“Participants wore an EEG cap that recorded the electrical activity of their brains while the surrounding magnetic field rotated in various directions.”
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I know this is a dumb statement, but don’t EEG measure the brain’s electrical activity? And to measure the electrical activity don’t you have to read the electro-magnetic field the electrical activity creates?
errrm...... Why wouldn’t the test just be measuring the changes in the field influence by the coil rather than changes in the field created by the brain which was influence by the coil????
Actually... that is a good question. Could it have been the instruments “causing” the effect rather than “reading” an effect?
i dunno. no expert but would the earth magnetic field be constant while brain waves be cyclical? not unlike the difference between AC and DC, but in the magnetic realm instead of the electrical realm?
Presumably, they would have the proper controls in place to differentiate between the brain wave changes and the changes in the sensors that result from the redirected magnetic field.
In any case, the fact that there are some measurable changes in the brain electrical activity does not mean the person senses direction through interaction of brain electrical activity and the earth’s magnetic field. As someone pointed out in another post, MRIs produce strong magnetic fields; the patient does not feel them.
good points