Experiment with electric fish

Here are some of the latest images from the Enki project…

The main view of the experiment chamber. The Enki installation at Cornerhouse is now up and running. There are experiments by appointment every 15mins, and all the data is being collected.

It has taken me ages to make these comms units, they contain16 interconnecting cables within a noise reducing or shielded structure.

The Table has two monitors one from the fish room and one from the human room. You can speak to the person in the experiment via a mic.

Inside the sound proofed room for the human there is a chair and the sensor interface.

There is a window into the fish room on the side of the chamber

The room containing the fish is electrically shielded.

neurostimulation and fish

The earliest recorded human effort at neuro-stimulation appears to have been that of the Mesopotamian healer Scribonius Largus 47AD (?) who used electrical currents to produce transient pain relief.

By either the direct application of electrical torpedo fish (eels, of the type shown below) to the human body or by placing painful extremities into a pool of water containing torpedo fish the resulting electrical shocks stunned the nervous system allowing an immediate and residual numbness in the extremity.

In this application electrical torpedo fish were the very first means of achieving transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) for therapeutic purposes. This form of treatment was particularly popular for the treatment of gouty arthritis.

Pliny (AD 61-113) commented on the fact that while the torpedo fish was not itself sluggish, it could induce sluggishness in other fish. He also detailed how to extract the medicinal magic of the torpedo fish into oils and ointments used for various ailments, or more popularly either to cool lust or to induce love.

In Plato’s (428-348 BC) dialoge Meno Socrates is told “you seem both in appearance and in your power over others to be like a torpedo fish, who torpifies those who come near him, as you have now torpified me, I think. For my soul and my tongue are really torpid and I do not know how to answer you.”

The affects of a shock from the electric Torpedo Fish, which lived in the Mediterranean, were well known. What caused of the affects was not. Aristotle (384-322 BC) said that the torpedo fish “narcotize” its prey.

The Institute of Science in Society

Dr Mae-Wan Ho is director of ISIS and among some really interesting research has developed a way of imaging living organisms as ‘liquid-crystal’ and other holistic approaches to looking at the organismn & has done a lot of research into finding a scientific basis for acupuncture; this looks at the relationship of collegen in cells, and the phenomenon of ‘ordered water’.

Live first instar Drosophila larva observed with a noninvasive imaging technique that produces interference colours in its tissues depending on the birefringent, liquid crystalline order of the constituent molecules.(1)

“The Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) founded by Mae-Wan Ho and Peter Saunders to work for social responsibility and sustainable approaches in science. A major part of our work is to promote critical public understanding of science and to engage both scientists and the public in open debate and discussion. ISIS has been providing inputs into the GM debate that would have been conspicuously lacking otherwise.”
www.i-sis.org.uk
“Science is intrinsically honest, open and pluralistic, and disagreements must be openly and democratically debated.”