by Nicholas West
July 4, 2014
from
ActivistPost Website
Spanish version
A vast array of direct mind control
techniques are being announced in the wake of investment from
government via the U.S.
BRAIN project and Europe's counterpart the
Human Brain Project - all told, billions of dollars are being
spent to decode what makes us tick and how to change it.
We are being given gadgets that create a brain-computer interface,
magnetic manipulation via "neural
dust," high-powered lasers, using
light beamed from outside the skull, the implanting and erasure
of memories, and even the direct
uploading of the contents of our brain.
Despite all this, some have stressed that the brain is not
consciousness; therefore, there is always a built-in protection that
the aware mind can erect to thwart outside attacks.
Neuroscientists, however, are now
claiming for the first time to have found absolute proof that
consciousness is completely dependent on brain structure. In fact,
it can be identified as a literal on/off switch that can be
physically tripped by electrical stimulation, thus closing down all
awareness in an instant.
Here are some key passages from their findings:
In a study published last week,
Mohamad Koubeissi at the George Washington University in
Washington DC and his colleagues describe how they managed to
switch a woman's consciousness off and on by stimulating her
claustrum.
The woman has epilepsy so the team
were using deep brain electrodes to record signals from
different brain regions to work out where her seizures
originate. One electrode was positioned next to the claustrum,
an area that had never been stimulated before.
When the team zapped the area with
high frequency electrical impulses, the woman lost
consciousness. She stopped reading and stared blankly into
space, she didn't respond to auditory or visual commands and her
breathing slowed. As soon as the stimulation stopped, she
immediately regained consciousness with no memory of the event.
The same thing happened every time
the area was stimulated during two days of experiments (Epilepsy
and Behavior,
Electrical stimulation of a small brain
area reversibly disrupts consciousness).
To confirm that they were affecting
the woman's consciousness rather than just her ability to speak
or move, the team asked her to repeat the word "house" or snap
her fingers before the stimulation began.
If the stimulation was disrupting a
brain region responsible for movement or language she would have
stopped moving or talking almost immediately. Instead, she
gradually spoke more quietly or moved less and less until she
drifted into unconsciousness. Since there was no sign of
epileptic brain activity during or after the stimulation, the
team is sure that it wasn't a side effect of a seizure.
Koubeissi thinks that the results do
indeed suggest that the claustrum plays a vital role in
triggering conscious experience.
"I would liken it to a car," he
says.
"A car on the road has many parts
that facilitate its movement - the gas, the transmission, the
engine - but there's only one spot where you turn the key and it
all switches on and works together.
So while consciousness is a
complicated process created via many structures and networks - we may have found the key."
(Source and full report can be
found
here.)
Professor of neuroscience, Anil Seth, is
one who urges caution about drawing conclusions from just one
patient who already had an organic deficiency.
However, the claustrum was the exact area that
Francis Crick (who identified the
structure of DNA) and his colleague Christof Koch had focused on in
2005.
Though Crick is now deceased, Koch
summarized the significance of such findings.
"Ultimately, if we know how
consciousness is created and which parts of the brain are
involved then we can understand who has it and who doesn't,"
says Koch.
"Do
robots have it? Do fetuses? Does a cat or dog or worm? This
study is incredibly intriguing but it is one brick in a large
edifice of consciousness that we're trying to build."
It is that typical scientific
reductionism which finds these arguments appealing, just as
Koubeissi stated above that he would liken the human organism to a
car with there being a similar ignition switch to put all parts in
motion - the claustrum. Just like a machine, consciousness can also
then be physically built - or torn down.
Others such as researcher
Jon Rappoport see a logical fallacy built into conventional
scientific thinking because they already assume what they are trying
to prove - that the seat of consciousness is somewhere in the brain
and could not be non-material.
And yet a wide body of scientific and spiritual research into the
role,
...seems to suggest that human consciousness is almost
certainly non-material; or, at the very least,
both:
As conventional scientists continue drilling further into the
workings of what they assume to be a human machine, reducing us to
ever smaller parts, they are acknowledging that there is something
special hinting at a conductor that makes it all work.
If that
conductor is orchestrating from within, then it can be replaced
through direct mind control.
If it comes from without, it is free to
roam and communicate through all time and all space, and be forever
free from all attempts to build the material prisons desired by
technocrats.
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