6 ms·

Understanding the Body Electric

29 points by Thevet 5y ago

stuartbman 5y ago
Really disappointing to see a whole host of inaccuracies in this article, even beyond the artistic license you'd expect for the New Yorker. My own area of knowledge is in neuroscience so I'd focus on this. For instance, while its somewhat correct that nerve signals are binary, insofar as they are all-or-nothing, and yet activity is highly analogue, with specific groups of neurons firing together in pre-programmed bursts & rhythms. This has been one of the challenges in producing BCIs
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  The analog nature of neural processing is frustratingly nonanalogous to digital computing. I’d really like to see more oscillatory computing systems built, like the von Neumann harmonic injector or the parametron. Using oscillators like central pattern generators is more common in robotics but there are much more powerful oscillatory computers that have simply never been built. That’s frustrating only because I think we’d learn a lot more about the way oscillations are used for computation in the brain.
  - achillesheels 5y ago
    I'm curious why you think it is non-analogous to digital computing? I published a manuscript which diagrams the necessity for the applications of electrical engineering scientific theory to electromagnetic brain reflexes which ought to be equivalent to electronic feedback control orders which become digital, i.e. operations which are principally numerically caused. If you're curious to read the proposition of cellular life evolving electronics please see it posted in the /r/dsp: https://www.reddit.com/r/DSP/comments/m06n31/dsp_theory_applied_to_human_physiology/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DSP/comments/m06n31/dsp_theory_appl...
    - dr_dshiv 5y ago
      Can you point me to where in the document I should look?
      - achillesheels 5y ago
        Yes, please see Chapter 5 "Human Homeostasis" on page 56. It is principled on the belief that biological tissue is piezoelectrical and forms electrical motion which is patterned - please see Chapter 1 section VII "Piezoelectricity in Biological Physical Matter" page 47: There is a preponderance of available evidence on the piezoelectric properties of biological matter. According to Chen-Glasser et al, Eiichi Fukada demonstrated piezoelectric effects in major human physiological tissue, such as in bone and muscle.[55][56] Fukada’s biological examination demonstrates the intrinsic nature of piezoelectric effects in the building blocks of cellular life: proteins. Proteins, when considered to be digital control outputs of cellular replication stability, are genome expressions of amino acids –with at least 15 demonstrating piezoelectric properties. It is the reorientation and change in dipole moments in biological macromolecules under stress that causes piezoelectricity, hypothetically as an effect of the dipolebmoments causingbelectromagnetic resonances to naturally occur.[57]
ncmncm 5y ago
For many decades, research on effects on living tissue of nano-currents and varying electromagnetic fields was effectively forbidden in the US. Trying to pursue it led to canceled grants, dis-invitation to conferences, and denial of tenure. (The electric power industry might be responsible: they wanted no chance of interference in their choices of transmission line routing.) George Becker somehow got a free pass, working for the US Veterans' Administration on what was hoped might be limb regeneration. He wrote up his findings, in popular form, in "The Body Electric". The key finding was that sub-nanoamp currents orchestrate both fetal development and healing processes, and also regeneration in animals that can still achieve it. But it turns out that healing a broken bone is, exactly, regeneration, even in us, and a small current can accelerate it, retard it, or trigger it in cases where it fails, as does happen. I attended (sneaked into) a conference in Hungary in 1987 where an American biologist presented her results, growing insect larvae to 4x normal size via varying magnetic field stimulation. She could not present these results in the US at the time. A key fact about effects of high frequency radio on living systems is that modulation is everything. Thus, a pure sine wave at 2.4 GHz and 1 watt might have no effect, but modulating it with two lower frequencies that differ by a few Hz could yield profound results, even at much lower power. The number of ways one could modulate is practically infinite, so nobody can say anything simple about effects of E-M, with effects that can be very large. Regulators have responded by restricting consideration solely to possible heating by absorption of the baseband signal.
- bsedlm 5y ago
  > For many decades, research on effects on living tissue of nano-currents and varying electromagnetic fields was effectively forbidden in the US. Trying to pursue it led to canceled grants, dis-invitation to conferences, and denial of tenure. (The electric power industry might be responsible: they wanted no chance of interference in their choices of transmission line routing.) This smells of shady occultment by people (and organizations) unknown (by their choice) due to reasons "best" kept away from the public. Emphasis on we do not know because we're prevented from knowing by means of "canceled grants, dis-invitation to conferences, and denial of tenure" This kind of thing induces massive distrust (from me) of official (government and state) organizations. Such distrust is problematic mostly for me until many other people also reason their way into this massive distrust. Now it's a social problem so them who hide things (whose factualness is most certainly a baseless assumption) must respond to the consequences of their choice to limit spread of knowledge.

29 points by Thevet 5y ago

Really disappointing to see a whole host of inaccuracies in this article, even beyond the artistic license you'd expect for the New Yorker. My own area of knowledge is in neuroscience so I'd focus on this. For instance, while its somewhat correct that nerve signals are binary, insofar as they are all-or-nothing, and yet activity is highly analogue, with specific groups of neurons firing together in pre-programmed bursts & rhythms. This has been one of the challenges in producing BCIs

dr_dshiv 5y ago
The analog nature of neural processing is frustratingly nonanalogous to digital computing. I’d really like to see more oscillatory computing systems built, like the von Neumann harmonic injector or the parametron. Using oscillators like central pattern generators is more common in robotics but there are much more powerful oscillatory computers that have simply never been built. That’s frustrating only because I think we’d learn a lot more about the way oscillations are used for computation in the brain.
- achillesheels 5y ago
  I'm curious why you think it is non-analogous to digital computing? I published a manuscript which diagrams the necessity for the applications of electrical engineering scientific theory to electromagnetic brain reflexes which ought to be equivalent to electronic feedback control orders which become digital, i.e. operations which are principally numerically caused. If you're curious to read the proposition of cellular life evolving electronics please see it posted in the /r/dsp: https://www.reddit.com/r/DSP/comments/m06n31/dsp_theory_applied_to_human_physiology/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DSP/comments/m06n31/dsp_theory_appl...
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    Can you point me to where in the document I should look?
    - achillesheels 5y ago
      Yes, please see Chapter 5 "Human Homeostasis" on page 56. It is principled on the belief that biological tissue is piezoelectrical and forms electrical motion which is patterned - please see Chapter 1 section VII "Piezoelectricity in Biological Physical Matter" page 47: There is a preponderance of available evidence on the piezoelectric properties of biological matter. According to Chen-Glasser et al, Eiichi Fukada demonstrated piezoelectric effects in major human physiological tissue, such as in bone and muscle.[55][56] Fukada’s biological examination demonstrates the intrinsic nature of piezoelectric effects in the building blocks of cellular life: proteins. Proteins, when considered to be digital control outputs of cellular replication stability, are genome expressions of amino acids –with at least 15 demonstrating piezoelectric properties. It is the reorientation and change in dipole moments in biological macromolecules under stress that causes piezoelectricity, hypothetically as an effect of the dipolebmoments causingbelectromagnetic resonances to naturally occur.[57]

ncmncm 5y ago

For many decades, research on effects on living tissue of nano-currents and varying electromagnetic fields was effectively forbidden in the US. Trying to pursue it led to canceled grants, dis-invitation to conferences, and denial of tenure. (The electric power industry might be responsible: they wanted no chance of interference in their choices of transmission line routing.) George Becker somehow got a free pass, working for the US Veterans' Administration on what was hoped might be limb regeneration. He wrote up his findings, in popular form, in "The Body Electric". The key finding was that sub-nanoamp currents orchestrate both fetal development and healing processes, and also regeneration in animals that can still achieve it. But it turns out that healing a broken bone is, exactly, regeneration, even in us, and a small current can accelerate it, retard it, or trigger it in cases where it fails, as does happen. I attended (sneaked into) a conference in Hungary in 1987 where an American biologist presented her results, growing insect larvae to 4x normal size via varying magnetic field stimulation. She could not present these results in the US at the time. A key fact about effects of high frequency radio on living systems is that modulation is everything. Thus, a pure sine wave at 2.4 GHz and 1 watt might have no effect, but modulating it with two lower frequencies that differ by a few Hz could yield profound results, even at much lower power. The number of ways one could modulate is practically infinite, so nobody can say anything simple about effects of E-M, with effects that can be very large. Regulators have responded by restricting consideration solely to possible heating by absorption of the baseband signal.

bsedlm 5y ago
> For many decades, research on effects on living tissue of nano-currents and varying electromagnetic fields was effectively forbidden in the US. Trying to pursue it led to canceled grants, dis-invitation to conferences, and denial of tenure. (The electric power industry might be responsible: they wanted no chance of interference in their choices of transmission line routing.) This smells of shady occultment by people (and organizations) unknown (by their choice) due to reasons "best" kept away from the public. Emphasis on we do not know because we're prevented from knowing by means of "canceled grants, dis-invitation to conferences, and denial of tenure" This kind of thing induces massive distrust (from me) of official (government and state) organizations. Such distrust is problematic mostly for me until many other people also reason their way into this massive distrust. Now it's a social problem so them who hide things (whose factualness is most certainly a baseless assumption) must respond to the consequences of their choice to limit spread of knowledge.