What We Have Accomplished in Six Million Years

So far we have determined that humans started to walk upright about six million years ago. It took us another 3.4 million years to invent stone tools. Some human pyro discovered fire about 1.9 million years ago. We haven’t discovered many of our other unique accomplishments since then until we domesticated unruly cats in 7,500 B.C. The Chinese added to our brain buzz by making wine in 7,000 B.C. The Egyptians invented papyrus in 3,000 B.C. We started to clean our armpits with soap in 2,200 B.C. Our first theatrical performance was in Greece in 534 B.C.

Finally we reached our absolute zenith when toilet paper was developed in 851 A.D. By that time the Roman Empire was wiped out. Humans were finally at near warp speed. Civilizations died from too much wine and too little common sense. The last great one, the British Empire, was so big in the 1930’s the sun never set on all of it. It was three times the size of the Roman Empire, ruled 475 million humans, and was ninety-one times the size of England at 11 million square miles--on one quarter of the earth’s surface. Now, in just half a century later, the sun sets on England about every 12 hours.

A recent medical and criminal case in Bangkok, Thailand, illustrates how we are using most of our cylinders to reach warp speed. A doctor used a very modern scientific invention called a colonoscope to remove a six-carat diamond ruining a woman’s digestive system. The operation was employed because laxatives and Mother Nature refused to budge the diamond from recesses in her large intestine.

The woman had stolen the gem worth $278,000 from a jewelry fair and had swallowed it to smuggle it out of the country. But, alas, a security camera at the fair caught her making a swift exchange with a fake stone when she had asked to inspect the real one. She denied making the switch until an x-ray showed the diamond resting uncomfortably in an intestine fold.

The ability to see objects inside human bodies is a relatively new invention. In the old days we just got the knives out. In this case cutting was not necessary. After locating the GPS of the diamond with the scope, a special pair of pliers was used to remove the gem.

This criminal case was not a big deal in hiding diamonds. In 2012 a South African man swallowed 220 polished diamonds worth $2.3 million and went to the airport to smuggle them out of the country. But another great invention, the whole body scanner, nailed the culprit before he could board the plane. We have improved since taking 4.1 million years to use fire for our benefit.

We Are Finally Getting Serious About Finding Out How Our Brains Actually Work

We finally have invented enough scientific equipment to make an attempt to figure out how our brain’s neurons use electricity and chemicals to make connections. The connections are called synapses and make up what neuroscientists call the connectome.

They estimate we have more connections in a cubic centimeter of our brain than there are stars in the Milky Way. OK, so no one has actually counted them yet.

Scientists are working on two different methods they can use to trace how connections are made. The two methods are washing the brain in a heavy metal or freezing the brain tissue, too complicated to explain in less than a thousand words. The only way to see connections taking place now is to scan the brain cut in very thin sheets with an electron microscope and then scan them back together using a computer. Researchers are “carving” a single cubic millimeter of brain into 30,000 slices to study, but the human brain contains over a million of those cubic millimeters!

This system does work, but it would take researchers over five years to make all the connections in a mouse’s tiny brain. The researchers need some inventions to do it faster. They need a super-thin-slicing device, many electron microscopes, $3 billion, and maybe 25 years to scan an entire human brain. Let’s work on it!

In 1986 a roundworm named C. elegans with only 302 neurons had its connections completely mapped by scientists who won the Nobel Prize for science. We haven’t been able to create an artificial roundworm brain yet even if it has only 302 neurons.

The human brain has over 100 billion neurons so we need some human brains to develop some sensational equipment so that we can study the human brain. It’s a spectacular challenge. The Obama administration has supplied the National Institutes of Health with $4.5 billion with instructions to “deliver a comprehensive, mechanistic understanding of mental function” by 2025.

That is a real tall order. As former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said about human knowledge and thought: “There are known knowns—there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” Isn’t that clear? Remember, it took 3,851 years for us to advance from papyrus to toilet paper.

How We Are Hooking Up the Brain to Cure Some of Our Imperfections

We need to keep thinking like Michelangelo when he was sculpting the statue David: “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows. I’m just taking away what doesn’t belong there.”

Devon Staples of Calais, Maine was in a drunken stupor on July 4th this year when he placed a big fireworks mortar tube on his head and lit the fuse, blowing off the top of his head. Perhaps he forgot the physics lesson about opposite reactions of forces. Or maybe he never took the course.

I’m sure Professor Erno Rubik, the inventor of the Rubik’s Cube, would not have lit the fuse. He worked on creating the Cube for many weeks after observing water flowing around pebbles in a river. Don’t ask about the mental connection. I don’t know either.

The brain is a magnificent organ. Professor Rubik discovered there were 43 quintillion permutations (possibilities) in solving the puzzle of the Cube. I have never tried to solve the puzzle. I don’t have the patience—or perhaps the right brain connections. He has sold 350 million of them, becoming the best-selling toymaker of all time. The world record for solving the puzzle is now 5.25 seconds. Naturally, teenagers hold all the records.

The world-wide human primeval urge to kill each other to solve property rights, financial problems, and relationships ironically gives us reasons for devising methods of hooking up our brain to inanimate materials so artificial body parts can take direct commands through nerves connected to the brain.

The Applied Physics Laboratory at John Hopkins University has a big contract with the military’s DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to work on advanced replacement limbs caused by IEDs in our two latest wars. They have developed a prosthetic hand that can transmit “feelings” from metal fingers to the brain.

The man testing the robotic hand had been paralyzed for a decade before electrodes were implanted into his sensory and motor cortexes. The connections allowed him to control the hand with thought and sense when the fingers of the hand were touched individually.

The program manager said: “Prosthetic limbs that can be controlled by thoughts are showing great promise…By wiring a sense of touch from a mechanical hand directly into the brain, this work shows the potential for seamless biotechnological restoration of near-natural function. We’ve completed the circuit.”

What can we wire up next? I see a 13-year-old Minnesota girl who lost part of an arm in an ATV accident is experimenting with a similar bionic arm developed by the Mayo Clinic. She has had six nerves “rewired” so she can control the robotic elbow, rotate the wrist, and open and close the hand. The hand power ranges from a 22-pound grip to holding a paper cup without crushing it. But it is still quite difficult to control. She has mastered closing a zipper, mixing muffin batter, and texting friends!

We also have other companies working on sex robots. Well, we knew it had to happen!

Every Human Needs Humor—And a Break From Serious Work

Every year Nobel Prizes worth over a cool $1 million are awarded to humans “who have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.” This is very serious stuff. In 2014 awards were made in economics, peace, literature, chemistry, physics, and physiology/medicine.

I’m sure the researchers who are slicing and dicing the brain and discovering what the 100 billion neurons actually do will someday win Nobel Prizes. But humans have discovered we need breaks and humor to save us from constant hard labor. This is why the silly IgNobel Prizes are also awarded each year at an absolutely bizarre conference. I had a chance to watch the IgNobel presentations this year.

1. Chemistry-A group invented a chemical recipe to partially un-boil an egg.
2. Physics-A group conducted research and determined that nearly all mammals including man empty their bladders in about 21 seconds—regardless of body size.
3. Literature-Awarded for discovering “huh?” (or its equivalent) exists in all languages.
4. Management-A group discovered that many business leaders when children developed a fondness for risk-taking when they had personally experienced natural disasters that hurt other people.
5. Economics-The Bangkok Metropolitan Police won the award for offering to pay policemen extra cash if the policemen refused bribes.
6. Medicine-Two groups tied for this award for experimenting to see what biomedical benefits accrued from intense kissing.
7. Mathematics-Two math teachers discovered the techniques used to determine how Moulay Ismael the Bloodthirsty of Morocco fathered 888 children between 1697 and 1727.
8. Biology-A group discovered than when you attach a stick to the rear end of a chicken, the chicken then walks in a manner similar to that in which dinosaurs are thought to have walked.
9. Diagnostic Medicine-A group discovered that acute appendicitis can be accurately diagnosed by the amount of pain evident when the patient is driven over speed bumps.
10. Physiology and Entomology-Awarded to two experts who created a Sting Pain Index, which rates the relative pain people feel when stung by various insects on 25 different body locations. The most painful were on the nostril, upper lip, and penis.

Back to Serious Brain Work

Humans have made gravity-defying leaps in technology in six million years. It took us 3.4 million years to develop the stone axe. It took us only 66 years from the first Wright brother’s flight of 852 feet in 1903 to the first landing of the moon of Apollo11 in 1969 that covered about 250,000 miles—one way.

What will happen when we can actually chart the complex electrical and chemical workings of the brain is incalculable. It’s a very tough assignment.

Look at the math ability of Jedediah Buxton of 18th Century England. He had no formal education and was incapable of writing his name. But he answered this math question: “In a body whose three sides are 23,145,789 yards, 5,642,732 and 54,965 yards, how many 1/8 inches exist?” He gave the 28-digit answer—backwards and forward—eight hours later. Asked how many times a coach wheel six yards in circumference would revolve when traveling 204 miles from York to London, he gave the right answer---59,840 times. That exercise took him 13 minutes. When asked how many barleycorns would be needed to reach eight miles, he correctly answered 1,520,640. When we can chart those calculations we will really make some progress.