iLip is a mathematician's dream come true. Don't ask me why I think that. Put the goods in a lip plate and let the brain receive the food for thought, is what MooPig is talking about.B says: "They live in one of the most isolated area in the world…
as i was watching a documentary about the mursi tribe, i was impressed at how the human body can adapt to its environment… The key is progression over time, ( aka evolution )…"The women in the tribe are able to insert up to 25 cm diameter long lip enlargement plates under their skin… its crazy and ugly, but they can do it… they start with a little one, and go on from there…
A Mursi woman from Southern Ethiopia. Over one shoulder, an AK47. An iPod pressed to one ear. Thrust deep into her lower lip, a large lip plate. Body modded, wired and armed woman of color!
MooPig keeps asking, "Lip plate; Brain wire; Lip plate or Brain wires...?" randomly over and over of himself.
The work of Dean Hamer, a geneticist at the National Cancer Institute, raises the prospect of genetically engineered mystics. Hamer claims to have found a gene associated with "self-transcendence" or "spirituality" in a group of 1,000 subjects who filled out surveys that probed their beliefs in God, ESP, and so on. Hamer calls this gene "the spiritual allele" or, even more dramatically, the "God gene"—which is also the title of the popular book in which he describes his research. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, has called Hamer's claim "wildly overstated."Spirit TechHow to wire your brain for religious ecstasy. By John Horgan
Posted Thursday, April 26, 2007
Mystical Brain Chips
In the 1950s, Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, while preparing epileptic patients for surgery, stimulated their exposed brains with electrodes. Some patients heard voices or music and saw apparitions when their temporal lobes were stimulated. Upon learning about Penfield's experiments, Aldous Huxley wrote: "Is there, one wonders, some area in the brain from which the probing electrode could elicit Blake's Cherubim?"
One still wonders. A Swiss team recently induced out-of-body experiences in an epileptic patient about to undergo surgery by stimulating her right angular gyrus, which underpins spatial awareness. Other groups have shown that implanted electrodes can trigger euphoria, and in fact they are now being tested as treatments for severe depression (as well as paralysis, tremors, and epilepsy). In principle, implants would provide the most precise, powerful means of inducing religious ecstasy. Indeed, self-described "Wireheads" look forward to the day when these devices will vanquish mental suffering and deliver ecstasy on demand. But for now, this technology—which requires inserting wires into the brain through holes drilled in the skull—remains too risky for all but the most desperate patients.
Interested in some followup? Go to the various links in this retrieve:Science editor Daniel Engber chatted with readers on washingtonpost.com about the special issue on the brain. John Horgan argued for the legalization of psychedelics and spelled out his problems with Buddhism. Steven Johnson reviewed several options consumers have to monitor their own brain activity, and David Dobbs analyzed the ethical effects of this "self-scanning" trend. Last year, Daniel Engber reviewed an imaging study of speaking in tongues, and in 2005, he listened to the Dalai Lama's lackluster speech to the Society for Neuroscience.
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