Thought experiments

摘要

N THE gleaming facilities of the Wyss Centre for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva, a lab technician takes a well plate out of an incubator. Each well contains a tiny piece of brain tissue derived from human stem cells and sitting on top of an array of electrodes. A screen displays what the electrodes are picking up: the characteristic peak-and-trough wave forms of firing neurons. To see these signals emanating from disembodied tissue is weird. The firing of a neuron is the basic building block of intelligence. Aggregated and combined, such "action potentials" retrieve every memory, guide every movement and marshal every thought. As you read this sentence, neurons are firing all over your brain: to make sense of the shapes of the letters on the page; to turn those shapes into phonemes and those phonemes into words; and to confer meaning on those words.