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General Discussion & Feedback => Just Chat! => Topic started by: stuart gillies on 05/05/2009 14:30:02

Title: What part of the brain could control telekinesis?
Post by: stuart gillies on 05/05/2009 14:30:02
stuart gillies  asked the Naked Scientists:
   
Hi, my name is Stuart.

I am currently writing a fictional script about a guy who controls people like puppets using a form of telekinesis, although the film is fictional I would like to try and keep it as real as possible and I was wondering if you would be able to answer two questions for me?

Firstly what part of the brain, if it were possible to actually do it, would allow you to use telekinesis ?

And secondly would it be possible to be shot in said part of the brain, rendering you unable to use telekinesis, without you dying?
any help you could give me would help to make this script more real.

thanks
Stuart

What do you think?
Title: What part of the brain could control telekinesis?
Post by: Bored chemist on 05/05/2009 20:02:45
Make up a bit of the brain. After all the likes of Brocca did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broca's_area
As long as the rest of the story hangs together you can get away with describing the discovery of "Gillies' region" in an obscure island tribe who were astonished when "ordinary" visitors didn't have this ability. I will leave the problem of how the visitors came to them rather than vice versa up to you :-)

Shooting out part of the brain is plausible enough- it's pretty much how Brocca really discovered that part of the brain is associated with speech.
Title: What part of the brain could control telekinesis?
Post by: MDriver1981 on 06/05/2009 04:48:23
One of the problems with science fiction is that it gives people a false sense of reality.  People have been watching and reading science fiction for over a hundred years and the genre has done such a good job at confusing people.  You see topics such as "telekinesis", "Hyperdrives" and "tachyons" quite frequently- so frequently that people come to believe that maybe these things could be real. 
Title: What part of the brain could control telekinesis?
Post by: Bored chemist on 06/05/2009 20:24:27
Many years earlier they were talking of magic carpets, elves and genies in oil lamps. Nothing has really changed.
Mankind seems really good at inventing stories about "really cool stuf"; the stories remain but the context changes a bit.