Yeah, what MP-Ryan said. And your experience with psychology does not match mine (though I had the benefit of one of the better/more rigorous psych departments in the country, and I think it perfectly believable that there's a lot of crap out there you might have run into).
I just don't see the argument that these are in any way one organism. They're connected by a wire, but severing that wire would probably leave them intact and independent were it feasible.
In particular I'd like to take issue with
If they were neurally seperate, then I would be 100% behind calling this telepathy, I just think calling it so just now is rather sensationalist. If they manage to seperate their brains (Which I imagine will be impossible for the forseeable future), and perform the axon capping you just described, then it would be true telepathy, albeit technologically aided.
this.
The distinction you're making doesn't seem functionally meaningful to me. In one case, they are connected by a neural bridge which transmits information through action potentials. In the other, they're connected by a neural bridge which transmits information through radio waves. Either way information is being passed; the medium just doesn't feel relevant.
I think of it as the difference between wired and wireless networking. Either way you've got two computers; plugging them in with an ethernet cord doesn't make them one.
It's more like a dual core processor with each core controlling a different OS installed on a different hard drive at the same, you're still running them off the same neurological basing, because the Thalamus is so utterly critical to the proper neurological functioning of the brain and body. Calling the Thalamus/Hypothalamus (which they share) a "wire" is VASTLY underestimating what it actually is (More analogous to the motherboard or processor than a wire), and is probably why they have problems like the satiety signals of one girl affecting the other. If I were to call them seperate or to be able to call this Telepathy, there would have to be no neurological "cock ups" like that occurring, especially since that part of the article implies that they have seperate GIs, and therefore one girl could be detrimentally affected by feeling satisfied when she has not eaten but her conjoined twin has. This is not telepathy, because it goes beyond mere sharing of thought (into hormonal stuff) and relies on the fact that their brains are joined, not distinct.
It's exactly what it says on the tin, their brains are physically joined and they share the Thalamus, resulting in a thalamic bridge, which has allowed some crosswiring of their cerebellum and tectums. A step in the right direction for understanding how to create or form telepathic connections, yes, but with a lot of bugs and excess things that do not make it true telepathy in my point.
As stated before, my issue is concerned with biology and neurology of it. I'd also think that the sharing of thought and so on might end up reducing the distinctiveness between the twins, as they're going to be sharing their perspectives, and thoughts on situation, and god knows what their subconsciousnesses are doing whilst they're asleep.
“It’s like they are one and two people at the same time,” Todd Feinberg, a professor of psychiatry and neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, told the Times
This is my stance, except that I lean towards calling them one person given how essential the shared part of the brain is - They've just got two hard drives running two different OSes at the same time.
Again, speaking as a biologist, I want to know what their neuronal structure radiating out of that shared thalamus is like, and how they conduct signals, especially given that they share their visual data. (One might assume they may be capable of sharing others, as the Thalamus routes a LOT of sensory data, but scent and sound would be harder to distinguish as coming from yourself or your conjoined twin, I imagine)
