The Bandwidth of Memorization Defies Brain Memory Dogmas

The main theory of a brain storage of memories is that people acquire new memories through a strengthening of synapses. There are many reasons for doubting this claim. One is that information is generally stored through a writing process, not a strengthening process. It seems that there has never been a verified case of any information being stored through a process of strengthening.

If it were true that memories were stored by a strengthening of synapses, this would be a slow process. The only way in which a synapse can be strengthened is if proteins are added to it. We know that the synthesis of new proteins is a rather slow effect, requiring minutes of time. In addition, there would have to be some very complicated encoding going on if a memory was to be stored in synapses. The reality of newly-learned knowledge and new experience would somehow have to be encoded or translated into some brain state that would store this information. When we add up the time needed for this protein synthesis and the time needed for this encoding, we find that the theory of memory storage in brain synapses predicts that the acquisition of new memories should be a very slow affair, which can occur at only a tiny bandwidth, a speed which is like a mere trickle. But experiments show that we can actually acquire new memories at a speed more than 1000 times greater than such a tiny trickle.

One such experiment is the experiment described in the scientific paper “Visual long-term memory has a massive storage capacity for object details.” The experimenters showed some subjects 2500 images over the course of five and a half hours, and the subjects viewed each image for only three seconds. Then the subjects were tested in the following way described by the paper:

Afterward, they were shown pairs of images and indicated which of the two they had seen. The previously viewed item could be paired with either an object from a novel category, an object of the same basic-level category, or the same object in a different state or pose. Performance in each of these conditions was remarkably high  (92%, 88%, and 87%, respectively), suggesting that participants successfully maintained detailed representations of thousands of images.

In this experiment, pairs like those shown below were used. A subject might be presented for 3 seconds with one of the two images in the pair, and then hours later be shown both images in the pair, and be asked which of the two was the one he saw.

Although the authors probably did not intend for their experiment to be any such thing, their experiment is a great experiment to disprove the prevailing dogma about memory storage in the brain. Let us imagine that memories were being stored in the brain by a process of synapse strengthening. Each time a memory was stored, it would involve the synthesis of new proteins (requiring minutes), and also the additional time (presumably requiring additional minutes) for an encoding effect in which knowledge or experienced was translated into neural states. If the brain stored memories in such a way, it could not possibly keep up with remembering images that appeared for only three seconds each in a long series. It would be a state of affairs like that depicted in what many regard as the funniest scene that appeared in the “I Love Lucy” TV series, the scene in which Lucy and her friend Ethel were working on a confection assembly line. In that scene Lucy and Ethel were supposed to wrap chocolates that were moving along a conveyor belt. But while the chocolates moved slowly at first, the conveyor belt kept speeding up faster and faster, totally exceeding Lucy and Ethel's ability to wrap the chocolates (with ensuing hilarious results).

The experiment described above in effect creates a kind of fast moving conveyor belt in which images fly by at a speed so fast that it should totally defeat a person's ability to memorize accurately – if our memories were actually being created through the slow process imagined by scientists, in which each memory requires a protein synthesis requiring minutes, and an additional time (probably additional minutes) needed for encoding. But nonetheless the subjects did extraordinarily well in this test.

There is only one conclusion we can draw from such an experiment. It is that the bandwidth of human memory acquisition is vastly greatly than anything that can be accounted for by neural theories of memory storage. We do not remember at the speed of synapse strengthening, which is a snail's speed similar to the speed of arm muscle strengthening. We instead are able to form new memories in a manner that is basically instantaneous. The authors of the scientific paper state that their results “pose a challenge to neural models of memory storage and retrieval.” That is an understatement, for we could say that their results are shockingly inconsistent with prevailing dogmas about how memories are stored.

There are some people who are able to acquire new memories at an astonishing rate. The autistic savant Kim Peek was able to recall everything he had read in the more than 7000 books he had read. Here we had a case in which memorization occurred at the speed of reading. Stephen Wiltshire is an autistic savant who has produced incredibly detailed and accurate artistic works depicting cities that he has seen only from a brief helicopter ride or boat ride. Of Wiltshire, savant expert Darold Treffert says, "His extraordinary memory is illustrated in a documentary film clip, when, after a 12-minute helicopter ride over London, he completes, in 3 hours, an impeccably accurate sketch that encompasses 4 square miles, 12 major landmarks and 200 other buildings all drawn to scale and perspective." Again, we have a case in which memories seem to be formed at an incredibly fast rate. Savant Daniel Tammet (who one time publicly recited accurately the value of pi to 22,514 digits) was able to learn the Icelandic language in only 7 days. Derek Paravicini is a blind and brain-damaged autistic savant who has the incredible ability to replay any piece of music he has heard for the first time. In 2007 the Guardian reported the following:

Derek is 27, blind, has severe learning difficulties, cannot dress or feed himself - but play him a song once, and he will not only memorize it instantly, but be able to reproduce it exactly on the piano. One part of his brain is wrecked; another has a capacity most of us can only dream of.

Other savants such as Leslie Lemke and Ellen Boudreaux have the same extraordinary ability to replay perfectly a song heard for the first time. 

Cases such as these are inconsistent with prevailing theories of memory. Are we to believe that such people (typically with substantial brain damage) can somehow synthesize proteins in their brains ten times or thirty times faster than the average human, so that their synapses can get bulked up ten times or thirty times faster? That's hardly credible. But if memories are not actually stored in brains, but stored in or added to a human psychic or spiritual facility, something like a soul, then there would be no reason why the brain-damaged might not have astonishing powers of memorization.

Some people can form memories 1000 times faster than should be possible under prevailing theories of brain memory storage, which involve postulating protein synthesis and encoding operations that should take minutes. This thousand-fold shortfall in only one of three thousand-fold shortfalls of the prevailing theory of brain memory storage. The two other shortfalls are: (1) humans can remember things for 50 years or more, which is 1000 times longer than the synaptic theory of memory storage can account for (synapses having average protein lifetimes of only a few weeks); (2) humans can recall things 1000 times faster than should be possible if you stored something in some exact location of the brain. If you stored a memory in your brain (an organ with no numbering system or coordinate system), it would be like throwing a needle onto a mountain-sized heap of needles, in the sense that finding that exact needle at some later point should take a very long time.

The imaginary conversation below illustrates some of the many ways in which prevailing dogma about brain memory storage fails. It's the kind of conversation that might occur if memories were formed according to the "brain storage of memory" dogmas that currently prevail among neuroscientists. 

Costello: Alright, guy, I'm now going to teach you an important geographical fact: which city is the capital city of Spain.

Abbott: Go ahead, I'm all ears.

Costello: Okay, here it is. The capital city of Spain is Madrid.

Abbott: Okay, I'll try to remember that.

Costello: So what is the capital city of Spain?

Abbott: I haven't formed the memory of that yet. It takes time. I'm still synthesizing the proteins I need to strength my synapses, so I can remember that.

Costello: So try hard. Remember, Madrid is the capital city of Spain.

Abbott: I'm working on forming the memory.

Costello: So do you remember by now what the capital city of Spain is?

Abbott: Don't ask me too soon. It takes minutes to synthesize those proteins.

After five additional minutes like this, the conversation continues.

Costello: Okay, so it's been five minutes since I first told you what the capital city of Spain is. You should have had enough time to have formed your memory of this fact.

Abbott: I'm sure by now I have formed that memory, because there has been enough time for protein synthesis in my synapses.

Costello: So what is the capital city of Spain?

Abbott: I can't recall.

Costello: But you formed the memory by now. Why can't you recall it?

Abbott: The problem is that I don't know exactly where in my brain the memory was stored. So I can't just instantly recall the memory. The memory is like a tiny needle in a haystack. There's no way I can find that quickly.

Costello: Can't you just search through all the memories in your brain, looking for this one?

Abbott: I could try, but it would take hours or days to search through all those memories.

Costello: Sheesh, this is driving me crazy. How about this? I can teach you that Madrid is the capital city of Spain, and when you form the memory, you can tell me the exact tiny spot where your memory was formed. So maybe you'll tell me, “Okay I stored that memory at brain neuron number 273,835,235.” Then I'll just say to you something like, “Please look in your brain at neuron number 273,835,235, and retrieve the memory you stored of what is the capital city of Spain.”

Abbott: That's a brilliant idea!

Costello: Thanks.

Abbott: On second thought, it will never work.

Costello: Why not?

Abbott: Neurons aren't numbered, and the brain has no coordinate system. It's like some vast city in which none of the streets are named, and none of the houses have house numbers. So if I put a memory in one little “house” in the huge brain city, I'll never be able to tell you the exact address of that house.

Costello: So how the hell am I supposed to teach you anything?

Abbott: Beats me. And if I ever learn anything new, I'm sure I won't remember it for more than a few weeks. That's because there's a big problem with those proteins that I will synthesize to store those new memories. They have average lifetimes of only a few weeks.

As long as they cling to “brain storage of memory” dogmas, our neuroscientists will never be able to overcome difficulties such as those mentioned in this conversation.

Brain Dogmas Versus the “Total Recall” People

In the Guardian this year, there was a long and very fascinating article entitled “Total Recall: The People Who Never Forget.” The article discusses very rare cases of people with what what is called hyperthymesia or Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, a topic that the 60 Minutes TV program had covered in 2010.

Less than 100 such people have been identified. They have the uncanny ability to remember in great detail every single day of past years of their lives, sometimes stretching back for decades.

The article discusses Jill Price, and says this about her:

Price was the first person ever to be diagnosed with what is now known as highly superior autobiographical memory, or HSAM, a condition she shares with around 60 other known people. She can remember most of the days of her life as clearly as the rest of us remember the recent past, with a mixture of broad strokes and sharp detail. Now 51, Price remembers the day of the week for every date since 1980; she remembers what she was doing, who she was with, where she was on each of these days. She can actively recall a memory of 20 years ago as easily as a memory of two days ago, but her memories are also triggered involuntarily.

A memory researcher named James McGaugh has verified the accuracy of Price's recollections. One way to do this is simply to ask her questions about what happened on a particular day that something notable happened. For example, if asked on what day Rodney King was beaten, or what day Bing Crosby died, she can quickly recall the exact date. Of if asked the significance of some particular date, she can tell you some famous person died on that day. McGaugh also verified the accuracy of Price's recollections by checking her diary. He and his colleagues wrote up the case in a scientific paper.

Another scientific paper (which can be read in full here) describes the case of HK, which the 2012 paper describes as a 20-year old person with “near-perfect” autobiographic memory. HK is described as blind and having been born at 27 weeks early, 13 weeks early. The paper states:

As can be seen in Figure 1,for dates between this first memory until his 10th year of life, HK shows a relatively steady increase in accuracy for autobiographical events. Accuracy takes a noticeable jump to near 90% in 2001 at age 11. From that point forward, HK’s recollection of autobiographical events is near perfect.

The paper also gives us insight as to what it is like to have such a memory:

He reports that he is able to relive memories in his mind as if they just happened. HK stated that everything about his memory, including sounds, smells, and emotions, are vividly re-experienced when he remembers a particular event in time...,He stated that there is no difference in the vividness of his recollection between events that occurred when he was five and events that he experienced within the past month.

The scientists did an MRI scan of the brain of this person with this near-flawless autobiographic memory. Did it show something like an abnormally big brain? No, something like the opposite was found. For the paper tells us that the volumetric analysis “reveals significantly reduced total tissue volume in HK” and that “a volumetric analysis of subcortical structures shows general reduction in subcortical volumes in HK (1019 mL) relative to controls (1249 ± 29 mL).” So the person with this miracle memory had a brain about 20% smaller. The only part of his brain that was larger was his amygdala, an almond-shaped part of the brain. HK's was 20% bigger, but that's only a flea-sized difference.

Cases such as Price and HK apparently date back to the nineteenth century, for an 1871 article describes a man named Daniel McCartney who, according to the Guardian article, “could remember the day of the week, the weather, what he was doing, and where he was for any date back to 1 January 1827, when he was nine years and four months old.” 

Something different from these cases of Highly Superior Autobiographic Memory or hyperthymesia are the cases of extraordinary memory in savants. Savants are individuals who have some mental disability but also have some extraordinary mental talents. An example of a savant is the late Kim Peek, who could accurately recall the details of 12,000 books he had read, despite having an IQ of only 87. Other examples are Tony DeBlois, who can play 8000 songs from memory, and Derek Paravicini who can play a piece after hearing it only once, despite having a severe learning disability. 

So far researchers have failed to draw any noteworthy conclusions from these cases of extraordinary memory. But such cases may suggest that standard ideas about memory are wrong. The standard story is that memories are all stored in your brain. There are several reasons for rejecting this idea, such as the seeming impossibility of explaining how instantaneous recall of distant memories could occur (discussed here), and the reason (discussed here) that there is no workable theory of how brains could be storing memories for 50 years. The most popular theory is that memories are stored in synapses. But synapses are subject to a high rate of protein turnover and structural turnover which should make it impossible for synapses to be storing memories for longer than a year or two. The proteins in synapses are replaced within a few weeks. A recent scientific paper mentions an estimate that the rate of protein turnover in synapses is about 0.7% per hour, which is a rate of about 16% per day. 

Under the assumption that memories are stored in brains, we would not by any means expect some people to remember their past experiences 800% better than an ordinary person can. Such a thing would seem to require a brain 800% bigger than the biggest brain that can fit into a human skull. And also under the assumption that memories are all stored in brains, we should not expect people with smaller brains or damaged brains (such as patient HK and Kim Peek) to have dramatically better memories.

But let's imagine a different scenario. Imagine if people's memories are not stored in brains, but are stored in some psychic or spiritual reality associated with a person. Your memories may be stored in something like your soul, not your brain. Under such a scenario, you might have complete memories for everything that happened to you. But your brain might act as a kind of valve, limiting your access to these memories. For some rare people, this normal blockage or limitation of access to biographical memory may not be occurring. Such people may have Highly Superior Autobiographic Memory.

Cases of Highly Superior Autobiographic Memory are easy to reconcile with such a theory. We simply imagine that in such people the brain's function as a kind of “blockage valve” for our memories is not working normally, so the blockage does not occur as it normally does. But cases of Highly Superior Autobiographic Memory are hard to reconcile with standard claims that the brain is where all your memories are stored. Under such claims, it is unthinkable that anyone should have memories such as Jill Price's, which would seem to require a brain the size of an elephant's.

Postscript: Another interesting mind anomaly is the rare anomaly of acquired savants.  A person may acquire extraordinary mental abilities after some accident.  One such case is Orlando Serrell, who acquired extraordinary calculation and memory skills after being hit by a baseball when he was 10, in 1979.  According to his web site, "He can recall the weather, where he was, and what he was doing for every day since the accident."  Again, we have something that does not fit in with conventional dogmas about the brain, but which is compatible with very different ideas about memory.  If your brain acts as a kind of faucet or valve for your memories, rather than a storehouse of such memories, it might be that a head injury might reset that valve so that memory is dramatically enhanced.

Two Reports of Autistic Mind Readers

Sometimes when nature takes away something, it seems to give something back in return. One such case seems to be the case of savants – people who have unusual mental abilities despite having other mental shortcomings. An example of a savant is Daniel Tammet, who has been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. He holds the European record for reciting Pi from memory, to 22,514 digits. Supposedly he learned the Icelandic language in only ten days. Another example of a savant is the late Kim Peek, who supposedly could accurately recall the details of 12,000 books he had read, despite having an IQ of only 87. Like several savants, he had the ability to instantly calculate the day of the week on which any person he met was born. You can find other similar cases on the web site of Darold Treffert, a doctor who has been studying such cases for many years.

In one article on the Scientific American blog, Treffert records the astonishing case of Leslie Lemke:

Leslie–blind, cognitively impaired and with such spasticity in his hands that he could not hold a fork or spoon to eat—had become a accomplished pianist, never having had a piano lesson in his life. Somehow the hand spasticity magically disappears when he sits at the keyboard. The 1983 60 Minutes program, which many still remember, recounted in detail the astonishment of Leslie’s mother, May Lemke, one evening, when Leslie, age 14, played back Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 flawlessly, having heard it earlier for the first time that evening as the soundtrack to the movie Sincerely Yours.

This was apparently no fluke. As Treffert tells us about Leslie in another story, “He can remember a piece of any length and play it back flawlessly after a single hearing... Leslie will still play back and sing any song that an audience member might provide as a challenge and it is almost impossible to 'stump Leslie' however hard people try.”

Dr. Treffert has expressed interest in a recent case that might be the most spectacular case of a savant ever: the case of a young autistic Indian girl named Nandana who can supposedly read her mother's mind with a high degree of accuracy. The case was reported in this news feature.

Newspaper reporters visiting Nandana said, “We were left amazed and totally impressed when Nandana passed our tests with flying colors.” They tried a test in which the mother was given a piece of paper with the digits 044050799. The child then typed those digits exactly, which she apparently had not seen. In a second test the mother was given a note saying, “Can I have some warm water, please?” The child reproduced the text, with some spelling errors. The mother was then brought to a different room, and asked to think about an object. She thought of a biscuit. The child was brought back in from the other room, and specified biscuit as the object her mother was thinking of.

Recently there has appeared another case of an alleged autistic mind reader. This case seems to have been investigated under controlled scientific conditions. The reported results are as spectacular as the previously reported tests with Nandana.

The results were presented at the recent annual convention of the Parapsychological Association, in a paper entitled “Evidence for Telepathic Communication in a Nonverbal Autistic Child” written by Diane Hennacy Powell, MD. You can read the abstract here by scrolling down to page 25. Powell did experiments with an autistic girl named Hayley who can supposedly engage in telepathy with her therapists. The results reported below by Powell seem to be some of the most spectacular results ever reported in an ESP experiment:

Data from the first session with Therapist A includes 100% accuracy on three out of twenty image descriptions containing up to nine letters each, 60 to 100% accuracy on all three of the five-letter nonsense words, and 100% accuracy on two random numbers: one eight digits and the other nine. Data from the second session with Therapist A includes 100% accuracy on six out of twelve equations with 15 to 19 digits each, 100% accuracy on seven out of 20 image descriptions containing up to six letters, and between 81 to 100% accuracy on sentences of between 18 and 35 letters. Data from the session with Therapist B showed 100% accuracy with five out of twenty random numbers up to six digits in length, and 100% accuracy with five out of twelve image descriptions containing up to six letters. There was no evidence of cueing or fraud.

Powell presenting her research (credit: Parapsychological Association)

Skeptics might object that some subtle signals (either auditory or visual) may have been going on between the therapists and the child. But these results were produced under videotaped conditions, as Powell reports:

To assess for any possible visual and/or auditory cueing, five high
definition point-of-view (POV) cameras and three microphones were
strategically placed in the experimental space to capture coverage
of the entire room, the therapist and child, and their separate workspaces.
All cameras were synchronized and time-stamped.

This sounds like potentially bulletproof evidence for mind-reading. But there's only one problem: the tapes haven't been released. One Facebook user says that he was invited to watch the tapes, and that they are five hours of very convincing evidence. But until these tapes are released, not many doubters will be persuaded. I will update this blog post if the tapes are ever released. 

Postscript: Powell gives some more details here. She claims she hasn't posted the video to YouTube because the family wants to remain anonymous.  

9 Strange Mental Phenomena That May Support an Alternate Theory of Consciousness

In a previous post I advanced what I called a receptacle hypothesis of consciousness, the idea that our minds may come from some unknown external source, rather than being purely the product of our brains. I did not claim that such a hypothesis is a likelihood, but I suggested it as an interesting alternate hypothesis. I suggested only one thing that might be evidence tending to support such a hypothesis: the phenomenon of near-death experiences. But there may be other mental phenomena that lend support to this hypothesis or similar alternate ideas about human consciousness. Let's take a look at such phenomena. 

 

I'll start by mentioning two or three phenomena that are only weakly supportive of the receptacle hypothesis of mind, and then move up to some phenomena that may support this hypothesis more strongly.

Savants

Savants (once called “idiot savants,” although that seems an inappropriate term) are individuals who have some mental disability but also have some extraordinary mental talents. Many people are familiar with savants from the film Rain Man starring Dustin Hoffman, based on an actual savant. An example of a savant is Daniel Tammet, who has been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. He holds the European record for reciting Pi from memory, to 22,514 digits. Supposedly he learned the Icelandic language in only ten days.

Another example of a savant is the late Kim Peek, who supposedly could accurately recall the details of 12,000 books he had read, despite having an IQ of only 87. Like several savants, he had the ability to instantly calculate the day of the week on which any person he met was born.

Hyperthymesia

Hyperthymesia is the rare ability of a person to remember almost everything that has ever happened to him.  25 cases have been documented in peer-reviewed journals. Hyperthymesia was the focus of a 60 Minutes segment that interviewed a group of people with this ability, including actress Marilu Henner. Henner says she can remember almost every day of her life since she was about 11 years old. In June 2012 a journal reported the case of a man identified merely as HK. The man could clearly recall every day of his life since he was about 11. The man underwent a brain scan, which showed that his brain was smaller than average.

Another person with hyperthymesia is Jill Price, who can recall details from every day in her life since she was 14. Her brain was scanned, and found to be normal. 

These cases of hyperthymesia and savants may be hard to fit in with the hypothesis that the human mind is entirely produced by the brain, as do other examples of extraordinary mental abilities.  

Brain Surgery Anomaly

Michael S. Gazzaniga is the director of the SAGE Center of the Study of Mind at the University of California. In his book Who's In Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain, he says this about a particular type of split-brain surgery:

In this procedure, the large tract of nerves that connects the two hemispheres, the corpus callosum, is severed to prevent the spread of electrical impulses. Their isolated left brain, however, which receives no input from the right hemisphere (in essence losing half its size) remains just as intelligent as a whole brain. If brain quantity is so important, you would think there would be an effect on problem solving and hypothesizing when half the brain is lost, but there is not.

This may be hard to explain under the idea that the mind is entirely the product of the brain, but it is no difficulty under the hypothesis that the brain is a mere receptacle for consciousness.

ESP
 
ESP or extrasensory perception is the alleged ability of some people to obtain Information in some paranormal way outside of the senses. Recently we saw headlines such as “ESP Debunked in New Psychology Study.” But the study in question did not at all do that – the study didn't even mention ESP, nor did it mention a sixth sense.

The most compelling evidence for ESP comes from what are called ganzfeld experiments. A ganzfeld experiment is one in which a test for extra-sensory perception is combined with sensory deprivation achieved through methods such as cutting a ping-pong ball in half and taping it over someone's eyes, and having someone wear an earphone transmitting white noise. In these ESP experiments, the expected chance hit rate (matching of a user's selection and a random target) is 25%. But as wikipedia reports here, “In 2010, Lance Storm, Patrizio Tressoldi, and Lorenzo Di Risio analyzed 29 ganzfeld studies from 1997 to 2008. Of the 1,498 trials, 483 produced hits, corresponding to a hit rate of 32.2%.” That success rate of 32.2% is hugely above the expected by-chance success rate of 25%. The review article can be found here. The probability of such a hit rate occurring by chance is incredibly low. The Law of Large Numbers dictates that whenever you do a huge number of trials, there is only a very low chance of exceeding the result expected by chance.

If ESP exists, it is very hard to fit in with the idea that our consciousness is entirely produced by our brains.

The Placebo Effect

A placebo is typically a sugar pill that a doctor gives to a patient, merely in the hopes that the patient's belief that he is getting an effective treatment will actually do some good. The placebo effect is the astonishing degree to which placebos are actually effective in reducing symptoms. This study indicates that half of a drug's effectiveness may be due to the placebo effect. This study indicates that when patients are given a placebo pill labeled as a drug, it does just as well in alleviating migraine headaches as when patients are given an actual drug labeled as a placebo. The placebo seems to work not just for problems involving the brain, but also other parts of the body. Wikipedia says, “A meta-study of 31 placebo-controlled trials of the gastric acid secretion inhibitor drug cimetidine in the treatment of gastric or duodenal ulcers found that placebo treatments, in many cases, were as effective as active drugs.” 

The placebo effect is very difficult to account for under the theory that your mind is entirely produced by your brain. But imagine if your whole body is a receptacle for your consciousness, which somehow arose from some unknown distant source. In that case something like the placebo effect would not be so surprising.

The Global Consciousness Project

The Global Consciousness Project is a long-running study to see whether random number generators behave differently during significant world events. The project uses random number generators scattered all over the world, and has operated for more than 15 years. The web site for the project indicates that overall the project has produced results with a probability of less than one in a million, indicating a significant deviation from the results expected by chance. It is as if somehow the human mind has an influence on computerized mechanical devices. Such an effect is hard to account for under the idea that your mind is entirely the product of your brain, but may be easier to explain under the hypothesis that your consciousness has some mysterious distant origin.

Near Death Experiences

The site here www.nderf.org gives over 1800 accounts of near death experiences, which have for several decades been the subject of serious investigation by researchers. But weren't near-death experiences debunked by some recent scientific study? No, the study involved rats, not humans, and merely showed that for 30 seconds at the time of death they had a particular type of brain wave. The conclusion that some people drew from this study (“Rats show signs of higher consciousness at death”) was quite strained, considering that we haven't the slightest idea how these rats thought or felt when they were dying, and even the very idea of talking about consciousness in rats may be rather laughable. In any case, I doubt anyone reading some of the long, involved accounts at the site above would think that most of the people were describing something that occurred in 30 seconds of time. 

In quite a few near death experiences, people report floating above their bodies, an observation which seems to be completely incompatible with the idea that the mind is produced solely by the brain.  

Alleged Ghost Sightings

People have reported seeing ghosts throughout human history. Many people would like to classify ghosts as a superstition of the past, like the belief in witches. The problem is that people keep reporting that they have seen ghosts. For example, for 5 years on the television show Celebrity Ghost Stories numerous celebrities  have gone on camera to report seeing ghosts (a list of these celebrities is found here).

Alleged Reincarnation Evidence

Reincarnation is the hypothesis that one person can be born with the soul or consciousness of another person who previously died. If all we had as evidence for reincarnation were uncorroborated stories of past-lives told during hypnotic regression, such evidence could easily be dismissed as mere fantasies produced during an abnormal mental condition. However, the evidence is a lot more substantial. After decades of research, Professor Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia published a 2268-page two volume work Reincarnation and Biology, in which he described in meticulous detail thousands of cases of alleged reincarnation, involving small children who claimed to have had a previous life. According to this link in a Scientific American blog, “Reincarnation and Biology contained 225 case reports of children who remembered previous lives and who also had physical anomalies that matched those previous lives, details that could in some cases be confirmed by the dead person’s autopsy record and photos.” Stevenson's work has been carried on by Jim Tucker, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia who has recently published a book Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children who Remember Past Lives. See this link for an interview.

Again we have a case of an alleged phenomena that is quite inconsistent with the idea that our consciousness is solely produced by the brain, but which is quite compatible with the receptacle hypothesis of consciousness.

Conclusion

I have cited here quite a few type of phenomena that may tend to support the theory I previously discussed, that our brains or bodies may be a mere receptacle of our minds, and that our minds may have arisen elsewhere, from some unknown external source outside of our bodies. The various phenomena discussed here may all tend to lend credibility to such a hypothesis. All of these phenomena are hard to explain under the alternate hypothesis, that the mind is produced solely by the brain. I am not claiming that all of these phenomena are necessarily what they appear to be; I am merely pointing out that they may tend to conflict with the conventional theory that our minds are produced solely  by brain activity. 

None of this proves that this receptacle hypothesis of consciousness is true, but at least these items may indicate that such a theory should be given serious consideration.

No doubt some will denounce some of these items I have cited as things that are too “weird” or far-out. But I think it is remarkable that a scientist who might make such a dismissal might then later proceed to spend lots of time writing about multiverses, parallel universes, string theory, time travel, distant extraterrestrial civilizations, and space-time wormholes – all of which are things just as strange (or stranger) than any of the items I have mentioned here.

In fact, there seems to be a very strange double standard in the minds of many a modern scientist. You might describe this double standard like this:

It is acceptable and encouraged to discuss multiverses, parallel universes, distant extraterrestrial civilizations, time travel, string theory, and space-time wormholes, things for which there is no observational evidence. But it is forbidden to discuss things like ESP, ghosts, and near-death experiences, which seem to be supported by many observations.

Such an ass-backwards principle makes no sense at all.

Postscript: for a discussion of other strange phenomena that may support an alternate hypothesis of consciousness, see this post. Among the cases discussed are two astonishing cases of people who managed to function well despite having hardly any brain tissue.  

Post-postscript: For other fascinating cases of savants, see this link.