COMPUTER SCIENTISTS BEGIN PAYING ATTENTION TO LONG-SHUNNED PARAPSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH

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Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP96-00792R000400330005-3
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RIFPUB
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U
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1
Document Creation Date: 
November 4, 2016
Document Release Date: 
April 10, 2000
Sequence Number: 
5
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Publication Date: 
April 2, 1985
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NSPR
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PDF icon CIA-RDP96-00792R000400330005-3.pdf139.58 KB
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u , 1i,ilI ?s,;Ii .;u; w the field. The human 1nC,un has suddenly become one of the most enticing scientific frontiers for ambitious scholars and researchers. What, then, is the present state of brain studies? The Nihon Keizai Shimbun team of reporters working on this "frontier" series has inter- viewed those working in the on- going studies and has been greatly impressed by their live- liness and immense variety. The following is only a sam- pling of a great many highly in- triguing theories. "Face cell" theory Up until recently, the brain was believed to analyze the in- formation transmitted from the eyes and form entire images by putting together fragments of information perceived by dif- ferent brain cells. For example, a cell responding to the concept of "roundness" gets linked with that responding to the idea of "redness" to produce the entire image of a "round, red apple." In the "face cell" theory, how- ever, a single cell or a small group of cells is believed to re- ceive information from the eyes and instantly form entire images on the basis of the in- formation. This theory was ad- vanced list fall by E.T. Rolls, professor at Oxford University. This theory became a topic of a meeting of a group of a dozen or so scholars, including Shun- ichi Amari, a University of To- kyo professor, held last January at a ski resort in Niigata Pre- fecture. ' "If we are to believe the 'face cell' theory," one scholar sug- gested at the meeting, "the bits of information handled by pile human brain will be limited to 14 billion, as that is the number of cells contained in the human Ap 1 "Art ?'~8.1986Y6 6- e9gi t4paying, attention to long-shunned -parapsychological research Tadahiro Sekimoto, presi- dent of NE oro., has a pet research theme which he is hoping to see taken up by his company's researchers. Seki- moto himself ti'rougi*-.up tile theme some 20 years ago, when he was a senior en-. gincer, and had it flatly turned down. The theme is to somehow explain scientifical- ly phenomena which are referred to as the "sixth sense" or "telepathy." "The study of the sixth sense and telepathy will cer- tainly prove a cornerstone of future modes of communica- tions," declares Sekimoto. Unknown energy Telecommunications en- gineering at present depends on electromagnetic energies- and sound vibration energies. Sekimoto believes that- there is unknown energy in "the world of the sixth sense" that can be used for telecom- munications and that dis- covery of this unknown energy may very well re- voluntionalize telecom- munications systems in their entirety. "Science today 'does not fully explain what the electric wave really is," declares Hiroo Yuhara, advisor to the le ecommuntcations gear maker Uniden Cora, and ormer head of the Posts ansl Telecommunications Min- isU?y's Itadi Researc Laboratories, the most ad- vanced of Japan's research organlza ions ed. "What we know is that we can make wonderful communica- tions equipment if we build it on the theories of electric wave engineering. There are many basic matters that re- quire, scientific explana- tions." Yuhara has for several years been engrossed in studying phenomena defying scientific explanation. lie conducted a simple experi- ment for an NKS reporter. Ile first placed some name cards and small pieces of paper with names written on them on a table and then brought a bar magnet hanging from a string. When the magnet was placed above the name cards, it started swinging right and left depending upon the name cards. Yuhara claimed that when the name card is that of a dead man, the magnet swings to the left, To explain this strange plie- nomenon, Yuhara formulated the following hypothesis: "The human body has a secret sensor in it and the sensor transmits the informa- tion about the state (dead or alive) of the man whose name is on the card to the bar magnet." "In Japan, psychic phe- nomena and the discipline of parapsychology are yet to be recognized," states _Soji 01~tani professor as ei tiT~, e College and president of the Japan Parapsychology Association, "We, therefore; are conducting. our research on the subjects completely on our own." Even among big business Approved For Release. 2000/08/; Z (. :1;1 ~.t S employees, there are some who are secretly engaged in telepathy in the belief that the days when the worth qi such studies is fully appreciated are not that far away. One such person is MT sa- r Ro ia, an engineer longing to Hitachi, Ltd.'s patent section. Rokusha has recently devised, with the use of a personal computer, a system to greatly improve the efficiency of studies of the sixth sense. Rokusha makes the com- puter memorize the figures one and zero 100 times at random and has a control to call out the figures before the machine flashes them on screen every two seconds: The "beep" sound is sometimes added to test what effects the sound will have on the con- trol's score. A computer analysis of vast amounts of data collected show that the scores become poor after the beep sound and that the best scores are con- centrated just before the beep sound. Rokusha explains these two phenomena by con- sidering that the controls somehow sense that the beep sound disrupts their intuition so some mysterious power. works and improves their scores before the beep sound, "The day will certainly come sooner or later when .studies of psychic phenomena become legitimate," Rokusha says. "I am building up the necessary data and informa- tion for such an eventuality." IA-RDP 00792R000400 0005-3 l l ~yM WVL-~ C ~- C6. ,. ~V'c National project Ilajimme Karatsu, technical adviser to Matsushita l,lec- tric Industrial Co., speaks of the importance of studies of psychic phenomena in a dif- ferent manner. "Develop- ment of future computers hinges on a full explanation of brain functions," says Karatsu. "In brain studies, phenomena so far unex- plained by conventional sciences should also be taken up."" The state also has started moving into the field. The Science and Technology Agency has recently decided to take up man's spiritual ac- f tivities as a study theme of its Creative Science and Tech- nology Promotion Program as from fiscal 1987. Although there are many words in the Japanese lan- guage smacking of the super- natural, no scientific studies have as yet been undertaken on the phenomena implied by the words. Studies of such phenomena may very well have wide-ranging practical applications, ranging from cures for illnesses to new communications modes. Sir Isaac Newton, formu- lator of the theory of gravity, became engrossed in studies. of the supernatural in his later years, while Brian D. Josephson, a British physicist known as the creator of the Josephson junction theory, is now fully committed to studies of man's spiritual ac- tivities.