Human Brains And Memories

The Human Brain Project is taking place in 24 countries, 112 institutions and 12 research areas. The people who believe that consciousness is ruled by matter fall under the mantle of materialist philosophy and they think our consciousness is just an illusion. Consciousness is definitely related to the brain, but we don’t know much more than that about consciousness. When our brains feel the effects of things like drugs or injuries it affects our consciousness so the brain consciousness link is certain, but it could be much more than just that. Could it be that some of us do not have free will? We assume we all have it, but what if we are wrong. Could some of us be more robotic than others? If a person commits a crime, but he could not have chosen any other path, should he be punished for something where he had no other choice, but was forced to commit a criminal act because he was programmed to do it?

One of the things I find very interesting is the fact we have not yet proven that all memory is in the brain. Most people are unaware of this. For all we know our genes could contain memories. There are some who believe that our genes may carry the memories of our ancestors and this becomes part of our memories and leads to things like the idea of reincarnation. In a case like this people might believe they have lived before, because they have vivid memories of past lives, but the truth is these may just be the result of DNA memory. It would seem real enough to those who remember these things and surely they would believe in reincarnation. Could our DNA be altered to contain current memories? The answer had to be yes if it contains past memories. This would mean memories were consistently being stored there perhaps in what is known as our junk DNA. This begs the question of why everyone doesn’t have these memories and that is yet to be solved.

Scientists have not been able to find memories in our brains even though they have searched quite diligently. For all we know our memories could be somewhere in our bodies we never thought of or even stored outside our bodies as some now believe. Dr. Sheldrake likens our brains to television receivers and believes our brains are receiving signals and interpreting them. This is called the resonance theory of memory. The big question is where are these signals coming from? It has been proven that when memories are created or recalled it does cause activity in certain parts of the brain. Another thing I thought was interesting was the fact many of us are now storing our computer data on something called the cloud. That means we are really sending and receiving our computer data from somewhere else other than our computers. There are some scientists who think our consciousness is being held outside our bodies and sent to our brains along with our memories when required. It would be the same type of system as would be our cloud storage for our machines. In some ways this is a scary thought. I say this because it might mean there is some distance limitation which would prevent us from keeping our consciousness past a certain point in space, but maybe I am getting too bizarre.

Does our brain also act as a sending device? Dr. Sheldrake conducted hundreds of tests on dogs and found that many of the dogs would go to the door within a half hour before someone got home even if they came in at odd hours. He countered the fact they could hear the car by having people come home not only at odd hours but by walking or on a bike, but most of the dogs would still know when to go to the door. This leads him to believe we humans are sending out a signal of our intention to come home and our dogs are receiving it. He also did a test with cats. He noticed that when someone got the cat’s cage or something else which led the cat to think it was going to the vet, it would hide. He asked hundreds of cat owners to only think about taking the cat to the vet and found the cats would still hide. He then came to the conclusion cats like dogs could pick up our thoughts at certain times. Could it be the more primitive brain is more susceptible to telepathy?

Over 85% of the population have had the experience when the phone rings the person on the other end is someone they were just thinking about. This certainly does make one wonder what is going on. Even though it is a rare thing, it has happened to almost all of us which makes it a very strange thing and makes us wonder if we have somehow sent or received a message from our brain which was received subconsciously by another party. If we sent a message to call us to a certain person and they responded without realizing it, does this mean we have the power to control their actions? Are our brains or at least our thoughts linked on some higher level we do not understand? Skeptics say this is just coincidence. To check this Dr. Sheldrake asked people who thought they were telepathic to supply four telephone numbers of those who they felt they had a close telepathic connection to. The idea was for them to guess who the random callers were who were picked by the doctor to call them. The odds should have been 25% correct guesses which is one out of four, but instead after hundreds of calls it was 45% which showed something was going on and which the skeptics could not explain.

Scientists at MIT have figured out how to create a solution which makes disembodied brains 4.5 times bigger so they can be studied easier. It is beginning to look like consciousness is far more than just our brains. It will be interesting to find out what incredible links to our consciousness will be found in the future.