This is a transcript of an interview between Aelretzia Fortzenia, and Dr. Reinart Saelzar for “The thinking mind”, a publication sponsored by The org’s scientific literacy fund
Aelretzia: Since ancient times we’ve wondered how we think. How are we what we are? Due to the contributions of one man we’re one step closer to an answer. With me today is Dr. Reinart Saelzar, hello doctor
Reinart: Hello Aelretzia. The intro was a bit grandiose, but happy to be here to talk about my work today
Aelretzia: Modesty is apparently your strong suit. So, you work as a consciousness researcher for Shekland University, correct?
Reinart: So they say. I don’t technically work on consciousness per-se. Moreso I work on the actual mechanics of neurological processing. It’s kind of, you can think of it like, imagine the signals passed in your brain are like electrical connections. I study the patterns of how those electrical connections “flow”, and combine them with statical methods to best associate certain patterns with behaviors. Does that make sense?
Aelretzia: Somewhat. So basically you look at when someone is angry, see the pattern that lights up in the brain, and call that the angry pattern?
Reinart: Kind of, not everyone is exactly the same patterns. It’s more like once I’ve calibrated to your baseline I can tell you which of your emotions you are likely feeling. With that I can take those patterns across dozens of people and create a statistical model that is less accurate, but still useable.
Aelretzia: That makes sense, but then with your work you’re also trying to store those states correct?
Reinart: Yes, so I’ve worked with the chemistry department to develop a kind of gel. The gel will let you “imprint” something approximating neurons into it. Essentially you can build groupings of neurons like you would find in the brain, but suspended in a semiconductive gel. Once you have that gel we’re able to store the patterns, and adjust them according to the gel’s topology, allowing us a generalized representation of an emotional state.
Aelretzia: So you can store someone’s memories then?
Reinart: No, not memories. Or well, we haven’t tried memories I guess. It’s more like we can build a model of a brain. Imagine your old biology classroom. They probably showed you a skeleton, but that skeleton is just a model, it doesn’t exactly map on to anyone. Instead it’s a general picture of what a skeleton is, and can be manipulated to simulate how someone moves.
Aelretzia: So what are the practical purposes for this then?
Reinart: Currently the main one is being able to compare people to the baseline gel. This can help us with more definitive and less invasive diagnostics for mental health issues than are currently available.
Aelretzia: Sticking electrodes is less invasive than psychological testing?
Reinart: Well, maybe not less invasive, but much more preferable. Currently it takes a doctor and patient hours to determine if they have ADHD. We could give someone a brain scan instead, but that’s incredibly expensive. The gel is incredibly cheap to manufacture, and so we can create a device where we send hospitals a collection of these gels that map to various diseases, and we send them a machine that compares the gel to the person being tested. We then put the patient through the same set of stimuli used to generate the gel, account for the topological differences in the brain and voila.
Aelretzia: Interesting, have you already begun testing these machines yet?
Reinart: In limited amounts. Human testing in general is cumbersome to deal with logistically. It will likely be a few years before this is seen outside our lab, let alone in hospitals. But, this technology could have tons of applications, and opens up an entirely new field of research to be done on manipulations of these gels, diagnostics, the list goes on and on. We’ve even seen interest from computer departments about implementing some of their artificial intelligence systems in the gels to have fully artificial cognition with them.
Aelretzia: Look who’s being grandiose now. That all sounds great, but given the current issues with artificial intelligence is this really a safe way to go about things?
Reinart: Arguably it’s much more safe than the current systems we have. If the network is embedded in our gels we can simply detach them and nothing happens. If an AI is on a computer who knows what it could do. Admittedly I’m not an expert on AI, but I would find this to be lower risk than the digital alternative in my laymen’s opinions
Aelretzia: Well you have given us all a lot to think about. Thank you Dr. Saelzar for your time, I’m sure we will talk to you again, and thank you the viewer for listening in. For The thinking mind I’m Aelretzia and I will see you next week