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If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?
- krackers 10mo agoHmm this leads me to recall a bunch of ancient pseudoscientific sounding beliefs and see whether or not they might be plausibly explained by this mechanism: * Is it possible for humans to get a vague impression of other humans' thoughts via this mechanism? Not via body language, but "telepathy" (it'd obviously only work over very short ranges). If it is possible, maybe it is what some people supposedly feel as "auras" * Some animals have a preference for sleeping direction in alignment with magnetic pole, are some sleeping directions "healthier" than others for humans? That aside, I didn't follow the part about how this is an answer to the hard problem of consciousness. Why couldn't the brain achieve global summarization via another mechanism, and why does having this "global summarization" result in qualia?
- esperent 10mo ago> If it is possible, maybe it is what some people supposedly feel as "auras" I've always held two complementary beliefs regarding auras and similar senses: 1. It's plausible that some humans can sense subtle information about things like emotional states or reactions in other humans using non standard sensing mechanisms (so maybe electric fields rather than sight, for example). 2. I'm very certain that for overwhelmingly most humans who claim they can see auras, it's one of: bullshit, fakery, self delusion, wishful thinking, charlatanism, a scam.
- krackers 10mo agoYeah, synesthesia combined with being attuned to body language and emotions could account for lot. I even remember there was some anecdote of a famous physicist (Feynman?) who investigated this soviet mind reader and found that he was picking up on subtle bodily clues.
- BoxOfRain 10mo ago> If it is possible, maybe it is what some people supposedly feel as "auras" For what it's worth, I have a disorder that causes me to see "auras" around people quite often. The nature of the disorder is that my brain can't filter out its own sensory noise properly, giving rise to a lot of visual artefacts that non-disordered brains filter out. These range from 'TV static' to stuff that's not a million miles away from diffusion model artefacts, but the auras around people I see pretty much all the time especially against plain backgrounds. It's not very well-known or studied but fMRI studies have recently implicated the same serotonin receptor psychedelics target, and it's also linked to migraine. I think this disorder being more prevalent than expected would be a good explanation for auras. It was once thought to be very rare, but many people who have it aren't actually affected enough to seek out a diagnosis. It wouldn't be an unreasonable source for images like auras, saints' haloes, and other things like that since they're just an ordinary part of vision for me. I also think it somewhat vindicates Aldous Huxley's thoughts on the subject. I really like the idea of electrical fields being somehow important for consciousness, and it's not something I'd rule out off the bat. I just think that disorders of perception are a better explanation for auras and similar phenomena.
- rithikjainNd01 10mo agoHaha yes, I developed the same thing following a blackout! It was scary at first but now it doesn't bother me, sometimes can be distracting though.
- mewpmewp2 10mo ago> * Is it possible for humans to get a vague impression of other humans' thoughts via this mechanism? Not via body language, but "telepathy" (it'd obviously only work over very short ranges). If it is possible, maybe it is what some people supposedly feel as "auras" If any of it was possible, it would be easily scientifically provable by very simple experiments. The fact that it hasn't been proven while people would have very high motivations to prove it, suggests it's very probably not happening.
- mapontosevenths 10mo agoThis reminds me of the study about dog poop being aligned to magnetic north/south.[0] It seems a bit silly, but I suspect that more of our life may be effected by biomagnetism than we yet realize. [0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1742-9994-10-80 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1742-9994-10-80
- ljlolel 10mo agoThis is cited
- mapontosevenths 10mo agoGood point. I missed that, thanks.
- krackers 10mo ago>may be effected by biomagnetism Bioelectricity too, which is just now starting to get properly researched (see Michael Levin's stuff).
- congoe 10mo agoSee this pubpeer discussion about critiques of plausibility of the papers conclusions: https://pubpeer.com/publications/155C1B85C0680A558D4431D059AC6B https://pubpeer.com/publications/155C1B85C0680A558D4431D059A...
- tracerbulletx 10mo agoWell how far do these fields propagate and do you need to read them from different directions to make sense of them? Think you’d want to answer those questions first. The sensors from the study are very close and all around the head. Also demonstrate there is some phenomenon to explain in the first place.
- apolloartemis 10mo agoIf this were true wouldn’t fMRI machines cause either loss of consciousness or extreme hallucinations?
- ggm 10mo agoI believe in dead salmon, they do.
- lgas 10mo agoThey cause hallucinations in dead salmon? I find that hard to believe.
- furyofantares 10mo agoLoss of consciousness seems equally unlikely.
- lgas 10mo agoTrue, though an easier mistake to make, I imagine.
- ggm 10mo agohttps://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/scicurious-brain/ignobel-prize-in-neuroscience-the-dead-salmon-study/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/scicurious-brain/ign...
- ggm 10mo agoContrast this with trans-cranial magnetic stimulation and claims this can induce the feeling of religiosity in people: you may believe in god, because your ferromagnetic particles align to believe in god in the right magnetic field.. (not really.. but still. the thing about induced states of mind by TCMS is true)
- tjpnz 10mo agoMaybe there is a correlation between religion and the proximity to power lines.
- rpastuszak 10mo agoFWIW that’s debunked
- ggm 10mo agoGood find. Here's a paper reference: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7887692_Sensed_presence_and_mystical_experiences_are_predicted_by_suggestibility_not_by_the_application_of_transcranial_weak_complex_magnetic_fields https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7887692_Sensed_pres...
- zellyn 10mo agoI’ve long thought it would be unsurprising if we eventually found evidence of certain kinds of telepathy. It would just be too damn useful, and tuning up one exquisitely complex magneto-electro-chemical instrument in close proximity to another similar one seems like a good way to at least get resonance. Who knows?
- andrewflnr 10mo agoThis feels just north of conspiracy theory logic. It's proven that humans can just barely sense large-scale magnetic fields, so how about if they can also sense extremely finely detailed fields in a way that solves long-standing philosophical and medical problems? Here are some supporting coincidences that have any number of alternate explanations, but it would sure be cool if this whole tower of conjecture was true, right? If you've seen conspiracy-theory debunks, the resemblance is rather strong.
- Animats 10mo agoThis paper starts to go downhill around "The easier-than-expected problem of consciousness". The Meta paper [1] is much more useful. They claim to be reading out what someone is seeing, in a rather approximate way. The sensing is improving. One project was able to sense magnetic fields at 13 points at 1KHZ using a custom helmet fitted with sensors.[2] The technology is still in the early stages, but they got rid of the high vacuum and cyrogenics needed for SQUID sensors. Progress. This currently has fewer data points than functional MRI, but more bandwith. fMRI, after all, is measuring blood flow. It's like trying to figure out what an IC is doing by watching its infra-red heat emissions. "Look, the FPU is working hard now." That paper is a few years old. What's been going on since? [1] https://ai.meta.com/blog/brain-ai-image-decoding-meg-magnetoencephalography/ https://ai.meta.com/blog/brain-ai-image-decoding-meg-magneto... [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6063354/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6063354/
- IanCal 10mo agoThis is further info because I think it’s interesting rather that any sort of correction but fMRI doesn’t quite measure blood flow - at least not directly. Oxygenated and deoxygenated blood have slightly different magnetic properties. So the fMRI is trying to detect from that how oxygenated the blood is, with the assumption that active areas are using more oxygen which causes a small dip then blood flow increases so then there’s an increase that follows over about 5-6 seconds. I don’t know if more advanced things are used now but when I messed about with it you’d measure the change then apply a 6s linear convolution to the signal to estimate activity. There’s an interesting set of layers of assumptions in all this, and to me the idea that the mri part works at all seems like wild magic.
- mykowebhn 10mo agoI feel like the title should read: "If an Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why couldn't the brain?" "Wouldn't" suggests that the brain is choosing not to. I'm not sure this is the case here.
- cwillu 10mo ago“Wouldn't” is being used in the logical-conditional sense, not in the sense of willingness, requesting, nor opinion. It's literally “What's the reason that the machinery of the brain doesn't use this mechanism, given this proof that the effect could in principle be used?”. A similar question can be made for quantum mechanical interference in the brain (which to be clear I feel is adequately answered by “the brain is a wildly inappropriate vehicle for harnessing interference effects).
- mykowebhn 10mo agoUsing your explanation, let me try this on an example, say the extinction event that killed off many dinosaur species. If some mammalian species were able to survive this extinction event and subsequently flourish, why wouldn't dinosaur species? Not sure that works for me. I'd put "couldn't".
- cwillu 10mo agoIt may not work for you, but you're literally arguing with the dictionary here.
- neuah 10mo agoI don't want to be mean but this honestly reads like an AI-fueled delusion.
- 152334H 10mo ago+1. The article itself hides it well, but the draft paper linked at the end is clearly 100% AIGC. And the paper is clearly the ancestor to the article itself, based on the date (5dec -> 11dec)
- titanomachy 10mo agoI agree. It’s an inversion of the usual pattern: AI-generated “thoughts”, written up by a human. I’m surprised this made it to the front page of HN. I think AI tools are making it easier to create increasingly plausible-sounding bullshit, and gradually overwhelming the defenses of this community.
- the_gipsy 10mo agoThat's exactly what I read out of it. I should yave stopped midway.
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- nurettin 10mo ago> The result: some of those people showed a response to the magnetic fields on the EEG! I wonder if that correlates with people who believe in astrology.
- catoc 10mo agoIf you don’t want the EEG to capture your brainwaves you can wear a tin foil hat to lead the magnetic field astray.
- Lapsa 10mo agotinfoil hat does NOT help with that. field tested
- catoc 10mo agoIt works, weber you like it or not (⌐⊙_⊙) (Slightly more seriously, the diamagnetic properties of Sn would in actuality very much interfere with the B1 field modulation of the (f)MRI sequence; and disturb the local B0 homogeneity; and thus disturb the experimental results. Although that was of course not what I meant when initially responding)
- Lapsa 10mo agoI'm getting blasted with (most likely) microwave auditory effect audio messages - tinfoil hat does not help
- RobotToaster 10mo agoReminds me of a study I read once on binaural beats[0], that found the effect disappeared when they used pneumatic (non-magnetic) headphones. [0]the theory that playing a different tone in each ear, that when superpositioned by the brain to produce a low frequency, would entrain the brainwave frequency to the modulated frequency.
- bamboozled 10mo agoIs there any actual science behind binaural beats? They do nothing in my experience…
- hexo 10mo agogo visit a doctor. edit: lol. downvotes on friendly reminder, what a classic. my friend was not sure what everyone sees on 3d TVs. then got rid of it. later it turned out it was because of eye cancer. take care.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- dahart 10mo agoFWIW, your first line by itself does not come off as a friendly reminder at all. If that’s all that was there before your edit, I can understand why it inspired some reactions. The edit suggesting it’s everyone else’s fault isn’t going to help either, but I will take your comment as well intentioned and vote it up, it sucks your friend had eye cancer, and it’s a good idea to get preventative checkups. Even as a friendly reminder, an implication of your first line is that binaural beats should work, and that if it doesn’t something is wrong. Did you mean to imply that? If so do you have an answer to the question about scientific support?
- dijit 10mo ago“nothing”, how? Nothing as in lasting effects, or “nothing” as in you can’t hear the bineurality. If the latter, it could be your headphones- and I assume you are using headphones, or the compression, or your ears might be non-equivalent in hearing capability. If the former, then thats the point OP is making. At least for me, the sound is strangely pleasurable, not incredibly dissimilar to the kind of “multiple audio sources colliding into one nice stream” that you get from a real life orchestra.
- orbitalfunction 10mo ago[dead]
- orbitalfunction 10mo ago[dead]
- jstanley 10mo agoIf a camera can see your eyes, why can't you?
- moffkalast 10mo agoMirror sold separately.
- Lapsa 10mo agowhenever I remind about mind reading - I get down voted and called schizophrenic. it's worse - tech is being actively used to sway large groups of population
- renewiltord 10mo agoThat’s because that’s obviously mind writing not mind reading.
- Lapsa 10mo agofuck you
- b800h 10mo agoThe whole article is making a category mistake.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- haritha-j 10mo agoThe brain could be using the weak magnetic field to glean info on what the brain is thinking...or you know, the brain could use the fact that its electrically connected to...the brain.
- Borrible 10mo agoThis reminds me of Dr. Adrian Thompson's interesting findings from the mid-1990s on the influence of electromagnetic phenomena in evolvable hardware on FPGAs. https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/ https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/ Of course, the substrate being researched back then is different from human wetware.
- rdgthree 10mo agoIf you're interested in my personal chain-of-thought on the subject: This was where I started pulling this thread (October 2025): https://1393.xyz/writing/could-the-root-cause-of-alzheimers-be-magnetic https://1393.xyz/writing/could-the-root-cause-of-alzheimers-... And this is an even further ancestor of the ideas (December 2023): https://1393.xyz/writing/are-we-only-conscious-while-were-learning https://1393.xyz/writing/are-we-only-conscious-while-were-le... I'm operating off of my own subjective experience, and this idea lines up tightly with System 1 and System 2 in cognitive psychology. It seems that many jump to "AI psychosis" when one mentions magnetic fields, but the evolutionary tree is very straightforward: 1. Nature evolves magnetoreception for navigation 2. Eventually, a brain in nature with magnetoreception accidentally "hears" its own magnetic field with with resonance 3. That lossy global summary of the brains ends up being an evolutionarily advantageous "higher-order sense" 4. Evolution sharpens the blade for many years On first principles, that seems perfectly viable and even likely given that magnetoreception was such a boon for survival for all life. Just glad others are finding it interesting!
- jodrellblank 10mo agoThen how can we exist around large magnetic fields without them affecting us mentally - no forgetting, no dropping unconscious, no trippy psychedelic experiences - seemingly nothing at all? How come our mains electricity does not not act on our minds analogously to a blowtorch on our skin, or a hydraulic press on our bones? MRI machines at 3 Tesla field strength are 100,000x stronger than the Earth's magnetic field, and pulsed very fast. They affect the spin of the nucleus of the Hydrogen atoms in the body, but apparently have no effect on the person's brain or consciousness (or biomagnetite)? We wear headphones with electromagnetic coils pulsing music on the sides of our heads for hours at a time, with no effect. We use machine's powerful electric motors, work near them, we're surrounded by alternating currents in wires, some people experiment with Tesla Coils, MagLev capable of lifting trains, wireless power delivery... (PS. Red / Arctic Foxes might be able to see the Earth's magnetic field and use it to help find mice to hunt; they listen for mice they can't see and jump-pounce into the snow and their jumps are successful at getting the mouse 80% of the time when they are facing North-East and only 18% of the time when they aren't - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/foxes-use-the-earths-magnetic-field-as-a-targeting-system https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/foxes-use... )
- wildylion 10mo agoThen why aren't we totally losing it when immersed in incredibly powerful magnetic fields inside an MRI machine? I'm pretty sure, that 1.5-3T field will totally down ANY useful signal.
- griffzhowl 10mo agoTwo main reactions: The Meta paper, as well as other studies which have been interpreted as rudimentary "mind-reading" have measured activity in sensory cortex correlated with direct sensory inputs. There's a fairly close mapping between the initial layers of sensory cortex and patterns of activation in the sense organs. e.g. the optic nerve from each eye projects onto the initial layer of visual cortex in a way that closely preserves the geometry of the retinal image, so it's not that difficult to correlate information in the stimulus and these parts of cortex. Making sense of activity in deeper areas of cortex which isn't as closely correlated with immediate sensory stimulation is a much harder task. Secondly, the idea seems to be that the brain could make use of a "lossy image" of its own overall functioning. This part seemed very handwavy to me. The brain already contains the information about its own functioning, by definition, so it's not clear to me what functions would be served by the brain's being able to "sense its own magnetic field". It's known that the brain integrates information from distant regions through the patterns of neuronal connectivity. It's not clear that something similar can be done with magnetic fields, because these would mostly affect very nearby areas of the brain, and long-distance effects would be scrambled with all the other activity going on in other parts of the brain. The idea to look at the effects of the electromagnetic fields in brain functioning is interesting though. The general idea has been around for a long time[0]. The dificult part is making a detailed proposal for how it would actually work and finding experimental evidence for that. [0] Burr, Northrop (1935) The Electro-Dynamic Theory of Life https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/394488 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/394488