3 scientific experiments that will force you to change your attitude towards yourself

1. There is no free will

Is there free will - the ability of our consciousness to spontaneously intervene in physical processes and direct their movement? Philosophy gives various answers to this question, but science has a very definite point of view.

According to neuroscientist Benjamin Libet, any thought is born unconsciously. Consciousness deals with a ready-made result. It is just a lantern that illuminates processes independent of it. Free will in this case is pure illusion.

A series of experiments carried out by him confirms this opinion. Benjamin Libet stimulated different parts of the human brain with electrodes. The delay between the brain's response to the stimulus and its awareness averaged half a second. This is what explains the work of unconditioned reflexes - we remove our hand from the hot stove even before we realize the danger and pain.

However, as Libet's research has shown, this is not only the mechanism of work of unconditioned reflexes. A person, in principle, is always aware of his sensations with some delay. The brain first sees, and only after that we become aware of what is visible, it thinks, but only after a while we discover what kind of thought appeared. We seem to live in the past, half a second behind reality.

However, Libet did not stop there. In 1973, he conducted an experiment, the purpose of which was to find out what is primary - the activity of the brain or our desire. Intuition tells us that we have a will that tells the brain to act in a certain way.

Libet measured the brain activity of people while making informed decisions. The subjects had to look at a dial with a rotating hand and stop the process at any time by pressing a button. Then they had to name the time when they first realized the desire to press the key.

The result was amazing. The electrical signal in the brain, sending the decision to press the button, appeared 350 milliseconds before the decision was made and 500 milliseconds before the action itself.

The brain prepares for action long before we make a conscious decision to take this action.

An observing experimenter can predict a person's choice that he has not yet made. In modern analogs of the experiment, the prediction of a person's volitional decision can be carried out 6 seconds before the person himself makes it.

Imagine a billiard ball rolling along a specific path. An experienced billiard player, automatically calculating the speed and direction of movement, will indicate its exact location in a couple of seconds. We are exactly the same balls for neuroscience after Libet's experiment.

Free choice of a person is the result of unconscious processes in the brain, and free will is an illusion.

2. Our "I" is not one

scientific experiments: our self is not one

In neuroscience, there is a method for elucidating the functions of a particular part of the brain. It consists in eliminating or lulling the studied area and in identifying the changes occurring after this in the psyche and intellectual abilities of a person.

Our brain has two hemispheres that are connected by the corpus callosum. For a long time, its significance was unknown to science.

Neuropsychologist Roger Sperry cut corpus callosum fibers in an epileptic patient in 1960. The disease was cured, and at first it seemed that the operation did not lead to any negative consequences. However, subsequently, profound changes began to be observed in human behavior, as well as in his cognitive abilities.

Each half of the brain began to work independently. If a person was shown a written word on the right side of his nose, then he could easily read it, since the left hemisphere, which is responsible for speech abilities, is involved in information processing.

But when the word appeared on the left side, the subject could not pronounce it, but could draw what the word meant. At the same time, the patient himself said that he had not seen anything. Moreover, having drawn an object, he could not determine what he was depicting.

During the observation of patients who underwent callosotomy (dissection of the corpus callosum), even more surprising effects were discovered. So, for example, each of the hemispheres sometimes revealed its own will, independent of the other. One hand tried to put the tie on the patient, while the other tried to take it off. However, the dominant position was occupied by the left hemisphere. According to scientists, this is due to the fact that the speech center is located there, and our consciousness and will are of a linguistic nature.

Next to our conscious "I" lives a neighbor who has his own desires, but who is not capable of expressing will.

When a man with a dissected corpus callosum was shown two words - "sand" and "clock" - he drew an hourglass. His left hemisphere was processing a signal from the right side, that is, the word "sand." When asked why he drew an hourglass, because he saw only sand, the subject went into ridiculous explanations of his action.

The real reasons for our actions are often hidden from ourselves. And the reason we call the justification that was constructed by us after the action. Thus, it is not the cause that precedes the effect, but the effect that constructs the cause.

3. Reading other people's thoughts is possible

Each of us is internally convinced that his consciousness is a private area, not accessible to anyone. Thoughts, feelings, perceptions are the most protected property as they exist in consciousness. But is it?

In 1999, the neuroscientist Yang Deng conducted an experiment that showed that the work of the brain is, in principle, no different from the work of a computer. Thus, knowing its encoding, one can easily read the information generated in the brain.

He used a cat as a test subject. Dan fixed the animal on a table and inserted special electrodes into the region of the brain responsible for processing visual information.

The cat was shown various images, and electrodes at this time recorded the activity of neurons. The information was transmitted to a computer, which converted electrical impulses into a real image. What the cat saw was projected onto the monitor screen.

It is important to understand the specifics of the image transmission mechanism. The electrodes are not cameras that capture the image that appears in front of the cat. Dan has used technology to replicate what the brain does - converting an electrical impulse into a visual image.

It is clear that the experiment was carried out only within the framework of the visual channel, but it reflects the principle of the brain's operation and shows the possibilities in this area.

Knowing how information spreads in the brain, and having the key to reading it, it is easy to imagine a computer that could fully read the state of the human brain.

It is not so important when such a computer will be created. The important thing is whether people are ready for the fact that their thoughts, memories, character, personality as a whole are just one of the pages of a book in an unknown language that can be read by others.