The dissolution of consciousness as we fall asleep

by **starroute** » Fri Jan 20, 2006 8:12 pm

There's an interesting article just up about matter, evolution, complexity, emergent systems, and such questions as whether diamonds can be said to "think." The whole thing is worth reading, but there's one bit that struck me as particularly relevant at this board, because it might potentially relate to the subject of hypnogogic visions and other strange experiences that happen on the edge of sleep. <a href="http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/news/nation/13670670.htm">www.grandforks.com/mld/gr...670670.htm</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Giulio Tononi, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, says consciousness may, in fact, result when lots of information is shared at once. At the age of 16 in Italy, he decided that understanding consciousness was the greatest puzzle in science and he wanted to solve it. Now he believes the key may be understanding why consciousness fades when we fall asleep. Consciousness, his theory holds, emerges when a system integrates information, such as when the different parts of the brain talk to each other. As sleep sets in, those parts stop talking among themselves, thereby dissolving the state of consciousness that emerged from that communication network. Scientists used to think that consciousness vanishes during non-dreaming sleep because the brain rests and stops working. Researchers showed that was wrong when they discovered that during slumber the brain is still electrically and chemically as active as during wakefulness. Consciousness fades away not because the brain takes a nap, Tononi speculated, but because its different parts stop communicating. To test his prediction, he and his colleagues performed an ingenious experiment: When they electrically stimulated an area of the awake brain, that part quickly sent out conference calls to many other parts. But in the sleeping, non-dreaming brain, stimulation produced no conference calls. The area of the brain that was dialed up by the small jolt of electricity sat on the message. "It fit exactly the key prediction of the information-integration theory," Tononi says. "The effect was very clear-cut."<hr></blockquote>

by **JimNelson** » Fri Jan 20, 2006 9:00 pm

So as the tides of consciousness recede (with the gloaming of sleepiness), and the islands of thought are left separated, what exactly are they? On one of the islands the natives spark a fire, begin dancing--a dream commences--what exactly is occuring, and what part of the "integrated" brain is able to "watch" it? I fell asleep last night after staying up late reading 'A Scanner Darkly.' Probably not something I'd recommend. He has some nice riffs on the duality of the mind, but sadly seemed unaware of Julian Jaynes' work. Any readers have any Jaynesianisms to share? Would be interesting, Starroute, to repeat the experiment with functional MRI. What areas of the brain deactivate during sleep? Only the associational tracts, or cortex, too?

by **nashvillebrook** » Fri Jan 20, 2006 9:52 pm

i love the bit about how he pursued these questions since childhood. i've wondered about 'consciousness' since i was a kid too, stumbling on lucid dreaming to work thru nightmares. brain stops taking it's own calls... is it 'taking calls' from elsewhere? or just wandering about? our subjective experience suggests whole narratives. there seems to be a there, there. when i was a kid having bad dreams, my subjective experience was that my dream consciousness was non-local. that's what parents tell you, afterall -- it's only a dream. it's not really 'you.' you don't die if you die in your sleep, etc. another thing about lucid dreaming... is that once you can do something in a dream it's so much easier to it real life. i couldn't put in contacts until i dreamed it. couldn't do conversational french in high school until i dreamed it. i'm waiting to dream where play the drums. my intuition since i was a kid is that brains are like radios and conscious egos are like frequencies on the dial. like how we gravitate to people 'on our wavelength.' only way more elegant.

by **Dreams End** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 3:55 am

I love to think about these things. My first response to the quote was that logic suggests, in interpreting these experiments: 1. consciousness does indeed emerge from the communication of these disparate parts (but which for dreaming as previous poster suggested...and how do dreams find their way to conscious thought?) or 2. consciousness is necessary for these parts to communicate. That is, it is not that the parts can't communicate that extinguishes consciousness, but it is the extinguishing of consciousness that prevents the parts from communicating. Evidence for this would be: we wake up! or 3. Some third thing is extinguished at sleep, which is both necessary for consciousness and necessary for the parts to communicate. But I think there is not even agreement as to what consciousness is...or even WHETHER it is. There seems to be a part of me that overlooks the other streams of thought, directs attention, makes decisions, and ultimately experiences and interprets all of the above. But some suggest this sense of a unified "self' or consciousness is merely an "illusion". I don't buy this, as an illusion requires someone to be "illuded". That is, to twist up Descartes, I'm fooled into thinking I am, therefore I am. Or something like that. Materialistically, it's tough to find where consciousness might reside. We have the subjective experience that we MAKE decisions. However, the model of the brain we have is that of a cascading series of electrochemical reactions. Ultimately, if you know the state of the entire system, you can predict all subsequent reactions. so where is the free will? the decisions aren't being made...the long chain of causes is merely creating an effect. And there's some other interesting experiments that show that decisions are not so much made as rationalized...or at least that's one way to interpret them. Volunteers were rigged up so that the testers could find when the nerves fired that would begin the process of their raising their hand. they were to imagine raising their hand sometimes and actually to raise their hand at others...the decision when was the subject's. What they found is that the nerves to raise the hand were fired up BEFORE the decision to raise the hand registered in the subject's conscious thought. Or, more subjectively, the nerves fired BEFORE the decision was made. It reminds me of hypnosis subjects given bizarre post-hypnotic suggestions. When asked why they clucked like a chicken or whatever, they wouldn't say "I don't know"...they'd try to construct a rationale. Leads to disturbing....or maybe revealing...implications. then another thread here told of experiments similar to the above where reactions to stimulating material were recorded as beginning BEFORE that material was revealed, but not before less stimulating material was revealed. The subject was not told which to expect. If those studies are accurate...it's off to the races for a whole new paradigm of both consciousness and time. the basic problem is that of dualism...which SEEMS right...it feels right. It really feels to me as if some mental phenomenon is in charge of the physical processes in the brain. It feels as if I think about and make decisions...not that an inevitable cascade of electrochemical impulses is simply following a predetermined course. So it SEEMS to us that some "mind stuff" is directing the "brain stuff." This belief is out of fashion among philosophers, I'm afraid. Their objection is a good one. How on earth would such non material stuff interact with the material. Where is the interface? How could it possibly work...and how could non-material "stuff" even do ANYTHING at all? (The other main objection is occam's razor. You don't NEED the extra entity (consciousness) to explain the workings of the brain. I don't buy this either, however. And won't, until a book on tape can succesfully explain the color red to someone blind since birth. In other words, there is an experiential quality to such things as color ("qualia" to the philosophers)...a "what-it's-like-ness", if you will. Some argue complexity theory...that the phenomenon of consciousness emerges out of the complexity of the systemI think this is the equivalent of a shrug and a "beats me!" Some go the quantum route. I don't mean folks like Deepockets Chopra....but scientists. So far, this is not a popular route...and risks utilizing popular treatments of quantum physics in a faddish way. In fact, we often interpret the biggest mysteries in terms of the latest tech breakthrough. We have mind as: computer, hologram or even quantum computer. This suggests that with future advances in technology, new paradigms (really, models with which to conceptualize) will come into being. And I think that is necessary as I have a very subjective feeling that we aren't really that close to the "truth" of the matter. And that, at present, we can't even begin to visualize the truth, even if some aliens came and laid it out for us. Just as holographic models of memory would have made no sense without some awareness of what holograms are like. (non-localized information storage..i.e., you cut a hologram in two, you get two complete images...though not as sharp) so too may the correct understanding of consciousness elude us until we have a model we can actually have access to. And maybe this is not possible. (the famous exam question: Define the universe and give three examples.) And there's always the possibility that, because we are using our minds to solve the problem, and because our minds are PART of the system we are trying to figure out, we may never be able to step outside the system in order to fully conceptualize how it works. All attempts will be incomplete..a la Godel's theorem. Enough late night rambling for now.

by **starroute** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 4:50 am

The part that particularly interests me -- in terms of relating this to my own experience -- is that there seems to be a sort of breakdown of normal though processes just before and after falling asleep. - Hypnogogic imagery is often bizarre and disordered. - The majority of my nightmares have always occurred during the first hour of sleep, which is normally dreamless. Nightmares of that kind are not merely scary but are also deeply non-rational. In ordinary dreams, we tend to try to rationalize anything anomalous. For example, if we see someone with a strange face, we might think, "Gee, that man has a terrible skin condition." In a nightmare, we are far more likely to think, "That man is morphing into an alien reptilian monster!" - If awaked suddenly out of deep sleep, I am often not only extremely disordiented -- which might be explained merely as grogginess -- but also have an intense sense of personal unreality and of my own limited and contingent nature. In short, I'm quite ready to believe that ordinary consciousness is tied in with the ongoing attempt to weave together information coming to us from a variety of incompatible sources, iron out the discrepancies, and construct a coherent narrative. As we enter sleep, that weaving-together process -- and the sense of an "I" that goes along with it (either as cause, as effect, or both) -- lapses. Then, in the latter part of the night, our ordinary dreams serve to re-weave consciousness and our sense of self so that we can awaken knowing instantly who and where we are. There are two areas where I see this linking up with topics of interest at this board. One would be nighttime visions -- whether of ghosts, demons, or aliens -- which are often associated with sleep paralysis and seem likely to be a particularly intense form of the hypnogogic state. The other would have to do with cases of dissociative identity -- which seems to represent an inability to construct a single coherent narrative corresponding to a unified consciousness. (The particularly bizarre imagery associated with recollections of Satanic ritual abuse, in particular, also seems more akin to the hypnogogic state than to ordinary waking consciousness.) I'm also reminded that certain experiments (was it at Princeton?) have been said to suggest that psychic experiences in general are associated with transitions between states of consciousness rather than with any one fixed state of consciousness. A tendency to get stuck in the hypnogogic state could thus be terrifying for a child on whom it was forced willy-nilly but at the same time extremely useful for an adult controller. And recollections of experiences in that state would inevitably hover uneasily between normal reality, hallucinatory reality, and outright dream. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=starroute>starroute</A> at: 1/21/06 1:52 am

by **monster** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 4:59 am

part about Godel's theorem, it's intuitively correct... I remember being blown away by that book Godel, Escher, Bach. Is the set of all sets a member of itself? That's basically why I don't believe God can be self-conscious. There are heirarchies of beings that express his will, but it's in his subconscious. Basically, I guess, God is dreaming.

by **Dreams End** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 5:12 am

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>The other would have to do with cases of dissociative identity -- which seems to represent an inability to construct a single coherent narrative corresponding to a unified consciousness. (The particularly bizarre imagery associated with recollections of Satanic ritual abuse, in particular, also seems more akin to the hypnogogic state than to ordinary waking consciousness.)<hr></blockquote> Well, hypnogogic stuff is interesting. I find myself in that state following perfectly "rational" trains of thought and then pull out a bit and realize I've been thinking stream of conscious gibberish! But there are still so many parts of the brain involved in dreaming...all the things we do and experience in dreams plays out, I imagine, in the same centers it plays out in waking life. And they are fairly coordinated, though different rules often apply. In fact, our brains have to take actions to paralyze our bodies so they don't get in the act...and yet for some, they still do. The DID stuff is a nonstarter. the experiment suggests different areas of the brain not communicating...but each DID alter uses all areas of the brain. While the overall pattern is different, according to brain scans, they all have a coordinated "consciousness" that differs in no way from a "uni" like me. It's not as if different alters reside in different parts of the brain...each of them uses the vision center for vision, frontal lobe for executive function, etc. In fact, because of this, the whole thing is rather mysterious...but I think the idea of a single personality is almost equally mysterious, frankly. So, there is definitely a difference when it's lights out. I think this has less to do with many areas not communicating, and more to do with relaxations on the executive function portion of the brain. the part that helps determine what input is ignored or decides to bring us out of "daydream" states and back into the current moment..the part that focuses our attention where we "want it" to be focused. I think this shuts down..allowing the stream of consciousness to go where it will. Nothing around to judge the "logic" of certain situations or to "doubt". this also suggests that processes that can shut down this part of the brain to a degree, without putting us to sleep, could allow us to remove our filters which sort out "illogical" or "nonrational" input. So, if there really are all kinds of paranormal things around that don't match our logical expectations, decreasing this brain area's function might open us up to perception of these realities. OR......... Might make us more prone to imagining those realities or having them suggested to us as in hypnosis. Or a combination, maybe. I think I may sometimes be too "left brain" to see a ghost, for example. Maybe ghosts are real, and maybe someone else will see it...but my logic filters are too strong (despite being open minded in many ways to these phenomena).

by **anotherdrew** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 5:30 am

you are not your body. Another reason for why the brain seems to stop crosstalking with itself, might be that it is no longer acting as an hyper-complex quantum-antenna linking the body with the higher-self, the brain and body are simply 'parked' in regeneration mode while other experiances continue "up above." Some of those experiences kinda trickle down the link which during sleep is not shut down entirely, it only "lowers it's bandwidth of information exchange." Anyway those experences often only slightly map to any normal human exeriences so take on the strange symbolic forms seen in dreams when later remembered. Learning to do lucid dreaming is a way of keeping the link at a higher "bandwidth" and gernerally partaking only in experiences that are fairly able to be translated into human brain storable/comprehsible memories. does that make sense to anyone? but that all in a way just pushes the consousness problem back a step, how then does the consiousness of the higher-self arise within the Pleroma. but dreaming is still free... as blondie sang: Dream dream, even for a little while Dream dream, filling up an idle hour Fade away, radiate I sit by and watch the river flow I sit by and watch the traffic go Imagine something of your very own Something you can have and hold I'd build a road in gold just to have some dreaming Dreaming is free Dreaming Dreaming is free Dreaming Dreaming is free Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=anotherdrew>anotherdrew</A> at: 1/21/06 2:35 am

by **Dreams End** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 5:36 am

Well, there've been quantum theories proposed for how non-material (so to speak) mind can interact with material mind (Penrose, Emperor's New Mind) ANY theory, when you want to study and understand consciousness scientifically (if that's even possible) would need to explain how that can happen. It's sort of like the creationism problem. Saying "god did it" answers no questions. How does God interact with the physical world? What is god made of? It's fine to suggest these are not answerable questions...but by definition, questions that can not possibly be answered are not scientific questions...they belong to another mode of knowledge. (not to compare your thought to creationism...but it's the same dilemma) Anyway, anotherdrew, your conception could be exactly right and it just may be that science as it now is done, can't really make any headway into that.

by **anotherdrew** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 5:46 am

it's possible the techinques of science could 'prove' something. I'd like to see someday if lucid dreamers/remote viewers could be shown to acuratly exchange information non-phsicly. I think it probably could be done, but... there is something 'over on the other side' that doesn't really seem to totally want us to 'prove' this stuff. Even operative in folks who believe and "do" this stuff, like the 'higher-self' part of them knows better than to let this stuff be scientificly proven. Possibly because it would "ruin the game" or possibly because life on earth is sort of a cosmic "childrens-roped off swiming area" and we are not to get into too deep water too soon as we may get lost. or perhaps the gnostics had it about right... The posibilities are many. and I should probably shut up now before I draw the "wrath of the archons" LOL from a scientific standpoint, I think we need to really identify a memory storage mechanism of some sort. I'm curently leaning toward conway game-of-life cellular automata type systems, von neuman machines, binary cellular matricies growing in multiple 2d membranes organised in an infinite-dimensional bulk. These spaces would in effect be the 'body' of any unique 'higher-self' although all are still part of the pleroma and so "all is one" remains true. I'm not expecting to come up with any books on this, I'm not trying to convince anyone, but it's fun to share sometimes the product of my synthesis in these maters. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=anotherdrew>anotherdrew</A> at: 1/21/06 3:02 am

by **Dreams End** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 6:16 am

So much of the reality we even have some understanding of is so hard to grasp. Here's a picture of a sculpture of a 4 dimensional object's shadow in three dimensions. And a 4d object's shadow WOULD have three dimensions. That's weird enough. Sculpture is weirder. <img src="http://www.science.psu.edu/alert/photos/miscphotos/sculpturePhotoSm4.jpg" style="border:0;"/>

by **anotherdrew** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 6:45 am

from what I can gather about the octacube it's a shadow being cast into 3d but the light source must also be 4d. It seems to me a 4d hypercube were sitting in the air, light from our sun would cast a 2d shadow when it fell on the ground. In fact it seems to me it would just look like a cube, any extent of meterial in the 4th D would not block any light rays. on the other hand "I Am Not A Topologist"

by **nomo** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 7:04 am

Does light exist in a fourth dimension?

by **eric144** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 7:54 am

Does light exist in a fourth dimension?

Light travels at the sped of light so therefore essentially exists 'outsid'e of time. Light is the great mystery of physics becaaus althoughit is a localised phenomeonon(photon), it's sped means it is simultanously at all points in 3d space (see wave particle duality, Youg's slits experiments) because it is essentially a wave phenomenon. Light is the messenger between the spiritual and physical world as is constantly refenced in for example Christian , Hindu and Buddhist mystical literature. Not being smart, all the above is very conventional, if someone could genuinely tie it together he would be a great genius.

by **anotherdrew** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 8:20 am

4d light - well, a line in 4d would just have a fourth vector component, like a line in 3d has X, Y and Z a 4th spacial dimention would be W. I'd say all the lines in space or light paths already have a W component, just all the lines we see seem to have a W slope of zero all the time. the cube is special because it's the simplest form that can enclose space using only striaght lines, with all intersections being perpendicular. it has 6 sides = 2 x 3d, in a 2d sace you get a square, 4 sides = 2 x2d, so hence the name octacube, in a 4d space the simplest closed space using only 90degree angles and straight lines gives you 8 3d surfaces making up the octacube or the older term hypercube or Tesseract. I'm not sure it's physicly possible to really 'visualize' this though, it's like someone with total blindness from birth trying to imagine the color green but actually maybe even harder than that. I believe some such blind persons have reported seeing colors and things in dreams, but not often. There's an area to research, the dreams of the congenitally blind... hmmm... <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Do the Blind Literally "See" in Their Dreams? A Critique of a Recent Claim That They Do Abstract This article provides a critique of a recent inaccurate claim that the congenitally blind literally "see" in their dreams, which flies in the face of findings that were established in 3 careful previous studies. It first shows how this claim arose through a blurring of the distinction between actual seeing through the visual system and imagery that preserves spatial and metric properties without specific reliance on the visual system. It then discusses the 3 mistaken reasons for this blurring. This correction is important beyond the specific issue of seeing in dreams because the original findings lend important support for a cognitive theory of dreaming by showing that the imagery necessary for dreaming develops between ages 4 and 7. <a href="http://psych.ucsc.edu/dreams/Library/kerr_2004.html">psych.ucsc.edu/dreams/Lib..._2004.html</a> <hr></blockquote> well, it clearly looks like it's not common, but I wonder what would happen if RV/lucid dreaming/TM type activities were undertaken by a congenitally blind person? Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=anotherdrew>anotherdrew</A> at: 1/21/06 5:23 am

The dissolution of consciousness as we fall asleep

The dissolution of consciousness as we fall asleep

Stop Thinking About It

MRI data has to exist somewhere...

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The hypnogogic state

I like the

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yeah yeah yeah, but...

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3d shadow

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Re: 3d shadow

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