Right is Might

You have forgotten your car keys and done hours of thinking; but to no avail. You give up in despair and start sipping your evening cup of coffee. Suddenly, out of nowhere you remember where you kept your keys. What you could not remember thinking, came so abruptly on its own. This is intuition and it is said that its the right brain (right half of the brain, obviously!) that is responsible for this. The famous scientist, Albert Einstein said “The only real valuable thing is intuition.”

When we copy a 'normal' picture, the 'logical' brain breaks down the picture into graphical pixels. These pixels are then plotted in their graphical co-ordinates. This is rather like mathematics. The picture on the left have been intentionally placed upside down. When you try to draw this picture, you just can not take anything for granted, because the orientation is just not right. The mathematical plotting can not be activated. Where reasoning ends, intuition begins. It is much easier to draw (copy a picture) a picture placed upside down, since our logic takes the back seat then; and the intuitive role of the right hemisphere ('intuitive brain') starts to play. We are no longer primed to 'assign' any coordinates preemptively. The right hemisphere of the brain is not only associated with intuition and drawing (art), but also emotion, music and other artistic abilities. The left brain is rather logical and deals with mathematics and other tasks that require calculations. When a subject is told to recall words, the activity in left frontal cortex increases (left parahippocampal area is also stimulated); while activities in the right frontal cortex (along with para hippocampal areas of both sides) are increased when a subject recalls sceneries or pictures. These activation patterns of the brain have been measured by fMRI scans (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging), PET scans (Positron Emission Tomography), ERP studies (event related potential or evoked potential) and other medical investigations.

Have you noticed that when we hold babies in our arms, we put them on our left? This left cradling is puzzling, because its the right arm that is stronger. So, why do mothers hold their babies on their left laps? It has been suggested that our expressions show better on the left side of the face and left cradling fosters stronger mother-baby relationship. This arises from the fact that the hemispheres of the brain is cross-wired. The (some of the) neural pathways from the brain cross to the opposite sides, as they enter the spinal cord, to supply peripheral circuits. The right brain (the one responsible for emotion etc) is wired to the left side of the body and the left brain is wired to the right. Thus the 'emotion generator' right brain, will have its manifestation on the left side of the face. Mothers possibly don't bother about all this, but evolutionary anthropology has left its indelible footprints on bipeds.

To become a creative genius, you need both intelligence (a faculty usually attributed to the left brain) and intuition (typically a right brain's domain). Albert Einstein, it is said, had strong intuitive powers, which helped him to formulate his famous theory of relativity, ahead of the contemporary knowledge. So, its time we wake up to this fact and start exercising our right brains as well.

Sleep to Dream and Dream to Discover

Imagine this. You are trying to solve a problem for the last few days. You are too tired to concentrate any more. You go to bed and sleep like a log, just as The Beatles sang. All of a sudden you find the "key" that leads to the solution you wanted, in a dream.

Things like that do happen in real life. Many a inventions in the past were directly or indirectly inspired by dreams. Elias Howe was toiling his brains out trying to figure out how he would make a needle stitch clothes, so that it could be operated by a machine. He was dog tired and went to bed. He had a good night's sleep that day only to be taken prisoner, in his dream, by fierce tribals wielding bizarre lances with holes at the tips. He immediately understood the dream's implication and the sewing machine was born.

Otto Loewi's discoveries about chemical neurotransmitter won him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The discovery appeared in a dream. He immediately jotted it down. But he couldn't decipher his own handwriting the next day. Loewi, disappointed, spent his 'longest day' in his life and went to sleep again. He got another dream. This time he went straight to his laboratory and performed the test according to the dream on a frog. This dream led to the discovery of neurotransmitters, chemicals through which neurons communicate. Acetylcholine was discovered and Loewi became known as the father of Neuroscience.

Kekule, the German chemist, was doubly fortunate for he was rewarded twice in dreams. Firstly, he got the structural formula and valencies of carbon atoms in a dream and secondly he propounded the ring structure of benzene ring, after having dreamed of a snake fidgeting with it's tail and putting it into it's mouth. His dream, while he was traveling in a London bus is well recorded. Serendipity in dreams doesn't end here, for there are many more examples. That is why Kekule once said, 'lets learn to dream'.

The whys and hows of dreams are not clearly understood but it is known that the brain does some housekeeping tasks (consolidation of semantic memories) while we are asleep. Also, it is the dreams in REM sleep that are vivid and remembered upon waking. It (REM or rapid eye movement) is a paradoxical sleep phase since, although the person is sleeping there is increased heart rate, brain activity and breathing. So, we need to sleep tight if we are to stay ahead in the race, and right now I feel I should do justice to myself by giving my fatigued brain it's due. Zzzzzzz....

Telepathy: The Nebulous Domain Of The Mystique

When we listen to the radio, see the TV or use a cellphone, do we ever give a damn why we need to resort to these gadgets to see or listen; when the informations, digital or analog is already there? Why do we need these tuners (devices) to 'hear or see' them? You may say, these gadgets help us tune and to decode the encrypted algorithm!

Some animals like dogs or birds can anticipate natural disasters like earthquakes beforehand. It is documented how the Jarwas of Andaman islands, India, sensed the tsunami (huge tidal waves of the sea due to undersea earthquakes), took shelter and saved themselves from extinction: they are already a dwindling tribe!

Analogy aside, we all have heard about ECG's , EEG's etc.. At different levels of brain activity (thinking, sleeping or dreaming) the brain does what is expected:-restarts after a dream (like defragmenting the acquired informations in scattered-chunks of memory and consolidating it in one contiguous and linked place: just as a computer does); hibernates in deep sleep and maintains just the minimum action such as breathing circulation; or opens new applications when in the awake state it hyperthreads:- relates to another program, which again relates to still another, as in a software process) as needed.

Since these are all electrical phenomena (electromagnetic, of ionic origin); they emanate electromagnetic emissions, which we so deftly capture in the form of EEG (EKG in the case of the heart) to our rapture. All electromagnetic radiations, as occurs in radio transmission, have to have some frequency. What we now need is a tuned circuit radio receiver, to get into the desired frequency, by resonance, for maximal transfer of energy.

Likewise, when a person thinks, due to the activity of the cerebral cortex, the frequency (EEG, for example) continuously varies as he emits the Electro-Magnetic waves. This can be intercepted by someone who happens to have the same frequency (smells like entanglement of quantum mechanics; though any quantum phenomenon at this distance is highly unlikely due to environmentally induced decoherence). But the prospect of a resonant energy transfer is much increased if the person is a yogi due to a streamlined and coherent thought process, so that the electro-magnetic emission could be like a pure sine wave.

Mono-zygotic (having a similar genetic make-up) twins raised in a common environment; women/mothers:- as in them the right hemisphere of the brain, responsible for arts and intuition, is more active (sixth sense) and logic is less active (in general); in lower primates (more intuition, less logic-->due to less well developed neocortex); tribals (more intuition, less logic); drugs like cannabis, mescaline (which depress the left brain more than the right) are some individuals who are more prone to pick up telepathic waves, albeit theoretically. It is presumed that persons with more intuitive (and having empathy) abilities will be able to receive or transmit these faint signal waves better. A logical person may try to 'overide' subconsciously any 'noise' that might affect his cortex.

Aldous Huxley, who wrote his famous book:'The Doors of perception' : about his experience on mescaline and Indian yogis who used these intoxicants for religious occasions (they probably did not fear the FBI), are some examples in point. Prospective study and retrospective study needs to be undertaken to validate these, as we can NOT rely on anecdotal evidences.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Get ready for a thought reader or a foolproof lie detector in about a decade. PET scan, SPECT scan, magneto-encephalogram, human genome mapping, cloning, measurement of ions across biological membranes, are among the few we have in our armory now, to address the issue.
Disclaimer: The above represents my views, however unscientific they may seem.

Update on the power of thought: 1. Scientists have used electrocorticographic signals (electrocorticography is like EEG, only difference is that the electrodes are placed on the cortex rather than on the scalp) to manipulate accurately computer cursors accurately placed at a distance.

Ref: A brain–computer interface using electrocorticographic signals in humans. Eric C Leuthardt et al 2004 J. Neural Eng. cite_volume">1 63-71 doi: 10.1088/1741-2560/1/2/001 A female monkey in North Caolina,US, controlled a robot in Japan using only her brain activity.

Ref: Monkey’s Thoughts Propel Robot, a Step That May Help Humans