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Category: brain

The neurocircuitry of awakening

The neurocircuitry of awakening

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See Dan Brown talking about it in this video. He is also co-author in the paper “Mapping complex mind states.” Some excerpts from the latter follow. Note that it does not differentiate the different aspect of ‘self’ as discussed by Damasio. It appears that what it means by ‘self’ is the autobiographical self-reference system. However Damasio would see some of these results as examples of the proto-self and core self. This neuroscience article compares Damasio’s different types of self to…

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The Neurohacker Collective

The Neurohacker Collective

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Good article discussing an interview except with Jordan Greenhall on global collapse, with that excerpt also provided. We are headed for collapse unless we as a species upgrade our decision making by “becoming much better at self-organizing into large-scale manifestations of collective intelligence.” Greenhall is co-founder of Neurohacker Collective. Their mission statement: “Our mission is to use the best of what we know about how the brain and mind work from all fields and disciplines in the service of realizing humanity’s deepest…

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A dive into the black waters under the surface of persuasive design

A dive into the black waters under the surface of persuasive design

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A Guardian article last October brings the darker aspects of the attention economy, particularly the techniques and tools of neural hijacking, into sharp focus. The piece summarizes some interaction design principles and trends that signal a fundamental shift in means, deployment, and startling effectiveness of mass persuasion. The mechanisms reliably and efficiently leverage neural reward (dopamine) circuits to seize, hold, and direct attention toward whatever end the designer and content providers choose. The organizer of a $1,700 per person event…

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Does quantum mechanics play a role in consciousness

Does quantum mechanics play a role in consciousness

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A 2017 BBC article concisely reviews essential concepts of quantum physics and summarizes the state of scientific speculation into the possible interactions of consciousness and quantum mechanics. Of interest are some specific, possibly testable, suggestions about chemical structures that could sustain nuclear spin entanglements in the brain for up to two days.

Neural responses to media a strong predictor of friendship

Neural responses to media a strong predictor of friendship

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“The findings revealed that neural response similarity was strongest among friends, and this pattern appeared to manifest across brain regions involved in emotional responding, directing one’s attention and high-level reasoning. Even when the researchers controlled for variables, including left-handed- or right-handedness, age, gender, ethnicity, and nationality, the similarity in neural activity among friends was still evident. The team also found that fMRI response similarities could be used to predict not only if a pair were friends but also the social distance between…

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Persuasion: Do you want to be effective or just feel righteous?

Persuasion: Do you want to be effective or just feel righteous?

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A recent article in The Atlantic reports fascinating research on the relative effectiveness of typical and moral-framing based approaches to persuading people of an opposing political orientation to see value in alternative positions. The upshot is that there are verifiably effective methods for getting around entrenched, reflexive opposition.

Roger McNamee on brain hacking and Facebook

Roger McNamee on brain hacking and Facebook

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Brain hacking is using social media and your smart phone to addict people and implant ideas. The advertisers put us in filter groups to feed addiction to our ‘likes,’ giving us a dopamine rush. It creates a sense of belonging with others who agree with us while further isolating human relations in real life. These filter groups are also geared to feed our fear and anger, which makes us more receptive to notice the ads and buy their products. While…

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Altered states and altered traits

Altered states and altered traits

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Good, brief clip on the difference between the above, and how meditation can turn altered states into lasting traits that one carries in their daily life. Aside from the physiological benefits, if we can just dump the metaphysical mumbo jumbo that accompanies traditional interpretations of what these states and traits mean then we’ll have made progress toward a postmetaphysical cultural metaphor.

Communication between brain areas based on nested oscillations

Communication between brain areas based on nested oscillations

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eNeuro, 10 March 2017, 4(2). This might be neuroscientific evidence for my speculations on the syntegration of consciousness states and stages via meditative discipline. To be determined. The abstract: “Unraveling how brain regions communicate is crucial for understanding how the brain processes external and internal information. Neuronal oscillations within and across brain regions have been proposed to play a crucial role in this process. Two main hypotheses have been suggested for routing of information based on oscillations, namely communication through coherence and…

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Consciousness in the world is scale invariant

Consciousness in the world is scale invariant

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And implies an event horizon of the human brain. There’s a mouthful, a new title in NeuroQuantology (15:3, September 2017). The abstract follows, also a brainful. This will take some reading and digesting, provided I have the requisite capacity to understand it (which remains to be seen). “Our brain is not a ‘stand alone’ information processing organ: it acts as a central part of our integral nervous system with recurrent information exchange with the entire organism and the cosmos. In this study, the brain…

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