The Future of the Mind Read Free Page B

resonance to build a 2.3-million-electron-volt particle accelerator in my mom’s garage.)
    Just a couple of years later, as a freshman at Harvard University, it was an honor to have Dr. Purcell teach me electrodynamics. Around that same time, I also had a summer job and got a chance to work with Dr. Richard Ernst, who was trying to generalize the work of Bloch and Purcell on magnetic resonance. He succeeded spectacularly and would eventually win the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1991 for laying the foundation for the modern MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machine. The MRI machine, in turn, has given us detailed photographs of the living brain in even finer detail than PET scans.
    EMPOWERING THE MIND
    Eventually I became a professor of theoretical physics, but my fascination with the mind remained. It is thrilling to see that, just within the last decade, advances in physics have made possible some of the feats of mentalism that excited me when I was a child. Using MRI scans, scientists can now read thoughts circulating in our brains. Scientists can also insert a chip into the brain of a patient who is totally paralyzed and connect it to a computer, so that through thought alone that patient can surf the web, read and write e-mails, play video games, control their wheelchair, operate household appliances, and manipulate mechanical arms. In fact, such patients can do anything a normal person can do via a computer.
    Scientists are now going even further, by connecting the brain directly to an exoskeleton that these patients can wear around their paralyzed limbs. Quadriplegics may one day lead near-normal lives. Such exoskeletons may also give us superpowers enabling us to handle deadly emergencies. One day, our astronauts may even explore the planets by mentally controlling mechanical surrogates from the comfort of their living rooms.
    As in the movie The Matrix , we might one day be able to download memories and skills using computers. In animal studies, scientists havealready been able to insert memories into the brain. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before we, too, can insert artificial memories into our brains to learn new subjects, vacation in new places, and master new hobbies. And if technical skills can be downloaded into the minds of workers and scientists, this may even affect the world economy. We might even be able to share these memories as well. One day, scientists might construct an “Internet of the mind,” or a brain-net, where thoughts and emotions are sent electronically around the world. Even dreams will be videotaped and then “brain-mailed” across the Internet.
    Technology may also give us the power to enhance our intelligence. Progress has been made in understanding the extraordinary powers of “savants” whose mental, artistic, and mathematical abilities are truly astonishing. Furthermore, the genes that separate us from the apes are now being sequenced, giving us an unparalleled glimpse into the evolutionary origins of the brain. Genes have already been isolated in animals that can increase their memory and mental performance.
    The excitement and promise generated by these eye-opening advances are so enormous that they have also caught the attention of the politicians. In fact, brain science has suddenly become the source of a transatlantic rivalry between the greatest economic powers on the planet. In January 2013, both President Barack Obama and the European Union announced what could eventually become multibillion-dollar funding for two independent projects that would reverse engineer the brain. Deciphering the intricate neural circuitry of the brain, once considered hopelessly beyond the scope of modern science, is now the focus of two crash projects that, like the Human Genome Project, will change the scientific and medical landscape. Not only will this give us unparalleled insight into the mind, it will also generate new industries, spur economic activity, and open up new vistas for