Tyson Aflalo, Spencer Kellis et al have continued their studies to apply motor imagery in tetraplegic patients to brain-machine interface technology. These are admirable studies designed to enable paralyzed patients to move all or parts of neuroprosthetic extremities. This particular article is published in Science, 2015 May 22; 348 (6237): 906-910.
The investigators recorded neural population activity with arrays of microelectrodes implanted in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) of a tetraplegic subject, paralyzed at C3-4 ten years earlier with all limbs involved. It was found that “the subject could control the activity of single cells through imagining particular actions. . . . In many cases, the subject could exert volitional control of single neurons by imagining simple movements of the upper arm, elbow, wrist and hand.” The subject’s “neurons coded both the goal and imagined trajectory of movements. . . . [theirs was] the first known instance of decoding high-level motor intentions from human neuronal populations.”
No reference was made by the investigators to a nonmaterial cognitive mind. It was recognized that neural networks that transmitted motor imagery were encoded, and the authors stated that “One unexplored possibility is that the PPC also encodes nonmotor intentions such as the desire to turn on the television, or preheat the oven.” The spontaneous intent to perform such actions as these two cannot reflect neural networks encoded in advance of will, of intent. This point has been made in previous blogs and in my books. I submit that an accounting of such an “unexplored possibility” has to be by an immaterial cognitive mind, the action of which instantiates codes within neural networks through experience archived in memory.