if you could cut a piece of human brain out and replace it with a computer chip?

Question

which responds to external stimuli in the exact same way and gives the same responces to the same pieces of brain. repeat this time after time until the entire brain is computerised. remember that each individual part act in exactly the same way as the original and it has been replaced bit by bit. is the resulting computer the same living person as the original biological brain, of is it just a simulation, and if it is just a simulation how could you distinguish this from the original?

Answer 1

Self-awareness and identity result from constant self-regulating waves of neural activity connecting neural nets with other neural nets and sweeping through broad interconnected areas of the brain. As someone has already pointed out the brain is constantly restructuring as a result of experience and both external and internal activity.

If you removed part of the brain, no matter how small, it could not be replaced by a chip with the identical properties because the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle precludes precise knowledge of form and function at the smallest level required. The computer chip being made could only represent the brain part as it was, not as it is at the point of replacement.

Eventually the mismatch would probably result not in a simulation of the original but effectively a different organism with no guarantee of integrated functionality. A Turing Test would prove the existence of the ability to communicate but not necessarily the depth of self-awareness or the identity of the 'self' under interrogation.

Answer 2

What you are asking is: what makes a mind / personality?

Is it just the neural structures or the information encoded therein?

Aside from technological problems, the answer depends on how you define 'self'. If you define self as that set of structures which originated, ultimately, from the original zygote ( first cell of you ), then - no, it must be a simulation. You could distinguish this from the original in one way only - it would not contain any cellular material.

If you define self as the learned information held within the brain, overlaid onto the instinctive responses, then yes it is the same.

However, I would venture to say that this suffers from the problem of philosophy - namely, it's all talk and no trousers. Build one and see...that's the only way...until then, it's mere speculation.

Answer 3

Nice theoretical question, with one flaw, the human brain changes physically as it learns, this is called neural pasticity. The moment you put the first chip in the rest of the brain would change and as the different neurons talk to one another they would change, this would happen again and agin until you have a computer.

Back in the real world however, we haven't even got a computer to come close to mastering even one of the many many things a two year old can do.

Answer 4

It is impossible to replace the human brain. It can work in ways no computer could plus it can reformulate thoughts and apply unassociated information to produce a solution to a problem. A computer can't do this.

Answer 5

When some 1 starts talking like Max Headroom.

Answer 6

well, assuming the hypothetical (and certainly impossible) basis:

the main difference would be that the new creature would have none of its memories from before the start of the switch, so the person involved would not think they were the same person

Answer 7

perhaps. but the technological know-how to accurately reproduce an entire human brain is light-years beyond our current capabilities.

so it's idle speculation at best.

Answer 8

You would get locked up.

You really do have to get out more and make some REAL friends.

Answer 9

if it's a woman's brain, no way to tell

Answer 10

THIS PROCEDURE WAS ATTEMPTED A FEW YEARS AGO AND FAILED IT WAS NEVER TRIED AGAIN BECAUSE OF THE TERRIBLE OUTCOME