trekbette

Yes, in theory, it could.

My theory may be a bit simplistic but..

We only use a small percentage of our total brain power.

The brain works by electrical impulse. Why can't someone pass a electrical impulse to another person?

There can't be much distance involved, because it would have to be a fairly large electrical charge to reach anther person. And either the charge wouldn't reach the other or the charge would have to be so large that if would fry the sender.

Maybe if people were close together or their heads touching, than some day, maybe thoughts can be shared.

What do you think?

Elvithriel

Not that silly myth again...

Azathoth

I don't think so.The amount of sensitivity to electricity such a person would need,would be too great.They'd be affected by every electrical field they came near.

Man made electrical fields can already drive the creatures that are sensitive to them into erratic behaviour patterns.The effect on equally sensitive humans probably wouldn't be a good one.

Jesse

If you want a natural form of "telepathy", it's a lot more plausible that it could be done with artificial means, like implanting chips which simulate neural responses in people's brains and then connecting them to each other in some way.

On a related note, here's something I was wondering about recently: do conjoined twins whose brains are connected ever share thoughts, emotions, or any kind of sensations? (assuming such cases are capable of surviving for more than a few years--perhaps they never do)

Lobstrosity

Interesting question, Jesse. A somewhat opposite phenomenon always fascinated me: split-brain patients. When the corpus callosum is severed, the two lobes of the brain become completely isolated from each other (well, from a neuronal point of view), resulting in some rather interesting consequences, including the potential for the simultaneous existence of two independent consciousnesses.

And to address the OP, typically communication of information requires a transmitter and receiver if it is to be efficient. The transmitter encodes the message in some form that can then be sent via some medium to the receiver, which decodes the message into useful information. Humans already have such a device. The transmitter is known as the vocal chords and the receiver is known as the ears. On top of this, we can also transmit information using photons and receive this information with our eyes. I just don't understand why people get so hung up on finding yet more ways for thoughts to get from one head to another.

Let's look at your suggestion for a moment, trekbette:
The first thing you've hit on the head is that the electric and magnetic fields produced when neurons fire are exceedingly weak and drop of as a function of 1/d², where d is your distance from the point of origin of the field. Now, you want this field to some how trigger neurons in another brain to fire? How exactly would this work? Assuming this did work, what would happen if you got near an object that actually had substantial charge? Common discharge of static electricity could literally fry any brain sensitive enough to pick up on such weak signals.

But there are even more questions we could ask. How would the correct neurons in your head know to fire so as to accurately reconstruct the thoughts being "transmitted"? What exactly is acting as the receiver in this case? The transmitting brain has hundreds of billions of neurons, all firing in strange patterns. Think of the complex fields this would produce...fields that are certainly not isotropic. Therefore, you get a different sampling of these fields that's a function of your position relative to the transmitting brain. The fields you experience depend on how far away you are from the other person's head and what direction you are both looking. They also depend on the activity going on in your own head as the firing of your neurons are producing their own fields, which superimpose upon that which you are trying to receive. Basically, in short, this concept of thought-transmission is not very feasible without the aid of technology to act as a transmitter/encoder and receiver/decoder, as Jesse points out.

Jayjay

If natural telepathy was possible, why aren't there animals that take full advantage of the mechanism? After all, if something can evolve in humans it's likely that it can evolve for other species too, and transmitting thoughts would be a useful trait in a multitude of situations.

Wounded King

Not neccessarily Jayjay, languages like ours haven't evolved in any other species, it might depend on the complexity of the brain.

Arken

Some people use more. They're called epileptics.

Corwin

For all we know, there are. (How would we know? Do you really think a telepath would have to stare at someone and scrunch up its face to send and recieve? )

Arken

Yes, but one would think that animals with telepathic powers would be easy to observe using them as they would involve doing all sorts of things which could not be communicated by other means.