The True Creator of Everything: How the Human Brain Shaped the Universe as We Know It

377 Pages·2020·6.173 MB·English

by  Miguel Nicolelis

The Tru e C r e a t or
of E v er y t hing
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The Tru e C r e a t or
of E v e r y t hi ng
∯
How the Human Brain Shaped the
Universe as We Know It
Miguel Nicolelis
new haven and london
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Copyright © 2020 by Miguel Nicolelis. All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part,
including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying
permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law
and except by reviewers for the public press), without writ-
ten permission from the publishers.
Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity
for educational, business, or promotional use. For informa-
tion, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. offi ce) or
[email protected] (U.K. offi ce).
Frontispiece: Juliano Pinto inside the brain-controlled robotic
exoskeleton built by the Walk Again Project. (Courtesy of the
Alberto Santos Dumont Association for Research Support
[AASDAP])
Excerpt at the end of Chapter 12 from THE ROCK: A Pageant
Play, Book by T. S. Eliot. Copyright © 1934 by Houghton
Miffl in Harcourt Publishing Company, renewed 1962 by
T. S. Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Miffl in
Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Set in Scala type by Newgen North America.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019943685
isbn 978-0-300-24463-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-
1992 (Permanence of Paper).
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To the teachers who introduced me to the diff erent faces
of the True Creator of Everything:
Juarez Aranha Ricardo
César Timo-Iaria
John Chapin
Rick Lin
Jon Kaas
and
Ronald Cicurel
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C on t en t s
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv
1. In the Beginning . . . 1
2. The True Creator of Everything Makes Its Evolutionary
Entrance 8
3. Information and the Brain: A Bit of Shannon, a Handful
of Gödel 25
4 Fueling the Brain with Dynamics: Biological Solenoids
and Functional Principles 49
5. The Relativistic Brain Theory: It All Comes Down to
One Picotesla of Magnetic Power 74
6. Why the True Creator Is Not a Turing Machine 103
7. Brainets: Coupling Brains to Generate Social
Behaviors 127
8. The Case for a Braincentric Cosmology 162
9. Building a Universe with Space, Time, and
Mathematics 189
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viii contents
10. The True Origins of the Mathematical Description of
the Universe 220
11. How Mental Abstractions, Information Viruses, and
Hyperconnectivity Create Deadly Brainets, Schools
of Thought, and the Zeitgeist 243
12. How Our Addiction to Digital Logic Is Changing
Our Brains 268
13. Self-Annihilation or Immortality? The Ultimate
Choice of the True Creator of Everything 287
Epilogue 304
Bibliography 307
Index 333
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Pr efac e
When Brazil was offi cially announced as the host of the 2014 FIFA Soccer
World Cup in 2007, I came up with an idea to introduce a global audience
to the edge of modern brain research and show how much it has to off er for
the betterment of human lives. After fi ve years of planning, I approached the
president of Brazil and the secretary-general of FIFA to propose running a sci-
entifi c demonstration during the opening ceremony of the upcoming World
Cup. The central goal of this event would be to highlight the fact that, thanks
to new technological developments and major insights on the basic operation
of the human brain, neuroscientists were getting close to achieving a mag-
nifi cent feat: restoring mobility to millions of people worldwide paralyzed by
serious spinal cord injuries.
To those in charge of the World Cup’s opening ceremony, I proposed having
a young Brazilian, completely paralyzed from the chest down by a spinal cord
injury, deliver the symbolic opening kickoff of the World Cup. In reply, the
event organizers immediately posed to me the question anybody confronted
with such an outrageous plan would ask: how will a paraplegic deliver such a
kick? My answer bewildered them even more: by using a lower-limb robotic
exoskeleton directly controlled by his or her brain, I said nonchalantly.
To my total surprise, the organizers agreed.
The easy part was done. Now came the tough part: actually pulling it off .
To do this, I created the Walk Again Project, an international nonprofi t
scientifi c consortium. In a matter of months, dozens of engineers, neurosci-
entists, roboticists, computer scientists, physicians, rehabilitation personnel,
and a large variety of technicians from twenty-fi ve countries joined us. The
next eighteen months were the craziest of my life, and possibly in the lives
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