12 ms·

Electric fields, not individual neurons, may hold information in memory: study

192 points by hhs 5y ago

hosh 5y ago
There was a story I heard about the autistic guy who volunteered for transcranial magnetic stimulation. Those have been known to temporarily shift someone autistic into a consciousness state that is more neurotypical. In his case (and it is the only documented case), it was permanent. He wrote a book about it. His marriage ended because of it (he had been a reliable emotional support for his wife while autistic), but he also became a lot closer to his son. I think we’re only scratching the surface here, and even that, there are wide-ranging implications.
- noasaservice 5y ago
  That only strengthens my theory that why most of the autistics and neurodivergent people are considered disabled is because of neurotypicals. When a ND isn't precise with their words, expect us to read into context, and then get angry when we don't understand - that's on them, not us.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    NTs can either read in to context or willfully ignore it (choose to act as if they haven't noticed), while autistic people always have to act without that information. It is kind of like wheelchairs and ramps - people who can climb stairs are strictly better off than people who can only go up ramps, but a society with ramps isn't any less capable than one where you have to climb a ladder to get to your office.
    - plutonorm 5y ago
      I disagree, that tuning into detail and avoidance of the context allows more brain power to be applied to the detail.
    - mistermann 5y ago
      > NTs can either read in to context or willfully ignore it (choose to act as if they haven't noticed) This makes some assumptions about the nature of real-time cognition though...it is possible that any given individual can do this for a given scenario, but the likelihood depends on many variables, many likely unknown.
  - timdiggerm 5y ago
    It's true, blind people are only considered disabled because of sighted people. I am not sure this is the convincing argument you think it is, however.
    - hosh 5y ago
      There is a very well-articulated argument by an autistic woman that, the clinical definitions for autism are framed from the disruption and impact to neurotypical society, but does not adequately address what’s going on for the autistic person. For example, the author herself is diagnosed with high-functioning autism. Her social impact on others is miminal enough where it qualifies for “high functioning”, but having executive dysfunction means she is highly dependent on someone in her life to help her. Our medical and social system does not provide adequate services because she is “high functioning”. She then talked about other people with a different blend of autistic traits who are considered low functioning (high impact on neurotypical social interactions), but don’t have the executive dysfunction like the author. Her example was someone who is non-verbal, yet has a well-developed intellect. I too, thought the idea that “autistic people are disabled because neurotypical people considers autism is a disability” was not very convincing. This author’s argument reframed it in a way that makes more sense to me, and that is, us neurotypicals are only seeing autism only from the lens of how autism impacts us, and we frame the discussion, diagnoses, and public policies along those lines.
      - cogman10 5y ago
        I'm going to assume that when you say "our medical system" you are referring to the US medical system. And let me tell you, it's a WHOLE lot more bleak than that. The US medical system does not provide adequate services for ANYONE other than perhaps children (in some cases). As soon as someone with a special need becomes an adult, nearly all public provided support is torn away. If you aren't 65, then when your child hits 26, they have no guarantee of being able to stay on your insurance. You might be able to make a deal with your employer and health insurance provider but that is by no means a given. Now think of what that means in terms of estate planning. It's possible for your child with special needs to qualify for social security and medicaid but their household income needs to be below poverty levels (with pretty crazy strict means testing). There's a reason so many people with mental disabilities often end up homeless. The fact is, some individuals will need 24/7 care for the rest of their lives. However, because taxes and government are bad and "they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps" or whatever, the US and many state government are setup to instead worry about keeping them off the benches when they end up homeless. Yes, I have a child with autism, and yes one thing that keeps me up at night is worrying what will happen to them after I'm gone.
  - anothernewdude 5y ago
    That's because language is built on imprecision and context. It's a feature of language.
- phaedrus 5y ago
  This is interesting because I recently read of a theory that clinical depression is actually an altered state of consciousness, like dreaming or being under the influence of psychedelic drugs. It seems to explain a lot about depression as well as posing the question what other things might be an altered state of consciousness. I predict if we're successful in creating general AI and/or artificial consciousness, we'll uncover a veritable zoo of different, altered states of consciousness much like how the standard model of particle physics revealed many more particles.
  - hackerbee 5y ago
    Your comment immediately reminded me of Marvin the paranoid android from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
    - anothernewdude 5y ago
      That always bothered me. He wasn't paranoid, he was depressed.
      - iszomer 5y ago
        Depressed by design.
  - hosh 5y ago
    I could say a lot more about this, but this would slip into what people would consider as woo. So without treading there, I am just going to say, I think this field-effect of neurons will lead to discoveries about field-effect of all cells, not just neurons; that consciousness is not exclusive to neurons; and how acupuncture (at a mechanical level) might work.
    - imcoconut 5y ago
      I completely agree with you
    - bsmitty5000 5y ago
- syspec 5y ago
  Do you have a link or some key words I could use to try and find that story?
  - mwint 5y ago
    Perhaps it’s https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29974430-switched-on# https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29974430-switched-on# ?
  - hosh 5y ago
    I found this: https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/150161/experimental-treatment-leaves-autistic-man-with-joys-sorrows-of-emotional-life https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/150161/experimental-treatme... It wasn’t the article I read, but that should have a lot of leads.
  - servytor 5y ago
    I remember it from the cover[0], it's titled "Switched On: A Memoir of Brain Change and Emotional Awakening". [0]: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91mEWtZ15qL.jpg https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91mEWtZ15qL...
- zionic 5y ago
  This is scary if true, because it opens up all kinds of doors for external EM fields modifying human cognition doesn’t it?
  - politician 5y ago
    Maybe those folks worried about 5G were on to something...
    - owlbynight 5y ago
      Spoiler: They weren't
      - imcoconut 5y ago
        Why are you so confident? It seems a fair number of experts have well justified doubts based on studies of already deployed lower energy radiation. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-have-no-reason-to-believe-5g-is-safe/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-have-no... > Citing this large body of research, more than 240 scientists who have published peer-reviewed research on the biologic and health effects of nonionizing electromagnetic fields (EMF) signed the International EMF Scientist Appeal, which calls for stronger exposure limits. The appeal makes the following assertions: “Numerous recent scientific publications have shown that EMF affects living organisms at levels well below most international and national guidelines. Effects include increased cancer risk, cellular stress, increase in harmful free radicals, genetic damages, structural and functional changes of the reproductive system, learning and memory deficits, neurological disorders, and negative impacts on general well-being in humans. Damage goes well beyond the human race, as there is growing evidence of harmful effects to both plant and animal life.” The scientists who signed this appeal arguably constitute the majority of experts on the effects of nonionizing radiation. They have published more than 2,000 papers and letters on EMF in professional journals. > The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified RFR as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" in 2011. Last year, a $30 million study conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) found “clear evidence” that two years of exposure to cell phone RFR increased cancer in male rats and damaged DNA in rats and mice of both sexes. The Ramazzini Institute in Italy replicated the key finding of the NTP using a different carrier frequency and much weaker exposure to cell phone radiation over the life of the rats. > Since 5G is a new technology, there is no research on health effects, so we are “flying blind” to quote a U.S. senator. However, we have considerable evidence about the harmful effects of 2G and 3G. Little is known the effects of exposure to 4G, a 10-year-old technology, because governments have been remiss in funding this research. Meanwhile, we are seeing increases in certain types of head and neck tumors in tumor registries, which may be at least partially attributable to the proliferation of cell phone radiation. These increases are consistent with results from case-control studies of tumor risk in heavy cell phone users.
- rootsudo 5y ago
  https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/21/475112703/electric-currents-and-an-emotional-awakening-for-one-man-with-autism https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/21/4751127... Wow, it really happened. Wow in general.
- sniperjoe360 5y ago
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3500377/Autistic-man-undergoes-transformative-treatment-allows-pick-emotional-cues-newfound-perception-leaves-divorce.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3500377/Autistic-ma... Here's the story
levitatorius 5y ago
Aaaand the ultimate question: if electric fields are controlling the neurons, what (or who?) contols the electric fields?
- miamalkova 5y ago
  The electric field is generated by neurons as they fire action potentials, but it is rather the aggregate electrical activity that is used to represent memories, rather than the summative signals from individual neurons.
  - taberiand 5y ago
    And if I understood the article correctly, the important idea is that the field is (relatively) stable even as the underlying neurons involved change and they don't even have to be the same neurons involved for the same memory field. The illusion of a stable single entity emergent from the constant flux of billions of individual living units linked through trillions of connections is in my opinion the answer to the question of consciousness (and also an answer to the question 'can machines ever be conscious', which is without a doubt - yes). It might also pose the question then, could humanity as a whole - as a global connection of billions of individuals - be thought of as a conscious entity? Well, maybe not - where's the stable field?
    - shaky-carrousel 5y ago
      Neurons don't know they form part of a consciousness. On the other hand, we can't communicate with our neurons. It could be that an emergent consciousness exists for which we are the neurons and neither it knows we exist or we know it exists.
- rdevsrex 5y ago
  It immediately makes me think of idealism and panpsychism. Not saying that’s what reality is, but it makes me think that it could be.
- 323 5y ago
king-geedorah 5y ago
I know it’s not a similar mechanism but I can’t help but think how this parallels the discovery made by of main character in the short story Exhalation by Ted Chiang
- anonporridge 5y ago
  Ref, https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41160292 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41160292 Looks interesting, thanks!
swayvil 5y ago
Can we make an artificial neuron? And then plug it into your brain along with all the others. Have we done that?
- k__ 5y ago
  I was also thinking if this new(?) fact would render virtual neurons/preceptrons moot?
gryn 5y ago
this reminds of a brain fart I had long time ago back when I was taking an EE course about electromagnetic compatibility & interference. how resilient is the brain and it's surrounding casing to outside electromagnetic interference ? can there one day be some jamming tool strong enough to just crash a brain without doing physical damage first ? where it would just brick a human, but a physician examining it would find relatively nothing wrong at the physical layer .
- plutonorm 5y ago
  I read a paper a long time ago that recorded the brain waves from one person doing a skilled task and then played that recording to an unskilled person as they performed the same task. They replayed the electromagnetic field of the skilled person on the outside of the skull of an unskilled person. They found that there was an improvement in skill levels in the untrained person. Intriguing.
  - broose_goose 5y ago
    Does this imply that the brain might communicate with other parts of the brain “asynchronously over a network” through EMF?
  - tux3 5y ago
    That sounds extremely suspicious. If that worked, the applications are obvious and very high value. If you find the article, please post a link. But very likely it does not replicate, or is a lot less impressive than tge headline makes it sound.
- porkbrain 5y ago
  There's a behavioural neuroscience method you might be interested in: > Watch Nancy's brain get zapped with transcranial magnetic stimulation. Measuring neural activity (with fMRI, MEG, ERPs, etc) cannot tell you which brain regions or neural responses are necessary for a given aspect of perception or cognition. To find out if a region is necessary, you have to mess with it. One method to do this in humans is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). http://nancysbraintalks.mit.edu/video/watch-nancys-brain-get-zapped-transcranial-magnetic-stimulation http://nancysbraintalks.mit.edu/video/watch-nancys-brain-get... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimul...
doctoboggan 5y ago
Mike Levin is exploring a related idea that bio generated electromagnetic fields are used to guide body regeneration in worms https://wyss.harvard.edu/news/mike-levin-on-electrifying-insights-into-how-bodies-form/ https://wyss.harvard.edu/news/mike-levin-on-electrifying-ins...
mateo1 5y ago
Although it is a very interesting paper, and I am by no means qualified to even understand half of it, while reading up representational drift I was much more convinced by another (and a bit more recent) paper portraying the phenomenon as a way for the brain to switch up the physical layout of the firing neurons in a redundant population without altering the output. All that possibly for biological reasons (ie dead neurons or perhaps repairs). Saying information is stored in electrical fields just doesn't sit right with me. I have a hard time imagining them being more robust than spikes, or really usable inside the brain because of the physics involved.
- shepardrtc 5y ago
  Was this the paper you're speaking of? "Self-healing codes: How stable neural populations can track continually reconfiguring neural representations": https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2106692119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2106692119 It came out about a month ago, and I've just started reading it. But it talks about neural drift, and they actually were able to create a model for it.
  - hhs 5y ago
    If interested, this is the press release for that paper: http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/news/study-proposes-how-changes-neural-code-unlock-brain-s-inner-learning http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/news/study-proposes-how-changes-neu... And in that release, it ends like this: "Dr O’Leary, Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering, said the study emphasises the idea that “drift” may arise from continual learning. “There is a huge unanswered challenge in artificial intelligence, namely the problem of building algorithms that can learn continually without corrupting previously learned information,” he said. “The brain manifestly achieves this, and this work is a step in the direction of finding algorithms that can do the same.”"
- acrefoot 5y ago
  I'm not sure exactly what you believe, but since you're talking about information storage, can I ask if you mean for working memory or for long-term memory? For long-term memory, the storage is durable and mostly static, while recall is dynamic (and may even affect the storage after further consolidation). For working memory, I imagine it's a pretty dynamic process for both storage and recall. The top-level link seems to only be about working memory, so the title of the HN post should probably be changed to avoid confusion.
jajag 5y ago
This aligns somewhat with Johnjoe McFadden's ideas about the role of the brain's electromagnetic field: https://aeon.co/essays/does-consciousness-come-from-the-brains-electromagnetic-field https://aeon.co/essays/does-consciousness-come-from-the-brai...
Angostura 5y ago
If this is correct, might it explain how and why electroconvulsive therapy works and how it can lead to the loss of memory. Presumably it would completely disrupt the stable memory field, even if it left the physical structures intact. The brain woul be reconstructing the field from first principles.
- tux3 5y ago
  Whether or not this is true, ECT memory loss is not hard to believe. I don't mean that the mechanism is obvious (it isn't), but only that the result is not very surprising. Neurons communicate via electric signals. There are multiple reasonnable ways to implement a memory based on that substrate, but the interface is almost certainly going to be through axons. There must be a way, whatever it may be, to query and to alter the brain's memory through its interface. We don't have to know precisely how the system works to predict that fuzzing the interface might result in adverse effects. That remains true whether the underlying storage is in the field, in synapses, a more complicated change in gene expression, or some other property of the cell.
  - acrefoot 5y ago
    There was a pretty fun Radiolab episode (https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/episodes/91569-memory-and-forgetting https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/episodes/91569...) that suggested that the process of recall changes memories, and that they are susceptible to change while the memory is being recalled. I'm sure ECT is disruptive in many ways, including just through damage and toxicity to the cells. But, in your fuzzing idea--a hypothesis might be that recall is triggered, and while the memory is susceptible, it's disrupted permanently. Another possibility is that the memory is still there, but the proper mapping to it is lost. Reality is probably a combination of many factors.
akomtu 5y ago
A probably related observation found on the wikipedia page about sonoluminescene that oscillations driven by an external periodic force often have a more stable period than the external force. In this case a neuron is a driving force and the magnetic field is the oscillating "water" that has a period more stable, and thus preserves information better than the neuron itself.
_yoqn 5y ago
This may be too meta for this forum, but I would like to point out that the brain theory as a whole has become so incomprehensibly complex that I am beginning to think that the brain has little to do with intention and memory storage. Point in fact: as we are now hundreds of years into medical research and we still can't figure out how the brain stores memory. Or what physical structure a memory even is. And I am supposed to believe this all happened by accident? Who is driving the upward development of life if the physical universe tends toward chaos?
- picture 5y ago
  Do you suggest intention and memory storage arise from soul or other non physical phenomena?
  - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
    We're looking in the wrong place, probably. I'd start in the gut, considering the cells are quite similar.
    - gus_massa 5y ago
      People with gut cancer get their gut removed regularly, sometimes a big chunk of the guts. Do they lose their memories?
      - ultimape 5y ago
        Maybe. There was a guy who induced aphantasia after a stem cell transplant and one of the hypothesis is the loss of gut bacteria via antibiotics. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8143657/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8143657/ I reversed a life-long case of Prosopagnosia after doing some n-of-1 experiments with replenishing my gut bacteria, so it seems plausible to me that losing intestines could impact this. I also have a friend had her intestines removed due to Crohn's disease. She had an infection from the surgery that put her in a coma she woke up unable to picture things in her head. Hard to say what caused it.
alar44 5y ago
I died and was brought back to life. Still have memories. Did I just debunk the paper?
- ahelwer 5y ago
  Death for something as complex as the human body isn’t a binary state.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
  Depends on the definition of death.
- dTal 5y ago
  Death is irreversible by definition, so you did not die.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kelnos 5y ago
  Presumably you were resuscitated before the electrical activity in your brain stopped? My understanding is that's how we define brain death, as the cessation of electrical activity in the brain.
- docere 5y ago
  You have a point. Medically induced coma such as with pentobarbital can “flatline” the brain, eliminating electrical fields. After weaning the pentobarbital patients have their memories intact.
  - aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
    If all electric fields were to disappear your brain would collapse into a point...
k__ 5y ago
So, we're back from "your body is your mind" to "the mind is something electrial floating around your cells"? This makes me sleep a bit better, I think.
- grishka 5y ago
  "Something electrical floating around your cells" isn't just the mind either, it's also how the organism coordinates its development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XheAMrS8Q1c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XheAMrS8Q1c
aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
So a strong enough electric field could disrupt our memories? I’m skeptical…
- mandmandam 5y ago
  ... Why? A strong enough electrical field can disrupt lots of stuff.
bzmrgonz 5y ago
So essentially the brain serves as an antenna receiving data to render this reality/simulation. Soon we will discover how exactly it is tuned in to the akashic records and perhaps we will understand the mechanics of the quantum fields more intimately, as well as how to dial up to the higher consciousness.
sniperjoe360 5y ago
This paper makes a lot of sense. As a doc, I've seen literally several hundred patients with portions of their brain removed or damaged, some of them very extensive (>20% of the brain). Yet many are completely asymptomatic, and many others regain full function and memory with time and physical therapy. It's led me to conclude that the function of the brain isn't tied 1:1 to the structure of the brain as we had all been taught.
- jotm 5y ago
  Couldn't it be that the brain has an extremely good redundancy setup? Memories stored in several parts of the brain, and recoverable if a part gets damaged? There are many people who did have permanent memory loss from various TBI (traumatic brain injury), especially gunshot wounds, and many who recovered theirs slowly. Kind of like restoring data from an archive, or rebuilding a RAID array, as an analogy.
- coolwulf 5y ago
  As five-year survival rate has been improved during cancer patients, we have seen more and more patients with multiple brain tumors. Recently we got awarded a NIH grant on a multi brain tumor SRS treatment platform. This might not be directly related with surgery of removal portion of the brain, but definitely SRS will act just like surgery (but with radiation). This month we are actually asked by NIH to have an interview program to talk with people who are interested in SRS, so in case you are interested in our project, you could schedule a 20-mins quick meeting with me at your convenience: https://calendly.com/hao-jiang-1/nih-i-corp-customer-discovery-interview?month=2022-03 https://calendly.com/hao-jiang-1/nih-i-corp-customer-discove...
- markus_zhang 5y ago
  I think it's also interesting to figure out what exactly is memory. I don't know anything about medical research but my gut feeling is that memory is more of a "feeling" than concrete snapshots such as computer memory.
dilawar 5y ago
Wouldn't you expect MRI scan to alter your working memory? When I had my MRI scan, I felt no change whatsoever in my train of thoughts.
- jotm 5y ago
  Or instead of storing memories, electric fields are used for fast transfers between parts of the brain. An MRI scan could affect it depending on the frequency? Perhaps a minor, temporary, drop in cognition/memory recall? You would have to conduct a study specifically for that.
fnord77 5y ago
what's the data storage capacity of this sort of electric field(s)?
- nelsondev 5y ago
  Does there have to be a persistence layer if the machine is never shutdown? If all our memories are stored in “RAM” and never flushed to “disk”, we may never find evidence of “disk”.
acrefoot 5y ago
The headline says working memory, not long-term episodic memory, but the comments (and headline) here don't seem to distinguish between the two. We can disrupt short term memories in a variety of ways. When memories consolidate, they move to different structures. We can hold a lot more information in long-term memories than in working memory. Because I hear this hypothesis come up from time to time--it's unlikely consciousness or long-term memory are maintained by e-fields generated in the brain, or that they require continuous electrical activity. Stark evidence against it come from ischemia studies. Ischemia usually accompanies serious underlying issues, so more controlled examples are easier to reason about: surgeons may use deep hypothermic circulatory arrest as protection for the brain in procedures with extended ischemia time requirements. In these cases, achieving electrocerebral silence (flat EEG) is one of the checklist items for the procedure. Clinical cases are worth reviewing for any hypothesis that suggests that long-term memory depends on continuous electrical activity* of neurons in the brain. Since the events of ischemia, brain flatlining, and brain death are so closely linked in time, it's easy to conflate them. After a cold stop+start, the brain doesn't immediately jump back to normal function--there are a variety of processes that are worth studying better to get back to normal brain waves and brain function. Ischemia-related damage is often from a metabolic problems than from a discontinuity of electrical function. The reason for the cooling is to maintain the local energy reserves of the cells--when that is lost, the cells may have too much difficulty getting back to normal when blood is later reintroduced, and that's where you see brain damage or death. This kind of procedure is not without serious risk factors. * Of course, electrical activity is needed for recall, but the point that I'm making is that the memory is later available for recall even after a period of discontinuity in the EEG.
- hhs 5y ago
  > The headline says working memory, not long-term episodic memory, but the comments (and headline) here don't seem to distinguish between the two. Please note, this is the press release headline and sub-headline: “Neurons are fickle. Electric fields are more reliable for information.” “A new study suggests that electric fields may represent information held in working memory, allowing the brain to overcome “representational drift,” or the inconsistent participation of individual neurons”
- 5y ago
Animats 5y ago
Hm. The actual work where the data used was collected is here.[1] (The details are paywalled, unfortunately.) This paper is here.[2] The first paper, about predicting where eyes will point next, is based on actual data recorded by the experimenters from two monkeys. The authors of that paper report positive but narrow results. They write about simple visual target info persisting for a few seconds. The second paper re-analyzes that data and draws much broader conclusions, less well justified by the data. No electric fields were actually measured in that work. They're being imputed from voltages from neuron probes and EEG pickups. So the statements about fields are somewhat iffy. It's recently become possible to image electric fields.[3] NASA work in 2015. A field-effect transistor with an open gate is an electric field sensor, and an array of them is an imager. A linear array was constructed and scanned mechanically to 2D image various objects, including a human. That paper has what is claimed to be the first image of the electric field of a human. Resolution was low, but it works. Might be useful for scanners at checkpoints and such, they claim. So the technology exists to start to measure such fields directly. With enough interest and money, someone could probably construct an IC with a large array of open gate FETs and the readout circuitry to get an image from them. It's a non-intrusive passive sensor, which is nice for human experimentation. If there's anything going with the brain's electric field at high resolution or high frequency, it should be possible to pick that up. It's not clear how useful this is, but the electronics part looks possible. [1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-2552/aa5a3e https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-2552/aa5a3e [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811922001872 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105381192... [3] https://sma.nasa.gov/docs/default-source/News-Documents/electric-potential-and-electric-field-imaging-with-applications.pdf https://sma.nasa.gov/docs/default-source/News-Documents/elec...
- kkylin 5y ago
  Preprint here: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.22.457247 https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.22.457247

192 points by hhs 5y ago

hosh 5y ago

There was a story I heard about the autistic guy who volunteered for transcranial magnetic stimulation. Those have been known to temporarily shift someone autistic into a consciousness state that is more neurotypical. In his case (and it is the only documented case), it was permanent. He wrote a book about it. His marriage ended because of it (he had been a reliable emotional support for his wife while autistic), but he also became a lot closer to his son. I think we’re only scratching the surface here, and even that, there are wide-ranging implications.

noasaservice 5y ago
That only strengthens my theory that why most of the autistics and neurodivergent people are considered disabled is because of neurotypicals. When a ND isn't precise with their words, expect us to read into context, and then get angry when we don't understand - that's on them, not us.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  NTs can either read in to context or willfully ignore it (choose to act as if they haven't noticed), while autistic people always have to act without that information. It is kind of like wheelchairs and ramps - people who can climb stairs are strictly better off than people who can only go up ramps, but a society with ramps isn't any less capable than one where you have to climb a ladder to get to your office.
  - plutonorm 5y ago
    I disagree, that tuning into detail and avoidance of the context allows more brain power to be applied to the detail.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    > NTs can either read in to context or willfully ignore it (choose to act as if they haven't noticed) This makes some assumptions about the nature of real-time cognition though...it is possible that any given individual can do this for a given scenario, but the likelihood depends on many variables, many likely unknown.
- timdiggerm 5y ago
  It's true, blind people are only considered disabled because of sighted people. I am not sure this is the convincing argument you think it is, however.
  - hosh 5y ago
    There is a very well-articulated argument by an autistic woman that, the clinical definitions for autism are framed from the disruption and impact to neurotypical society, but does not adequately address what’s going on for the autistic person. For example, the author herself is diagnosed with high-functioning autism. Her social impact on others is miminal enough where it qualifies for “high functioning”, but having executive dysfunction means she is highly dependent on someone in her life to help her. Our medical and social system does not provide adequate services because she is “high functioning”. She then talked about other people with a different blend of autistic traits who are considered low functioning (high impact on neurotypical social interactions), but don’t have the executive dysfunction like the author. Her example was someone who is non-verbal, yet has a well-developed intellect. I too, thought the idea that “autistic people are disabled because neurotypical people considers autism is a disability” was not very convincing. This author’s argument reframed it in a way that makes more sense to me, and that is, us neurotypicals are only seeing autism only from the lens of how autism impacts us, and we frame the discussion, diagnoses, and public policies along those lines.
    - cogman10 5y ago
      I'm going to assume that when you say "our medical system" you are referring to the US medical system. And let me tell you, it's a WHOLE lot more bleak than that. The US medical system does not provide adequate services for ANYONE other than perhaps children (in some cases). As soon as someone with a special need becomes an adult, nearly all public provided support is torn away. If you aren't 65, then when your child hits 26, they have no guarantee of being able to stay on your insurance. You might be able to make a deal with your employer and health insurance provider but that is by no means a given. Now think of what that means in terms of estate planning. It's possible for your child with special needs to qualify for social security and medicaid but their household income needs to be below poverty levels (with pretty crazy strict means testing). There's a reason so many people with mental disabilities often end up homeless. The fact is, some individuals will need 24/7 care for the rest of their lives. However, because taxes and government are bad and "they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps" or whatever, the US and many state government are setup to instead worry about keeping them off the benches when they end up homeless. Yes, I have a child with autism, and yes one thing that keeps me up at night is worrying what will happen to them after I'm gone.
- anothernewdude 5y ago
  That's because language is built on imprecision and context. It's a feature of language.
phaedrus 5y ago
This is interesting because I recently read of a theory that clinical depression is actually an altered state of consciousness, like dreaming or being under the influence of psychedelic drugs. It seems to explain a lot about depression as well as posing the question what other things might be an altered state of consciousness. I predict if we're successful in creating general AI and/or artificial consciousness, we'll uncover a veritable zoo of different, altered states of consciousness much like how the standard model of particle physics revealed many more particles.
- hackerbee 5y ago
  Your comment immediately reminded me of Marvin the paranoid android from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
  - anothernewdude 5y ago
    That always bothered me. He wasn't paranoid, he was depressed.
    - iszomer 5y ago
      Depressed by design.
- hosh 5y ago
  I could say a lot more about this, but this would slip into what people would consider as woo. So without treading there, I am just going to say, I think this field-effect of neurons will lead to discoveries about field-effect of all cells, not just neurons; that consciousness is not exclusive to neurons; and how acupuncture (at a mechanical level) might work.
  - imcoconut 5y ago
    I completely agree with you
  - bsmitty5000 5y ago
syspec 5y ago
Do you have a link or some key words I could use to try and find that story?
- mwint 5y ago
  Perhaps it’s https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29974430-switched-on# https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29974430-switched-on# ?
- hosh 5y ago
  I found this: https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/150161/experimental-treatment-leaves-autistic-man-with-joys-sorrows-of-emotional-life https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/150161/experimental-treatme... It wasn’t the article I read, but that should have a lot of leads.
- servytor 5y ago
  I remember it from the cover[0], it's titled "Switched On: A Memoir of Brain Change and Emotional Awakening". [0]: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91mEWtZ15qL.jpg https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91mEWtZ15qL...
zionic 5y ago
This is scary if true, because it opens up all kinds of doors for external EM fields modifying human cognition doesn’t it?
- politician 5y ago
  Maybe those folks worried about 5G were on to something...
  - owlbynight 5y ago
    Spoiler: They weren't
    - imcoconut 5y ago
      Why are you so confident? It seems a fair number of experts have well justified doubts based on studies of already deployed lower energy radiation. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-have-no-reason-to-believe-5g-is-safe/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-have-no... > Citing this large body of research, more than 240 scientists who have published peer-reviewed research on the biologic and health effects of nonionizing electromagnetic fields (EMF) signed the International EMF Scientist Appeal, which calls for stronger exposure limits. The appeal makes the following assertions: “Numerous recent scientific publications have shown that EMF affects living organisms at levels well below most international and national guidelines. Effects include increased cancer risk, cellular stress, increase in harmful free radicals, genetic damages, structural and functional changes of the reproductive system, learning and memory deficits, neurological disorders, and negative impacts on general well-being in humans. Damage goes well beyond the human race, as there is growing evidence of harmful effects to both plant and animal life.” The scientists who signed this appeal arguably constitute the majority of experts on the effects of nonionizing radiation. They have published more than 2,000 papers and letters on EMF in professional journals. > The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified RFR as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" in 2011. Last year, a $30 million study conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) found “clear evidence” that two years of exposure to cell phone RFR increased cancer in male rats and damaged DNA in rats and mice of both sexes. The Ramazzini Institute in Italy replicated the key finding of the NTP using a different carrier frequency and much weaker exposure to cell phone radiation over the life of the rats. > Since 5G is a new technology, there is no research on health effects, so we are “flying blind” to quote a U.S. senator. However, we have considerable evidence about the harmful effects of 2G and 3G. Little is known the effects of exposure to 4G, a 10-year-old technology, because governments have been remiss in funding this research. Meanwhile, we are seeing increases in certain types of head and neck tumors in tumor registries, which may be at least partially attributable to the proliferation of cell phone radiation. These increases are consistent with results from case-control studies of tumor risk in heavy cell phone users.
rootsudo 5y ago
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/21/475112703/electric-currents-and-an-emotional-awakening-for-one-man-with-autism https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/21/4751127... Wow, it really happened. Wow in general.
sniperjoe360 5y ago
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3500377/Autistic-man-undergoes-transformative-treatment-allows-pick-emotional-cues-newfound-perception-leaves-divorce.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3500377/Autistic-ma... Here's the story

levitatorius 5y ago

Aaaand the ultimate question: if electric fields are controlling the neurons, what (or who?) contols the electric fields?

miamalkova 5y ago
The electric field is generated by neurons as they fire action potentials, but it is rather the aggregate electrical activity that is used to represent memories, rather than the summative signals from individual neurons.
- taberiand 5y ago
  And if I understood the article correctly, the important idea is that the field is (relatively) stable even as the underlying neurons involved change and they don't even have to be the same neurons involved for the same memory field. The illusion of a stable single entity emergent from the constant flux of billions of individual living units linked through trillions of connections is in my opinion the answer to the question of consciousness (and also an answer to the question 'can machines ever be conscious', which is without a doubt - yes). It might also pose the question then, could humanity as a whole - as a global connection of billions of individuals - be thought of as a conscious entity? Well, maybe not - where's the stable field?
  - shaky-carrousel 5y ago
    Neurons don't know they form part of a consciousness. On the other hand, we can't communicate with our neurons. It could be that an emergent consciousness exists for which we are the neurons and neither it knows we exist or we know it exists.
rdevsrex 5y ago
It immediately makes me think of idealism and panpsychism. Not saying that’s what reality is, but it makes me think that it could be.
323 5y ago

king-geedorah 5y ago

I know it’s not a similar mechanism but I can’t help but think how this parallels the discovery made by of main character in the short story Exhalation by Ted Chiang

anonporridge 5y ago
Ref, https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41160292 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41160292 Looks interesting, thanks!

swayvil 5y ago

Can we make an artificial neuron? And then plug it into your brain along with all the others. Have we done that?

k__ 5y ago
I was also thinking if this new(?) fact would render virtual neurons/preceptrons moot?

gryn 5y ago

this reminds of a brain fart I had long time ago back when I was taking an EE course about electromagnetic compatibility & interference. how resilient is the brain and it's surrounding casing to outside electromagnetic interference ? can there one day be some jamming tool strong enough to just crash a brain without doing physical damage first ? where it would just brick a human, but a physician examining it would find relatively nothing wrong at the physical layer .

plutonorm 5y ago
I read a paper a long time ago that recorded the brain waves from one person doing a skilled task and then played that recording to an unskilled person as they performed the same task. They replayed the electromagnetic field of the skilled person on the outside of the skull of an unskilled person. They found that there was an improvement in skill levels in the untrained person. Intriguing.
- broose_goose 5y ago
  Does this imply that the brain might communicate with other parts of the brain “asynchronously over a network” through EMF?
- tux3 5y ago
  That sounds extremely suspicious. If that worked, the applications are obvious and very high value. If you find the article, please post a link. But very likely it does not replicate, or is a lot less impressive than tge headline makes it sound.
porkbrain 5y ago
There's a behavioural neuroscience method you might be interested in: > Watch Nancy's brain get zapped with transcranial magnetic stimulation. Measuring neural activity (with fMRI, MEG, ERPs, etc) cannot tell you which brain regions or neural responses are necessary for a given aspect of perception or cognition. To find out if a region is necessary, you have to mess with it. One method to do this in humans is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). http://nancysbraintalks.mit.edu/video/watch-nancys-brain-get-zapped-transcranial-magnetic-stimulation http://nancysbraintalks.mit.edu/video/watch-nancys-brain-get... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimul...

doctoboggan 5y ago

Mike Levin is exploring a related idea that bio generated electromagnetic fields are used to guide body regeneration in worms https://wyss.harvard.edu/news/mike-levin-on-electrifying-insights-into-how-bodies-form/ https://wyss.harvard.edu/news/mike-levin-on-electrifying-ins...

mateo1 5y ago

Although it is a very interesting paper, and I am by no means qualified to even understand half of it, while reading up representational drift I was much more convinced by another (and a bit more recent) paper portraying the phenomenon as a way for the brain to switch up the physical layout of the firing neurons in a redundant population without altering the output. All that possibly for biological reasons (ie dead neurons or perhaps repairs). Saying information is stored in electrical fields just doesn't sit right with me. I have a hard time imagining them being more robust than spikes, or really usable inside the brain because of the physics involved.

shepardrtc 5y ago
Was this the paper you're speaking of? "Self-healing codes: How stable neural populations can track continually reconfiguring neural representations": https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2106692119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2106692119 It came out about a month ago, and I've just started reading it. But it talks about neural drift, and they actually were able to create a model for it.
- hhs 5y ago
  If interested, this is the press release for that paper: http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/news/study-proposes-how-changes-neural-code-unlock-brain-s-inner-learning http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/news/study-proposes-how-changes-neu... And in that release, it ends like this: "Dr O’Leary, Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering, said the study emphasises the idea that “drift” may arise from continual learning. “There is a huge unanswered challenge in artificial intelligence, namely the problem of building algorithms that can learn continually without corrupting previously learned information,” he said. “The brain manifestly achieves this, and this work is a step in the direction of finding algorithms that can do the same.”"
acrefoot 5y ago
I'm not sure exactly what you believe, but since you're talking about information storage, can I ask if you mean for working memory or for long-term memory? For long-term memory, the storage is durable and mostly static, while recall is dynamic (and may even affect the storage after further consolidation). For working memory, I imagine it's a pretty dynamic process for both storage and recall. The top-level link seems to only be about working memory, so the title of the HN post should probably be changed to avoid confusion.

jajag 5y ago

This aligns somewhat with Johnjoe McFadden's ideas about the role of the brain's electromagnetic field: https://aeon.co/essays/does-consciousness-come-from-the-brains-electromagnetic-field https://aeon.co/essays/does-consciousness-come-from-the-brai...

Angostura 5y ago

If this is correct, might it explain how and why electroconvulsive therapy works and how it can lead to the loss of memory. Presumably it would completely disrupt the stable memory field, even if it left the physical structures intact. The brain woul be reconstructing the field from first principles.

tux3 5y ago
Whether or not this is true, ECT memory loss is not hard to believe. I don't mean that the mechanism is obvious (it isn't), but only that the result is not very surprising. Neurons communicate via electric signals. There are multiple reasonnable ways to implement a memory based on that substrate, but the interface is almost certainly going to be through axons. There must be a way, whatever it may be, to query and to alter the brain's memory through its interface. We don't have to know precisely how the system works to predict that fuzzing the interface might result in adverse effects. That remains true whether the underlying storage is in the field, in synapses, a more complicated change in gene expression, or some other property of the cell.
- acrefoot 5y ago
  There was a pretty fun Radiolab episode (https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/episodes/91569-memory-and-forgetting https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/episodes/91569...) that suggested that the process of recall changes memories, and that they are susceptible to change while the memory is being recalled. I'm sure ECT is disruptive in many ways, including just through damage and toxicity to the cells. But, in your fuzzing idea--a hypothesis might be that recall is triggered, and while the memory is susceptible, it's disrupted permanently. Another possibility is that the memory is still there, but the proper mapping to it is lost. Reality is probably a combination of many factors.

akomtu 5y ago

A probably related observation found on the wikipedia page about sonoluminescene that oscillations driven by an external periodic force often have a more stable period than the external force. In this case a neuron is a driving force and the magnetic field is the oscillating "water" that has a period more stable, and thus preserves information better than the neuron itself.

_yoqn 5y ago

This may be too meta for this forum, but I would like to point out that the brain theory as a whole has become so incomprehensibly complex that I am beginning to think that the brain has little to do with intention and memory storage. Point in fact: as we are now hundreds of years into medical research and we still can't figure out how the brain stores memory. Or what physical structure a memory even is. And I am supposed to believe this all happened by accident? Who is driving the upward development of life if the physical universe tends toward chaos?

picture 5y ago
Do you suggest intention and memory storage arise from soul or other non physical phenomena?
- aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
  We're looking in the wrong place, probably. I'd start in the gut, considering the cells are quite similar.
  - gus_massa 5y ago
    People with gut cancer get their gut removed regularly, sometimes a big chunk of the guts. Do they lose their memories?
    - ultimape 5y ago
      Maybe. There was a guy who induced aphantasia after a stem cell transplant and one of the hypothesis is the loss of gut bacteria via antibiotics. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8143657/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8143657/ I reversed a life-long case of Prosopagnosia after doing some n-of-1 experiments with replenishing my gut bacteria, so it seems plausible to me that losing intestines could impact this. I also have a friend had her intestines removed due to Crohn's disease. She had an infection from the surgery that put her in a coma she woke up unable to picture things in her head. Hard to say what caused it.

alar44 5y ago

I died and was brought back to life. Still have memories. Did I just debunk the paper?

ahelwer 5y ago
Death for something as complex as the human body isn’t a binary state.
aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
Depends on the definition of death.
dTal 5y ago
Death is irreversible by definition, so you did not die.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kelnos 5y ago
Presumably you were resuscitated before the electrical activity in your brain stopped? My understanding is that's how we define brain death, as the cessation of electrical activity in the brain.
docere 5y ago
You have a point. Medically induced coma such as with pentobarbital can “flatline” the brain, eliminating electrical fields. After weaning the pentobarbital patients have their memories intact.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
  If all electric fields were to disappear your brain would collapse into a point...

k__ 5y ago

So, we're back from "your body is your mind" to "the mind is something electrial floating around your cells"? This makes me sleep a bit better, I think.

grishka 5y ago
"Something electrical floating around your cells" isn't just the mind either, it's also how the organism coordinates its development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XheAMrS8Q1c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XheAMrS8Q1c

aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago

So a strong enough electric field could disrupt our memories? I’m skeptical…

mandmandam 5y ago
... Why? A strong enough electrical field can disrupt lots of stuff.

bzmrgonz 5y ago

So essentially the brain serves as an antenna receiving data to render this reality/simulation. Soon we will discover how exactly it is tuned in to the akashic records and perhaps we will understand the mechanics of the quantum fields more intimately, as well as how to dial up to the higher consciousness.

sniperjoe360 5y ago

This paper makes a lot of sense. As a doc, I've seen literally several hundred patients with portions of their brain removed or damaged, some of them very extensive (>20% of the brain). Yet many are completely asymptomatic, and many others regain full function and memory with time and physical therapy. It's led me to conclude that the function of the brain isn't tied 1:1 to the structure of the brain as we had all been taught.

jotm 5y ago
Couldn't it be that the brain has an extremely good redundancy setup? Memories stored in several parts of the brain, and recoverable if a part gets damaged? There are many people who did have permanent memory loss from various TBI (traumatic brain injury), especially gunshot wounds, and many who recovered theirs slowly. Kind of like restoring data from an archive, or rebuilding a RAID array, as an analogy.
coolwulf 5y ago
As five-year survival rate has been improved during cancer patients, we have seen more and more patients with multiple brain tumors. Recently we got awarded a NIH grant on a multi brain tumor SRS treatment platform. This might not be directly related with surgery of removal portion of the brain, but definitely SRS will act just like surgery (but with radiation). This month we are actually asked by NIH to have an interview program to talk with people who are interested in SRS, so in case you are interested in our project, you could schedule a 20-mins quick meeting with me at your convenience: https://calendly.com/hao-jiang-1/nih-i-corp-customer-discovery-interview?month=2022-03 https://calendly.com/hao-jiang-1/nih-i-corp-customer-discove...
markus_zhang 5y ago
I think it's also interesting to figure out what exactly is memory. I don't know anything about medical research but my gut feeling is that memory is more of a "feeling" than concrete snapshots such as computer memory.

dilawar 5y ago

Wouldn't you expect MRI scan to alter your working memory? When I had my MRI scan, I felt no change whatsoever in my train of thoughts.

jotm 5y ago
Or instead of storing memories, electric fields are used for fast transfers between parts of the brain. An MRI scan could affect it depending on the frequency? Perhaps a minor, temporary, drop in cognition/memory recall? You would have to conduct a study specifically for that.

fnord77 5y ago

what's the data storage capacity of this sort of electric field(s)?

nelsondev 5y ago
Does there have to be a persistence layer if the machine is never shutdown? If all our memories are stored in “RAM” and never flushed to “disk”, we may never find evidence of “disk”.

acrefoot 5y ago

The headline says working memory, not long-term episodic memory, but the comments (and headline) here don't seem to distinguish between the two. We can disrupt short term memories in a variety of ways. When memories consolidate, they move to different structures. We can hold a lot more information in long-term memories than in working memory. Because I hear this hypothesis come up from time to time--it's unlikely consciousness or long-term memory are maintained by e-fields generated in the brain, or that they require continuous electrical activity. Stark evidence against it come from ischemia studies. Ischemia usually accompanies serious underlying issues, so more controlled examples are easier to reason about: surgeons may use deep hypothermic circulatory arrest as protection for the brain in procedures with extended ischemia time requirements. In these cases, achieving electrocerebral silence (flat EEG) is one of the checklist items for the procedure. Clinical cases are worth reviewing for any hypothesis that suggests that long-term memory depends on continuous electrical activity* of neurons in the brain. Since the events of ischemia, brain flatlining, and brain death are so closely linked in time, it's easy to conflate them. After a cold stop+start, the brain doesn't immediately jump back to normal function--there are a variety of processes that are worth studying better to get back to normal brain waves and brain function. Ischemia-related damage is often from a metabolic problems than from a discontinuity of electrical function. The reason for the cooling is to maintain the local energy reserves of the cells--when that is lost, the cells may have too much difficulty getting back to normal when blood is later reintroduced, and that's where you see brain damage or death. This kind of procedure is not without serious risk factors. * Of course, electrical activity is needed for recall, but the point that I'm making is that the memory is later available for recall even after a period of discontinuity in the EEG.

hhs 5y ago
> The headline says working memory, not long-term episodic memory, but the comments (and headline) here don't seem to distinguish between the two. Please note, this is the press release headline and sub-headline: “Neurons are fickle. Electric fields are more reliable for information.” “A new study suggests that electric fields may represent information held in working memory, allowing the brain to overcome “representational drift,” or the inconsistent participation of individual neurons”
5y ago

Animats 5y ago

Hm. The actual work where the data used was collected is here.[1] (The details are paywalled, unfortunately.) This paper is here.[2] The first paper, about predicting where eyes will point next, is based on actual data recorded by the experimenters from two monkeys. The authors of that paper report positive but narrow results. They write about simple visual target info persisting for a few seconds. The second paper re-analyzes that data and draws much broader conclusions, less well justified by the data. No electric fields were actually measured in that work. They're being imputed from voltages from neuron probes and EEG pickups. So the statements about fields are somewhat iffy. It's recently become possible to image electric fields.[3] NASA work in 2015. A field-effect transistor with an open gate is an electric field sensor, and an array of them is an imager. A linear array was constructed and scanned mechanically to 2D image various objects, including a human. That paper has what is claimed to be the first image of the electric field of a human. Resolution was low, but it works. Might be useful for scanners at checkpoints and such, they claim. So the technology exists to start to measure such fields directly. With enough interest and money, someone could probably construct an IC with a large array of open gate FETs and the readout circuitry to get an image from them. It's a non-intrusive passive sensor, which is nice for human experimentation. If there's anything going with the brain's electric field at high resolution or high frequency, it should be possible to pick that up. It's not clear how useful this is, but the electronics part looks possible. [1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-2552/aa5a3e https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-2552/aa5a3e [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811922001872 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105381192... [3] https://sma.nasa.gov/docs/default-source/News-Documents/electric-potential-and-electric-field-imaging-with-applications.pdf https://sma.nasa.gov/docs/default-source/News-Documents/elec...

kkylin 5y ago
Preprint here: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.22.457247 https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.22.457247