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Future discussion topic recommendations

Future discussion topic recommendations

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Several of us met on Labor Day with the goal of identifying topics for at least five future monthly meetings. (Thanks, Dave N, for hosting!) Being the overachievers we are, we pushed beyond the goal. Following are the resulting topics, which will each have its own article on this site where we can begin organizing references for the discussion: sex-related influences on emotional memory gross and subtle brain differences (e.g., “walls of the third ventricle – sexual nuclei”) “Are there…

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Is a carb-free diet good for brain function?

Is a carb-free diet good for brain function?

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An article in Wired cites two studies that show carb-free diets improved the memories and extended the lives of lab mice. While there are many DIY human experiments underway, scientific trials are needed to clarify the effects of ketogenic diets on people.

The differences between sitting and moving meditative states

The differences between sitting and moving meditative states

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Here is Thompson’s talk on the topic. As a dancer and martial artist, as well as an embodied cognitioner, this talk is particularly relevant to me. I’ve been saying since forever that these arts are meditative disciplines in themselves. And one doesn’t necessarily need the sitting still sort of meditation to achieve meta-cognition. Having done both kinds my anectodic report is that both sitting and moving meditation induce meta-cognition. But there are no studies on movement meditation to confirm it…

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From intersubjectivity to interbeing

From intersubjectivity to interbeing

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I was reminded today of this seminal paper by Evan Thompson with the above title. The premise: “Human consciousness is not located in the head, but is immanent in the living body and the interpersonal social world. One’s consciousness of oneself as an embodied individual embedded in the world emerges through empathic cognition of others. Consciousness is not some peculiar qualitative aspect of private mental states, nor a property of the brain inside the skull; it is a relational mode…

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There’s no such thing as a male or female brain

There’s no such thing as a male or female brain

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See this New Scientist article. Excerpt: When the group looked at each individual brain scan, however, they found that very few people had all of the brain features they might be expected to have, based on their sex. Across the sample, between 0 and 8 per cent of people had “all-male” or “all-female” brains, depending on the definition. “Most people are in the middle,” says Joel. This means that, averaged across many people, sex differences in brain structure do exist,…

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Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality

Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality

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Ted Talk by neuroscientist Anil Seth. The brain processes the outer world via the senses, then organizes it and projects that organization back on to the world. Perception itself is an active, constructive process. It is a controlled hallucination. Reality is just an agreed upon hallucination. And so is the perception of our self a controlled hallucination. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyu7v7nWzfo]

‘Entangled’ consciousness app approaching release

‘Entangled’ consciousness app approaching release

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The Global Consciousness Project, Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS, for which I was once Hawaii state coordinator) and Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) are collaborating to release a smart phone app, Entangled, that aims to Monitor your mind’s influence on your physical environment Let you take part in large-scale consciousness experiments Support ongoing development of a”consciousness technology” platform for developers and artists Monitor global consciousness data in real-time Before you think I’ve gone off the deep end, let me explain that I…

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Giant neuron found encircling and intraconnecting mouse brain

Giant neuron found encircling and intraconnecting mouse brain

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A neuron that encircles the mouse brain emanates from the claustrum (an on/off switch for awareness) and has dense links with both brain hemispheres. Scientists including Francis Crick and Christoph Koch have speculated that the claustrum may play a role in enabling conscious thought. https://www.sciencealert.com/a-giant-neuron-has-been-found-wrapped-around-the-entire-circumference-of-the-brain  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1569501/ (Crick and Koch academic article) We’ve frequently discussed how self-aware consciousness likely arises not from any single brain structure or signal, but from complex, recursive (reentrant), synchronized signaling among many structures organized into functional regions. (Did I get…

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Embodied consciousness and the Flow Genome Project

Embodied consciousness and the Flow Genome Project

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In line with our July joint meeting with the NM Tech Council, I’m reading a fascinating book (Stealing Fire) on the variety of ways humans can experience states of flow (optimal states of consciousness and performance). The authors, Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal, explain the significance of flow and introduce their Flow Dojo concept in the videos linked below. Applying methods for achieving flow is often categorized in the consciousness hacking movement, also called brain hacking. What is Flow (6+ minutes) The Flow Dojo (4+ minutes)…

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