Comment by idopmstuff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by idopmstuff | Hacker News Reader

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This is a really great point.

I feel like I have three levels of thought - unconscious, unprompted and active. Unconscious are what you'd imagine - I don't actively think them (like I don't hear the thought in my head), but clearly something's happening in my brain that's affecting my actions.

Unprompted and active are both things that I hear in my inner monologue or picture in my head. The former, as the name would suggest, are things that I'm not trying to think about - intrusive thoughts are certainly an example. The latter are things that I am purposely shaping my thoughts around.

Active thoughts are almost the only thing that come out of my mouth (if I'm very surprised, an unprompted thought might come out). Would I have that same level of control here?

In past experiments that I'm aware of, you steered the cursor, or typed a letter, by using a few seconds of _visualizing_ a sort of "command image". The command image recall would essentially generate a recognizable signal in a sensor array that is in a cap the patient wears.

When I'm trying to be funny, I'll sometimes feel a funny joke coming, but I have no idea what it'll be. Then it pops out, fully formed, seemingly out of nowhere. Sometimes I don't feel it coming.

It's strange, but I feel like this is what you're talking about with unprompted thoughts.

Or just try to sit still for a minute and not do anything and you'll notice that the vast majority are unprompted and just arise from nowhere.

You would definitely have that level of control. These signals don't map to your inner monologue but they can pick up your intention to physically do something.

So if you think LEFT, you can move the selector on the keyboard to the next key to the left. And if you think CLICK, you can trigger a click. But you are focusing on asking your hand to physically make that click. Which your hand can't do obviously, but they can track those neurons to simulate the action for you.

I wonder how it works for those of us without an internal monologue.

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