Could your work with brains and studying electrical signals from the brain and simulation lead to studies on animals

Question: Could your work with brains and studying electrical signals from the brain and simulation lead to studies on animals and communication with them?

Asked by askjeeves to Martin on 18 Mar 2010 in Categories: Benefits.
- Martin Coath answered on 18 Mar 2010:
  
  That is an interesting question. I am guessing a bit what you mean so get back to me if I am wrong!
  
  Our brains are very similar to brains of other animals, particularly other mammals. My work is an attempt to work out what language all brains speak INSIDE themselves. So if we knew this, then we would be able to understand what animals were thinking WITHOUT speaking because the patterns would be the same! Is that about right?
  
  Actually this is partly true – and it is already possible to use medical scanners to find out roughly the sorts of things people are thinking about from their brain activity. This should be the same for other animals too.
  
  This is difficult to check because people have to lie very still inside the scanners and training animals to lie still in scanners is tricky.
  
  But what you say is possible.

Comments

Chris commented on 18 Mar 2010:

Martin – my gut feeling here is that as animals don’t have language then we can already communicate with them as much as we are ever going to by talking to them and using non-verbal communication. I am not sure how seeing an MRI scan will tell us more. Though thinking back to my kids in their pre-language days guess if there was a specific “hunger” signal I could pick up in a scanner it would have prevented the trial and error as to why they were crying. Nappy change…NO.. cuddle …NO. Oh bottle of milk – so you were hungry!
- Martin commented on 19 Mar 2010:
  
  I think it is almost certain that it would be relatively easy to ‘read the mind’ (excuse the hyperbole) of non-humans, or non-verbal humans, from a detailed picture of the brain activity.
  
  You could get far more specific information than from non-verbal communication – although more detail than is possible with MRI (at the moment) would be useful.
  
  Your example of a `baby state’ scanner is perfectly plausible, although impractical, even with current technology. You would need your floor-boards beefed up a bit if you wanted a 3 Tesla magnet in the nursery.
  
  I know this isn’t the same thing as `communicating’ with babies or dogs or gerbils in an interactive sense, but the possibility – however Star Trek it might seem – is real.
Chris commented on 21 Mar 2010:

Martin – for the future of baby brain scanning see:

http://www.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/research/nirs/ and for a video see http://www.jove.com/index/details.stp?ID=1268

Question: Could your work with brains and studying electrical signals from the brain and simulation lead to studies on animals and communication with them?