| Neuroscientist here: There is no such thing as a mind-body duality. Your body is your mind and your mind is your body. Full stop. We are still in the very infancy of the study of the mind body and brain. We're finally uncovering some of the most basic tools that will serve us for millennia to come. Imagine trying to understand a 2022 Ford F-150 with only a 7/16ths wrench and a flat-head screwdriver: You can get pretty far, but you're not getting anywhere near the cylinders. It's going to take along time to even get the tools to understand the brain. For example: We don't even have all the basic circuit components that the brain has. We have resistors, capacitors, and inductors. All things that the electrical systems of the brain have analogs to (very very roughly, I am simplifying a lot here). But we're missing the memristor. We know the brain has a memristor, it's the synapse, but we don't really have ones to play around with and use as tools. Yes, you can model these things in software. But then you miss out on most of the ugly reality that is hard/wetware; and that's where all the magic happens. But that's just the electrical parts of the nervous system. Most of what is happening is in the electrically dark chemistry. Heck, we can't even agree on what percentage of the brain is glia. Is it 50%, is it 90%? Whose paper should you trust? We don't even have a good census of what is in the damn thing! But of course you can't take the brain in isolation. The inputs and effects on it are still nearly completely unknown to us. And that's not hyperbole either. We really are mostly in the dark as to what effects the brain. Just look at temperature. We know that the rate of firing of neurons goes as T ^ 4. Yes, that's the hypercube of temperature. Even the slightest change in temperature has massive changes to firing rates. How in God's name do any of us function on a hot or cold day!? We haven't the foggiest idea. So again, we're in the absolute infancy of our study of the brain. Fortunately, most of us HNers are going to live to see a lot of progress in this science. It's an exciting time to be alive. |
"Not only simpler lifeforms. Cases with humans that may indicate a memory transfer after organ transplants are also documented:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31739081/
>The acquisition of donor personality characteristics by recipients following heart transplantation is hypothesized to occur via the transfer of cellular memory
https://www.namahjournal.com/doc/Actual/Memory-transference-...
>There have been perplexing reports of organ transplant receivers claiming that they seem to have inherited the memory, experiences and emotions of their deceased donors, and which are causing quirky changes in their personality."
This post was in response to one describing decapitated worms growing new heads with their old memories intact, as well as old studies where planarians were trained to navigate a simple maze, then fed to other planarians who were then also able to navigate the maze. Fascinating stuff!
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372687