6 ms·
The spotlight of attention is more like a strobe, say researchers
- newhere420 8y agoCould this be in any way related to the strobing effects (and afterimages / discrete tracers) of LSD and other psychedelics? (see also http://psychedelic-information-theory.com/The-Control-Interrupt-Model-of-Psychedelic-Action http://psychedelic-information-theory.com/The-Control-Interr... - not sure how much of it is just pseudoscience nonsense though)
- nabla9 8y agoLong time mediators are familiar with this. When you drill down attention to smaller and smaller time resolution, eventually you notice that attention flickers. Buddhist Abhidhamma sutra describes this phenomenon. Smallest flicker of consciousness is called ceta. I think 250 ms is closer to vithi (kind of small molecule of mind- moments), than ceta. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abhidharma/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abhidharma/ > We have seen that the Abhidharma’s analysis of sentient experience reveals that what we perceive as a temporally extended, uninterrupted flow of phenomena is, in fact, a rapidly occurring sequence of causally connected consciousness moments or cittas ... > The Sarvāstivādins use the term “moment” (kṣaṇa) in a highly technical sense as the smallest, definite unit of time that cannot be subdivided, the length of which came to be equated with the duration of mental events as the briefest conceivable entities. There is no Sarvāstivādin consensus on the length of a moment, but the texts indicate figures between 0.13 and 13 milliseconds in modern terms (My personal subjective estimate is something like to 40 ms)
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- jchanimal 8y agoSimilar to the time distance of an Elvis style slapback vocal echo. Less than ~40ms and it’s not perceived as a distinct sound, more than ~120 ms and it starts to sound obvious like a reggae dub echo. Same sound perception time constants show up all over audio recording.
- jerf 8y agoI did not know exactly what Elvis-style slapback echo is, so here's the fruit of my moments of poking around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuStmPbG528 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuStmPbG528 About 1:30 long.
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- bsder 8y agoIt's generically echo or delay. Normally, it's called slapback when it's used for "rockabilly" (yes, basically sounding like Elvis--specifically his guitarist Scotty Moore). People emulating Brian Setzer is the more modern thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PY4CSScCKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PY4CSScCKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW54TX4Pwl8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW54TX4Pwl8
- dharma1 8y agoWhen playing software instruments with latency, most people say the threshold for percieving the latency is between 10-30ms
- bsder 8y ago> When playing software instruments with latency, most people say the threshold for percieving the latency is between 10-30ms I really challenge the lower end of this. Sound travels about a foot per millisecond. Bands regularly play at 10ft distances. The problem is that 10ms latency on a digital audio workstation generally isn't if you start measuring with an oscilloscope.
- panic 8y agoThere’s a huge difference between the feedback loop of playing an instrument and the one-way experience of listening to a band, though.
- klank 8y agoBands typically are using in-ear or floor monitors. Main PA latency won't affect their playing because it's not what they're paying attention to.
- xelxebar 8y agoOh wow! I just recently stumbled on this in my personal meditation practice. I noticed that it's almost like there's a game loop that periodically hits the CartesianSelfAssertion function. Or something. Everyone I've tried to talk to so far has just given blank stares, so it's kind to nice to run across someone with similar experience. Thanks for sharing.
- Baeocystin 8y agoI've always felt it more akin to garbage collection triggered by hitting a resource limit. (not being sarcastic)
- xelxebar 8y agoWould you mind elaborating a bit? This is something I've recently been trying to get more intimately familiar with and new metaphors are a really helpful rubric.
- Baeocystin 8y agoWith the caveat that I think stretching the metaphor too much further would exceed its utility, my point is only that awareness is not a smooth process, but occurs in fits and starts, slightly delayed from actual reality- it takes time for a brain to assemble meaning from its sensorium. Different parts of the brain can work semi-independently, while other parts are strictly single-use. And 'resetting' one's mental machinery after this kind of interference takes a measurable amount of time, much like the triggering of garbage collection. The Stroop Effect is a good demonstration of this kind of cognitive collision. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGpzftQf8oI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGpzftQf8oI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect
- justinpombrio 8y ago> I noticed that it's almost like there's a game loop that periodically hits the CartesianSelfAssertion function. Or something. Could you go into a bit more detail? What does CartesianSelfAssertion feel like? How often is it called---on the order of 40ms per OP, or less frequently? Do you notice this only during/after meditation?
- zeta0134 8y agoDoes anyone else notice the length of a moment changing? I especially notice a difference if something causes me to trigger an adrenaline rush; I noticed it a lot when playing DDR and similar, since the physical motion would trigger adrenaline, and then the tempo of whatever I was playing would appear to slow. It was like ... to use a game developer's terms, like my perception was suddenly running at a higher framerate. Of course as a musician this meant the music felt "wrong" somehow after that. "Why is it so slow? Was this song always this easy?" and relatedly, "Why is it harder to move my legs quickly?" etc. This persisted for maybe 20 minutes and then returned to normal gradually. Once I pieced together the criteria, I started to notice that sort of tempo... kind of a "beat" in everything that I do. I feel it especially when I'm visually analyzing a scene, as it's the speed at which I can control my eyes darting about a room. If I'm tired that slows down considerably. The brain is just... so fascinating.
- trentmb 8y ago> Does anyone else notice the length of a moment changing? Sure- a couple beers makes a couple hours feel like a couple minutes.
- justinpombrio 8y ago> My personal subjective estimate is something like to 40 ms This is fascinating. I'm waiting for the time in my meditation practice when I start to notice it. Could you (or anyone else who experiences individual moments) go into a bit more detail about what you experience? Do the moments tend to all be from the same sensory modality (e.g. vision), or are they mixed? If you can tell, does any moment combine more than one sensory modality? How often are there moments of thinking (e.g. narration or a visually imagined scenario), or does thinking tend to end the experience? How isolated do the moments feel: are they like isolated snapshots, or is it like a movie running slow where you can tell that there are frames but they partially blend together?
- certmd 8y agoCannot strongly recommend enough "The Mind Illuminated" by John Yates. https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Meditation-Integrating-Mindfulness/dp/1501156985/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1541648654&sr=1-1&keywords=the+mind+illuminated https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Meditation-Integrati... It's been discussed on HN before (it's how I found it a few years ago) and breaks down meditation in a systematic way while relating the phenomena described in Buddhist texts to current psychological principles. This "moments of consciousness model" of the mind is discussed at length and a short answer to you question is yes, different sensory moments are integrated in "binding moments".
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- justinpombrio 8y agoYeah, I own it. "Binding moments" is why I asked that question :-). I'm partly wondering if peoples' experience matches the book's description, and partly looking for more detail about what the actual experience is like than the book provides. Would second the recommendation though: it's a great book.
- damontal 8y agoHow do you know what 40 ms feels like as opposed to say 60?
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- Nomentatus 8y agoIf you're used to noticing the dots-and-dashes from flicking your eyes past a 60hz (non-incandescent, say LED) light (each about 17ns apart), - something that happens to most of us many times per day - 40 vs 60 is a pretty obvious difference, and 17ns an obvious measure for comparison.
- Daishiman 8y agoIt's always mind-blowing to hear the precision and scientific rigor of the ancient Buddhist monks from two millennia ago and how they managed to create what is ultimately technology to observe the phenomena that comprise consciousness to the smallest perceivable level.
- madeuptempacct 8y agoI don't really understand any practical consequences of this.
- justinpombrio 8y agoApparently there aren't many: no one (except perhaps a few buddhists who spent an unreasonable amount of time meditating) noticed until now. The interesting bit is that we don't notice.
- partingshots 8y agoThe finding highlights and perhaps provides somewhat of a meaningful answer to philosophical arguments around what we perceive to be reality around us in fact being very much an illusion of continuity. The fact that we so readily trick ourselves into believing, and only through intense mindfulness/introspection are we able to contradict that sense of internal consistency, is quite profound in my opinion.
- afarrell 8y agoFor folks who are trying to be more focused, it seems like this emphasises the importance of training yourself to re-focus your attention
- cs702 8y agoMakes me wonder if there might be any advantages to modulating Softmax attention in deep artificial neural nets, with some kind of mechanism for recomputing attention based on each previous attention.
- ctoth 8y agoI came here hoping to read this. I'm not clever enough to implement it, but my first thought was that someone would see a connection here.
- fromthestart 8y agoThe article is paywalled, but it looks like the concept of flow was not considered in the human study conducted by the authors, judging only by the short summary of the paper. I suspect this changes under conditions of flow, where a human can spend hours engrossed in one task and totally lose track of his surroundings.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoFlow as described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.¹ It would be interesting to see if experimental results differ between when a person is in flow-state and when they are not. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi#Flow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi#Flow
- yosito 8y agoPlot twist: the human brain is actually running JavaScript and attention is executed on each tick of the event loop.
- rolltopdesk 8y agoThey say this flicker likely provides an evolutionary advantage-a chance to switch attention. I wonder if it’s optional. Wonder also about cases like attention disorders and attention of autistics.
- gnode 8y agoAttention deficit disorders are known to be caused primarily by problems with neurotransmitter systems which modulate attention (e.g. dopamine and noradrenaline). This seems to be more like a clock signal for the brain. I imagine problems with this system would manifest more as Sensory Processing Disorder, which has differences noticeable in an EEG.
- techbio 8y agoSupport for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwave_entrainment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwave_entrainment ?
- ericsoderstrom 8y agoSounds like a timer interrupt invoking a scheduler. Interesting!
- winchling 8y agoIs the attention spotlight synchronised with the brain's theta waves?
- mrexroad 8y ago“Theta phase acts as a clocking mechanism, organizing alternating attentional states” From the research paper linked to by article.
- dr_dshiv 8y agoI saw a researcher present a model of theta as a siren light (vs strobe), that moves from the back of the brain to the front, in an oscillatory loop. Where theta is active, the whole of attention is integrating with the local input of the part. As a general principle, we look for "phase amplitude coupling" to describe the integration of fast (gamma) local oscillations with slower (theta) global oscillations. Another well established oscillatory model describes binding in visual perception -- which is based on the synchronization of 40hz inhibitory interneurons in different parts of the visual field. Different parts of the same object have a synchronized inhibitory input. Theory is called "binding by inhibition gating" or " communication through coherence"
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- vankessel 8y agoI am curious if this has any relation to saccades. It feels to me like it would be easier to retain attention on a moving object than a stationary one. Not substantial but found this in a quick search of any support for this conjecture: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00049537608255262 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0004953760825526...
- chiefalchemist 8y agoGiven my (anecdotal) experience with audio books, I'd have to agree. I tried listen to mostly non-fiction in the car while on the highway (read: not local traffic) and despite the fact it was only me and the road I found myself fading in and out so often that I stop listening and went back to reading. Since, I've heard / read that setting play back to a faster speed helps - because of the novelty? - but I haven't tried it myself.
- ilovecaching 8y agoOur perception of reality is just a bunch of hacks, God is a programmer with a deadline confirmed. In all seriousness, it's interesting to think about the design tradeoffs evolution came up with for humans, and how those tradeoffs may no longer be the right tradeoffs given our radically changed lifestyles. If only we could flick focus mode like a switch when sitting at a computer, that would be nifty.
- gnode 8y ago> If only we could flick focus mode like a switch when sitting at a computer, that would be nifty. But you do. When you engage in a task, the dopamine and noradrenaline systems in your brain modulate which parts are active, directing your attention. If these systems don't work well enough, then you get ADHD. If what you mean is to be able to disable involuntary attention control, then that's not good either. You'd be at great risk of under-responding to emerging situations.
- grigjd3 8y agoThe first time I heard the spotlight analogy from a neuroscientist, I asked for what backs this up and the response I got was, "it's been shown" with a tone that made it clear no argument or discussion was allowed. Later I found out it comes from some behavioral studies that are pretty contrived.
- PavlikPaja 8y agoI think I experience the opposite, focusing on nothing in particular and only occasional brief flashes of focus, when I need to focus on something. Are people really more or less unaware of what is going on around them all the time?
- social_quotient 8y ago“Every 250 milliseconds, you have an opportunity to switch attention,” said Ian Fiebelkorn, Really makes you rethink the speed of website load time. I know there is a ton of research around site abandonment after x seconds (ms in some cases) but I’ve tended to think drop rates were because the time spent was the upper bound of what that user would spend of “continuous” attention. Reading this article it makes me think that if the site takes 4 seconds to load, the user had about 16 opportunities to go do something else. While the abandonment outcomes are what they are, the cause seems to be very different than what I had always thought.
- gnode 8y agoI think it's also important to note that when looking at a blank screen there is nothing stimulating, and stimulation (external or internal) drives our attention control. Putting a progress indicator on something gives us something to pay attention to, and so we're more likely to respond with frustration than inattention.
- pdkl95 8y agoTo see the "spotlight of attention" masterfully exploited, I recommend Apollo Robbins[1]. Yes, his slight of hand is very impressive, but his act is fundamentally about how he fills up your attention input buffer, notices where you are allocating your "attention spotlight", and works with a blatant flourish just outside of that spotlight. The overlap with "walk in with confidence holding a clipboard" approah to security is obvious; Apollo Robbins has even given a talk at DEFCON[2] about the implications of this approach to attention & security. I find his demonstrations a very humbling lesson in just how weak our actual perception of reality really is. [1] https://video.newyorker.com/watch/apollo-robbins-tricks-of-the-trade https://video.newyorker.com/watch/apollo-robbins-tricks-of-t... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kkOKvPrdZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kkOKvPrdZ4
- aerique 8y agoOoh that's nice, thank you. I recently figured out that keeping two separate items in one hand, say my bicycle keys and my house keys, makes it easier for me to lose one of them without realizing it since I'm still feeling the other. So there's no sense of loss.