"Your Brain Works Like a Radio" and other mind matters

[DrEvil]

A thought just popped into my head: If the planet has a global mind of some sort, mediated by magnetic fields, biochemistry, ultra-dimensional elves or whatnot, what does that make us? A virus, or planetary sperm?

[Allegro]

Not to mention the mindfuck crossing the galactic plane.

. QED .

...We have the ability to recover the voluntary from the autonomic, to transform the instinctual with the intuitive.

Most times, at first attempts, it’s easier without pressing one’s self to empirically explore and observe enough— for instance, through viewing forms of art or perhaps listening to music performances, and there’s observing nature, of course —one can become confident for the very unknowable quiet nuance that unconceals whatever there is to be. Sometimes, without perceiving what’s to be perceived, until at the moment of Surprise, as someone else noted a few weeks ago. Variables for any one individual experience are myriad, and make for most a forum conversation enormously complicated and exhausting.

In conclusion , we see what we see until we see again.
The Gods help me, I’m beginning to sound like You and You .

Of course, this.

This fractal universe vibrates complete.

Pixelated, at the start.

POST 2499

[Hammer of Los]

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transmitting, transmitting

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[Allegro]

Here are some thoughts I’ve talked about from time to time, but hadn’t seriously begun to put into words until recently. The writing here was entirely inspired after viewing the first time the documentary, The Music Instinct: Science & Song.

~ A.

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With a few exceptions I’ll call curiosities, this documentary, The Music Instinct: Science & Song, is brilliant. Those curiosities, by the way, are, as a pianist, as biased for the heart-brain connection as scientists’ biases are for the brain—at the near exclusion of the heart. The documentary has been posted in this comment space, below.

Please keep in mind that I’m not a scientist—alas, not a writer, either—but a pianist trained in the classical, western European traditions, which is to say, until I discover differently, I feel most neuroscientists’ sensibilities aren’t within range of most extraordinary musical capacities, granted as spoken in a presumptive sense, of course. Therefore, skepticism between proficient music performers and learned scientists should not be disparaged but encouraged. My paramount inquiry is, ‘In our known universe, where is music not?’

The only thing is, apparently, most if not all musicians and scientists are neither investigating nor demonstrating curiosities about tenacious responses evidenced by the physical heart—its intrinsic vibrations; rhythms in those vibrations; resonances or frequencies theorized as themselves music—with regard to skilled performers’ psychophysiological tendencies observed during their music performances.

The focus of musicians and scientists in this documentary is music and the brain. My preferred preconception is that current voluminous investigation of the brain expanded with research of vibrations within human psychophysiology would at some point multiply exponentially once the heart’s prestimulus or intuitive process is not excluded. In other words, I’m suggesting scientists and musicologists are not asking all the questions they might with regard to involuntary precognitions expected and experienced by adept music performers during their rehearsals and stage or studio performances.

It’s no surprise that sounds of music alter human biology, which is an idea mentioned in the documentary; thus, neuroscientific audial investigations of music—with the human heart’s vibrations and rhythms also considered forms of music perhaps not melodious and harmonious as we humans are so apt to expect—could very possibly increase neuroscientists’ studies to higher levels of complexity via their own physical hearts and brains.

Speculation mentioned in the documentary: humans and music could have co-evolved, that is, not evolving without the other, over millennia.

Producers of the documentary may have omitted scenes in which the role of the physical heart had been clarified more than a few fleeting seconds it was noted by way of an obvious fact or two.* Nonetheless, this documentary is fascinating.

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The Music Instinct | Science & Song
A film written and directed by Elena Mannes

YOUTUBE NOTES. The Music Instinct: Science & Song explores ground-breaking science revealing the power of music and its connection with the body, the brain and the world of nature. The film deals with research, showing music can heal as well as its potential for education.

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Featured in the documentary: Bobby McFerrin, Daniel J. Levitin, Brian Greene, Evelyn Glennie, Daniel Bernard Roumain, Daniel Barenboim, Robert J. Zatorre, Lawrence Parsons, Steven Mithen, Nicholas J. Conard, Yo-Yo Ma, Jamshed Bharucha, Kay K. Shelemay, Christine Karam, Sandra E. Trehub, Sheila C. Woodward, Kathleen Wermke, Yungchen Lhamo, Gino Sitson, Tom Fritz, John Sloboda, Gottfried Schlaug, Hwaen Ch’uqi, Oliver Sacks, Tony Cicoria, Sebastian Jentschke, Darlene Monda, Isabelle Peretz, Aniruddh Patel, Steven Pinker, Ofer Tchernichovski.

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* Refer Electrophysiological Evidence of Intuition: Part 1 | 2004 - The Surprising Role of the Heart. Abstract and papers included here.

[Freitag]

For instance, I routinely hear voices -- have my whole life. Most nights I can just listen to banal conversations while I pass out.

It could be worse, you could have Exploding Head Syndrome, like I do.

[Wombaticus Rex]

A thought just popped into my head: If the planet has a global mind of some sort, mediated by magnetic fields, biochemistry, ultra-dimensional elves or whatnot, what does that make us? A virus, or planetary sperm?

We're the wires, the nuts and bolts, the infrastructure, the canvas, the medium, the receiver, etc.

[Canadian_watcher]

For instance, I routinely hear voices -- have my whole life. Most nights I can just listen to banal conversations while I pass out. I'm totally ambivalent about the "origin" of these conversations and monologues but I don't identify with them and the sensation is different from actual audible hearing. Still, based on that basic and ongoing life circumstance, I've always been attracted to the Brain as Radio model/metaphor. It fits my empirical experience. In a way that lets me not be a latent schizophrenic.

Me too. I could have written that post verbatim.
Do you find that you can concentrate on the conversations? I have trouble doing that.. usually I only hear three or four (max) back and forths between whatever participants are speaking on any given night and then I fall to sleep.

[LilyPatToo]

Sometimes, when there's a fan on in the bedroom, within the white noise I'll hear a conversation. Usually it's a man's and a woman's voices and I occasionally hear the rattle of a newspaper page being turned. No clue where the sounds are coming from--too far from the neighbors' houses to hear a conversation in normal voices. It's difficult to pick out the words, but I do hear inflection and varying rhythms in their speech. Interestingly, a real conversation coming from our kitchen sounds very similar if you're inside the bedroom with the door closed--speech, but not individual words.

It doesn't happen often and it's not part of a dream--I'm awake at the time, often about to get up for the day. Makes me wonder if that particular place in my house has the sort of haunting that's like a recording of a banal incident from the era when it was built--late 1920's.

LilyPat

[Iamwhomiam]

Freitag wrote:
It could be worse, you could have Exploding Head Syndrome, like I do.

[Saurian Tail]

Anthony Peake is a consciousness writer that I've paid some attention to over the last few years … his research fits right in with this topic.

On his Facebook page he says of the video posted below:

I am also of the opinion that this presentation encapsulates everything that I am about and stands as a perfect explanation of where I am with regards to my research .... Indeed I feel that this talk is the culmination of my career ... I will find it almost impossible to better this.

Since he felt this was the best possible summary of his work, I thought that I would post it here. It is well worth the listen:



http://youtu.be/0KzT44_9ygc

[nashvillebrook]

I had an MRI yesterday. You have to lie completely still in a tight tube for a half hour while magnets make a really loud drumbeat. Some people get panic attacks in the MRI machine but I don't mind it. It's a long time to lie still so you might as well just marvel at, and be aware of what your brain is doing while you're in there.

So I'm lying there and I'm getting all kinds of visual and cognitive imagery. In one set of images I realize every night this week I've been dreaming of a black skimmer flying by and just barely seeing it as it flies away from me. I've been chasing black skimmers around to photograph them in real life. One frustrating pass after another watching the southbound end of a northbound bird, looping in my mind's eye.

Then, almost immediately after the skimmer, I had a sudden insight as to what a childhood hypnogogic experience was about. When I was really little, 5 maybe, I was napping/not-napping when I found a linear split in the world I found myself walking down dark stairs to a door where there was a fairy (swear to god, and i wasn't even into fairies) looking just like you'd imagine, only big like an adult. And she said to me that I couldn't go into "the club" but I would be able to later.

I'd always wondered who the fairy was, and in the MRI machine out of nowhere it occurred to me that she was me. It was older me talking to younger me.

Not meant as proof of anything, just that I've always thought that brains are like radios, and that being in an MRI machine provided a unique opportunity to mess around with the notion

[nashvillebrook]

Might as well share this too…I've always had a feeling that brains were like receiver-transmitters, and got into some trouble with the idea in Philosophy of Mind class b/c I wasn't yet good enough at rhetoric to do anything interesting with the idea, but just couldn't leave it alone. My professor was a libertarian skeptic just to make things a worst case scenario. Somehow I passed the class.

One of my intuitions or hypotheses on the subject is that some forms of "giftedness," as measured in school tests, are really just about being able to tune into the test-taker enough to give them the answer they're looking for. I was a good test taker. A way better test taker than I was a student. Not engaged enough to even be interested but understood everything and ignored the stuff that bored me further.

The older I get, the more I'm sure that testing high as a kid had to do with pulling the answers out of thin air. I was able to mirror the test-giver.

Growing up, I lived in a very small world circumscribed by my grandmother's depression and my grandfather's social security checks. The biggest cultural experiences of my childhood involved going to the lumber yard. I was an only-kid living with old people -- I HAD TO learn how to read them, and I think that gets confused with intelligence.

Or, maybe it's a form of intelligence. At any rate, it's not the same kind of linear intelligence that we normally think of when we think of IQ.

[Saurian Tail]

In one set of images I realize every night this week I've been dreaming of a black skimmer flying by and just barely seeing it as it flies away from me. I've been chasing black skimmers around to photograph them in real life.

That's such an interesting image. Hypnagogic imagery and dream recognition is a big part of what helped me get my first real glimpses into the autonomous nature of the mind. The mind just flits from here to there running thoughts and images like your black skimmers. I'm sure it has some sort of emotional charge to it that is metaphorically significant to you that they are appearing both inside and outside. It's quite interesting.

I get a similar set of hypnagogic images related to riding bicycles … a rider will come from behind me and practically brush right up against me as he zooms past … there is a real feeling of close motion, proximity, and familiarity that is really hard to describe. I've also had the rider come towards me and swerve away at the last moment before we run into each other. Sometimes I just have to laugh and think "Where the heck did that come from!!"

I hope your MRI results were encouraging nashvillebrook … prayers and blessings to you this evening.

[Hammer of Los]

...

Might as well share this too…I've always had a feeling that brains were like receiver-transmitters, and got into some trouble with the idea in Philosophy of Mind class b/c I wasn't yet good enough at rhetoric to do anything interesting with the idea, but just couldn't leave it alone. My professor was a libertarian skeptic just to make things a worst case scenario. Somehow I passed the class.

That's funny, man.

Libertarian skeptic eh?

I guess you didnt mention the ultra dimensional elves then?

I'm supposing it's always better not to mention the ultra dimensional elves.
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[slimmouse]

Just a quick thanks to ST for posting the vidieo. Its a pretty impressive presentation IMHO.

My, my. All our brains are full of holes.......wormholes !