20 December 2018
Morning. You are sitting in the car at Ohio Health across from Boy Scout Camp Lazarus on Rt. 23 south of Delaware waiting for Carol who has an appointment. After eleven Kim is coming over to the house to help her mother with organizing her large table and files in the workroom. - Amorella
Late morning. Carol and Kim are in the workroom. You have been reading an article you found online in Quora. Drop it in and I will add an explanation onto why I consider it important enough to include in today's posting. - Amorella
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The Brain’s Autopilot Mechanism Steers Consciousness
Freud’s notion of a dark, libidinous unconscious is obsolete. A new theory holds that the brain produces a continuous stream of unconscious predictions
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IN BRIEF
Research on the unconscious mind has shown that the brain makes judgments and decisions quickly and automatically. It continuously makes predictions about future events.
According to the theory of the “predictive mind,” consciousness arises only when the brain’s implicit expectations fail to materialize.
Higher cognitive processing in the cerebral cortex can occur without consciousness. The regions of the brain responsible for the emotions and motives, not the cortex, direct our conscious attention.
In 1909 five men converged on Clark University in Massachusetts to conquer the New World with an idea. At the head of this little troupe was psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Ten years earlier Freud had introduced a new treatment for what was called “hysteria” in his book The Interpretation of Dreams. This work also introduced a scandalous view of the human psyche: underneath the surface of consciousness roils a largely inaccessible cauldron of deeply rooted drives, especially of sexual energy (the libido). These drives, held in check by socially inculcated morality, vent themselves in slips of the tongue, dreams and neuroses. The slips in turn provide evidence of the unconscious mind.
At the invitation of psychologist G. Stanley Hall, Freud delivered five lectures at Clark. In the audience was philosopher William James, who had traveled from Harvard University to meet Freud. It is said that, as James departed, he told Freud, “The future of psychology belongs to your work.” And he was right.
The view that human beings are driven by dark emotional forces over which they have little or no control remains widespread. In this conception, the urgings of the conscious mind constantly battle the secret desires of the unconscious. Just how rooted the idea of a dark unconscious has become in popular culture can be seen in the 2015 Pixar film Inside Out. Here the unconscious mind of a girl named Riley is filled with troublemakers and fears and housed in a closed space. People like to think of the unconscious as a place where we can shove uncomfortable thoughts and impulses because we want to believe that conscious thought directs our actions; if it did not, we would seemingly have no control over our lives.
This image could hardly be less accurate, however.Recent research indicates that conscious and the unconscious processes do not usually operate in opposition.
They are not competitors wrestling for hegemony over our psyche. They are not even separate spheres, as Freud’s later classification into the ego, id and superego would suggest.
Rather there is only one mind in which conscious and unconscious strands are interwoven. In fact, even our most reasonable thoughts and actions mainly result from automatic, unconscious processes.
THE PREDICTIVE MIND
A revolutionary, and now widely accepted, countermodel to Freud’s scheme goes by the term “predictive mind.” The theory comes in different flavors, but overall it holds that automatic processes play a central role in the mind, allowing us to predict events quickly and accurately as they arise.
Learning, experience and consciousness constantly improve our implicit, or unconscious, predictions, and we take note of events only when the predictions fail.
That is, we become conscious of circumstances when they merit our attention. This automaticity enables us to function smoothly in the world, and becoming conscious when predictions fail enables us to avoid the pitfalls of automatic processing and adjust to changes in our environment.
In a simplified example, unconscious processes predict the trajectory of a ball tossed to us and adjusts our limb motions accordingly. Conscious processing would become engaged, however, if the ball took a sudden right-angle turn.
Like the popular conception of the embattled mind, the predictive mind perspective is rooted in 19th-century precursors. Physicist and physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz was the first to hypothesize that the conclusions we arrive at automatically are anchored in perception.
Our visual system, for example, readily produces an imaginary triangle out of three strategically placed circles with slices cut out (illustration). According to Helmholtz, such useful illusions proved that preprogrammed mechanisms shape our image of the world without our doing anything at all.
The predictive mind model now hypothesizes that this automaticity shapes not only our perceptions but all mental processes, including our judgments, decisions and actions.
The Kanizsa triangle illusion provides evidence that our perception is based on implicit inferences. Our visual system constructs an imaginary triangle as a way to “explain” the arrangement of the circles. Credit: Scientific American
To physically function smoothly in the world, you need your brain to quickly and automatically distinguish between the body’s own actions and external inputs.
It accomplishes this feat by creating a so-called efference copy of each command it sends to muscles. When you shake your head back and forth, for example, you know that the external world is not rocking back and forth even though the visual cues reaching the brain might give that impression, because the efference copy indicates that the brain itself gave the motion commands.
The efference copy is also the reason you cannot create the same tickle sensation in your own foot that others can induce: when the tickling sensation at the sole of your foot is processed, the areas of the brain responsible for perception of touch are already well informed that your own fingers are doing the job.
The workings of unconscious processes are also evident in a wide variety of other phenomena, such as automatic movements, spontaneous associations, jumping to instant conclusions (an example of what scientists call “implicit inferences”) and perception of subliminal stimuli (those not consciously recognized).
Laboratory experiments have shown that test subjects recognize the rule underlying a particular task before they are able to verbalize the rule.
In one study design, for example, volunteers are asked to draw cards from two stacks, one that could bring huge hypothetical profits but also massive losses and one that is less risky; the volunteers are not told of the difference between the stacks.
Signs of stress, such as increased sweating, will reveal that the subjects sense the pattern—the difference between the stacks—long before they can articulate that one of the piles is risky.
As neuroscientist Nicolas Schuck of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin has recently demonstrated, such implicit inferences affect activity in certain parts of the frontal lobe—where decisions are often said to be made—even before the test subjects make their decisions.
THE POWER OF SUBLIMINAL STIMULI
Research using a subliminal intervention called priming provides further examples of the ways unconscious processing influences behavior.
Experimenters present images, words or even physical sensations in such a way that test subjects either will not notice the stimuli (because the exposure is too brief) or will disregard them (because they presumably have nothing to do with whatever is being focused on).
In an example of the latter strategy, psychologists may ask subjects to read texts in which certain words appear multiple times without the words being highlighted and ask control subjects to read a neutral text.
If the test subjects display measurable differences in thinking, feeling or acting after reading the text with multiple occurrences of the word, researchers can assume that the text had an unconscious effect.
Numerous studies have demonstrated that subliminal stimulation involving concepts such as aging or death have measurable consequences on behavior. Test subjects move more slowly, for example, or become more responsive to spiritual ideas. The phenomenon is familiar in everyday life. Passing a bakery, people may suddenly remember that they forgot to get the ingredients for a birthday cake. Our unconscious paves the way for our actions.
Such examples confirm that the brain functions along multiple tracks. Compared with a computer, our gray matter chugs along very slowly—but on many parallel levels.
Researchers often distinguish between two general strands, however. Nobel laureate in economics
Daniel Kahneman calls them System 1 and System 2. Others speak of implicit and explicit or hot versus cold processing. The first strand (System 1, implicit, hot) refers to the rapid, automatic and uncontrollable workings of the unconscious mind; the other strand (System 2, explicit, cold) describes the slow, more flexible conscious processes that are subject to volition.
But what is key in the predictive mind conception of mental functioning is that these two strands always work in tandem; in other words, our mind operates both unconsciously and consciously.
The following sentences illustrate the truth of this assertion: Veery nmoral sopern acn dpeciher eseth drows. Talhoguh het telters rae ramscbled, ouy houlsd vahe on ficudiflty unstanddering thaw si geibn dias. Ouy anc od hist ecabuse fo het sursingpri mautoaticity fo het brian! Most people will take only a fraction of a second to become aware of what the next word must be. The autopilot in our brain anticipates the words and quickly sorts the scrambled letters.
A big riddle is what precisely distinguishes conscious from unconscious processes at the neurophysiological level—and how exactly they interact.
According to philosopher Peter Carruthers of the University of Maryland, College Park, we are aware only of the material in our working memory: the “user interface,” so to speak.
But working memory holds only a vanishingly small fraction of the data we take in. We remain unconscious of most of the input that floods the brain—and feeds System 1, which processes it automatically and quickly.
What does the brain do with these data? It constantly peers into the future, considering, What will happen next? What stimuli are likely to come up? Anything dangerous on the horizon? What are others up to?
Such prognostications relate not only to the outer world but to the internal milieu of our bodies.
Seen in this light, our desire to eat is nothing more than the unconscious anticipation of an impending loss of energy.
Our unconscious aims to maintain homeostasis, to keep our body (including the balance of energy intake and use) in a steady state.
PREDICTIVE NEUROBIOLOGY
Mark Solms of the University of Cape Town in South Africa, who is a strong proponent of the predictive mind theory, has added other insights to the neurobiological basis of unconscious and conscious functioning.
In contrast to Freud, he argues that our mind is not seeking greater consciousness but rather the opposite—to keep consciousness to a minimum.
As he explains, “You know the Talking Heads song where ‘heaven is a place where nothing, nothing ever happens’? Well, that’s the brain’s preferred state because it is energy- and time-efficient. It’s a survival mechanism.”
In 1909 a delegation of psychoanalysts, including Sigmund Freud (bottom row, left) and Carl Gustav Jung (bottom row, right), attended a conference at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., organized by Stanley Hall (bottom row, center). Freud delivered five lectures. Credit: Getty Images
Solms described this idea in a 2018 paper co-authored with Karl Friston of University College London, a key figure in the development of the imaging techniques that have so revolutionized brain research.
About 10 years ago Friston introduced the free energy principle, a mathematically formalized version of the theory of the predictive brain.
In his definition, free energy in the brain describes the neuronal state that results from the brain’s failure to make a correct prediction; the brain does all it can to avoid free energy.
In the final analysis, Solms and Friston assert, predictive errors equal surprise equals consciousness; when things do not work as expected, we get consciousness—a state the brain tries to limit.
This perspective not only stands Freud’s theory on its head, but it also contradicts the classic view that the cortex (the outer layer of the cerebrum) is the source of consciousness.
According to Solms, these higher regions are not the bearers of consciousness but instead are “told” what to attend to by deeper structures in the brain stem and midbrain.
Solms locates the source of consciousness in the areas of the brain that regulate alertness, emotional stimulation, and drives—precisely those areas where Freud located the unconscious (brain illustration).
“The pattern-detection mechanisms of the cortex work most efficiently without conscious attention. It is the deeper, emotional parts of the brain, the limbic structures, from which consciousness arises,” he says.
This hypothesis can be empirically confirmed. Children who as a result of developmental disorders were born without a cerebral cortex are capable of forms of consciousness, for example. Such infants, if they survive into childhood, are not only alert but display emotional reactions.
In a 2007 review, neuroscientist Björn Merker concluded that numerous conscious phenomena occur even without a cerebral cortex.
Although more complex mental operations such as logical thinking or self-reflection are not possible, emotions such as joy, annoyance or sadness can be experienced.
The brain’s outer rind—the cerebral cortex—is the seat of higher mental functions in traditional views of the brain.
But in a model proposed by Mark Solms of the University of Cape Town in South Africa, consciousness arises from activity in lower regions, such as the reticular activating system, the ventral tegmentum and the thalamus.
For instance, sensory information—all of which passes through the thalamus—becomes conscious only when it is emotionally or motivationally relevant, in which case the prefrontal and the cingulate cortex direct our attention to it.
Meanwhile the striatum and the precuneus play a role in automatic movement control and orientation, which enable us to interact with our environment without giving it a conscious thought. Credit: Falconieri Visuals
THE REAL MASTERMIND
Many people stubbornly cling to the old distinction between the instinctive unconscious and rational consciousness, with a preference for the latter.
But, as I have shown, this view is untenable.
Unconscious processes greatly control our consciousness. Where you direct your attention, what you remember and the ideas you have, what you filter out from the flood of stimuli that bombard you, how you interpret them and what goals you pursue—all these result from automatic processes.
Timothy Wilson of the University of Virginia considers this reliance on the unconscious to be the price that we pay for survival as a species.
If we were forced always to consider every aspect of the situation around us and had to weigh all our options about what to do, humankind would have died out long ago.
The autopilot in our brain—not consciousness—makes us what we are.
The real mastermind that solves problems and ensures our survival, then, is the unconscious.It is understandable that people tend to distrust the unconscious, given that it seems uncontrollable.
How are we supposed to be in control of something when we do not even know when and how it influences us? Nevertheless, the arrangement works.
John Bargh of Yale University, who studies priming, compares the human mind to a sailor: To steer a boat from point A to point B, a sailor needs to know the destination and be able to make course corrections.
Such abilities are not sufficient, however, because, as is true of the unconscious, uncontrollable factors such as ocean currents and wind come into play. But expert sailors take them into account to arrive at their destination.
We do well to treat our unconscious similarly—by not getting in its way. And that is really what we do day in and day out.
When I put a picture of my loved ones on my desk to fuel my motivation for work or when I take the stairs instead of the elevator, I am steering my unconscious mind, recognizing that its desires for leisure and rest do not serve my best interests at the moment.
And the fact that I am able to do this shows that the conscious and the unconscious are partners rather than opponents.
This article originally appeared in Gehirn&Geist and has been reproduced with permission.
Selected and edited from - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brains-autopilot-mechanism-steers-consciousness/?utm_source=quora&utm_medium=referral
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1152 hours. This is quite an interesting article. I am wondering how your processing (your [Amorella's] sense of consciousness flowing from my brain into my fingertips on the keyboard) fits in this article's hypothesis? First though, I need to look up 'automaticity' from a background scientific perspective via Wikipedia
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Neurobiological models of altered state experiences
The entropic brain hypothesis
A theory, informed by neuroimaging research, that investigates and utilizes the psychedelic brain state in particular, to make inferences about other states of consciousness, is the entropic brain hypothesis by Robin L. Carhart-Harris (2014).[39] The expression "entropy" is applied here in the context of states of consciousness and their associated neurodynamics, while high entropy is synonymous with high disorder. It is proposed that a general distinction can be made between two fundamentally different modes of cognition: Primary and secondary consciousness. Primary consciousness is associated with unconstrained cognition and less ordered (higher-entropy) neurodynamics that preceded the development of modern, healthy adult, normal waking consciousness. Examples include the psychedelic state, rapid eye movement sleep (REM) or the onset phase of psychosis. Secondary consciousness is associated with constrained cognition and more ordered neurodynamics. Examples include normal waking consciousness, the anesthetized or the depressed state. The theory further proposes that via induction of the classic psychedelic substance psilocybin, the brain is able to enter into a primary state of consciousness (the psychedelic state) from normal waking consciousness. This "phase transition" between these fundamentally different states of consciousness is facilitated by a collapse of the normally highly organized activity within the default mode network (DMN) and a decoupling between the DMN and the medial temporal lobes (MTLs), which are normally significantly coupled.[39] The DMN is closely associated with higher-order cognitive functions such as sub-functions of the neurological basis for the self (e.g. self-reflection, subjectivity, introspection), thinking about others (e.g. theory of mind), remembering the past and thinking about the future (e.g. episodic memory). Task-positive networks are associated with the inverse of these things, e.g., focus on and scrutiny of the external world.
The entropic brain hypothesis emphasizes the great research potential of the psychedelic state of mind for gaining more insight into general human consciousness.
History
History of utilization of ASCs
ASCs might have been employed by humans as early as 30,000 years ago.[10] Fields of application were mainly religion and spirituality. Mind-altering plants and/ or excessive dancing were used in order to attain an ecstatic or mystic state.[13] Examples of early religious use are the rites of Dionysos and the Eluisian Mysteries,[14] as well as Yoga and Meditation.[10] To the recent day, followers of various shamanic traditions "enter altered states of consciousness in order to serve their community".[14] One rather speculative theory by McKenna suggests that the use of psychedelic mushrooms in prehistoric times has led to the "evolution of human language and symbol use".[15] Furthermore, some theorists argue that mind-altering substances might have pushed the formation of some of the world's main religions (See also: Soma).[14] The book Altering Consciousness (Etzel Cardeña, Michael Winkelman) summarizes multiple of these therories.
Meditation in its various forms is being rediscovered by modern psychology because of its therapeutic potential and its ability to "enable the activity of the mind to settle down".[16] In Psychotherapy techniques like hypnosis, meditation, support psychological processes.[17]
History of the science and theoretical-modelling
Due to the behaviourist paradigm in psychology altered states of consciousness were dismissed as a field of scientific inquiry during the early 20th century.[18] They were pathologized and merely seen as symptoms of intoxication or demonic possession.[19]
Their return into psychology began with Wiliam James' interest into a variety of altered states, such as "mystical experiences and drug-induced states".[8] James' investigations into first-person-subjective-experience contributed to the reconsideration of introspection as a valuable research method in the academic community.[8]
The social change of the turbulent 1960s has decisively led to a change of the scientific perspective to the point that introspection as a scientific method and ASCs as valid realms of experience became more widely accepted.[20] Foundations for the research have been laid out by various scientists such as Abraham Maslow, Walter N. Pahnke, Stanislav Grof and Charles Tart.[21] They focused on seemingly beneficial aspects of ASCs such as their potential to "promote creativity or treat addiction".[9]Rather oppressive states such as dissociation from trauma were neglected.
In the midst of the rise of new-age subculture Stanislav Grof and others formed the new field of transpersonal psychology, which emphasized "the importance of individual human experience, validity of mystical and spiritual experience, interconnectedness of self with others and the world and potential of self-transformation".[22]
Abraham Maslow's research on peak experiences, as moments of "highest happiness and fulfillment",[22] further contributed to the depathologization of altered states.
A first summary of the existing literature was carried out by Charles T. Tart in his book Altered the States of Consciousness, which led to a more common use of the term.[22] Tart coined the key terms discrete[note 2] and baseline states of consciousness and thought about a general classification system for ASCs.[23] He also called for "state specific sciences"[10] in which researchers should do science on ASCs from within such states.
Classification
A classification of Altered States of Consciousness is helpful if one wants to compare or differentiate between induced ASCs and other variations of consciousness. Various researchers have attempted the classification into a broader framework. The attempts of classification discussed in the following focus on slightly different aspects of ASCs. Several authors suggested classification schemata with regard to the genesis of altered states and with regard to the type of experiences:
A classification with five categories was suggested by Vaitl[24] to distinguish ASCs according to how they were induced:
· Spontaneous(day-dreaming and near-death experience)
· Physical and physiological (fasting and sex)
· Psychological(music, meditation, hypnosis)
· Pathological (Epilepsy, brain damage)
· Pharmacological (psychoactive substances)
Vaitl[25] further suggests four basic aspects of experiences: (1) activation (2) awarenessspan (3) self-awareness (4) sensory dynamics. Alternatively Roland Fischer[25] suggests a classification along ergotropic (i.e., ecstasy) or trophotropic (i.e., meditation) properties. The work of Adolph Dittrich[25] aimed to empirically determine common underlying dimensions of consciousness altererations induced by different methods, such as drugs or non-pharmacological methods. He suggested three basic dimensions, which were termed: (1) oceanic boundlessness (2) dread of ego dissolution(3) visionary restructuralization. Further, Ken Wilber[10] proposes a multidimensional system and adds that the individual experience of an ASC is shaped by a person's unique psychological development.
Selected and edited from - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_state_of_consciousness
Added supplemental to'Good Friday Experiment' mentioned above:
Marsh Chapel Experiment / [Good Friday Experiment]
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Experiment
Prior to the Good Friday service, twenty graduate degree divinity student volunteers from the Boston area were randomly divided into two groups. In a double-blind experiment, half of the students received psilocybin, while a control group received a large dose of niacin.
Niacin produces clear physiological changes and thus was used as an active placebo. In at least some cases, those who received the niacin initially believed they had received the psychoactive drug.[3]:5
However, the feeling of face flushing (turning red, feeling hot and tingly) produced by niacin subsided after about an hour after receiving the dose. However, the effects of the psilocybin intensified over the first few hours.
Almost all of the members of the experimental group reported experiencing profound religious experiences,providing empirical support for the notion that psychedelic drugs can facilitate religious experiences.
One of the participants in the experiment was religious scholar Huston Smith, who would become an author of several textbooks on comparative religion. He later described his experience as "the most powerful cosmic homecoming I have ever experienced".[4]
In a 25-year follow-up to the experiment, all of the subjects given psilocybin described their experience as having elements of "a genuine mystical nature and characterized it as one of the high points of their spiritual life".[3]:13
Psychedelic researcher Rick Doblin considered Pahnke's original study partially flawed due to incorrect implementation of the double-blind procedure, and several imprecise questions in the mystical experience questionnaire.
Nevertheless, Doblin said that Pahnke's study cast "a considerable doubt on the assertion that mystical experiences catalyzed by drugs are in any way inferior to non-drug mystical experiences in both their immediate content and long-term effects".[3]:24
A similar sentiment was expressed by clinical psychologist William A. Richards, who in 2007 stated "[psychedelic] mushroom use may constitute one technology for evoking revelatory experiences that are similar, if not identical, to those that occur through so-called spontaneous alterations of brain chemistry."[5]
In a 14-month follow-up to this study, over half of the participants rated the experience among the top five most meaningful spiritual experiences in their lives, and considered the experience to have increased their personal well-being and life satisfaction.[7]
Selected and Edited from Wikipedia
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Later afternoon. Under "Classification" above you were hesitant as you just underlined the categories and sub-parts. I thus, took part and underlined the sub-parts:[day-dreaming and near-death experience] and [music, meditation, hypnosis]. - Amorella
1649 hours. My 'spontaneous flashes' are not daydreams. I do agree though that the classifications: spontaneous and psychological are correct. In fact, most places I have described in both "Encounters Blogs" are closer to spontaneous flashes than insightful visions. Some (over the decades) may have been spiritual, a couple even religious-like manifestations. Some may have been nothing more than intuitive flashes from less spiritual orientations of the brain.
Time for a your nap, don't you think? More later. Post now in case you do not get back to this until tomorrow. Amorella
