4 ms·

It’s Not a ‘Stream’ of Consciousness

53 points by pldpld 11y ago

cgio 11y ago
The metaphor I use in my research is the anapnoe of consciousness from the greek word for breathing.
entelechy0 11y ago
Just because a stream of water is composed of particles called water molecules doesn't make it any less of a stream.
- Houshalter 11y ago
  It's more like if the stream was flowing in short bursts. One second a little water would be flowing, and then the next it would stop, and then it would flow again, and so on. As opposed to a continuous stream.
nabla9 11y ago
This is also the experience of experienced meditators in awareness type of meditation (mindfulness, vipasssana, shikantaza, silent illumination). If you keep the focus in current moment prolonged periods of time, it's equivalent of "temporal zooming". Somewhere near 20-25 ms (40hz) is the "time resolution limit". In the limit sensations – thoughts are also considered sensations – come in as separate units and you experience the content of consciousness as very fast "flickering". There are units in higher resolution too, but they can be divided into these nuggets. Concentrative type meditation (deep samadhi states, jahnas) is somewhat different experience because it shuts down most sensations.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Interesting, so far only music got me to slow down my perceptions to that point. It was a prerequisite for me to allow independent patterns without ending up focusing on one limb or another. As weird as pleasurable.
- dschiptsov 11y ago
  Shutting down attention to sensory input is a prerequisite for realization of discrete nature of thoughts and what is between two thoughts.)
  - atom-morgan 11y ago
    > thoughts are also considered sensations – come in as separate units and you experience the content of consciousness as very fast "flickering". I've also had very similar experiences in sensory deprivation tanks.
dschiptsov 11y ago
It is "awareness" - what newborn babies have (born with).
- dschiptsov 11y ago
  To train a cluster of clusters of neural networks (which is the basis of associative, verbal mind) some "primitive" machinery is required. This is what we call "awareness" or pre-processing (pattern matching) of sensory input, which is prior to the intellect, which is based on a language and related mental concepts, which are socially and culturally conditioned and mostly wrong.)
gojomo 11y ago
It's a flipbook!
asifjamil 11y ago
The view of brain oscillations driving (or even partially modulating) neural activity is further supported by research involving stimulating the brain using Alternating Currents [1] I'm currently doing my PhD on this topic, and it seems so far that targeting AC (with an entrained frequency) to various motor-related neural networks can actually enhance the motor skill and even motor learning. Brain oscillations are quite phenomenal, and the causal role of these synchronisations still require further research. [1] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2012.05.021 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2012.05.021
dreen 11y ago
So essentially we have an event loop, right.
hyperpape 11y ago
This is fascinating stuff, but what it means for how we think about conscious experience is quite open for discussion. We can't jump to either the consclusion that our conscious experience is not a "stream" or that the brain "fills in" the gaps. It's been a long time since I've read about this stuff, but there's work by Daniel Dennett (http://cogprints.org/267/1/fillin.htm http://cogprints.org/267/1/fillin.htm), and Alva Noe (http://www.alvanoe.com/action-in-perception/ http://www.alvanoe.com/action-in-perception/) that's quite relevant.
akyu 11y ago
This seems like trying to understand how a car engine works by listening to the pitch of the sound it makes. Sure you can deduce somethings, but you aren't really going to understand the engine.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  This is how I feel about neuroscience. Like sending signals through a processor to store heat maps. Some abstraction is missing.
  - jonex 11y ago
    Hmm, interesting thought, how much would we learn about a computer by a combination of stress testing and heat-mapping? I'd say, quite much. I'm sure there would be no problem to figure out at least a few layers of memory, the existence of a separate GPU, the fact that it has a limited capability of concurrent computation and that most computation occurs at a very minor part of the CPU etc. Then, if we also figured out that the CPU is based on a lot of small transistors that'd probably give some insight as well. But this would obviously not be nearly enough to build our own computer with capabilities similar to a modern computer. That'd require a lot more detailed knowledge and advanced equipment I'd say neuroscience is somewhere at the beginning of the mapping process, certainly not nearly enough to construct our own brain, but still very informative on the subject of how the brain functions.
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      But it would allow confusion, describing CPUs as qualitatively different because of quantitative variations (register count, size, bus width) even though they're essentially the same (integrate, differentiate).
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
- Houshalter 11y ago
  According to the article it's more like studying a computer and realizing it has clock cycles, where all the circuits are synchronized by a global clock. It's a very interesting finding.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
satx 11y ago
The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, trained as a physicist, welcomed, encouraged Western science to validate Transcendental Meditation, a mechanical mantra repetition technique, with the stress on lack of effort which is opposed to mindfulness, concentration, self-observation, and other effortful techniques. Electro-encephalographs of TM meditators, after just a few weeks of initiation into TM technique, show the various brain waves frequencies spreading from back to front, plus left-right hemispheric synchrony, and increasing in amplitude. This behaviour was seen a few decades ago, and is even more verified lately as detectors and signal processing advanced. Was do the data mean? That's less "scientific", but clearly something is happening, and subjective reports are that it's a very positive experience with benefits that last outside of meditation. Why does this behavior persist, is repeatable across many TM meditators, even neophyte meditators? It suggests, verifies even, that the TM technique recognizes inherent properties, abilities, behavior of the human brain. Again, the benefits, if any, meditative sessions causing whole-brain wave synchrony, coherence, and increased wave amplitude? You'll have to ask TM meditators.
- justifier 11y ago
  off topic of the article but on topic to your comment.. of transcendental meditation jd salinger wrote a book called franny and zooey(i) where the main character is obsessed with a little book about an individual who seeks an answer to a question developed after reading a vague reference in the bible to praying incessantly it's biblical, but skeptical and the religious elements dissolve and are really only symptomatic of the period, the book wishes to tell a story and the infrastructure of christianity just happens to be the catalyst the answer is sought in a pilgrimage around russia of the day, visiting the highest religious sanctums to question the foremost of the holy hierarchies, and the answer unfolds slowly to the pilgrim the book in the story is a real 19th century anonymous work translated as the way of the pilgrim(ii) the book is beautiful, and i would definitely recommend it it walks you through the stages of transcendental meditation and then has the most beautiful final chapter without the ending the story, for me, would have been a waste, but the last interaction is just so beautiful in its paradoxical self invalidation the process of having a simple question, seeking an answer and finding innate complexity that leads to a simple solution that dissolves the complexity that led to the realisation is something i recognise in many pursuits (i) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franny_and_Zooey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franny_and_Zooey (ii) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_of_a_Pilgrim http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_of_a_Pilgrim
karmakaze 11y ago
I'm likening the 'chucks' to be undergoing wavelet transforms.
A_COMPUTER 11y ago
This seems similar to Alfred North Whitehead's idea of pulses/buds of perception, from the 1920's, sans the metaphysical aspect.

53 points by pldpld 11y ago

cgio 11y ago

The metaphor I use in my research is the anapnoe of consciousness from the greek word for breathing.

entelechy0 11y ago

Just because a stream of water is composed of particles called water molecules doesn't make it any less of a stream.

Houshalter 11y ago
It's more like if the stream was flowing in short bursts. One second a little water would be flowing, and then the next it would stop, and then it would flow again, and so on. As opposed to a continuous stream.

nabla9 11y ago

This is also the experience of experienced meditators in awareness type of meditation (mindfulness, vipasssana, shikantaza, silent illumination). If you keep the focus in current moment prolonged periods of time, it's equivalent of "temporal zooming". Somewhere near 20-25 ms (40hz) is the "time resolution limit". In the limit sensations – thoughts are also considered sensations – come in as separate units and you experience the content of consciousness as very fast "flickering". There are units in higher resolution too, but they can be divided into these nuggets. Concentrative type meditation (deep samadhi states, jahnas) is somewhat different experience because it shuts down most sensations.

agumonkey 11y ago
Interesting, so far only music got me to slow down my perceptions to that point. It was a prerequisite for me to allow independent patterns without ending up focusing on one limb or another. As weird as pleasurable.
dschiptsov 11y ago
Shutting down attention to sensory input is a prerequisite for realization of discrete nature of thoughts and what is between two thoughts.)
- atom-morgan 11y ago
  > thoughts are also considered sensations – come in as separate units and you experience the content of consciousness as very fast "flickering". I've also had very similar experiences in sensory deprivation tanks.

dschiptsov 11y ago

It is "awareness" - what newborn babies have (born with).

dschiptsov 11y ago
To train a cluster of clusters of neural networks (which is the basis of associative, verbal mind) some "primitive" machinery is required. This is what we call "awareness" or pre-processing (pattern matching) of sensory input, which is prior to the intellect, which is based on a language and related mental concepts, which are socially and culturally conditioned and mostly wrong.)

gojomo 11y ago

It's a flipbook!

asifjamil 11y ago

The view of brain oscillations driving (or even partially modulating) neural activity is further supported by research involving stimulating the brain using Alternating Currents [1] I'm currently doing my PhD on this topic, and it seems so far that targeting AC (with an entrained frequency) to various motor-related neural networks can actually enhance the motor skill and even motor learning. Brain oscillations are quite phenomenal, and the causal role of these synchronisations still require further research. [1] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2012.05.021 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2012.05.021

dreen 11y ago

So essentially we have an event loop, right.

hyperpape 11y ago

This is fascinating stuff, but what it means for how we think about conscious experience is quite open for discussion. We can't jump to either the consclusion that our conscious experience is not a "stream" or that the brain "fills in" the gaps. It's been a long time since I've read about this stuff, but there's work by Daniel Dennett (http://cogprints.org/267/1/fillin.htm http://cogprints.org/267/1/fillin.htm), and Alva Noe (http://www.alvanoe.com/action-in-perception/ http://www.alvanoe.com/action-in-perception/) that's quite relevant.

akyu 11y ago

This seems like trying to understand how a car engine works by listening to the pitch of the sound it makes. Sure you can deduce somethings, but you aren't really going to understand the engine.

agumonkey 11y ago
This is how I feel about neuroscience. Like sending signals through a processor to store heat maps. Some abstraction is missing.
- jonex 11y ago
  Hmm, interesting thought, how much would we learn about a computer by a combination of stress testing and heat-mapping? I'd say, quite much. I'm sure there would be no problem to figure out at least a few layers of memory, the existence of a separate GPU, the fact that it has a limited capability of concurrent computation and that most computation occurs at a very minor part of the CPU etc. Then, if we also figured out that the CPU is based on a lot of small transistors that'd probably give some insight as well. But this would obviously not be nearly enough to build our own computer with capabilities similar to a modern computer. That'd require a lot more detailed knowledge and advanced equipment I'd say neuroscience is somewhere at the beginning of the mapping process, certainly not nearly enough to construct our own brain, but still very informative on the subject of how the brain functions.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    But it would allow confusion, describing CPUs as qualitatively different because of quantitative variations (register count, size, bus width) even though they're essentially the same (integrate, differentiate).
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
Houshalter 11y ago
According to the article it's more like studying a computer and realizing it has clock cycles, where all the circuits are synchronized by a global clock. It's a very interesting finding.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

satx 11y ago

The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, trained as a physicist, welcomed, encouraged Western science to validate Transcendental Meditation, a mechanical mantra repetition technique, with the stress on lack of effort which is opposed to mindfulness, concentration, self-observation, and other effortful techniques. Electro-encephalographs of TM meditators, after just a few weeks of initiation into TM technique, show the various brain waves frequencies spreading from back to front, plus left-right hemispheric synchrony, and increasing in amplitude. This behaviour was seen a few decades ago, and is even more verified lately as detectors and signal processing advanced. Was do the data mean? That's less "scientific", but clearly something is happening, and subjective reports are that it's a very positive experience with benefits that last outside of meditation. Why does this behavior persist, is repeatable across many TM meditators, even neophyte meditators? It suggests, verifies even, that the TM technique recognizes inherent properties, abilities, behavior of the human brain. Again, the benefits, if any, meditative sessions causing whole-brain wave synchrony, coherence, and increased wave amplitude? You'll have to ask TM meditators.

justifier 11y ago
off topic of the article but on topic to your comment.. of transcendental meditation jd salinger wrote a book called franny and zooey(i) where the main character is obsessed with a little book about an individual who seeks an answer to a question developed after reading a vague reference in the bible to praying incessantly it's biblical, but skeptical and the religious elements dissolve and are really only symptomatic of the period, the book wishes to tell a story and the infrastructure of christianity just happens to be the catalyst the answer is sought in a pilgrimage around russia of the day, visiting the highest religious sanctums to question the foremost of the holy hierarchies, and the answer unfolds slowly to the pilgrim the book in the story is a real 19th century anonymous work translated as the way of the pilgrim(ii) the book is beautiful, and i would definitely recommend it it walks you through the stages of transcendental meditation and then has the most beautiful final chapter without the ending the story, for me, would have been a waste, but the last interaction is just so beautiful in its paradoxical self invalidation the process of having a simple question, seeking an answer and finding innate complexity that leads to a simple solution that dissolves the complexity that led to the realisation is something i recognise in many pursuits (i) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franny_and_Zooey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franny_and_Zooey (ii) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_of_a_Pilgrim http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_of_a_Pilgrim

karmakaze 11y ago

I'm likening the 'chucks' to be undergoing wavelet transforms.

A_COMPUTER 11y ago

This seems similar to Alfred North Whitehead's idea of pulses/buds of perception, from the 1920's, sans the metaphysical aspect.