, because the IQ is higher, but this is not entirely true. I regularly read neurophysiological articles of the XIX century and see how much thought scientists put into these articles. Nowadays, an article is something short, as cursory as possible and a limited discussion. This is a simple example that suggests that in our time we think and act differently. But that doesn't make us smarter than the people of the past.
What drugs are used to upgrade the brain
As a rule, a neurotransmitter such as serotonin, dopamine or glutamic acid is injected into the human body to get the appropriate effect (dopamine, for example, increases learning opportunities).
The problem is that the use of these chemicals can cause the effect of an inverted letter U, that is, at first the brain functions will grow steadily, but then due to an overdose everything will collapse sharply and become even worse. In addition, one neurotransmitter can participate in many functions, and scientists do not yet understand the long-term consequences of using such neurotransmitters, especially in young people.
There are also methods of brain stimulation based on the electroceutical approach. Instead of neurotransmitters, modulating substances, the brain is stimulated with electrodes, in the simplest version with two electrodes "plus" and "minus". The electrodes polarize the neurons, engage them in work in one place and slow them down in another. This is a rather crude method, but it bears fruit. You can read more about this method in the collection of articles Augmentation of Brain Function: Facts, Fiction and Controversy ("Expansion of brain functions: facts, fiction and controversy").
Another relatively new method of expanding brain functions is neural interfaces. So far, these are rather fantasies, but reasonable fantasies that will be realized in the next 20 years. The reputable magazine The Economist even put this technology on the list of innovations to watch out for in 2022, along with space tourism, artificial meat and an HIV vaccine. Therefore, let's focus on this issue in more detail.
Why do we need neural interfaces?
A neurointerface is a device that is connected to the brain to read information from there and then process it for some useful purposes. First of all, we are talking about medicine: a person with a paralyzed arm will be able to control the prosthesis directly, with the help of brain activity. There is success in this direction: in 2019, French scientists showed an example of a paralyzed patient below the neck, who with the help of an exoskeleton was able to walk 145 meters and start moving his arms.
But, in addition, neurointerfaces are planned to be used to improve brain function. The idea is to use the advantages of the human brain and add to them the capabilities of computers, since machines are able to calculate information much faster than a person and perform routine operations.
The main obstacle is that now a person communicates with a computer by pressing keys. It is more effective to use normal motor skills, sensitivity, vision and hearing. How to implement a seamless connection directly is still unclear. But as soon as this opportunity appears, improving brain function using interfaces will move from conversations to the level of working prototypes.
In parallel, a whole cluster of technologies is developing under the general name "artificial intelligence". Modern artificial neural networks simulate the work of natural neural networks, that is, artificial intelligence models the brain. Naturally, AI and the real brain are different things, but many processes are similar. There are already many articles in the scientific literature in which the work of the biological brain is understood thanks to the research of artificial intelligence. And there is a high probability that at some point AI will become a human assistant, including interacting with him through the neurointerface.
What are the dangers of neural interfaces
The dangers associated with neural interfaces are quite obvious. It is enough to recall the popular experiments of the neuroscientist James Olds, who implanted electrodes into a certain part of the brain of a rat. While the rodent pressed the pedal, he enjoyed it. The experiment could last 12 hours, and all this time the animal did not stop.
People have a similar example — when patients with parkinsonism are treated with implants placed in the brain. These implants relieve the symptoms of the disease, but at the same time, people may have side effects, since the stimulated areas are located next to the areas responsible for motivation and pleasure. Sometimes it happens that a person with an implant not only stops experiencing symptoms of the disease, but also becomes happier. It was found out by accident. That is, before stimulating the brain, you need to carefully study what consequences this can lead to.
By the way, Parkinson's disease is one of the most frequent neurodegenerative human diseases along with Alzheimer's disease. They most often occur in the elderly and are considered a sign of aging of the brain. Will neural interfaces help to deal with these problems? Probably yes, but this approach implies that if something stops working in the brain, this area will need to be replaced with an electronic circuit.
So far, there are no such adequate electronic circuits, so scientists suggest focusing on other tasks. The first is to maintain normal blood circulation of the brain so that it receives all the substances necessary for normal functioning. The second is to preserve the blood—brain barrier, which protects the brain from the penetration of microorganisms and toxins. And the third is to regulate the brain's own immune system so that the glial cells that support homeostasis eat only unnecessary elements. Otherwise, when microglia is overly activated, it eats the brain itself, which leads to neurodegeneration.
What new research is being conducted in the field of neurointerfaces
Modern experiments in the field of interfaces are conducted as follows: they take a certain area of the brain, study the principles of its operation and then try to expand the function of this area. For example, experiments with the visual cortex: scientists can already insert an electrode into the visual cortex, give an impulse, and at the same time the subject will see a flash of light called phosphene (a visual phenomenon in the form of spots or figures that a person sees in the dark or with his eyes closed). So far, it is impossible to achieve more, it is impossible even to make this flash of light colored. But this is already progress, and over time, the technology will allow you to restore vision in some primitive form.
There are successful experiments with hearing, first of all we are talking about cochlear implants — prostheses that interact directly with the auditory nerve and compensate patients for hearing loss. Implants that work at the level of stem centers or the auditory cortex are also being developed. It is possible to expand the possibilities of motor functions — to read activity from the motor cortex and use it to control, for example, a robot.
There is a completely futuristic task — to create feelings that initially do not exist in a person. In the experiment, rats were given a sense of infrared light, an infrared radiation detector was placed on their heads and connected to electrodes that stimulated the visual or somatosensory cortex. The rat was actually gaining a new sensitivity, and potentially the same could be done with a human.
People need to monitor the achievements in the field of neurointerfaces, if only because they will become consumers of all these achievements, whether they want it or not. The first neural interfaces will be terribly expensive and poorly functioning, so a limited number of users will receive them. But as we develop this tool, it will become cheaper and more efficient, in 20 years it will surely happen. And in general, it is useful for anyone to know how the brain works, what processes exist in it. Especially considering that often a person has a very distant idea of how this organ of his works, preferring to rely on myths or views resembling religious ones.
About the author: Mikhail Lebedev – PhD, Scientific Director of the HSE Center for Bioelectric Interfaces, Senior Researcher at the Duke University Medical Center, Durham Center for Neuroengineering.
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