Scientists Say Paralyzed Man Moves Physical Objects With His Mind
July 13, 2006 Posted by Amy Hall
Some excerpts from the article describing this amazing feat (HT: The Pearcey Report):
A man paralysed from the neck down has shown he can open email, control a TV and move objects with a robotic arm by thought alone.
The 25-year-old American patient, Matthew Nagle, had a computer-linked implant placed in his brain that enabled him to operate devices just by thinking about it….by imagining a particular task being carried out….
Known as the BrainGate Neural Interface System, it consists of an array of electrodes that record neural activity from the motor cortex of the brain.
Signals from the implant are decoded and processed by a computer, allowing them to be translated into movement commands.
First, Mr. Nagle learned to move a computer cursor by focusing his thoughts on the task….
He was able to open simulated e-mail, draw circular shapes on the computer screen, play a simple video game called “neural Pong”, and change the channel and adjust the volume on a television.
Ultimately, he could open and close the fingers of an artificial hand and use a robotic arm to grasp and move objects.
Initiated by his will to move (the initiation is not in itself a physical process, nor is it determined by a physical process, but the action is initiated by the will of the man), Nagle’s thoughts are then translated into something physical (the electrical impulses in his brain) which are then translated by man-made equipment into information used to move physical objects in the world.
The real mystery, known to God alone, is how the desires of our minds are translated into the physical impulses of our brains–how something non-physical interacts with the physical. Scientists can only build machines that measure the physical impulses, but they could never have access to the thoughts themselves. The truth is, the will to move parts of our body is not determined by physical impulses, it causes them.
The title of this post may have surprised you, but it shouldn’t. You move a physical object every day with your mind–your own body!
Is it any surprise, then, that the God who created a way for your mind to interact with the physical machine of your body can Himself affect the physical world, though He is non-physical?
Related posts:
- Could a Non-Physical Being Possibly Affect the Physical World?
- Vonnegut on the Tribal Thinking of Scientists
- Newsflash: Christian "Taliban" Destroying Foundations of Science!
- The Heart of Intelligent Design Theory
- Design and Knowledge
- Confusion About Science and Religion – Part One
Posted in Amy's Posts, Main Page, Philosophy, Science
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July 13th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
I just think that's really neat. I wrote a blog about this same subject last year. Intentional actions would be impossible if we didn't have an immaterial mind that has causal influence over the physical brain.
It makes you think, though. If minds can have causal interaction with brains, why couldn't they have causal interaction with other things? Everything is made up of the same protons, neutrons, and electrons that brains are made of. If minds can move particles in the brains, why couldn't they move particles outside the brain? Why couldn't we really move things beyond our bodies with our minds? I had a dream the other night that I could move things with my mind kinda like a jedi trying to fetch his light saber from a distance. It was neat.
I suppose there's two possible reasons. The mind/brain interactions are so subtle that they can't really be detected. The mind seems to initiate a causal chain that only becomes obvious once it's really going. Otherwise, there would be a measurable “violation” of the first law of thermodynamics. Energy would be added to the system. Instead, it seems to be more like an avalanche. The brain has potential chemical energy that's released from a subtle trigger. It's so subtle that it evades measurement.
I'm just speculating here, of course, but if the mind works in such a subtle way, then it really doesn't have much causal power. With such little causal power, you couldn't even pick up a grain of sand with your mind alone. That could be one reason we can't move things with our minds.
Another is that it could simply be part of God's design for the soul that it only interacts with the brain. The brain acts as a window through which the mind perceives and interacts with the physical world.
Things that make you go hmm…
July 13th, 2006 at 4:44 pm
Last year when I was writing about the mind/body problem, I raised what seemed to me to be an interesting question. The causal interaction between the mind and brain seems to go both ways. When we act willfully, our mental states cause brain states. But when we perceive, brain states cause mental states. The mind is able to perceive the physical world because we have organs that send signals to the brain, giving us physical sensations of touch, taste, sight, sound, and smell. If the mind only perceives these things through the “window” of the brain, then what's it like to be a disembodied spirit? Without physical organs and a brain, is it possible for a disembodied spirit to perceive the physical world at all? Another thing to make you go hmm… What do YOU think?
July 13th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
I saw this post at the Pearcy Report and this thought occured to me:
Materialist: Matter (Brain) over Matter (Muscles & Nervous System) over Matter (Machine).
Hylomorphist: Mind (Soul) over Internal Matter (body) over external matter (machine)
On the surface it seems that in the materialist's schema there is no efficient cause between matter and matter while on the other there is.
This might be a long shot but these are my two pesos.
July 13th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
Sorry. I just keep thinking of other things to say. There's a question that has trouble me for some time. One of the major differences between material and immaterial things is that material things have location and immaterial things don't. Yet it seems like minds do in some sense have location. Otherwise, it wouldn't make sense to say, “Amy is in California,” or “Sam is in Texas.” I mean think about it. Why can your mind cause something in your brain, but not mine? Why is it that our minds only have causal interaction with our own brains and not somebody else's? (I suppose if we COULD have causal interaction with other people's brains, we'd be able to put thoughts into people's heads or read other people's minds. Hmm…)
Maybe it's just a mistake to say that immaterial things don't have location. Does a thing need to extend in space in order to have location? Points don't extend in space, but they still have location.
The whole thing just makes me wonder what exactly a spirit is. What kind of properties does it really have? What's it like to be a disembodied spirit?
July 13th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
A great post, Amy. Well-reasoned and persuasive.
July 14th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
I think we're definitely limited by design. Didn't you see X-Men III?
July 14th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Thanks, Alex!
July 14th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
I guess I should have.