alt Hacker NewsWe know that the brain is a structure that works through electrochemical reactions. Synapses transmit signals sent by axons to neurons. We can test this. We can measure it. There's nothing else going on that we can describe using known science.
Ah, we might say, maybe there is an unknown science - we did not know about so much before, like electricity, like X-Rays, like quantum physics, and then we did, and the World changed.
The difference is that we observed something that science could not explain, and then we found the new science that explained it, and a new science was born.
It's pretty clear to me - but you may know more - that we can explain all brain activity through known science. It might be hard to think of us as nothing more than a bunch of electrochemical reactions in a real-world reinforcement learning system, but that's what we are: there's no gap that needs new science, is there?
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No, none of this is settled. We cannot adequately explain brain function with current science.
There have been studies this year implying that some brain functions rely on quantum interactions.
Can we? We can only see whatever we can measure with the tools we currently have, which are based on the knowledge we currently have. Who's to say there isn't something out there we haven't discovered yet? There's more than enough we still don't understand in many domains of science
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Scalp-recorded EEG does not measure action potentials, it can only measure the graded potentials of basically one type of neuron (pyramidal cells) in the cortex, which is a really tiny percentage of both neurons and electrical activity in the brain. Additionally, there is also the various roles neurotransmitters play in the brain, etc., and glial cells seem to also play an important role. So, it’s definitely not the case that there aren’t any gaps that need new science, and even if there weren’t, it’s a pretty big stretch from there to decoding all brain activity solely through the electrical component.