Neuroscientists have found evidence that when a monkey learns to use a tool, it treats it like another body part. Earlier research has found that brain area F5 controlled the monkey’s ability to hold and use objects. The researchers recorded the activity of 113 neurons in F5 (as well as F1, also involved in manipulation) and discovered that the same ones fired in the same order when the monkeys grasped with their hands as when they used pliers, and even when they used reverse pliers that required they open their hand to grab the food. So, it seems that the monkey brain uses the same neural net for tool use as when using its hands, thereby extending its consciousness beyond its hand.

This serves as scientific support for the theory of extended cognition, as advanced by David Chalmers and Andy Clark. Our minds have a certain plasticity that allows them to go beyond bodily parameters. When writing with a pen, we are not conscious of manipulating an object, but can write without thinking about it, unless the pen breaks, at which point we are confronted with the reality that we are using a faulty tool. This mental plasticity allows people to use robotic prosthetic appendages, as well as let blind people see and deaf hear by means of cybernetic implants. The study reinforces that we do in fact extend our minds into the tools we use, incorporating them into a kind of machinic assemblage where subject and instrument are merged into one.

Tool Use Is Just a Trick of the Mind, ScienceNow.ScienceMag.org
The Extended Mind, Andy Clark and David Chalmers, Consc.net

Forget individual artificial intelligence programs for a moment, because a whole artificial society has just opened up. New and Emergent World models Through Individual, Evolutionary, and Social Learning or the NEW TIES project is deveping an artificial computer simulated society composed of agent programs (adaptive, artificial beings that have independent behaviors). The aim is to create an artificial society capable of exploring and understanding its environment through cooperation and interaction. The agent programs are complex enough to develop a communication system and learn to work together.

At first, the world will be running across a grid of 60 computers and contain about 1,000 agents (one day to grow into the millions). Each agent will have its own characteristics (gender, life expectancy, fertility, size, and metabolism), some of which they will pass to their offspring. They will be able to learn from experience as well as from others. NEW TIES is the first to create such a complex large-scale artificial society. The results may have curious implications for evolutionary computing systems, artifical intelligence and linguistics.

New Ties Portal
Artificial Personalities to Populate Virtual World, ScienceaGoGo.com

A team of Emory neuroscientists, led by Gregory Berns MD, Phd, have identified the part of the brain activated during the experience of dread. The research was conducted as part of a program in neuroeconomcs, a new field that applies neurology to economic questions. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the team examined the brains of participants while delivering a series of 96 low voltage shocks of varying frequency and intensity to their feet. Having first screened the participants for their pain thresholds, before each shock they they told them how strong it would be (in % of threshold), and offered the choice between more pain sooner or less pain later. Most preferred to speed up the process at least a little, "mild dreaders," while 28% were willing to take more pain just to avoid waiting, termed "extreme dreaders." The degree to which people opted for more voltage sooner, seems to indicate the dread they felt from waiting.

The brain scans showed localized activity in areas associated with pain, as well as attention, which reflects that dread is more than fear or anxiety, feelings found in other parts of the brain. Further, the extreme dreaders had more attentional activity, which was seen much earlier compared the mild dreaders. "Taken together, the anatomical locations of dread responses suggest that the subjective experience of dread that ultimately drives an individual’s behavior comes from the attention devoted to the expected physical response, and not simply a fear or anxiety response," explains Dr. Berns. So, it is not so much the amount of pain a person can bear, as how attentively the pain is experienced, that determines the amount of dread produced. An extremely attentive person, then, may have a more dreadful life than someone who is abscent-minded, who sometimes might not even notice being hurt. While attentiveness has its benifits, taken to an extreme it can be paralyzing. Take Dostoyevsky’s underground man, whose hyper-attention to the most minute social gestures led him to live in isolation on the fringes of society, incapable of normal interaction. The study, supported by the National Institutes of Drug Abuse (NIDA), was published in the May 5 issue of Science.

Neurobiology of dread gives scientists clues about human decision making, Emory.edu

Depending on what we are thinking, how hard we are concentrating, our brain chemistry, environment, and a number of other factors, our brains have a certain electromagnetic signature, a wave frequency, which we can measure with available technology, namely electroencephalographs (EEG). Traditionally, these continuous rhythmic sinusoidal EEG waves were classified into four types: delta, theta, alpha and beta waves. Delta had a frequency range up to 4 Hz, associated with infants and children. Theta ranged from 4-8 Hz, and was linked with adolescence, trance and the preconscious state just before waking. Alpha (Berger’s) waves, 8-12 HZ, were tied to relaxed, alert consciousness. While, Beta waves, 12 Hz and above, were related to anxious thinking and active concentration. However, as increasing evidence for higher frequency brain activity came to light, Gamma waves lay claim the 26-80 Hz range, known euphemistically as “coherent 40 Hz oscillations.” These waves seem to go together with higher mental processes, perception and consciousness, making them the brain waves you probably want to have.

Gamma waves do not result from axonal-dendritic synapses, but rather from dentro-dendritic gap junctions that form after a synapse activation that links neurons together. Neurons connected by gap junctions have one common membrane, fire simultaneously and generally behave like a single giant neuron. These mega-neurons have membranes that depolarize coherently and can spread across different parts of the cortex (potentially allowing for brain-wide states). Normally, these networks are transient, as gap junctions form and dissolve constantly. But, recent research showing that practiced meditators like Tibetan monks can muscle 25-42 Hz easy, with some pushing 80-120 Hz, suggests that it is possible to keep the gap junctions open longer.

The relation between meditation and high wave frequency is not surprising, since the middle frequency (12-16 Hz), the sensorimotor rhythm, goes together with physical stillness. Just sitting still for a while is already half-way to Gamma. From there on, it almost seems it is just a matter of how much of your brain you have under control. Heightened consciousness, known as Samadhi in the meditation traditions, is an experience unclouded by cognitive contents. One usually arrives at it gradually, after years of practice, disciplining the mind that delights in distraction, learning how to focus all attention on a single thing. To focus completely on a single thing means to be able to let go of everything else. So, once you can do that, you can rid yourself from all undesired cognitive contents and enjoy a pure unmediated experience of reality. Now, if the Gamma wave frequency goes up as more of the brain is connected through gap junctions, it seems that advanced practitioners are simply able to network more of their brains, having trained to concentrate their minds. The benefits of meditation do not all wear off, advanced practitioners have a higher baseline gamma synchrony, suggesting a higher general awareness, concentration and consciousness. Other research has shown that meditation also thickens grey matter in parts of the cortex where it normally gets thinner with age. 

Breakthrough study on EEG of meditation, Stuart Hameroff MD, Director, Center for Consciousness Studies, U. of Arizona-Tucson

Grasping the Intentions of Others with One’s Own Mirror Neuron System
Abstract: Understanding the intentions of others while watching their actions is a fundamental building block of social behavior. The neural and functional mechanisms underlying this ability are still poorly understood. To investigate these mechanisms we used functional magnetic resonance imaging. Twenty-three subjects watched three kinds of stimuli: grasping hand actions without a context, context only (scenes containing objects), and grasping hand actions performed in two different contexts. In the latter condition the context suggested the intention associated with the grasping action (either drinking or cleaning). Actions embedded in contexts, compared with the other two conditions, yielded a significant signal increase in the posterior part of the inferior frontal gyrus and the adjacent sector of the ventral premotor cortex where hand actions are represented. Thus, premotor mirror neuron areas, "areas active during the execution and the observation of an action," previously thought to be involved only in action recognition are actually also involved in understanding the intentions of others. To ascribe an intention is to infer a forthcoming new goal, and this is an operation that the motor system does automatically.

According to this study by UCLA neuroscientists, specialized brain cells called mirror neurons work in our understanding of others. These cells behave the same when one is performing an action as when they are observing another do it. To identify which areas of the brain are most active for a given task, the study used a brain imaging technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to subtract the activation patterns from two different stimuli, thereby highlighting brain regions that are activated differentially in response to the difference in stimulus. Basically, fMRI (ephemerai uses a machine that scans the blood flow to functioning areas of the brain and pops out a picture, like this one from the aforementioned study:

The rest of Grasping the Intentions of Others with One’s Own Mirror Neuron System, PLoSBiology.org.

In a library basement in Edinburgh, there is a plain-looking black box the size of two cigarette packs. Inside it there is a microchip, no more complex than a pocket calculators. However, what distinguishes the Edinburgh box is that it can tell the future.It apparently sensed the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre four hours before they happened - but the claims were knocked back by sceptics. Last December, it also appeared to forewarn of the Asian tsunami just before the deep sea earthquake that precipitated the epic tragedy. "It’s Earth-shattering stuff," says Dr Roger Nelson, emeritus researcher at Princeton University, NJ, who is heading the research project behind the "black box" phenomenon. The Global Consciousness project has attracted a roster of 75 respected scientists from 41 different nations, making for the most rigorous and longest-running investigation ever into the potential powers of the paranormal.

The project has its roots in the work of Professor Robert Jahn of Princeton University in the late 1970s, who was one of the first modern scientists to take paranormal phenomena seriously. Jahn used current technology to study paranormal phenomena such as telepathy, telekinesis and ESP. One of these technologies was a Random Event Generator (REG), which generated ones and zeros in a random sequence, like an electronic coin-flipper. Then he checked if human thought alone could interfere in some way with the machine’s usual readings. He hauled strangers off the street and asked them to concentrate their minds on his number generator, trying to make it flip more heads than tails. Repeatedly, they were successful at the task. Dr Nelson, also at Princeton University, extended this approach to group meditations, which showed an increased influence over the REG. He then decided to connect 40 REGs from around the world to his computer lab in Princeton via internet. These ran day in day out, but most of the time the graph looked more or less like a flat line. Then September 6, 1997, the machines started reporting huge deviations. That was the day approximately one billion people around the world watched the funeral of Princess Diana.

Since then a total of 65 Eggs (as the generators have been named) in 41 countries have now been recruited to act as the ‘eyes’ of the project. Thus far, the Eggs have "sensed" a whole series of major world events as they were happening, from the Nato bombing of Yugoslavia to the Kursk submarine tragedy to America’s hung election of 2000. The Eggs also regularly detect huge global celebrations, such as New Year’s Eve.

Can this box see into the future? RedNova.com.
Global Consciousness Project