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[https://www.flickr.com/photos/21891888@N00] said : "advertising brilliance, like painting a plane pink."
Darwin Jingili Water Gardens Day 4-5
Across the first 3 to 4 days of walking around Jingili Water Gardens my thinking evolved from discovery and my understanding of the actual scope of commitment it will take to realize a creative breakthrough. My reflection efforts have been centered on observing my thinking and my thoughts about my thinking. I now realize that I have evaded thinking about my cognitive psychology and what I bring to the gardens each repeated activity. In short, the subconscious filters that inhibit my perceptions
As mentioned in previous reflections, I am a career educator and a fledgling artist, and I am preparing my exit from educational leadership and building my aspirations as a late-career artist. The repeated activity is intended to enable me to find a difference that can help support a transformation.
On the macro, when I entered my artistic and education-based careers, computers were not readily available. As such, the Fine Arts course I completed at RMIT was in oil painting and teacher training at Monash University did not address information technology in the classroom. The notion of creativity was constructed on elite aspirations and consumption. Fine Arts belonged to the rich and the successful studio artists sold art through commercial art galleries. Schools sorted youth onto either blue and white collar pathways. Access to achievement relied on school resources - access to non-curriculum activity, teacher knowledge, and the school library. I would like to suggest that Jingili Water Garden's were designed by yesterday's concepts - a 1980's pre-information technology design. Like how I passed through school and acted as an artist how I pass through the gardens conforms in with the design concepts. The basis of my usage is low-level physical exercise, a fleeting form of mobility within the space, and an adoration of the natural components. I more or less follow the path that has been laid out for me.
However, this design factor is the purpose of my repeated entry. I am seeking something different within the design constraint. My repetitive engagements are to find a difference that may support an artistic transformation. This is not a pursuit of relaxed "just-do-it" consumption. Despite not knowing what I will specifically gain, I am employing the design agents embedded into Jingili Water Gardens to create my discreet insights. I am investing my time in the park to transpose my thoughts to find a way forward.
In the book The Road Ahead, Bill Gates combined the consumption of the Internet by the populous, and the fledging placement of Microsoft in society to reestablish the corporation within what was evolving as a devoted movement of nonproprietary computing. Open-source and internet-connected computing were threats to Microsoft. I believe that Gates employed the act of writing The Road Ahead for himself and his corporation. The intended reader was not for the general public reader - unless the message was read as; hang in there with us we will catch up. In short, Gates had to reestablish Microsoft within an emerging creative force and his reflective writing was the stimulus for organizational change. The transformation into cloud-based services was a struggle, as has been the transformation of education and the arts from 20th to 21st-century change. What I have observed is that the transformation from broad-based consumption to user-centeredness is occurring, however, my knowledge and experience is struggling to keep up. I am not dissimilar to Education services and the Arts industry who are struggling to develop the strategies to step forward.
In short, the world's population is aging at the same time there is rapid technological change. Forbes research highlights the aging of audiences and declining numbers attending museums and fine arts events. Ironically, the future of art attendance seems to be stable for attendees over the age of 75 and over. So what are the younger adults doing if not attending? The average age of teachers is 45 and from my observation of the teaching-force is that it is struggling to be suitably responsive to rapid societal change. Many academic educationalists comment on student disengagement and the turn over of young teacher graduates. My walk begins at 7:00am, numbers are few and the age group is in the mature age group. Despite school holidays, the Jingili Water Gardens are basically empty. The rapid changes in society must have some impact on the contextual purpose of suburban/city parks. I think it is fair to say that the unconscious purpose has changed, however, the lingering structures have not
This leads to a subtle variation of my reflective focus. That is the conceptual interface that governs access and activity in the arts, schools, and parks and gardens have constant variables. Despite the uniqueness of each domain, there is a consistent challenge. This challenge is also my challenge.
What I am looking at is my opportunity at aged 60, to actually see the opportunities created by change within what are established services I think and operate in. In regards to Jingili Water Gardens, my initial thinking has to do with, aesthetics, access, and interactivity. My challenge is that as an older artist I presently create products differently to that that interests younger users. My step forward is in the art and science of engaging users, and what I can do to attract the interest.
Read more: www.jjfbbennett.com/2020/07/darwin-jingili-water-gardens-...
One-off sponsorship: www.paypal.me/bennettJJFB
Historically, even before IQ tests were invented, there were attempts to classify people into intelligence categories by observing their behavior in daily life. Those other forms of behavioral observation are still important for validating classifications based primarily on IQ test scores. Both intelligence classification by observation of behavior outside the testing room and classification by IQ testing depend on the definition of "intelligence" used in a particular case and on the reliability and error of estimation in the classification procedure.[citation needed]The English statistician Francis Galton made the first attempt at creating a standardized test for rating a person's intelligence. A pioneer of psychometrics and the application of statistical methods to the study of human diversity and the study of inheritance of human traits, he believed that intelligence was largely a product of heredity (by which he did not mean genes, although he did develop several pre-Mendelian theories of particulate inheritance). He hypothesized that there should exist a correlation between intelligence and other observable traits such as reflexes, muscle grip, and head size.He set up the first mental testing centre in the world in 1882 and he published "Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development" in 1883, in which he set out his theories. After gathering data on a variety of physical variables, he was unable to show any such correlation, and he eventually abandoned this research.French psychologist Alfred Binet was one of the key developers of what later became known as the Stanford–Binet test.French psychologist Alfred Binet, together with Victor Henri and Théodore Simon had more success in 1905, when they published the Binet-Simon test, which focused on verbal abilities. It was intended to identify mental retardation in school children,but in specific contradistinction to claims made by psychiatrists that these children were "sick" (not "slow") and should therefore be removed from school and cared for in asylums.The score on the Binet-Simon scale would reveal the child's mental age. For example, a six-year-old child who passed all the tasks usually passed by six-year-olds—but nothing beyond—would have a mental age that matched his chronological age, 6.0. (Fancher, 1985). Binet thought that intelligence was multifaceted, but came under the control of practical judgment.In Binet's view, there were limitations with the scale and he stressed what he saw as the remarkable diversity of intelligence and the subsequent need to study it using qualitative, as opposed to quantitative, measures (White, 2000). American psychologist Henry H. Goddard published a translation of it in 1910. American psychologist Lewis Terman at Stanford University revised the Binet-Simon scale, which resulted in the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales (1916). It became the most popular test in the United States for decades.The many different kinds of IQ tests include a wide variety of item content. Some test items are visual, while many are verbal. Test items vary from being based on abstract-reasoning problems to concentrating on arithmetic, vocabulary, or general knowledge.The British psychologist Charles Spearman in 1904 made the first formal factor analysis of correlations between the tests. He observed that children's school grades across seemingly unrelated school subjects were positively correlated, and reasoned that these correlations reflected the influence of an underlying general mental ability that entered into performance on all kinds of mental tests. He suggested that all mental performance could be conceptualized in terms of a single general ability factor and a large number of narrow task-specific ability factors. Spearman named it g for "general factor" and labeled the specific factors or abilities for specific tasks s. In any collection of test items that make up an IQ test, the score that best measures g is the composite score that has the highest correlations with all the item scores. Typically, the "g-loaded" composite score of an IQ test battery appears to involve a common strength in abstract reasoning across the test's item content. Therefore, Spearman and others have regarded g as closely related to the essence of human intelligence.Spearman's argument proposing a general factor of human intelligence is still accepted in principle by many psychometricians. Today's factor models of intelligence typically represent cognitive abilities as a three-level hierarchy, where there are a large number of narrow factors at the bottom of the hierarchy, a handful of broad, more general factors at the intermediate level, and at the apex a single factor, referred to as the g factor, which represents the variance common to all cognitive tasks. However, this view is not universally accepted; other factor analyses of the data, with different results, are possible. Some psychometricians regard g as a statistical artifact.
This graphic, released under a Creative Commons attribution license, provides a quick overview of Bloom's taxonomy of the kinds of cognitive processes often asked of students in educational settings. The graphic reflects the 2001 revision of the original Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. For more on Bloom's taxonomy, see the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching guide on the subject: cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/.
Does this one float your boat? Sorry couldn't resist ;)
No Photoshop (well except for the usual resize, sharpen, border), this is a real life optical illusion.
We perceive the boat to float above the surface of the water because our brains see the shadow and assume that it's on the surface of the water, so we think that the boat must be floating above the surface. In reality of course the shadow is on the seabed; the only reason we can see it is that it's a sunny day, the water's clear, and the sea bottom is quite pale. This type of illusion is known as a cognitive illusion, as it relies on the way the brain processes information to work.
The water colour has been enhanced by the polarizing filter, which also cuts any reflection that might give our brains a clue that things aren't quite as they appear. The water really is a wonderful turquoise/cerulean colour though; I suspect it's caused by fine particulates in the water, as the water changes back to a more normal blue colour once it leaves the bay itself.
This shot was taken near the Minack Theatre on the Cornish coast at Porthcurno
Canon EOS 400D DIGITAL
Canon EF 300mm f4/L IS
f4.5 @ 1/350 ISO100. RAW converted via DPP.
I just discovered this Lonergan report on Board composition and the benefits of what I like to call cognitive diversity.
From below: "The diverse group outperforms the smart group most of the time" — Scott Page at Santa Fe Inst. board retreat
“Boards that don’t have any diversity can be unattractive to new board candidates,” according to report advisor Kambiz Hooshmand, an experienced SV150 CEO and director who is currently Chairman at Infinera. “People want to join a board where there are constructive differences in perspective,” he added. (p.23 of Lonergan Report)
And I was delighted to see “Super Director” Ann Mathers profiled on p.28. as we recently recruited her to the Planet Labs' board. I just kicked off a similar search for another cool company, so I am looking for more.
A cognitive bias is a pattern of deviation in judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion.
Individuals create their own “subjective social reality” from their perception of the input.
An individual’s construction of social reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the social world.
Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality (Wikipedia)
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12 panels panorama
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the laundry building at Beelitz-Heilstaetten
Zenit B with Helios 44-2 58mm f2.
Kodacolor 200 ISO 35mm film.
Processed at home with Tetenal C-41 kit.
Naps aren’t only for toddlers. Approximately 1 in 3 American adults nap, according to previous Pew Research Center data.
Naps come in all shapes and sizes. “Some people take restorative daytime naps in order to compensate for insufficient nighttime sleep,” says Shanon Makekau, MD, chief of pulmonology and sleep medicine director at Kaiser Permanente in Honolulu. “Others may take ‘prophylactic’ naps to prepare for an overnight shift.”
And then there’s the power nap.
“A power nap is a nap that's short — less than 30 minutes long,” says Safia Khan, MD, a specialist in sleep disorders and an assistant professor in the department of family and community medicine and the department of neurology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
It provides the restorative benefits of sleep without adversely affecting one’s ability to fall asleep at night, Dr. Makekau adds.
Is It Healthy to Nap?
Yes, but follow these tips from Alex Dimitriu, MD, a Menlo Park, California–based psychiatrist and sleep medicine physician, so they don’t mess with sleep at night!
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department offers comprehensive services in the diagnosing and treatment of people with sleep disorders, including breathing-related sleep disorders (e.g., obstructive sleep apnea, OSA), insomnia, hypersomnia(e.g., narcolepsy, Kleine-Levine Syndrome), circadian rhythm disorders, parasomnia, and sleep disturbance caused by psychiatric and medical conditions.
We provide integrated and multi-discipline medical services comprising of physicians specializing in various disciplines (e.g. Psychiatry, Neurology, ENT, Pulmonary Medicine , Rehabilitation) as well as other health and well-being professionals (e.g. sleep psychologists and nurse practitioners).
Conditions We Treat
Insomnia
Difficult to fall asleep at night
Nocturnal spontaneous waking
Early morning awakening
Don’t feel refresh after waking in the morning
Feeling tired, fatigue, or sleepiness during the day
Irritable, or depressed during the day
Sleep related breathing disorders
Snore loudly.
Have morning headaches.
Snort or choke while asleep.
Have pauses in breathing or irregular breathing while asleep.
Excessive sleepiness during the day (watching TV, work, driving).
Wake up groggy or tired in the morning, no matter how many hours you've slept.
Parasomnia
Sleepwalking
Nightmares
Sleep enuresis
Sleep terrors
REM sleep behavior disorder
Bruxism
Services & Treatments
■ Out patient Clinic
■ Polysomnography (PSG)
■ Continuous Positive Airway Pressure titration (CPAP titration)
■ Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT)
■ Actigraphy
■ Light therapy
■ Cognitive behavioral therapy
english.tmuh.org.tw/Department/57
What Counts as a Power Nap?
Some experts say the power nap should be even shorter — 20 minutes max. But all agree it shouldn’t exceed 30 minutes. That’s because the body enters a deep sleep around that time, and waking up from a deep sleep can lead to grogginess, according to the Sleep Foundation.
This state of grogginess or drowsiness is also called “sleep inertia.” It’s when your body feels like you need to sleep more because your brain has already started to get into a deeper state of sleep, Dr. Khan explains.
Sticking to the shorter time frame keeps the body from dealing with sleep inertia so you wake up feeling recovered rather than sleepy. “With a power nap, you stay in the lighter stages of sleep,” Khan says. “When you’ve been sleeping longer than 30 minutes, it’s more difficult to wake up and you wake up feeling groggy versus when waking up from lighter sleep.”
Power naps are the most beneficial type of nap for most adults, according to the American Sleep Association.
What Are the Benefits of a Power Nap?
The main benefit of a power nap is to help you feel refreshed, so you feel more awake through the rest of the day. “When you take a power nap, it energizes you and makes you more alert for the next four to six hours,” Khan says. “You feel like you can get a lot more accomplished.”
According to Mayo Clinic, napping can help you feel relaxed, reduce fatigue, increase alertness, and improve your mood as well as your performance, such as by increasing your reaction time and memory. “Power naps can help people with jobs requiring high vigilance (for example, drivers and pilots) to recharge, thus reducing the risk of accidents and errors due to drowsiness,” Makekau says.
Napping can also boost the immune system and reduce stress. A small study published in February 2015 in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found short, 30-minute naps had stress relieving and immune benefits for a group of healthy young adult men.
And if you needed another excuse for a midday break: Naps may keep your heart healthy. A study published in December 2019 in Heart found that participants who napped once or twice a week had a lower risk of experiencing a cardiovascular event.
Just remember that 30-minute limit to ensure the nap doesn’t interfere with nighttime sleep, Khan says. “It's easier to wake up from a power nap, and it does not significantly affect your nighttime sleep,” she says. “A longer nap will affect your ability to fall asleep at night.”
RELATED: Are You Sleeping Too Much?
Does a Caffeine Nap Actually Work?
Some people take the power nap to the next level by consuming coffee (or other source of caffeine) immediately before falling asleep.
“By the time coffee gets absorbed into the system, the effect of the caffeine will start working and will help wake you up,” Khan says.
A study published in the September–October 2020 issue of Chronobiology International had participants drink 200 milligrams of caffeine right before a 30-minute nap. (For reference, that’s about two cups of coffee, according to Mayo Clinic.) Those individuals tested higher on careful attention and fatigue in the 45 minutes after waking up from the nap compared with those who did not consume caffeine before sleeping.
Whether or not it’ll work for you depends on how you respond to caffeine. “There are some people who get wired immediately as they drink their coffee,” Khan says.
If you decide to give it a try, do it in the early afternoon. “We don't recommend drinking coffee past 3 or 4 p.m. because it can disrupt your nighttime sleep,” Khan says.
Who Are Power Naps Best for and How Do I Know I’m Doing It Right?
If you get the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep at night (per guidelines from National Sleep Foundation published in March 2015 in Sleep Health), wake up feeling rested, and have plenty of energy throughout the day, you probably don’t need to worry about power napping. But, if you tend to feel drowsy in the afternoon or you’ve had a poor night sleep, a power nap could indeed be beneficial, Khan says.
Power naps may be especially helpful for shift workers, especially those who need to avoid drowsiness for safety reasons, such as truck drivers or doctors prepping for surgery. “This reduces risks of errors in judgment,” Khan says.
Khan says it’s okay to power nap regularly. “However, if you need to take a power nap daily, then you may benefit from increasing total sleep time at night,” she says.
RELATED: How Much Sleep You Really Need
Here are a few tips from the Sleep Foundation on how to get the most out of your power nap:
Don’t nap too close to nighttime sleep. A good rule of thumb is to nap at the midpoint between the time you wake up and the time you go to bed.
Set an alarm for 10 to 20 minutes to ensure you wake up feeling alert instead of groggy.
Find the right spot to rest. The best sleep environment for napping is the same one for nighttime: You want a cool, dark, quiet, and comfortable place. Your bedroom is ideal, and ear plugs and an eye mask may help, Makekau says.
Power naps aren’t for everyone. You may not be able to make it work schedule-wise or you may be the type who wakes up feeling disoriented or even more tired than you were before, regardless of the duration of the nap.
But, Khan adds that she’s personally a big fan. “Most people do benefit from taking a power nap,” she says.
www.everydayhealth.com/sleep/power-naps-the-benefits-how-...
A nap is a short period of sleep that usually occurs during the day. For many adults, naps can help to maintain alertness or overcome daytime fatigue.
Nap needs and the benefits of napping can vary among individuals. Knowing the facts about napping can help determine whether to take naps, and tips for better naps can enable healthier napping habits.Benefits of Naps
Naps can deliver a number of benefits. Brief naps can be restorative and reduce fatigue during the day. After a night of insufficient sleep, a nap may counteract daytime drowsiness
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. Naps can be particularly beneficial for shift workers who struggle to get enough sleep and have to be alert at irregular times.
A short daytime snooze may also boost workplace performance
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National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
The NHLBI is the nation's leader in the prevention and treatment of heart, lung, blood and sleep disorders.
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. A nap can improve cognitive functions such as memory, logical reasoning, and the ability to complete complex tasks.
Some studies have found that physical performance can also improve after napping
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. Athletes may experience improved endurance, reaction times, and cognitive performance if they take a daytime nap.
Napping may provide other health benefits. One observational study found that napping one or two times a week was associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular problems
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, such as heart attack, stroke, or heart disease. However, more research is needed to understand the complex ways that the frequency and duration of naps affect heart health.
Napping may also reduce the impacts of insufficient sleep. For example, a small trial found evidence that naps relieved stress
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and supported the immune system in people whose sleep was limited the night before.
Additionally, naps may contribute to the well-being of specific groups of people. For instance, a study of people diagnosed with intracranial aneurysms found that regularly napping was associated with a lowered risk of a rupture
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of the aneurysm.How Sleep Works During Nap Time
Whether at night or during the day, sleep unfolds in a series of stages that make up a sleep cycle.
Stage 1: Stage 1 is the lightest and briefest stage of sleep, lasting only one to seven minutes.
Stage 2: Stage 2 follows stage 1 and lasts about 10 to 25 minutes. During stage 2 sleep, the muscles relax, and body functions slow. However, sleep in this stage is still relatively light.
Stage 3: Stage 3 is a deeper, more restorative stage of sleep, and it can be difficult to wake up while in this stage. Stage 3 usually lasts between 20 and 40 minutes.
Rapid eye movement (REM): During REM sleep, the body’s muscles are temporarily paralyzed, and the eyes move quickly under closed eyelids. Dreaming tends to take place during REM sleep.
When sleep periods last several hours, the body cycles through these stages several times. During a nap, though, there is not enough time to go through multiple sleep cycles.
In fact, during a short nap, a person may not be asleep long enough to spend much, if any, time in stage 3 or REM sleep. This can actually make it easier to wake up refreshed from a quick nap.
Longer naps, such as those lasting more than 30 minutes, can cause the sleeper to enter deep sleep, and deep sleep may start even sooner in people who are sleep deprived. Grogginess often results from being woken up during deep sleep.
Here are some tips on how to eat to preserve your memory and keep your brain healthy.
Key Points
Limiting candy in your diet may support brain health, as high added sugar intake could increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
A brain-healthy lifestyle includes regular exercise, managing chronic diseases, staying socially engaged and following diets like the MIND diet.
Making mindful dietary and lifestyle choices can enhance cognitive health and overall well-being over time.
More than 55 million people have dementia worldwide, with Alzheimer’s disease being the most common form, contributing to 60% to 70% of dementia cases. Having Alzheimer’s disease means living with a progressive disorder that causes brain cells to degenerate and die, leading to a continuous decline in memory, thinking skills and the ability to perform everyday tasks. Sadly, as the disease progresses, even basic activities and communication become challenging.
Several factors influence the risk of developing dementia, with some being completely beyond your control. Aging is the most significant risk factor, as individuals over the age of 65 are more susceptible. Genetics also play a crucial role, with specific genetic mutations directly linked to Alzheimer’s disease. However, along with unchangeable factors, certain lifestyle choices can help lower the risk of cognitive decline, with diet being a pivotal piece of the puzzle. “Some of the best foods for brain health are antioxidant-rich wild blueberries, salad greens for B vitamins, salmon for its anti-inflammatory fatty acids, fiber-rich black beans, and walnuts, the best source of plant-based omega-3 ALA among nuts,” says Maggie Moon, M.S., RD. There are some foods you should avoid when focusing on brain health support too, with candy being the #1 food on that list.
Why You Should Limit Candy for Brain Health
Taking steps to reduce dementia risk is one positive step for brain health. While there isn’t one food that will cause dementia, high-added-sugar candy tops the list of foods that should be limited on a brain-healthy diet.
“Candies are not your brain’s friend,” Moon says. She points to a study that found that eating too much added sugar more than doubled the risk for dementia. “That includes added sugar from candies, as well as other sweets like pastries, sweetened café drinks and sodas,” she says. Researchers think that high blood sugar and insulin levels are risk factors for Alzheimer’s because insulin resistance may also occur in the brain, which may impact memory.
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Of course, everything can be eaten in moderation in a healthy, balanced eating plan. “While fine once in a while, research has found that a diet that is consistently high in added sugar may increase the amyloid plaque buildup in the brain,” says Laura M. Ali, M.S., RDN. "These plaques disrupt the communication system in our brain, and scientists have found that people with Alzheimer’s disease tend to have more of these plaques.”
In fact, says Ali, one study found that every 10 grams of added sugar consumed per day (equivalent to 2½ teaspoons of sugar or 8 gummy candies) was associated with a 1.3% to 1.4% increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Those with the highest daily added sugar intake had 19% higher odds of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
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The #1 Habit to Start Now to Reduce Your Dementia Risk
Other Ways to Reduce Your Risk of Dementia
Limiting sweetened candy doesn't guarantee that you won't get dementia, but it is a positive step forward. Along with limiting added sugar in your diet, here are some other ways to reduce your dementia risk:
Exercise by participating in both aerobic activity and resistance exercise.
If you smoke cigarettes, take the first steps to quit.
Limit alcohol intake. If you regularly drink alcohol, try to do so in moderation. Excessive drinking is linked to cognitive decline. Moderate drinking means two drinks or less in a day for men and one drink or less in a day for women.
Stay socially engaged. Maintaining social connections builds your cognitive reserve to maintain good brain function with age.
If you have chronic diseases, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, make sure you’re managing these well. Stiffness in arteries and blood vessels can damage the brain. If you need help or individualized advice, reach out to a healthcare professional.
Include brain-healthy foods in your diet. The MIND diet emphasizes foods like whole grains, nuts, berries, vegetables and olive oil, which research shows may help support brain health. “The brain-healthy MIND diet limits foods high in saturated fats and added sugars because both are linked to oxidative stress, inflammation and the brain plaques and tangles associated with Alzheimer’s disease,” says Moon. She clarifies that this diet limits—but does not eliminate—fried foods, pastries and sweets, red meat, whole-fat cheese and butter.
Our Expert Take
Nothing will guarantee that you will live a life free from dementia. But certain steps may help reduce your risk, with your dietary choices being one factor. And along with eating brain-healthy foods, limiting your candy intake can help keep you cognitively sharp. Enjoying a small handful of candy corn on Halloween or conversation hearts on Valentine’s Day won’t “cause” dementia. “It’s important to remember that no single food eaten once, or even once in a while, is going to make or break your brain health,” Moon adds.
8 Sources:
World Health Organization. Dementia.
Alzheimer’s Association. What is Alzheimer’s Disease?
National Institute on Aging. Thinking about your risk for Alzheimer’s Disease? Five questions to consider.
Dhana K, James BD, Agarwal P, Aggarwal NT, et al. MIND Diet, Common Brain Pathologies, and Cognition in Community-Dwelling Older Adults. J Alzheimers Dis.;83(2):683-692. doi: 10.3233/JAD-210107.
Agarwal P, Ford CN, Leurgans SE, Beck T, Desai P, Dhana K, Evans DA, Halloway S, Holland TM, Krueger KR, Liu X, Rajan KB, Bennett DA. Dietary sugar intake associated with a higher risk of dementia in community-dwelling older adults. J Alzheimers Dis. 2023;95(4):1417-1425. doi:10.3233/JAD-230013
Liu L, Volpe SL, Ross JA, Grimm JA, Van Bockstaele EJ, Eisen HJ. Dietary sugar intake and risk of Alzheimer's disease in older women. Nutr Neurosci. 2022 Nov;25(11):2302-2313. doi:10.1080/1028415X.2021.1959099
Alzheimer’s Association. Risk reduction.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dietary guidelines for alcohol.
"Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction". E. O. Wilson
A new study into the potential of artificial gravity to help astronauts stay healthy in space is now in full swing, or should that be spin?
Phase one of the 60-day bedrest study, commissioned by ESA and NASA and carried out by German Aerospace Center DLR, began at DLR’s ‘:envihab’ medical research and rehabilitation facility in Cologne, Germany, on Monday 25 March.
The study is the first of its kind to be conducted in partnership between ESA and NASA. It is also the first to employ DLR’s short-arm centrifuge (shown in this image) as a way of recreating gravity for participants.
Each of the 12 male and 12 female participants will lie in beds with their heads tilted 6° below horizontal for 60 consecutive days. Medical researchers will oversee them and ensure one of their shoulders is touching the mattress at all times.
As blood flows to their heads and muscle is lost from underuse, researchers will investigate changes and test techniques from diet to physical exercise.
Artificial gravity is one of the techniques under the spotlight this time around. Once a day, a selection of the study’s participants will be moved to the centrifuge to encourage blood to flow back towards their feet and allow researchers to understand the potential of artificial gravity in combating the effects of weightlessness.
A number of different experiments, carried out over the course of the study, will look at cardiovascular function, balance and muscle strength, metabolism and cognitive performance among other factors.
Seven of these experiments will be conducted by European-led research groups, with a view to validating the findings on the International Space Station during future missions.
Find out more about bedrest studies in this brochure.
Credits: DLR
On the Cognitive Perception of Relative Tallosity
by Dr. Diana Richards Ph.D (Piled High and Deep)
Here are a couple of photos of the same outfit, one with the top tucked in and one not. It's an old truism that a strong horizontal will tend to make a tall person appear shorter, and I think this is the proof. I could be wrong, but I think that the belt does indeed make me appear shorter.Anyway, I needed groceries so that's what I went with.
If you look closely, you'll also see I'm NOT WEARING HOSE! That's the first time I've been bare-legged in public in...oh my, years and years and years! But it was pushing 100 degrees so I thought I'd try it, and oddly enough, and to my great relief, the world did NOT end. The earth didn't open to swallow the wicked, nor was there a plague of frogs and salamanders, or even bolts of pure destruction from black and viscous skies.
Whew!
Cluster meanings
People perceive reality as cognitive psychology explains thinking through clusters of formulated meanings.
The whole style of painting Jaisini built is based on creation of such clusters that contain information for the eye and the mind.
The picture offers certain clues.
The picture’s puzzle could adjust to the viewer’s capacity to see the idea, connection between reality and artistic puzzle-like formula.
The coherence of picture could be reached through different approaches, either thinking or seeing, maybe by intuitive comprehension or knowledge.
Jaisini’s line clusters do not claim to construct reality.
They aim to present us with an alternative connection with reality.
It is a self-conscious exercise of seeing but not believing, supposing but not sensing, feeling but not perceiving.
Jaisini motivates to experience many levels of self-conscious exercise.
He triggers off the viewer by a puzzle and new transformation of a myth, by new variations and relations of colors, by exchange of shapes with void and spatial intrigue of linear spontaneity creating a session of hypnosis with a purpose to bring the viewer’s eye to a level of sophistication comparable to the artist’s.
Jaisini sets priority of significance on linear spontaneity such as free flow, causality of the line together with color purity and spatial intricacy.
At the same time conceptual activity of meaning-creation is a brain teasing game that can take turn or even put aside formal exploration of the painting.
It was set so by the artist for the viewer who gets tired seeing an option to start reading.
Great achievement of Jaisini is the mastery over causality, elimination of any artificial rigidity, non-tension of linear plasticism that is a great tool to cultivate subconscious comfort and willingness to further understanding of art.
Line enclosure is an element of externality (the artist’s command).
In postmodern art such external command of an artist’s hand was abolished due to the lowering of painting quality standard and discourse into over mechanization with hollowing of the meaning and reduction of painting to a color pallet as a decorative spot or introverted symbol.
The weak side of such style is yearning for addition, necessity to place another painting next to it and more of different styles in order to stimulate the postmodern painting’s presence with lost meaning, reason or fashion.
In decorative purpose like that point of true creativity is missing altogether.
A possession of a true art piece is comparable to possession of relic that works in mysterious way bringing luck to the house, creating new stories to tell. In this respect a painting by Jaisini eliminates artificial rigidity.
It is an exhibition in itself said by the owner of a gallery who is experienced in evaluating visual effect and compares one painting with an entire exhibition.
I as a writer found that Jaisini’s pictures capable to capture interest of a beholder to the point of desire to start studying art to better understand the complexity of one painting.
In Jaisini’s case one wouldn’t say, hey, I could paint like that.
Jaisini himself pointed out that it’s almost impossible to repeat painting or remember the way he had painted his picture.
Structure of style’s elements to create formal meaning coherence
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diptych (back & front cover, internal iconography) published in
Cognitive capitalism (인지자본주의) - Joe Jeong Hwan (조정환) (Publisher: Galmuri Press)
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diptych published in
Y SIN EMBARGO magazine #23
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Outlining a Theory of General Creativity . .
. . on a 'Pataphysical projectory
Entropy ≥ Memory ● Creativity ²
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Study of the day:
Proposition VI
Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavours to persist in its own being.
Proposition VII
The endeavour, wherewith everything endeavours to persist in its own being, is nothing else but the actual essence of this thing.
Proposition VIII
The endeavour, whereby a thing endeavours to persist in its own being, involves no finite time, but an indefinite time.
Proposition IX
The mind, both in so far as it has clear and distinct ideas, and also in so far as it has confused ideas, endeavours to persist in its being for an indefinite period, and of this endeavour it is conscious.
Proof
The essence of the mind is constituted by adequate and inadequate ideas (III. iii.), therefore (III. vii.), both in so far it possesses the former, and in so far it possesses the latter, it endeavours to persist in its own being, and that for an indefinite time (III. viii.). Now as the mind (II. xxiii.) is necessarily conscious of itself through the ideas of the modifications of the body, the mind is therefore (III. vii.) conscious of its own endeavour.
Scholia
This endeavour, when referred solely to the mind, is called will, when referred to the mind and body in conjunction it is called appetite ; it is, in fact, nothing else but man's essence, from the nature of which necessarily follow all those results which tend to its preservation ; and which man has thus been determined to perform.
Further, between appetite and desire there is no difference, except that the term desire is generally applied to men, in so far as they are conscious of their appetite, and may accordingly be thus defined : Desire is appetite with consciousness thereof. It is thus plain from what has been said, that in no case do we strive for, wish for, long for, or desire anything, because we deem it do be good, but on the other hand we deem a thing to be good, because we strive for it, wish for it, long for it, or desire it.
( Benedictus de Spinoza - Ethics - The affects )
Proposition VI
Chaque chose, autant qu'il est en elle, s'efforce de persévérer dans son être.
Proposition VII
L'effort par lequel chaque chose s'efforce de persévérer dans son être n'est rien en dehors de l'essence actuelle de cette chose.
Proposition VIII
L'effort par lequel chaque chose s'efforce de persévérer dans son être n'implique pas un temps fini, mais indéfini.
Proposition IX
L'esprit, en tant qu'il a autant d'idées claires et distinctes que d'idées confuses, s'efforce de persévérer dans son être pour une certaine durée indéfinie, et est conscient de cet effort qu'il fait.
Démonstration
L'essence de l'Esprit est constitué d'idées adéquates et inadéquates (III.3), et par suite (III.7), tant en tant qu'il a les unes qu'en tant qu'il a les autres, il s'efforce de persévérer dans son être ; et ce (III.8) pour une certaine durée indéfinie. Et comme l'Esprit à travers les idées des affections du Corps est nécessairement conscient de soi, l'Esprit est donc conscient de son effort. CQFD.
Scolie
Cet effort, quand on le rapporte à l'Esprit seul, s'appelle Volonté ; mais, quand on le rapporte à la fois à l'Esprit et au Corps, on le nomme Appétit ; et celui-ci n'est rien d'autre que l'essence même de l'homme, essence d'où suivent nécessairement toutes les conduites qui servent sa propre conservation ; c'est pourquoi l'homme est nécessairement déterminé à les accomplir. En outre, il n'y a aucune différence entre l'Appétit et le Désir, si ce n'est qu'en général on rapporte le Désir aux hommes en tant qu'ils sont conscients de leur appétit ; c'est pourquoi on pourrait le définir ainsi : Le Désir est l'appétit avec la conscience de l'appétit. Il ressort donc de tout cela que nous ne nous efforçons pas vers une chose, nous ne la voulons, ne la poursuivons, ni ne la désirons pas parce que nous jugeons qu'elle est bonne, mais au contraire nous ne jugeons qu'une chose est bonne que parce que nous nous efforçons vers elle, nous la voulons, la poursuivons ou la désirons.
( Baruch Spinoza - Ethique - De l'origine et de la nature des affects )
Proposición VI
Cada cosa, en cuanto está en ella, se esfuerza por perseverar en su ser.
Proposición VII
El esfuerzo con que cada cosa se afana por perseverar en su ser, no es sino la esencia actual de la cosa misma.
Proposición VIII
El esfuerzo con que se afana cada cosa por perseverar en su ser no envuelve ningún tiempo finito, sino indefinido.
Proposición IX
La mente, tanto en la medida en que tiene ideas claras y distintas como en la medida en que las tiene confusas, se esfuerza por perseverar en su ser por una duración indefinida, y es consciente de este esfuerzo suyo.
Demostración
La esencia de la mente está constituida por ideas adecuadas e inadecuadas (III.3), y por ello (III.7) tanto en la medida en que tiene éstas como en la que tiene aquéllas, se esfuerza por perseverar en su ser; y esto por una duración indefinida. Adermás, en vista de que la mente consciente de sí misma a través de las afecciones del cuerpo, también es (III.7) consciente de su esfuerzo.
Escolio
Este esfuerzo, cuando se relaciona sólo con la mente, se llama voluntad, pero cuando se relaciona con la mente y el cuerpo al mismo tiempo, se llama apetito; el cual no es, por ende, más que la esencia misma del hombre de cuya naturaleza se desprenden necesariamente aquellas cosas que sirven a su conservación; en consecuencia, el hombre está determinado a efectuarlas. Asimismo, entre apetito y deseo no hay diferencia alguna, sino que el deseo se relaciona generalmente con los hombres, en cuanto son conscientes de su apetito, por lo cual puede definirse así: El deseo es el apetito con conciencia de sí mismo. Consta, pues, por todo esto que no nos esforzamos, queremos, apetecemos ni deseamos algo porque juzguemos que es bueno; sino que, al contrario, juzgamos que algo es bueno porque nos esforzamos por ello o lo queremos, apetecemos y deseamos.
( Benedictus de Spinoza - Ética - Afecta )
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| . rectO-persO . | . E ≥ m.C² . | . co~errAnce . | . TiLt . |
High potential? Parents want to know
Psychological examinations are increasingly common to identify gifted children. It’s a trend that hides a complex reality, as gifted children can also be prone to failure.
Enéa gets good marks. But she disturbs the class, talks a lot and complains often. This situation surprises her mother, Stéphanie Laurent. At home, this seven-year old schoolgirl from Lausanne is quiet, responsible and not the type to bother others. What’s wrong? School. Enéa is bored. A teacher friend advised Stéphanie Laurent to enter her daughter for tests to determine whether she was “high potential”. And the result came back positive.
High potential (HP) children are referred to as gifted or precocious. They are sometimes compared with child prodigies, which is one reason for the increase in requests for psychological examinations. “Interest in these tests is growing,” states Pierre Fumeaux, a child psychiatrist at Lausanne University Hospital who is currently conducting a study on the subject. “A few years ago when parents or teachers had to deal with a difficult student, they would ask the doctor if the child was hyperactive. Now the term ‘high potential’ has taken centre stage in the media.” Contrary to popular belief, gifted is not always synonymous with success. High potential children can also be prone to failure.
A different brain
To be diagnosed as “HP”, an individual has to obtain a score of at least 130 on IQ tests. “But the score isn’t enough,” explains Claudia Jankech, a psychotherapist in Lausanne specialised in child and teenager psychology. “We also need to understand their family and social context and their personality.”
Surprisingly, a high number of HP children have trouble in school. “When it’s too easy for them, they get used to being on autopilot,” says the psychologist. “They’ve never learnt how to learn.” These difficulties are partly due to what specialists call arborescent thinking. “Normal people develop logical reasoning through linear, sequential thinking. However, the thought process in HP children is like fireworks exploding with ideas and impressive intuition. They can solve complex equations but will have difficulty explaining how they came up with the answer,” explains Pierre Fumeaux.
Surprisingly, a high number of HP children have trouble in school. “When it’s too easy for them, they get used to being on autopilot,” says the psychologist. “They’ve never learnt how to learn.”
Studies suggest that HP children’s brains function differently. Information moves better between the two cerebral hemispheres. “We assume that they use both their left and right brains easily and have excellent abilities in both logic and creativity,” says the child psychiatrist. “Other work has shown that HP children can more easily juggle with concepts and think in the abstract, such as performing mental calculations. “In a functional MRI, a dye is injected to highlight the areas of the brain with the highest blood flow.
Using a scanner, we can then see which areas are activated,” Pierre Fumeaux explains. “A stimulus or given task will activate certain areas of the brain in normal individuals. In HP children, sometimes several larger areas are activated at the same time,” he adds. These indicators help doctors understand how an HP mind works. “But our knowledge in neuroscience remains limited,” the researcher admits. “Being high potential is not an illness, but a special cognitive ability. And that’s not a priority for researchers.”
INTERVIEW: “The methods of diagnosis are debatable”
In a survey conducted on gifted children, the French sociologist Wilfried Lignier noted that specialists do not agree about the tests designed to diagnose giftedness.
In Vivo You observe that most gifted children don’t have difficulty in school or psychological problems. Why then do parents have them take tests?
Wilfried Lignier These parents are very concerned that their children will face difficulties, whereas they actually have every chance of success. They think that the school’s assessment is not enough. Psychology offers greater legitimacy for their concerns.
IV You approach giftedness as a “debated and debatable” issue. Why?
WL Many psychologists don’t recognise giftedness mainly because they doubt the credibility of IQ tests. These tests are meant to assess something other than academic skills, but in form they are quite similar to the exercises performed in school. Furthermore, children also have this impression. After the test is over, some say that they did well in the “maths” section, referring to the logical reasoning, or the “language” section, referring to the vocabulary. Being so similar to exercises done in school, these tests contradict the idea that intelligence isn’t the same as academic performance. Yet most of the social repercussions expected from test results are based on the idea that they tell a truth that school does not.
IV You show that the diagnosis swings in favour of one gender. How do you explain that high potential is more often diagnosed in boys?
WL Parents tend to express greater concern about their future, as it more readily carries their hopes of upward social mobility. The fact that boys have greater chances of having “symptoms”, such as openly expressing their boredom or not being able to stay still, also plays a role.
Hyper-sensitivity
HP children also typically have emotional characteristics featuring high sensitivity or a high level of empathy. Stéphanie Laurent’s two other children, boys, have also been diagnosed as high potential. “Nathael, age six, cries at Christmas because poor people are cold and have nothing to eat.” His hyper-sensitivity distresses him. “It can take on huge proportions. At one point, Mathys, age eight, felt unreasonable fear because he knew that there was a core on fire at the centre of the earth.” Myriam Bickle Graz, a developmental paediatrician at Lausanne University Hospital who wrote a thesis on the subject, says, “The children seen at consultations were often overwhelmed by their emotions. For some, it was incredibly difficult; they have no filter,” she explains. “The fear of death, for example, comes very early.” They develop symptoms such as anxiety, sleep disorders, strained relationships with other children and aggression.
THE HAPPIEST HP CHILDREN ARE THOSE WHO ARE NOT IDENTIFIED AS SUCH AND MANAGE TO ADAPT.
As in the Laurent family, there are often several gifted siblings. “Not all siblings are necessarily going to be HP, but there is a certain degree of genetic heritage. However, that hasn’t been proven scientifically,” explains Myriam Bickle Graz. “It remains a clinical observation.”
Although some high potential children suffer, the majority of them lead normal lives. As summed up by Pierre Fumeaux, “the happiest HP children are those who are not identified as such and manage to adapt.”
Arborescent thinking deploying in several directions, simultaneously, extremely fast and without boundaries. While it is a important source of creativity, it also implies: Difficulties to identify relevant information; all these thoughts in all directions may be confusing when the child is faced with a question, a problem or a task at school, An absolute need to organise these thoughts within a sturdy frame so that the child feels affectively, emotionally and socially secure. A “global” information processing system, with analogic and intuitive thinking. While it enables a very rich and deep understanding, with photographic memory, it also implies: Serious difficulties to adapt to the traditional schooling systems which treat information in details and sequentially (one thing after the other), An inability to develop arguments or justify their reasoning. Gifted children usually can’t explain their results, they consider the answers obvious, they know intuitively. The necessity to use in parallel the traditional school learning methods and their own knowledge aquisition systems; they do not want to feel useless, rejected or stupid. A thinking mode that needs meaning to function and complexity to develop and bloom. While it is an endless source of information data stored in an exceptional memory, it also implies: Difficulties or even refusal to acquire skills or information which they consider useless, too simple or not exciting enough to justify their attention and efforts, Constant challenges of established rules and norms, to satisfy their needs for meaning, To “learn how to learn” while taming their impatience through inventive and stimulating methodologies, with deep enrichment on all subjects. A way of thinking constantly integrating affective aspects of its environment. While it is a rich incentive to learning, it also implies: Frustration, even rejection of some teachers whom they see as incompetent in their teaching methods or behaviours, Excessive, even pathological reactions if these children, who try to master their environment and their variations, cannot find reassurance. They are scared by what they do not understand and they know, from a very young age, many things that they cannot put in perspective due to their short life experience. A need for constant reassurance on their learning progress, with a learning methodology adapted to their needs and offering a long-term continuity and homogeneity, thus reducing affective disruptions as much as possible.
anhugar.wifeo.com/arborescent-way-of-thinking.php A difficulty encountered by many gifed children is the fact that they think in an arborescent way instead of a linear one. The usual teaching methods are linear - when forced to learn in that mode, gifted children need to make a lot of efforts to voluntarily slow-down their “processing” thinking pace.
Arborescent thinking is very adequate for gifted people; it allows them to use all their mental capacities and their knowledge simultaneously. However, it needs to be guided and framed otherwise their thinking takes them far away from the subject of that day.
Here is an example from Jeanne Siaud-Fachin: The teacher gives a spelling test. He dictates “the boat sails on the sea”. The gifted child will initially visualize an image of a boat on the sea before seeing the sentence made of 6 words. Following the image, her thoughts will go in all directions: well, it is not a good idea to sail today because there is a lot of wind are there any people on that boat? my friend Frank owns a boat, he’s lucky but his parents are divorced, that is not fun I hope my parents will never get divorced yet, Frank has twice as many presents for Christmas now that he has 2 homes which reminds me, I have not yet prepared a wish-list for Christmas etc. While the other children have finished writing the initial sentance, the gifted child does not remember it at all and if she’s pressed, she may write the last sentence that went through her head “ I have not yet prepared a wish-list for Christmas ”.
Also
www.talentdifferent.com/la-pensee-en-arborescence-901.htm...
www.asep-suisse.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_docman&am... (pdf) How to help such children overcome their ‘handicap’
From the main link in the title (translated from the French by Google Chrome, I think): Surprisingly, a high number of high potential children have trouble in school. “When it’s too easy for them, they get used to being on autopilot,” says the psychologist. “They’ve never learnt how to learn.” These difficulties are partly due to what specialists call arborescent thinking. “Normal people develop logical reasoning through linear, sequential thinking. However, the thought process in HP children is like fireworks exploding with ideas and impressive intuition. They can solve complex equations but will have difficulty explaining how they came up with the answer,” explains Pierre Fumeaux.
Surprisingly, a high number of HP children have trouble in school. “When it’s too easy for them, they get used to being on autopilot,” says the psychologist. “They’ve never learnt how to learn.”
Studies suggest that HP children’s brains function differently. Information moves better between the two cerebral hemispheres. “We assume that they use both their left and right brains easily and have excellent abilities in both logic and creativity,” says the child psychiatrist. “Other work has shown that HP children can more easily juggle with concepts and think in the abstract, such as performing mental calculations. “In a functional MRI, a dye is injected to highlight the areas of the brain with the highest blood flow.
Intelligence is a multidimensional entity, a human characteristic too complicated to be accurately and sufficiently measured by any IQ test. IQ tests merely photograph one's cognitive level / mental performance, rather than fully analyze and describe it, mainly since IQ itself is not all there is to intelligence. Creativity, for instance, which is highly correlated to imagination (the core of intelligence), is not IQ dependent. So it's really very hard to say, particularly since the IQ estimation of most of the greatest geniuses of all time is based almost entirely on their work, since they're not alive. Thus, the results' credibility cannot be verified with intelligence tests. Despite that, several psychometricians consider William James Sidis to be the most intelligent human who ever lived. Moreover, some believe his peak cognitive level to be representative of the highest possible level a human being can reach (his deviation IQ is estimated at about 250-280, sd 16). Others characterize Emanuel Swedenborg as the most intellectually charismatic person ever (during his lifetime, his mental abilities where considered nearly divine). Some other universal geniuses exceeding the level of a deviation IQ of 200, sd 16 are Leonardo Da Vinci, Socrates, Plato, Nikola Tesla, Hypatia, Stephen Hawking and more. Others, with an estimated deviation IQ above 180, sd 16 - the critical level of 5 sigma above the mean - are Friedrich Nietzsche, Gottfried W. Leibniz, Salvador Dali, Baruch Spinoza, Marie Curie, Johann W. Goethe, Pythagoras, Srinivasa Ramanujan, John Stuart Mill, Michelangelo Buonarroti, William Shakespeare, Robert J. Fischer and many more. Just consider that according to the current statistics & norms, the top 0.00003% of the unselected population corresponds to a deviation IQ of 180, sd 16 which is statistically equivalent to approximately 1800 individuals in our current population of (roughly) 6.4 billion people. Many scientific magazines & top scientists around the globe accept Dr. Edward Witten as the most intelligent human alive on earth. Witten works as a professor of physics at Princeton's Institute of Advanced Study and focuses on the laws that govern the Superstring Theory, currently the most realistic and widely accepted theory regarding the beginning and evolution of our universe. Grail Society (founded by Paul Cooijmans) has been created with a sole purpose of bringing out the most intelligent person who ever lived, that is, 1 in 100 billion people. This corresponds to 6.7 sigma above the average or a deviation IQ of 207, sd
Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mood disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally-elevated mood that last from days to weeks each. A self-disorder, also called ipseity disturbance, is a psychological phenomenon of disruption or diminishing of a person's sense of minimal (or basic) self-awareness. The precise mechanisms that cause bipolar disorder are not well understood. Bipolar disorder is thought to be associated with abnormalities in the structure and function of certain brain areas responsible for cognitive tasks and the processing of emotions. A neurologic model for bipolar disorder proposes that the emotional circuitry of the brain can be divided into two main parts. The ventral system (regulates emotional perception) includes brain structures such as the amygdala, insula, ventral striatum, ventral anterior cingulate cortex, and the prefrontal cortex. The dorsal system (responsible for emotional regulation) includes the hippocampus, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and other parts of the prefrontal cortex.The model hypothesizes that bipolar disorder may occur when the ventral system is overactivated and the dorsal system is underactivated.Other models suggest the ability to regulate emotions is disrupted in people with bipolar disorder and that dysfunction of the ventricular prefrontal cortex (vPFC) is crucial to this disruption.
If the elevated mood is severe or associated with psychosis, it is called mania; if it is less severe, it is called hypomania. During mania, an individual behaves or feels abnormally energetic, happy or irritable, and they often make impulsive decisions with little regard for the consequences.[5] There is usually also a reduced need for sleep during manic phases.[5] During periods of depression, the individual may experience crying and have a negative outlook on life and poor eye contact with others.[ The risk of suicide is high; over a period of 20 years, 6% of those with bipolar disorder died by suicide, while 30–40% engaged in self-harm. Other mental health issues, such as anxiety disorders and substance use disorders, are commonly associated with bipolar disorder. The sense of minimal self refers to the very basic sense of having experiences that are one's own; it has no properties, unlike the more extended sense of self, the narrative self, which is characterized by the person's reflections on themselves as a person, things they like, their identity, and other aspects that are the result of reflection on one's self. Disturbances in the sense of minimal self, as measured by the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience (EASE), aggregate in the schizophrenia spectrum disorders, to include schizotypal personality disorder, and distinguish them from other conditions such as psychotic bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder. The minimal self has been likened to a "flame that enlightens its surroundings and thereby itself." Unlike the extended self, which is composed of properties such as the person's identity, the person's narrative, and other aspects that can be gleaned from reflection, the minimal self has no properties, but refers to the "mine-ness" "given-ness" of experience, that the experiences are that of the person having them in that person's stream of consciousness. These experiences that are part of the minimal self are normally "tacit" and implied, requiring no reflection on the part of the person experiencing to know that the experience is theirs. The minimal self cannot be further elaborated and normally one cannot grasp it upon reflection. The minimal self goes hand-in-hand with immersion in the shared social world, such that "[t]he world is always pregiven, ie, tacitly grasped as a self-evident background of all experiencing and meaning." This is the self-world structure. De Warren gives an example of the minimal self combined with immersion in the shared social world: "When looking at this tree in my backyard, my consciousness is directed toward the tree and not toward my own act of perception. I am, however, aware of myself as perceiving this tree, yet this self-awareness (or self-consciousness) is not itself thematic."[5] The focus is normally on the tree itself, not on the person's own act of seeing the tree: to know that one is seeing the tree does not require an act of reflection. In the schizophrenia spectrum disorders, the minimal self and the self-world structure are "constantly challenged, unstable, and oscillating," causing anomalous self-experiences known as self-disorders. These involve the person feeling as if they lack an identity, as if they are not really existing, that the sense of their experiences being their own (the "mine-ness" of their experiential world) is failing or diminishing, as if their inner experiences are no longer private, and that they don't really understand the world. These experiences lead to the person engaging in hyper-reflectivity, or abnormally prolonged and intense self-reflection, to attempt to gain a grasp on these experiences, but such intense reflection may further exacerbate the self-disorders. Self-disorders tend to be chronic, becoming incorporated into the person's way of being and affecting "how" they experience the world and not necessarily "what" they experience. This instability of the minimal self may provoke the onset of psychosis. Similar phenomena can occur in other conditions, such as bipolar disorder and depersonalization disorder, but Sass's (2014) review of the literature comparing accounts of self-experience in various mental disorders shows that serious self-other confusion and "severe erosion of minimal self-experience" only occur in schizophrenia; as an example of the latter, Sass cites the autobiographical account of Elyn Saks, who has schizophrenia, of her experience of "disorganization" in which she felt that thoughts, perceptions, sensations, and even the passage of time became incoherent, and that she had no longer "the solid center from which one experiences reality", which occurred when she was 7 or 8 years old. This disturbance tends to fluctuate over time based on emotions and motivation, accounting for the phenomenon of dialipsis in schizophrenia, where neurocognitive performance tends to be inconsistent over time. The disturbance of the minimal self may manifest in people in various ways, including as a tendency to inspect one's thoughts in order to know what they are thinking, like a person seeing an image, reading a message, or listening closely to someone talking (audible thoughts; or in German: Gedankenlautwerden). In normal thought, the "signifier" (the images or inner speech representing the thought) and the "meaning" are combined into the "expression", so that the person "inhabits" their thinking, or that both the signifier and the meaning implicitly come to mind together; the person does not need to reflect on their thoughts to understand what they are thinking. In people with self-disorder, however, it is frequently the case that many thoughts are experienced as more like external objects that are not implicitly comprehended. The person must turn their focus toward the thoughts to understand their thoughts because of that lack of implicit comprehension, a split of the signifier and the meaning from each other, where the signifier emerges automatically in the field of awareness but the meaning does not. This is an example of the failing "mine-ness" of the experiential field as the minimal self recedes from its own thoughts, which are consigned to an outer space. This is present chronically, both during and outside of psychosis, and may represent a middle point between normal inner speech and auditory hallucinations, as well as normal experience and first-rank symptoms. They may also experience uncontrolled multiple trains of thought with different themes simultaneously coursing through one's head interfering with concentration (thought pressure) or often feel they must attend to things with their full attention in order to get done what most people can do without giving it much thought (hyper-reflectivity), which can lead to fatigue.In a 2014 review, Postmes, et al., suggested that self-disorders and psychosis may arise from attempts to compensate for perceptual incoherence and proposed a hypothesis for how the interaction among these phenomena and the person's attempts to resolve the incoherence give rise to schizophrenia. The problems with the integration of sensory information create problems for the person in keeping a grip on the world, and since the self-world interaction is fundamentally linked to the basic sense of self, the latter is also disrupted as a result. Sass and Borda have studied the correlates of the dimensions of self-disorders, namely disturbed grip (perplexity, difficulty "getting" stuff most people can get), hyperreflexivity (where thoughts, feelings, sensations, and objects pop up uncontrollably in the field of awareness, as well dysfunctional reflecting on matters and the self), and diminished self-affection (where the person has difficulty being "affected" by aspects of the self, experiencing those aspects as if they existed in an outer space), and have proposed how both primary and secondary factors may arise from dysfunctions in perceptual organization and multisensory integration. In a 2013 review, Mishara, et al., criticized the concept of the minimal self as an explanation for self-disorder, saying that it is unfalsifiable, and that self-disorder arises primarily from difficulty integrating different aspects of the self as well as having difficulty distinguishing self and other, as proposed by Lysaker and Lysaker: Ichstörung or ego disorder, as they say, in schizophrenia arises from disturbed relationships not from the "solipsistic" concept of the self as proposed by Sass, Parnas, and others. In his review, Sass agrees that the focus of research into self-disorder has focused too much on the self, and mentions attempts to look at disturbances in the person's relationship with other people and the world, with work being done to create an Examination of Anomalous World Experience, which will look at the person's anomalous experiences regarding time, space, persons, language, and atmosphere; he suggests there are problems with both the self and the world in people with self-disorder, and that it may be better conceptualized as a "presence-disturbance".Parnas acknowledges the Lysaker model, but says that it is not incompatible with the concept of the minimal self, as they deal with different levels of self-hood.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-disorder
Late adolescence and early adulthood are peak years for the onset of bipolar disorder.The condition is characterized by intermittent episodes of mania and/or depression, with an absence of symptoms in between. During these episodes, people with bipolar disorder exhibit disruptions in normal mood, psychomotor activity (the level of physical activity that is influenced by mood)—e.g. constant fidgeting during mania or slowed movements during depression—circadian rhythm and cognition. Mania can present with varying levels of mood disturbance, ranging from euphoria, which is associated with "classic mania", to dysphoria and irritability. Psychotic symptoms such as delusions or hallucinations may occur in both manic and depressive episodes; their content and nature are consistent with the person's prevailing mood. According to the DSM-5 criteria, mania is distinguished from hypomania by length: hypomania is present if elevated mood symptoms persist for at least four consecutive days, while mania is present if such symptoms persist for more than a week. Unlike mania, hypomania is not always associated with impaired functioning. The biological mechanisms responsible for switching from a manic or hypomanic episode to a depressive episode, or vice versa, remain poorly understood.The causes of bipolar disorder are not clearly understood, both genetic and environmental factors are thought to play a role. Many genes, each with small effects, may contribute to the development of the disorder. Genetic factors account for about 70–90% of the risk of developing bipolar disorder. Environmental risk factors include a history of childhood abuse and long-term stress. The condition is classified as bipolar I disorder if there has been at least one manic episode, with or without depressive episodes, and as bipolar II disorder if there has been at least one hypomanic episode (but no full manic episodes) and one major depressive episode. If these symptoms are due to drugs or medical problems, they are not diagnosed as bipolar disorder. Other conditions that have overlapping symptoms with bipolar disorder include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, personality disorders, schizophrenia, and substance use disorder as well as many other medical conditions. Medical testing is not required for a diagnosis, though blood tests or medical imaging can rule out other problems. Mood stabilizers—lithium and certain anticonvulsants such as valproate and carbamazepine—are the mainstay of long-term relapse prevention. Antipsychotics are given during acute manic episodes as well as in cases where mood stabilizers are poorly tolerated or ineffective or where compliance is poor. There is some evidence that psychotherapy improves the course of this disorder. The use of antidepressants in depressive episodes is controversial: they can be effective but have been implicated in triggering manic episodes. The treatment of depressive episodes, therefore, is often difficult. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is effective in acute manic and depressive episodes, especially with psychosis or catatonia. Admission to a psychiatric hospital may be required if a person is a risk to themselves or others; involuntary treatment is sometimes necessary if the affected person refuses treatment. Bipolar disorder occurs in approximately 1% of the global population. In the United States, about 3% are estimated to be affected at some point in their life; rates appear to be similar in females and males. Symptoms most commonly begin between the ages of 20 and 25 years old; an earlier onset in life is associated with a worse prognosis. Interest in functioning in the assessment of patients with bipolar disorder is growing, with an emphasis on specific domains such as work, education, social life, family, and cognition. Around one-quarter to one-third of people with bipolar disorder have financial, social or work-related problems due to the illness. Bipolar disorder is among the top 20 causes of disability worldwide and leads to substantial costs for society. Due to lifestyle choices and the side effects of medications, the risk of death from natural causes such as coronary heart disease in people with bipolar disorder is twice that of the general population. Also known as a manic episode, mania is a distinct period of at least one week of elevated or irritable mood, which can range from euphoria to delirium. The core symptom of mania involves an increase in energy of psychomotor activity. Mania can also present with increased self-esteem or grandiosity, racing thoughts, pressured speech that is difficult to interrupt, decreased need for sleep, disinhibited social behavior, increased goal-oriented activities and impaired judgement, which can lead to exhibition of behaviors characterized as impulsive or high-risk, such as hypersexuality or excessive spending.To fit the definition of a manic episode, these behaviors must impair the individual's ability to socialize or work.[ If untreated, a manic episode usually lasts three to six months.
In severe manic episodes, a person can experience psychotic symptoms, where thought content is affected along with mood. They may feel unstoppable, or as if they have a special relationship with God, a great mission to accomplish, or other grandiose or delusional ideas. This may lead to violent behavior and, sometimes, hospitalization in an inpatient psychiatric hospital. The severity of manic symptoms can be measured by rating scales such as the Young Mania Rating Scale, though questions remain about the reliability of these scales. The onset of a manic or depressive episode is often foreshadowed by sleep disturbance. Mood changes, psychomotor and appetite changes, and an increase in anxiety can also occur up to three weeks before a manic episode develops.[medical citation needed] Manic individuals often have a history of substance abuse developed over years as a form of "self-medication". Hypomania is the milder form of mania, defined as at least four days of the same criteria as mania, but which does not cause a significant decrease in the individual's ability to socialize or work, lacks psychotic features such as delusions or hallucinations, and does not require psychiatric hospitalization. Overall functioning may actually increase during episodes of hypomania and is thought to serve as a defense mechanism against depression by some. Hypomanic episodes rarely progress to full-blown manic episodes. Some people who experience hypomania show increased creativity, while others are irritable or demonstrate poor judgment. Hypomania may feel good to some individuals who experience it, though most people who experience hypomania state that the stress of the experience is very painful. People with bipolar disorder who experience hypomania tend to forget the effects of their actions on those around them. Even when family and friends recognize mood swings, the individual will often deny that anything is wrong. If not accompanied by depressive episodes, hypomanic episodes are often not deemed problematic unless the mood changes are uncontrollable or volatile.Most commonly, symptoms continue for time periods from a few weeks to a few months. People with bipolar disorder who are in a euthymic mood state show decreased activity in the lingual gyrus compared to people without bipolar disorder. In contrast, they demonstrate decreased activity in the inferior frontal cortex during manic episodes compared to people without the disorder. Similar studies examining the differences in brain activity between people with bipolar disorder and those without did not find a consistent area in the brain that was more or less active when comparing these two groups. People with bipolar have increased activation of left hemisphere ventral limbic areas—which mediate emotional experiences and generation of emotional responses—and decreased activation of right hemisphere cortical structures related to cognition—structures associated with the regulation of emotions. Neuroscientists have proposed additional models to try to explain the cause of bipolar disorder. One proposed model for bipolar disorder suggests that hypersensitivity of reward circuits consisting of frontostriatal circuits causes mania, and decreased sensitivity of these circuits causes depression. According to the "kindling" hypothesis, when people who are genetically predisposed toward bipolar disorder experience stressful events, the stress threshold at which mood changes occur becomes progressively lower, until the episodes eventually start (and recur) spontaneously. There is evidence supporting an association between early-life stress and dysfunction of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis leading to its overactivation, which may play a role in the pathogenesis of bipolar disorder. Other brain components that have been proposed to play a role in bipolar disorder are the mitochondria and a sodium ATPase pump. Circadian rhythms and regulation of the hormone melatonin also seem to be altered. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter responsible for mood cycling, has increased transmission during the manic phase. The dopamine hypothesis states that the increase in dopamine results in secondary homeostatic downregulation of key system elements and receptors such as lower sensitivity of dopaminergic receptors. This results in decreased dopamine transmission characteristic of the depressive phase. The depressive phase ends with homeostatic upregulation potentially restarting the cycle over again. Glutamate is significantly increased within the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during the manic phase of bipolar disorder, and returns to normal levels once the phase is over. Medications used to treat bipolar may exert their effect by modulating intracellular signaling, such as through depleting myo-inositol levels, inhibition of cAMP signaling, and through altering subunits of the dopamine-associated G-protein.[81] Consistent with this, elevated levels of Gαi, Gαs, and Gαq/11 have been reported in brain and blood samples, along with increased protein kinase A (PKA) expression and sensitivity;[82] typically, PKA activates as part of the intracellular signalling cascade downstream from the detachment of Gαs subunit from the G protein complex. Decreased levels of 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid, a byproduct of serotonin, are present in the cerebrospinal fluid of persons with bipolar disorder during both the depressed and manic phases. Increased dopaminergic activity has been hypothesized in manic states due to the ability of dopamine agonists to stimulate mania in people with bipolar disorder. Decreased sensitivity of regulatory α2 adrenergic receptors as well as increased cell counts in the locus coeruleus indicated increased noradrenergic activity in manic people. Low plasma GABA levels on both sides of the mood spectrum have been found.[83] One review found no difference in monoamine levels, but found abnormal norepinephrine turnover in people with bipolar disorder. Tyrosine depletion was found to reduce the effects of methamphetamine in people with bipolar disorder as well as symptoms of mania, implicating dopamine in mania. VMAT2 binding was found to be increased in one study of people with bipolar mania.
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cognition refers to a faculty for the processing of information, applying knowledge, and changing preferences. Cognition, or cognitive processes, can be natural or artificial, conscious or unconscious. These processes are analyzed from different perspectives within different contexts, notably in the fields of linguistics, anesthesia, neurology, psychology, philosophy, anthropology, systemics, computer science and creed. Within psychology or philosophy, the concept of cognition is closely related to abstract concepts such as mind, intelligence, cognition is used to refer to the mental functions, mental processes (thoughts) and states of intelligent entities (humans, human organizations, highly autonomous machines and artificial intelligences).
When the mind makes a generalization such as the concept of tree, it extracts similarities from numerous examples; the simplification enables higher-level thinking.The sort of mental processes described as cognitive are largely influenced by research which has successfully used this paradigm in the past, likely starting with Thomas Aquinas, who divided the study of behavior into two broad categories: cognitive (how we know the world), and affective (feelings and emotions). Consequently, this description tends to apply to processes such as memory, association, concept formation, pattern recognition, language, attention, perception, action, problem solving and mental imagery. Traditionally, emotion was not thought of as a cognitive process. This division is now regarded as largely artificial, and much research is currently being undertaken to examine the cognitive psychology of emotion; research also includes one's awareness of strategies and methods of cognition, known as metacognition.
Empirical research into cognition is usually scientific and quantitative, or involves creating models to describe or explain certain behaviors.
While few people would deny that cognitive processes are a function of the brain, a cognitive theory will not necessarily make reference to the brain or other biological process. It may purely describe behavior in terms of information flow or function. Relatively recent fields of study such as cognitive science and neuropsychology aim to bridge this gap, using cognitive paradigms to understand how the brain implements these information-processing functions, or how pure information-processing systems (e.g., computers) can simulate cognition
Entropy, as expressed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, is an all pervasive natural force, similar in importance to gravity or electro- magnetism. Its attributes involve the flow of what we call "time". It shows why time travel is impossible and why water only runs downhill. Entropy permeates all aspects of human existence. Entropy explains why it is easy to lose money and difficult to make money. Entropy is the force behind Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong, must go wrong. Is time-travel impossible? Why does water only run downhill? Why is it easy to lose money but difficult to acquire it? The answer to these and many other puzzling questions rests in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, in Entropy. The so-called Second Law relates closely to the term Entropy. An understanding of this fundamental law of nature and its ramification provides great insights in the way the world really works. Entropy, as expressed by the Second Law, is the ultimate Natural Law because it determines the flow of what we call "time". Thus, entropy deals with the very existence of the universe. The term entropy describes phenomena that have the most profound effect on all events in human existence, including our ability to achieve happiness by aligning ourselves with Objective Reality.
The Second Law holds a unique position in science because it has never evolved from a theory such as the Theory of Relativity or the Theory of Quantum Mechanics. The Second Law is empirical. There is no fully satisfactory theoretical proof for the Second Law, although there are some connections to Quantum Mechanics, Probability and Relativity. Once a Unified Field Theory, the Theory of Everything, is developed, it will and must account for Entropy. Many scientists, who claimed that this Law is paradoxical in nature, have tried to attack it. However, in all instances the alleged paradoxes were due to faulty reasoning. The Second Law has prevailed and has established itself as the most fundamental of all Natural Laws.
The profound nature of the Second Law manifests itself in every aspect of human existence. It covers questions pertaining to the obscure beginnings of the universe to the way we pour milk in our coffee. I remember my high school teacher posing the question: You have a cup of very hot coffee that you would like to drink as soon as possible, let us say, within 5 minutes. Should you first add the desired quantity of cold milk to the coffee and then let the coffee sit for 5 minutes? Alternatively, do you let the coffee sit for 5 minutes and then add the same quantity of milk?
The answer is not intuitive but it is simple, if we are familiar with the Second Law: The rate of heat exchange between the hot coffee and the ambient air depends on their temperature differential. The higher the temperature differential, the faster will be the rate of exchange. Within the 5-minute waiting period, heat transfers to the air at a higher rate if we do not add the cold milk initially to the coffee. If we add the milk at the beginning, instead of at the end of the 5 minutes, the energy transfer will slow down and the coffee will be markedly hotter at the end of 5 minutes.
This revelation does not appear to be a momentous event. It was only intended to indicate the pervasiveness of the Second Law, especially in view of the fact that most people are seemingly ignorant of it. The point is, the Second Law is not intuitive. We have to acquire the relevant knowledge by a rational thought process in order to take advantage of it. The cup of coffee is not important but the principle behind the cup permeates all of our existence: In order to optimize the effectiveness of our actions it is helpful to understand the implications of Entropy.
Entropy describes the degradation of energy to perform work. What is energy? On the high school level, we simply defined energy as the capacity to do work. However, the real question is, What factor, precisely, is doing this work? Why does energy have the capacity to perform work? The HOWs in life are easy, the WHYs are the tough ones.
Energy is the raw material of the universe. At the time of the Big Bang, about 13.7 billion years ago, there was nothing but raw energy. There was no mass with a physical attribute. It was only much later in the nascent universe that this primal energy transformed itself into physical mass, stars, nebula and black holes. Stars, and particularly supernovas, are the factories of the elements, such as iron, from which human beings are formed.
As we know from Einstein's famous formula E = m c^2, mass and energy are freely convertible into each other. The Hydrogen Bomb demonstrates this conversion in a spectacular fashion. Most of the energy it generates is due to the conversion of matter into energy. Such conversion of matter into energy, and vice-versa, is also a less spectacular event in everyday phenomena although it is usually so minuscule as to escape our attention: When we exercise vigorously, we convert chemical energy into radiated heat energy. All this radiated energy that leaves our body has mass, just as light has energy and weight, although it will not register on our bathroom scale.
In cognizance of these basic facts, we can stipulate that energy is the basic raw material that makes up the universe and all that is contained within it, including human beings. The essence of the universe is the unity of energy, time and space.
Energy is essentially a heat phenomenon. Heat and work are mechanisms by which systems exchange energy with one another. The mechanical equivalent of heat is called a Joule. 4.2 joules are the equivalent of one calorie, the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius.
In order for energy to perform work, a difference must exist between energy at a high potential and energy at a more randomized, diluted, potential. The term entropy is a measure of the degree to which energy has lost the capacity to perform useful work. Entropy signifies the dilution, the randomization of energy. We may look at water in two lakes, connected by a canal. Unless the lakes are at a different level, unless they are at a different energy potential, there is plenty of water, but all this water has no potential energy and cannot perform any useful work because it cannot change levels. This ability or inability to perform useful work is an analogy to and is at the heart of the term entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Let us back up a little: This whole subject of Thermodynamics sounds like a very complicated affair. Indeed, it is both very simple and extremely complex. There are three Laws of Thermodynamics, but we need to concern ourselves only with the first two laws because they are closely interwoven and can actually be expressed in one sentence: The total energy content of the universe is constant and the total entropy, the non-usable energy, is constantly increasing. There you have it: The combination of the first and second law of thermodynamics.
Very interesting, but what does it mean? It means that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can be transformed into mass, chemical energy, heat energy, latent energy and work, but it cannot be created and it cannot disappear. Energy is also in a constant, inevitable and irreversible process of becoming increasingly randomized. Salt crystals may be dissolved in a beaker of water without losing its identity as salt. The salt became more randomized when it dissolved in the water. The Law of Entropy decrees that it cannot reconvert itself to the less randomized, crystalline version. The salt cannot reconstitute itself as crystals, unless we introduce external energy to evaporate the water.
The amount of energy in the universe was established at the time of the Big Bang. At that point, energy was extremely concentrated and ordered. Since then, the universe has expanded vastly and energy has become more diluted and randomized. It is inherent in the nature of the universe that this process must and will continue. If it were to stop, the universe would cease to exist.
This increasing randomization of energy, entropy, is part of the structure of the universe. The energy dilemma does not involve the amount of energy that is available; it involves the form in which the energy is available. The universe is involved in a constant process of converting one form of energy into another form and in doing so, it inevitably must convert part of the original energy into more randomized, less usable, heat energy. Potential energy is organized energy whereas heat represents randomized, disorganized energy. Heat energy is irretrievable energy. Although the energy contained in heat is not destroyed, it has become unavailable for producing work. All forms of energy are degraded incessantly and irreversibly to an inferior, lower-quality, more-randomized form of energy: Heat.
By the same principle, the solar energy that pours out of the furnace of the sun travels on and on until it eventually becomes scattered throughout the universe: It becomes so randomized that it becomes unusable for the performance of work. Therefore, we must stipulate that entropy, as a measure of the randomness of energy in the universe, is always increasing.
The question arises, what will happen when all the usable energy in the universe is converted into randomized heat energy and is no longer capable of performing such work as expanding the universe. We refer to this condition as the Heat Death of the Universe: Once all the energy in the universe is converted to and randomized as heat, then the universe will be in a state of energy equilibrium, everything will be of the same temperature and entropy will remain constant. This is where science gets more complicated and involves the microwave background radiation consisting of photons near, but not quite at, absolute Zero. Scientists have recently detected this microwave background radiation and have thus confirmed the connectivity between Thermodynamics and Quantum Mechanics.
Before we go on to some practical manifestations of entropy, we need to be aware of a very important characteristic of entropy: The Laws of Thermodynamics pertain only to a system that we refer to as a closed system: An entity that does not exchange energy, information or mass with anything outside the system. The universe in its totality is a closed system because no new energy is injected into it. Therefore, all laws of Thermodynamics apply to the universe. Earth is not a closed system because our sun constantly injects it with new energy. This infusion of energy into the non-closed system of the earth makes it possible to comply with the Second Law while achieving an increase in the complexity of life forms, as necessitated by the process of evolution.
The laws of thermodynamics are among the very few laws of nature that describe phenomena that are an integral part of the origin of the universe, of the Big Bang. The other laws in this category are gravity, relativity, nuclear binding forces and electromagnetism. Human beings need not concern themselves with the effects of relativity or quantum mechanics. However, the phenomena of thermodynamics constantly and profoundly affect all human beings.
If there are any laws that have truly universal applicability and that also affect ordinary human affairs, they are the Laws of Thermodynamics. The following statement contains the essence of Entropy: In any transformation of energy from one form to another, useful energy is lost irreversibly. The German physicist Clausius first used the term Entropy in 1865 to describe the nature of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Even great physicists of that period, like James Maxwell, had trouble with a concept involving only negatives and dealing with the idea of measuring a state of disorder. Today we can condense the statement of Entropy by stating: Entropy in a closed system can never decrease. There are no exceptions to this statement.
The Second Law decrees that water can only flow downhill. Objects do not run uphill by themselves. If we wish to have water run uphill, we must supply outside energy to pump it up the hill.
A clock gradually runs down because the latent energy in its spring is used to run the clock and part of this energy is converted to irretrievable heat. Because the heat cannot be reconstituted into usable energy, this energy is lost irretrievably and the clock cannot rewind itself.
Even in the most complex energy transformations, there is a forward direction to the process because only an outside energy source can reverse a heat-process within a closed system. The burning of gasoline in a car creates mechanical energy and heat. However, no process in the universe will allow the exhaust gases to re-combine with the heat energy and reconstitute the original gasoline: The heat energy of the burning gasoline has achieved a higher and irreversible state of randomization: The entropy of the system, and the universe, is irreversibly increased, as required by the Second Law.
The close relationship of entropy to the statistical laws of probability becomes clear when we hold a stack of five coins in a hand and throw them on a flat surface. Instead of retaining their previous order and proximity, they scatter and increase their randomness. The fall of the coins generated and dissipated the tiniest little bit of heat and the lack of this heat prevented the coins from reforming in the same stack as before. Entropy always drives all transformation of energy in such a way as to increase irreversible randomness.
Ice must have a tendency to melt because H2O molecules in ice crystals are more orderly than in the form of water. Ice crystals tend to become randomized by changing from orderly ice crystals to a more disorderly state as a liquid.
Water must evaporate: A gaseous structure is more randomized than a liquid state.
Time can only flow in one direction: The arrow of time can only move from the dead past to the non-existing future. The Second Law is closely interwoven with the laws of probability. Therefore, the laws of entropy are statistical laws. If we apply statistical laws applicable to entropy to future events, they provide meaningful results; if we apply them to past events, they are meaningless. Therefore, time can flow only from the dead past toward the future, which does not yet exist. Time travel will always remain impossible: It is inherently impossible to move from one state of non-existence to other states of non-existence. The Second Law decrees that the universe would have to cease to exist in order to allow for time-travel.
The laws of thermodynamics are the descriptors of the universe and do not permit perpetual motion machines. We would only waste our time and money if we were to attempt building a machine that not only can run forever, but that could even produce excess energy while doing so.
Heat flows from a hot object to a cold object, never the other way around. When we drop a hot peace of metal in a container of cold water, the metal cools and the water heats up until their temperatures have equalized. During this process the entropy, the randomness of the system consisting of the water and the metal, increases and no further useful work can be performed because there is no longer a temperature differential between the water and the metal: The system has become randomized.
This manifestation of the Second Law can be stated quite simply: Heat energy will not flow from a cooler to a warmer body. It would be foolish to try to warm our hands on a block of ice although there is considerable heat in the ice. If we compare the heat of ice with the heat of liquid hydrogen, ice would appear to be very hot, indeed. It would be easy to build a machine that runs on the heat differential between the cold block of ice and the much colder liquid hydrogen. However, since the heat in the ice is at a much lower level than the heat in our body, heat cannot flow from the ice to our hands. We cannot warm our hands by immersing them in ice. We have always known this fact. Now we know why we cannot warm our hand by touching a block of ice.
Bridges and buildings will inevitably collapse, unless entropy is counteracted by the addition of new energy, such as money, energy, power or labor, to the system. If we do not paint the bridge, it will eventually, but inevitably, collapse.
Money is not energy but it represents energy. Therefore, money becomes randomized automatically, in compliance with the Second Law. As we only know too well, money has a distinct tendency to dissipate, to randomize. On the other hand, the creation of wealth requires an infusion of energy from a source outside the system, such as a competent strategy or the contribution of additional capital or labor.
We know empirically, that things do not organize themselves into artifacts that are more complex unless new energy is inserted from outside the system. This fact is obvious because a broken window will not repair itself. Without competent management, without the energy to organize and structure transactions, a business will fail, a victim of entropy.
Without new software, without the infusion of new energy from outside the computer system, a computer will never acquire new capabilities, but its hard-drive will fill up with defects and clutter due to the degeneration of the data it holds. A well known fact.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is closely interwoven with the future of the universe and with all life on earth. Sometimes people say that the existence of life on earth violates or contradicts the Second Law. However, this is not the case; we know of nothing in the universe that violates the Second Law.
The definition of life revolves around three prerequisites: The organism must be able to replicate itself, the organism must be capable of energy conversion and the organism must be subject to evolution. The essence of evolution is an increase in complexity, as is obvious when we consider the evolution of living organisms over eons of time.
An increase in complexity entails an increase in the orderliness of the organizational character of the organism: Life represents a decrease of entropy, a decrease of randomness. Such a decrease in randomization can only come about as a result of an infusion of energy from the outside of the closed system, from the outside of the organism. Therefore, the ability to utilize energy by converting it to a usable form, is the essence of all things that we call alive or living. In the case of life on earth, the outside energy is derived from the sun. No sunlight, no life on earth.
This is the chain of life on earth: No energy, no evolution. -- No evolution, no life -- No energy, no life
The discussion of energy is significant, because nothing happens in the universe without energy. The whole universe is a cauldron of energy conversions. As far as human beings are concerned, we need to remember that the standard of living of a person or a nation is determined primarily by the availability of usable energy sources, such as oil or nuclear energy. Without sources of energy to turn our wheels and to compensate for entropy, humanity would revert to the primeval existence of hunters and gatherers.
Many people have trouble understanding the principle of entropy because it is a concept of negatives, because it is a measure of the disorder, of the randomness of a closed system. Every biochemical function requires a decrease in entropy, which can only be achieved by the infusion of energy into a life-sustaining system.
Many people erroneously believe that everything that we use up can be recycled and reused if we only develop the appropriate technology. However, the Second Law makes it inherently impossible to achieve complete reconstitution or recycling. In order to recycle a used product, we must insert additional energy in the collecting, transportation and reprocessing of used materials and this energy expenditure contributes to the overall entropy, the randomness, of the environment. Thus, discards can be recycled only by the expenditure of additional energy and at the expense of increasing the entropy of the universe as a whole. On a light note: Every time someone lights a cigarette, he increases the entropy of the universe and contributes to the energy death of the universe.
Why is this discussion of entropy and the Second Law so important to us, to ordinary human beings? After all, most of us are more concerned with living a happy life, than the heat death of the universe. The problem is that the Second Law has a tendency to interfere with our happiness because it has a pervasive, pernicious effect on our lives. It is imperative that we are aware of the impairments caused by entropy in order to counteract them effectively.
If we encounter a problem in life, it is most important to be fully cognizant of the precise nature and cause of the problem. In trying to resolve the problem, it would be counter-productive to invoke the help of imagined superior beings, instead of dealing with the problem in a realistic, purposeful manner. Unless we understand the nature of entropy, we cannot resolve the deleterious effects that make it difficult to achieve desired results. Therefore, a profound knowledge of the Second Law is extremely important to our quest for happiness.
"Murphy's Law" is well known. After allowing for many humorous embellishments and variations on the basic theme, Mr. Murphy’s proposition states: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." A corollary version claims: "Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse".
We laugh about this aspect of life because we have all experienced the effect of Mr. Murphy's Law on many occasions. Rather than recognize Murphy's Law as a humorous version of a basic law of nature, we usually look upon it as a quirk of nature. Nothing could be further from the truth: When we look at the Second Law of Thermodynamics, we realize that Mr. Murphy's law is an inescapable consequence of the principle of Entropy.
Unless we constantly insert new energy into a house by maintaining it, painting it, repairing it, the structure will eventually but inevitably be leveled to the ground. Its molecules will move from a lower level of randomization, from structure, to a higher level of randomization, towards unstructured debris.
Entropy is the reason why paint peels, why hot coffee turns cold. Furthermore, entropy is the reason why investments have a preordained inclination to go sour -- unless we enhance success by inserting into the investment system additional energy in the form of strategy, work, calculated risk or other forms of energy. Entropy ensures that sugar, which becomes more randomized when it is dissolved in water, will not reconstitute itself in the crystalline form -- unless we apply heat energy from outside the system and evaporate the water.
Wherever we look, whatever we do, we must be acutely aware of the immutable laws of thermodynamics, especially the easily overlooked Second Law: Entropy. This fundamental law of physics ranks with other fundamental manifestations of the universe such as gravity, time and electromagnetism.
Anything that can go wrong not only will go wrong, it must go wrong, as decreed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics
COGNITIVE BEHAVIOR INSTITUTE
(2017) Vans RV-14A
LOM - December 26, 2019
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Paul Kanagie
"The patient is young" is true to some degree – the lower the age of the patient (measured e.g. in years), the more the sentence is true. The word Advaita is a composite of two Sanskrit words: Advaita is often translated as "non-duality," but a more apt translation is "non-secondness." Advaita has several meanings: As Gaudapada states, when a distinction is made between subject and object, people grasp to objects, which is samsara. By realizing one's true identity as Brahman, there is no more grasping, and the mind comes to rest. Nonduality of Atman and Brahman, the famous diction of Advaita Vedanta that Atman is not distinct from Brahman; the knowledge of this identity is liberating. Monism: there is no other reality than Brahman, that "Reality is not constituted by parts," that is, ever-changing 'things' have no existence of their own, but are appearances of the one Existent, Brahman; and that there is in reality no duality between the "experiencing self" (jiva) and Brahman, the Ground of Being. The word Vedānta is a composition of two Sanskrit words: The word Veda refers to the whole corpus of vedic texts, and the word "anta" means 'end'. The meaning of Vedānta can be summed up as "the end of the vedas" or "the ultimate knowledge of the vedas". Vedānta is one of six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy. Truth of a fuzzy proposition is a matter of degree. I recommend to everybody interested in fuzzy logic that they sharply distinguish fuzziness from uncertainty as a degree of belief (e.g. probability). Compare the last proposition with the proposition "The patient will survive next week". This may well be considered as a crisp proposition which is either (absolutely) true or (absolutely) false; but we do not know which is the case. We may have some probability (chance, degree of belief) that the sentence is true; but probability is not a degree of truth. In metrology (the science of measurement), it is acknowledged that for any measure we care to make, there exists an amount of uncertainty about its accuracy, but this degree of uncertainty is conventionally expressed with a magnitude of likelihood, and not as a degree of truth. In 1975, Lotfi A. Zadeh introduced a distinction between "Type 1 fuzzy sets" without uncertainty and "Type 2 fuzzy sets" with uncertainty, which has been widely accepted. Simply put, in the former case, each fuzzy number is linked to a non-fuzzy (natural) number, while in the latter case, each fuzzy number is linked to another fuzzy number.Problems of vagueness and fuzziness have probably always existed in human experience. From ancient history, philosophers and scientists have reflected about those kinds of problems. The ancient Sorites paradox first raised the logical problem of how we could exactly define the threshold at which a change in quantitative gradation turns into a qualitative or categorical difference. With some physical processes this threshold is relatively easy to identify. For example, water turns into steam at 100 °C or 212 °F (the boiling point depends partly on atmospheric pressure, which decreases at higher altitudes). With many other processes and gradations, however, the point of change is much more difficult to locate, and remains somewhat vague. Thus, the boundaries between qualitatively different things may be unsharp: we know that there are boundaries, but we cannot define them exactly. The Nordic myth of Loki's wager suggested that concepts that lack precise meanings or precise boundaries of application cannot be usefully discussed at all.[9] However, the 20th-century idea of "fuzzy concepts" proposes that "somewhat vague terms" can be operated with, since we can explicate and define the variability of their application by assigning numbers to gradations of applicability. This idea sounds simple enough, but it had large implications. The intellectual origins of the species of fuzzy concepts as a logical category have been traced back to a diversity of famous and less well-known thinkers,[10] including (among many others) Eubulides, Plato, Cicero, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,[11] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hugh MacColl,[13] Charles S. Peirce, Max Black,[15] Jan Łukasiewicz,[16] Emil Leon Post, Alfred Tarski,Georg Cantor, Nicolai A. Vasiliev,[19] Kurt Gödel, Stanisław Jaśkowski[20] and Donald Knuth. Across at least two and a half millennia, all of them had something to say about graded concepts with unsharp boundaries. This suggests at least that the awareness of the existence of concepts with "fuzzy" characteristics, in one form or another, has a very long history in human thought. Quite a few logicians and philosophers have also tried to analyze the characteristics of fuzzy concepts as a recognized species, sometimes with the aid of some kind of many-valued logic or substructural logic. An early attempt in the post-WW2 era to create a theory of sets where set membership is a matter of degree was made by Abraham Kaplan and Hermann Schott in 1951. They intended to apply the idea to empirical research. Kaplan and Schott measured the degree of membership of empirical classes using real numbers between 0 and 1, and they defined corresponding notions of intersection, union, complementation and subset.[22] However, at the time, their idea "fell on stony ground".[23] J. Barkley Rosser Sr. published a treatise on many-valued logics in 1952, anticipating "many-valued sets".[24] Another treatise was published in 1963 by Aleksandr A. Zinov'ev and others In 1964, the American philosopher William Alston introduced the term "degree vagueness" to describe vagueness in an idea that results from the absence of a definite cut-off point along an implied scale (in contrast to "combinatory vagueness" caused by a term that has a number of logically independent conditions of application). The German mathematician Dieter Klaua [de] published a German-language paper on fuzzy sets in 1965, but he used a different terminology (he referred to "many-valued sets", not "fuzzy sets"). Two popular introductions to many-valued logic in the late 1960s were by Robert J. Ackermann and Nicholas Rescher respectively.] Rescher's book includes a bibliography on fuzzy theory up to 1965, which was extended by Robert Wolf for 1966–1974.[30] Haack provides references to significant works after 1974.[31] Bergmann provides a more recent (2008) introduction to fuzzy reasoning.
According to the modern idea of the continuum fallacy, the fact that a statement is to an extent vague, does not automatically mean that it is invalid. The problem then becomes one of how we could ascertain the kind of validity that the statement does have.Nondualism is a fuzzy concept, for which many definitions can be found. According to David Loy, since there are similar ideas and terms in a wide variety of spiritualities and religions, ancient and modern, no single definition for the English word "nonduality" can suffice, and perhaps it is best to speak of various "nondualities" or theories of nonduality.[10] Loy sees non-dualism as a common thread in Taoism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Advaita Vedanta,distinguishes "Five Flavors Of Nonduality":
Advaita, nondual awareness, the nondifference of subject and object, or nonduality between subject and object. According to Loy, in the Upanishads " It is most often expressed as the identity between Atman (the self) and Brahman.". Monism, the nonplurality of the world. Although the phenomenal world appears as a plurality of "things", in reality they are "of a single cloth". Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical ascetic traditions of the first millennium BCE developed in close interaction, utilizing proto-Samkhya enumerations (lists) analyzing experience in the context of meditative practices providing liberating insight into the nature of experience. The first millennium CE saw a movement towards postulating an underlying "basis of unity," both in the Buddhist Madhyamaka and Yogacara schools, and in Advaita Vedanta, collapsing phenomenal reality into a "single substrate or underlying principle." From Dualism to Oneness in Psychoanalysis: A Zen Perspective on the Mind-Body Question focuses on the shift in psychoanalytic thought, from a view of mind-body dualism to a contemporary non-dualistic perspective. The Perennial philosophy has its roots in the Renaissance interest in neo-Platonism and its idea of The One, from which all existence emanates. Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) sought to integrate Hermeticism with Greek and Jewish-Christian thought, discerning a Prisca theologia which could be found in all age Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94) suggested that truth could be found in many, rather than just two, traditions. He proposed a harmony between the thought of Plato and Aristotle, and saw aspects of the Prisca theologia in Averroes, the Koran, the Cabala and other sources. Agostino Steuco (1497–1548) coined the term philosophia perennis."Dual" comes from Latin "duo," two, prefixed with "non-" meaning "not"; "non-dual" means "not-two." When referring to nondualism, Hinduism generally uses the Sanskrit term Advaita, while Buddhism uses Advaya (Tibetan: gNis-med, Chinese: pu-erh, Japanese: fu-ni). "Advaita" (अद्वैत) is from Sanskrit roots a, not; dvaita, dual. As Advaita, it means "not-two." or "one without a second," and is usually translated as "nondualism", "nonduality" and "nondual". The term "nondualism" and the term "advaita" from which it originates are polyvalent terms. "Advaya" (अद्वय) is also a Sanskrit word that means "identity, unique, not two, without a second," and typically refers to the two truths doctrine of Mahayana Buddhism, especially Madhyamaka.
The English term "nondual" was informed by early translations of the Upanishads in Western languages other than English from 1775. These terms have entered the English language from literal English renderings of "advaita" subsequent to the first wave of English translations of the Upanishads. These translations commenced with the work of Müller (1823–1900), in the monumental Sacred Books of the East (1879). Max Müller rendered "advaita" as "Monism", as have many recent scholars. However, some scholars state that "advaita" is not really monism. Nondual awareness, also called pure consciousness or awareness, contentless consciousness, consciousness-as-such, and Minimal Phenomenal Experience, is a topic of phenomenological research. As described in Samkhya-Yoga and other systems of meditation, and referred to as, for example, Turya and Atman, pure awareness manifests in advanced states of meditation. Unitarian Universalism had a strong impact on Ram Mohan Roy and the Brahmo Samaj, and subsequently on Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda was one of the main representatives of Neo-Vedanta, a modern interpretation of Hinduism in line with western esoteric traditions, especially Transcendentalism, New Thought and Theosophy. His reinterpretation was, and is, very successful, creating a new understanding and appreciation of Hinduism within and outside India, and was the principal reason for the enthusiastic reception of yoga, transcendental meditation and other forms of Indian spiritual self-improvement in the West. Narendranath Datta (Swami Vivekananda) became a member of a Freemasonry lodge "at some point before 1884" and of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj in his twenties, a breakaway faction of the Brahmo Samaj led by Keshab Chandra Sen and Debendranath Tagore.Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), the founder of the Brahmo Samaj, had a strong sympathy for the Unitarians, who were closely connected to the Transcendentalists, who in turn were interested in and influenced by Indian religions early on. It was in this cultic milieu that Narendra became acquainted with Western esotericism. Debendranath Tagore brought this "neo-Hinduism" closer in line with western esotericism, a development which was furthered by Keshubchandra Sen, who was also influenced by transcendentalism, which emphasised personal religious experience over mere reasoning and theology. Sen's influence brought Vivekananda fully into contact with western esotericism, and it was also via Sen that he met Ramakrishna. Vivekananda's acquaintance with western esotericism made him very successful in western esoteric circles, beginning with his speech in 1893 at the Parliament of Religions. Vivekananda adapted traditional Hindu ideas and religiosity to suit the needs and understandings of his western audiences, who were especially attracted by and familiar with western esoteric traditions and movements like Transcendentalism and New thought. In 1897 he founded the Ramakrishna Mission, which was instrumental in the spread of Neo-Vedanta in the west, and attracted people like Alan Watts. Aldous Huxley, author of The Perennial Philosophy, was associated with another neo-Vedanta organisation, the Vedanta Society of Southern California, founded and headed by Swami Prabhavananda. Together with Gerald Heard, Christopher Isherwood, and other followers he was initiated by the Swami and was taught meditation and spiritual practices. Neo-Vedanta was well-received among Theosophists, Christian Science, and the New Thought movement; Christian Science in turn influenced the self-study teaching A Course in Miracles.Pure consciousness is distinguished from the workings of the mind, and "consists in nothing but the being seen of what is seen." Gamma & Metzinger (2021) present twelve factors in their phenomenological analysis of pure awareness experienced by meditators, including luminosity; emptiness and non-egoic self-awareness; and witness-consciousness.A main modern proponent of perennialism was Aldous Huxley, who was influenced by Vivekananda's Neo-Vedanta and Universalism. This popular approach finds supports in the "common-core thesis". According to the "common-core thesis", different descriptions can mask quite similar if not identical experiences:
According to Elias Amidon there is an "indescribable, but definitely recognizable, reality that is the ground of all being." According to Renard, these are based on an experience or intuition of "the Real". According to Amidon, this reality is signified by "many names" from "spiritual traditions throughout the world": [N]ondual awareness, pure awareness, open awareness, presence-awareness, unconditioned mind, rigpa, primordial experience, This, the basic state, the sublime, buddhanature, original nature, spontaneous presence, the oneness of being, the ground of being, the Real, clarity, God-consciousness, divine light, the clear light, illumination, realization and enlightenment. According to Renard, nondualism as common essence prefers the term "nondualism", instead of monism, because this understanding is "nonconceptual", "not graspapable in an idea" Even to call this "ground of reality", "One", or "Oneness" is attributing a characteristic to that ground of reality. The only thing that can be said is that it is "not two" or "non-dual": [N]o unmediated experience is possible, and that in the extreme, language is not simply used to interpret experience but in fact constitutes experience. The idea of a common essence has been questioned by Yandell, who discerns various "religious experiences" and their corresponding doctrinal settings, which differ in structure and phenomenological content, and in the "evidential value" they present. The specific teachings and practices of a specific tradition may determine what "experience" someone has, which means that this "experience" is not the proof of the teaching, but a result of the teaching. The notion of what exactly constitutes "liberating insight" varies between the various traditions, and even within the traditions. Bronkhorst for example notices that the conception of what exactly "liberating insight" is in Buddhism was developed over time. Whereas originally it may not have been specified, later on the Four Truths served as such, to be superseded by pratityasamutpada, and still later, in the Hinayana schools, by the doctrine of the non-existence of a substantial self or person. And Schmithausen notices that still other descriptions of this "liberating insight" exist in the Buddhist canon.nsight (prajna, kensho, satori, gnosis, theoria, illumination), especially enlightenment or the realization of the illusory nature of the autonomous "I" or self, is a key element in modern western nondual thought. It is the personal realization that ultimate reality is nondual, and is thought to be a validating means of knowledge of this nondual reality. This insight is interpreted as a psychological state, and labeled as religious or mystical experience. According to Hori, the notion of "religious experience" can be traced back to William James, who used the term "religious experience" in his book, The Varieties of Religious Experience. The origins of the use of this term can be dated further back. In the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, several historical figures put forth very influential views that religion and its beliefs can be grounded in experience itself. While Kant held that moral experience justified religious beliefs, John Wesley in addition to stressing individual moral exertion thought that the religious experiences in the Methodist movement (paralleling the Romantic Movement) were foundational to religious commitment as a way of life. Wayne Proudfoot traces the roots of the notion of "religious experience" to the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), who argued that religion is based on a feeling of the infinite. The notion of "religious experience" was used by Schleiermacher and Albert Ritschl to defend religion against the growing scientific and secular critique, and defend the view that human (moral and religious) experience justifies religious beliefs. Such religious empiricism would be later seen as highly problematic and was – during the period in-between world wars – famously rejected by Karl Barth. In the 20th century, religious as well as moral experience as justification for religious beliefs still holds sway. Some influential modern scholars holding this liberal theological view are Charles Raven and the Oxford physicist/theologian Charles Coulson. The notion of "religious experience" was adopted by many scholars of religion, of which William James was the most influential. The notion of "experience" has been criticised. Robert Sharf points out that "experience" is a typical Western term, which has found its way into Asian religiosity via western influences.Insight is not the "experience" of some transcendental reality, but is a cognitive event, the (intuitive) understanding or "grasping" of some specific understanding of reality, as in kensho,or anubhava. "Pure experience" does not exist; all experience is mediated by intellectual and cognitive activity A pure consciousness without concepts, reached by "cleaning the doors of perception", would be an overwhelming chaos of sensory input without coherence.A major force in the mutual influence of eastern and western ideas and religiosity was the Theosophical Society.It searched for ancient wisdom in the east, spreading eastern religious ideas in the west One of its salient features was the belief in "Masters of Wisdom", "beings, human or once human, who have transcended the normal frontiers of knowledge, and who make their wisdom available to others". The Theosophical Society also spread western ideas in the east, aiding a modernisation of eastern traditions, and contributing to a growing nationalism in the Asian colonies.Transcendentalism was an early 19th-century liberal Protestant movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the Eastern region of the United States. It was rooted in English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher, and the skepticism of Hume. The Transcendentalists emphasised an intuitive, experiential approach of religion. Following Schleiermacher, an individual's intuition of truth was taken as the criterion for truth. In the late 18th and early 19th century, the first translations of Hindu texts appeared, which were read by the Transcendentalists and influenced their thinking. The Transcendentalists also endorsed universalist and Unitarianist ideas, leading to Unitarian Universalism, the idea that there must be truth in other religions as well, since a loving God would redeem all living beings, not just Christians.Western esotericism (also called esotericism and esoterism) is a scholarly term for a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements which have developed within Western society. They are largely distinct both from orthodox Judeo-Christian religion and from Enlightenment rationalism. The earliest traditions which later analysis would label as forms of Western esotericism emerged in the Eastern Mediterranean during Late Antiquity, where Hermetism, Gnosticism, and Neoplatonism developed as schools of thought distinct from what became mainstream Christianity. In Renaissance Europe, interest in many of these older ideas increased, with various intellectuals seeking to combine "pagan" philosophies with the Kabbalah and with Christian philosophy, resulting in the emergence of esoteric movements like Christian theosophy."Dual" comes from Latin "duo," two, prefixed with "non-" meaning "not"; "non-dual" means "not-two." When referring to nondualism, Hinduism generally uses the Sanskrit term Advaita, while Buddhism uses Advaya (Tibetan: gNis-med, Chinese: pu-erh, Japanese: fu-ni). "Advaita" (अद्वैत) is from Sanskrit roots a, not; dvaita, dual. As Advaita, it means "not-two."[1][8] or "one without a second,"[8] and is usually translated as "nondualism", "nonduality" and "nondual". The term "nondualism" and the term "advaita" from which it originates are polyvalent terms. "Advaya" (अद्वय) is also a Sanskrit word that means "identity, unique, not two, without a second," and typically refers to the two truths doctrine of Mahayana Buddhism, especially Madhyamaka. The English term "nondual" was informed by early translations of the Upanishads in Western languages other than English from 1775. These terms have entered the English language from literal English renderings of "advaita" subsequent to the first wave of English translations of the Upanishads. These translations commenced with the work of Müller (1823–1900), in the monumental Sacred Books of the East (1879). Max Müller rendered "advaita" as "Monism", as have many recent scholars. However, some scholars state that "advaita" is not really monism
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism
A fuzzy concept is a kind of concept of which the boundaries of application can vary considerably according to context or conditions, instead of being fixed once and for all. This means the concept is vague in some way, lacking a fixed, precise meaning, without however being unclear or meaningless altogether.It has a definite meaning, which can be made more precise only through further elaboration and specification - including a closer definition of the context in which the concept is used. The study of the characteristics of fuzzy concepts and fuzzy language is called fuzzy semantics. The inverse of a "fuzzy concept" is a "crisp concept" (i.e. a precise concept).
A fuzzy concept is understood by scientists as a concept which is "to an extent applicable" in a situation. That means the concept has gradations of significance or unsharp (variable) boundaries of application. A fuzzy statement is a statement which is true "to some extent", and that extent can often be represented by a scaled value. The term is also used these days in a more general, popular sense – in contrast to its technical meaning – to refer to a concept which is "rather vague" for any kind of reason. In the past, the very idea of reasoning with fuzzy concepts faced considerable resistance from academic elites. They did not want to endorse the use of imprecise concepts in research or argumentation. Yet although people might not be aware of it, the use of fuzzy concepts has risen gigantically in all walks of life from the 1970s onward. That is mainly due to advances in electronic engineering, fuzzy mathematics and digital computer programming. The new technology allows very complex inferences about "variations on a theme" to be anticipated and fixed in a program. New neuro-fuzzy computational methods make it possible to identify, measure and respond to fine gradations of significance with great precision. It means that practically useful concepts can be coded and applied to all kinds of tasks, even if ordinarily these concepts are never precisely defined. Nowadays engineers, statisticians and programmers often represent fuzzy concepts mathematically, using fuzzy logic, fuzzy values, fuzzy variables and fuzzy sets."There exists strong evidence, established in the 1970s in the psychology of concepts... that human concepts have a graded structure in that whether or not a concept applies to a given object is a matter of degree, rather than a yes-or-no question, and that people are capable of working with the degrees in a consistent way. This finding is intuitively quite appealing, because people say "this product is more or less good" or "to a certain degree, he is a good athlete", implying the graded structure of concepts. In his classic paper, Zadeh called the concepts with a graded structure fuzzy concepts and argued that these concepts are a rule rather than an exception when it comes to how people communicate knowledge. Moreover, he argued that to model such concepts mathematically is important for the tasks of control, decision making, pattern recognition, and the like. Zadeh proposed the notion of a fuzzy set that gave birth to the field of fuzzy logic..."Hence, a concept is generally regarded as "fuzzy" in a logical sense if:defining characteristics of the concept apply to it "to a certain degree or extent" (or, more unusually, "with a certain magnitude of likelihood").
or, the boundaries of applicability (the truth-value) of a concept can vary in degrees, according to different conditions.
or, the fuzzy concept itself straightforwardly consists of a fuzzy set, or a combination of such sets.
The fact that a concept is fuzzy does not prevent its use in logical reasoning; it merely affects the type of reasoning which can be applied (see fuzzy logic). If the concept has gradations of meaningful significance, it is necessary to specify and formalize what those gradations are, if they can make an important difference. Not all fuzzy concepts have the same logical structure, but they can often be formally described or reconstructed using fuzzy logic or other substructural logics.The advantage of this approach is, that numerical notation enables a potentially infinite number of truth-values between complete truth and complete falsehood, and thus it enables - in theory, at least - the greatest precision in stating the degree of applicability of a logical rule..In philosophical logic and linguistics, fuzzy concepts are often regarded as vague concepts which in their application, or formally speaking, are neither completely true nor completely false, or which are partly true and partly false; they are ideas which require further elaboration, specification or qualification to understand their applicability (the conditions under which they truly make sense). The "fuzzy area" can also refer simply to a residual number of cases which cannot be allocated to a known and identifiable group, class or set if strict criteria are used. The collaborative written works of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari refer occasionally to fuzzy sets in conjunction with their idea of multiplicities. In A Thousand Plateaus, they note that "a set is fuzzy if its elements belong to it only by virtue of specific operations of consistency and consolidation, which themselves follow a special logic", and in What Is Philosophy?, a work dealing with the functions of concepts, they write that concepts as a whole are "vague or fuzzy sets, simple aggregates of perceptions and affections, which form within the lived as immanent to a subject" In mathematics and statistics, a fuzzy variable (such as "the temperature", "hot" or "cold") is a value which could lie in a probable range defined by some quantitative limits or parameters, and which can be usefully described with imprecise categories (such as "high", "medium" or "low") using some kind of scale or conceptual hierarchy.n mathematics and computer science, the gradations of applicable meaning of a fuzzy concept are described in terms of quantitative relationships defined by logical operators. Such an approach is sometimes called "degree-theoretic semantics" by logicians and philosophers, but the more usual term is fuzzy logic or many-valued logic. The novelty of fuzzy logic is, that it "breaks with the traditional principle that formalisation should correct and avoid, but not compromise with, vagueness". The basic idea of fuzzy logic is that a real number is assigned to each statement written in a language, within a range from 0 to 1, where 1 means that the statement is completely true, and 0 means that the statement is completely false, while values less than 1 but greater than 0 represent that the statements are "partly true", to a given, quantifiable extent. Susan Haack comments: "Whereas in classical set theory an object either is or is not a member of a given set, in fuzzy set theory membership is a matter of degree; the degree of membership of an object in a fuzzy set is represented by some real number between 0 and 1, with 0 denoting no membership and full membership." ..."Truth" in this mathematical context usually means simply that "something is the case", or that "something is applicable". This makes it possible to analyze a distribution of statements for their truth-content, identify data patterns, make inferences and predictions, and model how processes operate. Petr Hájek claimed that "fuzzy logic is not just some "applied logic", but may bring "new light to classical logical problems", and therefore might be well classified as a distinct branch of "philosophical logic" similar to e.g. modal logics.Fuzzy logic offers computationally-oriented systems of concepts and methods, to formalize types of reasoning which are ordinarily approximate only, and not exact. In principle, this allows us to give a definite, precise answer to the question, "To what extent is something the case?", or, "To what extent is something applicable?". Via a series of switches, this kind of reasoning can be built into electronic devices. That was already happening before fuzzy logic was invented, but using fuzzy logic in modelling has become an important aid in design, which creates many new technical possibilities. Fuzzy reasoning (i.e., reasoning with graded concepts) turns out to have many practical uses. It is nowadays widely used in:
The programming of vehicle and transport electronics, household appliances, video games, language filters, robotics, and driverless vehicles. Fuzzy logic washing machines are gaining popularity. All kinds of control systems that regulate access, traffic, movement, balance, conditions, temperature, pressure, routers etc. Electronic equipment used for pattern recognition, surveying and monitoring (including radars, satellites, alarm systems and surveillance systems).
Cybernetics research, artificial intelligence,[54] virtual intelligence, machine learning, database design and soft computing research. "Fuzzy risk scores" are used by project managers and portfolio managers to express financial risk assessments. It looks like fuzzy logic will eventually be applied in almost every aspect of life, even if people are not aware of it, and in that sense fuzzy logic is an astonishingly successful invention.[58] The scientific and engineering literature on the subject is constantly increasing.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_concept
Advaita Vedanta (/ʌdˈvaɪtə vɛˈdɑːntə/; Sanskrit: अद्वैत वेदान्त, IAST: Advaita Vedānta) is a Hindu sādhanā, a path of spiritual discipline and experience, and the oldest extant tradition of the orthodox Hindu school Vedānta. The term Advaita (literally "non-secondness", but usually rendered as "nondualism",and often equated with monism[note 3]) refers to the idea that Brahman alone is ultimately real, while the transient phenomenal world is an illusory appearance (maya) of Brahman. In this view, jivatman, the experiencing self, is ultimately non-different ("na aparah") from Ātman-Brahman, the highest Self or Reality.The jivatman or individual self is a mere reflection or limitation of singular Ātman in a multitude of apparent individual bodies. In the Advaita tradition, moksha (liberation from suffering and rebirth),is attained through recognizing this illusoriness of the phenomenal world and disidentification from the body-mind complex and the notion of 'doership',[note 5] and acquiring vidyā (knowledge) of one's true identity as Atman-Brahman, self-luminous (svayam prakāśa)[note 6] awareness or Witness-consciousness. Upanishadic statements such as tat tvam asi, "that['s how] you are," destroy the ignorance (avidyā) regarding one's true identity by revealing that (jiv)Ātman is non-different from immortal[note 8] Brahman. While the prominent 8th century Vedic scholar and teacher (acharya) Adi Shankara emphasized that, since Brahman is ever-present, Brahman-knowledge is immediate and requires no 'action', that is, striving and effort,[15][16][17] the Advaita tradition also prescribes elaborate preparatory practice, including contemplation of the mahavakyas and accepting yogic samadhi as a means to knowledge, posing a paradox which is also recognized in other spiritual disciplines and traditions. Advaita Vedānta adapted philosophical concepts from Buddhism, giving them a Vedantic basis and interpretation,and was influenced by, and influenced, various traditions and texts of Indian philosophy, While Adi Shankara is generally regarded as the most prominent exponent of the Advaita Vedānta tradition,[26] his early influence has been questioned, as his prominence started to take shape only centuries later in the 14th century, with the ascent of Sringeri matha and its jagadguru Vidyaranya (Madhava, 14th cent.) in the Vijayanagara Empire.[note 11] While Shankara did not embrace Yoga,[37] the Advaita Vedānta tradition in medieval times explicitly incorporated elements from the yogic tradition and texts like the Yoga Vasistha and the Bhagavata Purana, culminating in Swami Vivekananda's full embrace and propagation of Yogic samadhi as an Advaita means of knowledge and liberation. In the 19th century, due to the influence of Vidyaranya's Sarvadarśanasaṅgraha, the importance of Advaita Vedānta was overemphasized by Western scholarship,[42] and Advaita Vedānta came to be regarded as the paradigmatic example of Hindu spirituality, despite the numerical dominance of theistic Bhakti-oriented religiosity. In modern times, Advaita views appear in various Neo-Vedānta movements. While "a preferred terminology" for Upanisadic philosophy "in the early periods, before the time of Shankara" was Puruṣavāda,[50][note 13] the Advaita Vedānta school has historically been referred to by various names, such as Advaita-vada (speaker of Advaita), Abheda-darshana (view of non-difference), Dvaita-vada-pratisedha (denial of dual distinctions), and Kevala-dvaita (non-dualism of the isolated). It is also called māyāvāda by Vaishnava opponents, akin to Madhyamaka Buddhism, due to their insistence that phenomena ultimately lack an inherent essence or reality,[ According to Richard King, a professor of Buddhist and Asian studies, the term Advaita first occurs in a recognizably Vedantic context in the prose of Mandukya Upanishad.[51] In contrast, according to Frits Staal, a professor of philosophy specializing in Sanskrit and Vedic studies, the word Advaita is from the Vedic era, and the Vedic sage Yajnavalkya (8th or 7th-century BCE is credited to be the one who coined it] Stephen Phillips, a professor of philosophy and Asian studies, translates the Advaita containing verse excerpt in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, as "An ocean, a single seer without duality becomes he whose world is Brahman.While the term "Advaita Vedanta" in a strict sense may refer to the scholastic tradition of textual exegesis established by Shankara, "advaita" in a broader sense may refer to a broad current of advaitic thought, which incorporates advaitic elements with yogic thought and practice and other strands of Indian religiosity, such as Kashmir Shaivism and the Nath tradition. The first connotation has also been called "Classical Advaita" and "doctrinal Advaita," and its presentation as such is due to mediaeval doxographies,the influence of Orientalist Indologists like Paul Deussen, and the Indian response to colonial influences, dubbed neo-Vedanta by Paul Hacker, who regarded it as a deviation from "traditional" Advaita Vedanta.Yet, post-Shankara Advaita Vedanta incorporated yogic elements, such as the Yoga Vasistha, and influenced other Indian traditions, and neo-Vedanta is based on this broader strand of Indian thought. This broader current of thought and practice has also been called "greater Advaita Vedanta," "vernacular advaita,"and "experiential Advaita." It is this broader advaitic tradition which is commonly presented as "Advaita Vedanta," though the term "advaitic" may be more apt.The nondualism of Advaita Vedānta is often regarded as an idealist monism. According to King, Advaita Vedānta developed "to its ultimate extreme" the monistic ideas already present in the Upanishads. In contrast, states Milne, it is misleading to call Advaita Vedānta "monistic," since this confuses the "negation of difference" with "conflation into one."Advaita is a negative term (a-dvaita), states Milne, which denotes the "negation of a difference," between subject and object, or between perceiver and perceived. According to Deutsch, Advaita Vedānta teaches monistic oneness, however without the multiplicity premise of alternate monism theories.According to Jacqueline Suthren Hirst, Adi Shankara positively emphasizes "oneness" premise in his Brahma-sutra Bhasya 2.1.20, attributing it to all the Upanishads. Nicholson states Advaita Vedānta contains realistic strands of thought, both in its oldest origins and in Shankara's writings.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta#Svayam_prakāśa_(self-luminosity)
Senility is defined as the weakness or mental infirmity of old age, and is associated with the deterioration of the body and mind in the elderly. It is commonly referred to as dementia.
Different areas of the brain control different skills and abilities. When mental functions such as memory, language, orientation, or judgment deteriorate, this may be a direct result of the way dementia has affected the brain.
The difference between a resourceful mind and senility is only 100 milliseconds of brain speed. We react to light in 50 milliseconds, recognize sound in 100 milliseconds, and think in 300 milliseconds. By the time thinking slows down to 400 milliseconds, we can no longer process logical thoughts. The neurons no longer fire off information fast enough for the rest of the brain to respond, and new information will not become embedded in memory.
Typically, we lose seven to 10 milliseconds -- a tenth of a second -- of brain speed per decade from age 20 on, which means that aging alone causes us to lose brain cells and processing speed. This minute change is very difficult to notice, even for the most tuned-in individuals, because aging occurs at a constant rate.
All of this seems to be connected to the quality of the myelin sheath that insulates nerve fibres.
Myelin is the fatty sheath that coats the axons of the nerves,allowing for efficient conduction of nerve impulses. It is key to the fastprocessing speeds that underlie our higher cognitive functioning.
It isthe breakdown of this late-stage myelin that promotes the buildup of toxicamyloid-beta fibrils that eventually deposit in the brain and become theplaques which have long been associated with Alzheimer's disease.
----------------------
So eat your oily fish and exercise your brain.
(Candid street shot Europe 2017)
Thanks everyone for all your encouragement, things have been pretty dark for me lately and life has been in one of those rough patches that come up for everyone
occasionally, so thanks to everyone that has been so thoughtful and encouraging. I appreciate it so much..
I shot this same shot last week but I had to recreate it because I decided to use it as my shot for a flickr contest group and It was 1 damn day to old. It is almost the same...I think I got pretty close, there are a few differences but I don't mind.
Another play around with the zoom lens using the wheel on a tripod to rotate a lit sphere and then zooming in a small amount spinning the wheel and uncapping the lens for a second or so, each time zooming in a bit more. I had already set up the camera rotator on a tripod in front of the epitrochoid machine and had pre-focused a 28mm Minolta Rokkor lens. I Rotated the camera at 90 degree intervals and span the spinny thingy each time. Another night of madness.
_PDS5923
A juvenile Guinea baboon called Wasabi bites a leaf wile gazing at the camera.
The wrinkles on the juveniles' faces are unique. Therefore, the primatologists use the wrinkles to identifiy the young individuals, while older baboons usually have other visible characteristics that make them easier to distinguish.
This photo was taken in the wild, in Niokolo-Koba National Park, Senegal, during a visit to the Centre de Recherche de Primatologie Simenti, founded by the Cognitive Ethology Lab (Göttingen, Germany).
More information: www.dpz.eu/en/cognitive-ethology
Now I know a man with tattoo can be very kind.....
Tokwawan, Hong Kong. By Rolleiflex2.8E2, Expired RDPIII
Congratulations to Intel on their acquisition of Nervana. This photo is from the last board meeting at our offices; the Nervana founders — from right to left: Naveen Rao, Amir Khosrowshahi and Arjun Bansal — pondered where on the wall they may fall during M&A negotiations.
We are now free to share some of our perspectives on the company and its mission to accelerate the future with custom chips for deep learning.
I’ll share a recap of the Nervana story, from an investor’s perspective, and try to explain why machine learning is of fundamental importance to every business over time. In short, I think the application of iterative algorithms (e.g., machine learning, directed evolution, generative design) to build complex systems is the most powerful advance in engineering since the Scientific Method. Machine learning allows us to build software solutions that exceed human understanding, and shows us how AI can innervate every industry.
By crude analogy, Nervana is recapitulating the evolutionary history of the human brain within computing — moving from the logical constructs of the reptilian brain to the cortical constructs of the human brain, with massive arrays of distributed memory and iterative learning algorithms.
Not surprisingly, the founders integrated experiences in neuroscience, distributed computing, and networking — a delightful mélange for tackling cognitive computing. Ali Partovi, an advisor to Nervana, introduced us to the company.
We were impressed with the founding team and we had a prepared mind to share their enthusiasm for the future of deep learning. Part of that prepared mind dates back to 1989, when I started a PhD in EE focusing on how to accelerate neural networks by mapping them to parallel processing computers. Fast forward 25 years, and the nomenclature has shifted to machine learning and the deep learning subset, and I chose it as the top tech trend of 2013 at the Churchill Club VC debate (video). We were also seeing the powerful application of deep learning and directed evolution across our portfolio, from molecular design to image recognition to cancer research to autonomous driving.
All of these companies were deploying these simulated neural networks on traditional compute clusters. Some were realizing huge advantages by porting their code to GPUs; these specialized processors originally designed for rapid rendering of computer graphics have many more computational cores than a traditional CPU, a baby step toward a cortical architecture. I first saw them being used for cortical simulations in 2007. But by the time of Nervana’s founding in 2014, some (e.g., Microsoft’s and Google’s search teams) were exploring FPGA chips for their even finer-grained arrays of customizable logic blocks. Custom silicon that could scale beyond any of these approaches seemed like the natural next step. Here is a page from Nervana’s original business plan (Fig. 1 in comments below).
The march to specialized silicon, from CPU to GPU to FPGA to ASIC, had played out similarly for Bitcoin miners, with each step toward specialized silicon obsoleting the predecessors. When we spoke to Amazon, Google, Baidu, and Microsoft in our due diligence, we found a much broader application of deep learning within these companies than we could have imagined prior, from product positioning to supply chain management.
Machine learning is central to almost everything that Google does. And through that lens, their acquisition, and new product strategies make sense; they are not traditional product line extensions, but a process expansion of machine leaning (more on that later). They are not just playing games of Go for the fun of it. Recently, Google switched their core search algorithms to deep learning, and they used Deep Mind to cut data center cooling costs by a whopping 40%.
The advances in deep learning are domain independent. Google can hire and acquire talent and delight in their passionate pursuit of game playing or robotics. These efforts help Google build a better brain. The brain can learn many things. It is like a newborn human; it has the capacity to learn any of the languages of the world, but based on training exposure, it will only learn a few. Similarly, a synthetic neural network can learn many things.
Google can let the Brain team find cats on the Internet and play a great game of Go. The process advances they make in building a better brain (or in this case, a better learning machine) can then be turned to ad matching, a task that does not inspire the best and the brightest to come work for Google.
The domain independence of deep learning has profound implications on labor markets and business strategy. The locus of learning shifts from end products to the process of their creation. Artifact engineering becomes more like parenting than programming. But more on that later; back to the Nervana story.
Our investment thesis for the Series A revolved around some universal tenets: a great group of people pursuing a product vision unlike anything we had seen before. The semiconductor sector was not crowded with investor interest. AI was not yet on many venture firms’ sectors of interest. We also shared with the team that we could envision secondary benefits from discovering the customers. Learning about the cutting edge of deep learning applications and the startups exploring the frontiers of the unknown held a certain appeal for me. And sure enough, there were patterns in customer interest, from an early flurry in medical imaging of all kinds to a recent explosion of interest in the automotive sector after Tesla’s Autopilot feature went live. The auto industry collectively rushed to catch up.
Soon after we led the Series A on August 8, 2014, I found myself moderating a deep learning panel at Stanford with Nervana CEO Naveen Rao.
I opened with an introduction to deep learning and why it has exploded in the past four years (video primer). I ended with some common patterns in the power and inscrutability of artifacts built with iterative algorithms. We see this in biology, cellular automata, genetic programming, machine learning and neural networks.
There is no mathematical shortcut for the decomposition of a neural network or genetic program, no way to “reverse evolve” with the ease that we can reverse engineer the artifacts of purposeful design.
The beauty of compounding iterative algorithms — evolution, fractals, organic growth, art — derives from their irreducibility. (More from my Google Tech Talk and MIT Tech Review)
Year 1. 2015
Nervana adds remarkable engineering talent, a key strategy of the first mover. One of the engineers figures out how to rework the undocumented firmware of NVIDIA GPUs so that they run deep learning algorithms faster than off-the-shelf GPUs or anything else Facebook could find. Matt Ocko preempted the second venture round of the company, and he brought the collective learning of the Data Collective to the board.
Year 2. 2016 Happy 2nd Birthday Nervana!
The company is heads down on chip development. They share some technical details (flexpoint arithmetic optimized for matrix multiplies and 32GB of stacked 3D memory on chip) that gives them 55 trillion operations per second on their forthcoming chip, and multiple high-speed interconnects (as typically seen in the networking industry) for ganging a matrix of chips together into unprecedented compute fabrics. 10x made manifest. See Fig. 2 below.
And then Intel came knocking.
With the most advanced production fab in the world and a healthy desire to regain the mantle of leading the future of Moore’s Law, the combination was hard to resist. Intel vice president Jason Waxman told Recode that the shift to artificial intelligence could dwarf the move to cloud computing. “I firmly believe this is not only the next wave but something that will dwarf the last wave.” But we had to put on our wizard hats to negotiate with giants.
The deep learning and AI sector have heated up in labor markets to relatively unprecedented levels. Large companies are recently paying $6–10 million per engineer for talent acquisitions, and $4–5M per head for pre-product startups still in academia. For the Masters students in a certain Stanford lab, they averaged $500K/yr for their first job offer at graduation. We witnessed an academic turn down a million dollar signing bonus because they got a better offer.
Why so hot?
The deep learning techniques, while relatively easy to learn, are quite foreign to traditional engineering modalities. It takes a different mindset and a relaxation of the presumption of control. The practitioners are like magi, sequestered from the rest of a typical engineering process. The artifacts of their creation are isolated blocks of functionality defined by their interfaces. They are like blocks of magic handed to other parts of a traditional organization. (This carries over to the customers too; just about any product that you experience in the next five years that seems like magic will almost certainly be built by these algorithms).
And remember that these “brain builders” could join any industry. They can ply their trade in any domain. When we were building the deep learning team at Human Longevity Inc. (HLI), we hired the engineering lead from the Google’s Translate team. Franz Och pioneered Google’s better-than-human translation service not by studying linguistics, grammar, or even speaking the languages being translated. He focused on building the brain that could learn the job from countless documents already translated by humans (UN transcripts in particular). When he came to HLI, he cared about the mission, but knew nothing about cancer and the genome. The learning machines can find the complex patterns across the genome. In short, the deep learning expertise is fungible, and there are a burgeoning number of companies hiring and competing across industry lines.
And it is an ever-widening set of industries undergoing transformation, from automotive to agriculture, healthcare to financial services. We saw this explosion in the Nervana customer pipeline. And we see it across the DFJ portfolio, especially in our newer investments. Here are some examples:
• Learning chemistry and drug discovery: Here is a visualization of the search space of candidates for a treatment for Ebola; it generated the lead molecule for animal trials. Atomwise summarizes: “When we examine different neurons on the network we see something new: AtomNet has learned to recognize essential chemical groups like hydrogen bonding, aromaticity, and single-bonded carbons. Critically, no human ever taught AtomNet the building blocks of organic chemistry. AtomNet discovered them itself by studying vast quantities of target and ligand data. The patterns it independently observed are so foundational that medicinal chemists often think about them, and they are studied in academic courses. Put simply, AtomNet is teaching itself college chemistry.”
• Designing new microbial life for better materials: Zymergen uses machine learning to predict the combination of genetic modifications that will optimize product yield for their customers. They are amassing one of the largest data sets about microbial design and performance, which enables them to train machine learning algorithms that make search predictions with increasing precision. Genomatica had great success in pathway optimization using directed evolution, a physical variant of an iterative optimization algorithm.
• Discovery and change detection in satellite imagery: Planet and Mapbox. Planet is now producing so much imagery that humans can’t actually look at each picture it takes. Soon, they will image every meter of the Earth every day. From a few training examples, a convolutional neural net can find similar examples globally — like all new housing starts, all depleted reservoirs, all current deforestation, or car counts for all retail parking lots.
• Automated driving & robotics: Tesla, Zoox, SpaceX, Rethink Robotics, etc.
• Visual classification: From e-commerce to drones to security cameras and more. Imagen is using deep learning to radically improve medical image analysis, starting with radiology.
• Cybersecurity: When protecting endpoint computing & IOT devices from the most advanced cyberthreats, AI-powered Cylance is proving to be a far superior and adaptive approach versus older signature-based antivirus solutions.
• Financial risk assessment: Avant and Prosper use machine learning to improve credit verification and merge traditional and non-traditional data sources during the underwriting process.
• And now for something completely different: quantum computing. For a wormhole peek into the near future, our quantum computing company, D-Wave Systems, powered a 100,000,000x speedup in a demonstration benchmark for Google, a company that has used D-Wave quantum computers for over a decade now on machine learning applications.
So where will this take us?
Neural networks had their early success in speech recognition in the 90’s. In 2012, the deep learning variant dominated the ImageNet competitions, and visual processing can now be better done by machine than human in many domains (like pathology, radiology and other medical image classification tasks). DARPA has research programs to do better than a dog’s nose in olfaction.
We are starting the development of our artificial brains in the sensory cortex, much like an infant coming into the world. Even within these systems, like vision, the deep learning network starts with similar low level constructs (like edge-detection) as foundations for higher level constructs like facial forms, and ultimately, finding cats on the internet with self-taught learning.
But the artificial brains need not limit themselves to the human senses. With the internet of things, we are creating a sensory nervous system on the planet, with countless sensors and data collecting proliferating across the planet. All of this “big data” would be a big headache but for machine learning to find patterns in it all and make it actionable. So, not only are we transcending human intelligence with multitudes of dedicated intelligences, we are transcending our sensory perception.
And it need not stop there. It is precisely by these iterative algorithms that human intelligence arose from primitive antecedents. While biological evolution was slow, it provides an existence proof of the process, now vastly accelerated in the artificial domain. It shifts the debate from the realm of the possible to the likely timeline ahead.
Let me end with the closing chapter in Danny Hillis’ CS book The Pattern on the Stone: “We will not engineer an artificial intelligence; rather we will set up the right conditions under which an intelligence can emerge. The greatest achievement of our technology may well be creation of tools that allow us to go beyond engineering — that allow us to create more than we can understand.”
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Here is some early press:
Xconomy(most in-depth), MIT Tech Review, Re/Code, Forbes, WSJ, Fortune.
A 20 year line-up of ASIMO humanoids... The early models look like a variety of Star Wars droids.
In this video clip video from the Honda labs, ASIMO looks like a child reaching out for a toy.
From Cognitive Computing ’07 in Berkeley today:
“Cognitive Computing is about engineering the mind by reverse engineering the brain.”
I ended my talk with a quote from Danny Hillis in The Pattern on the Stone:
“We will not engineer an artificial intelligence; rather we will set up the right conditions under which an intelligence can emerge. The greatest achievement of our technology may well be creation of tools that allow us to go beyond engineering – that allow us to create more than we can understand.”
Quotes from the Honda Research Institute talk, my favorite of the morning:
• for Honda, intelligence is a technology
• the essence of brain-like intelligence lies in the global organisation and self-referential control of processing
• following the analysis by synthesis principle, we verify our large scale hypotheses on our demonstrators in direct interaction with their environment
• in our strategy we approach the problem on several different levels of system organisation: macroscopic, mesoscopic, microscopic, microscopic & developmental
• first results confirm our approach to brain-like intelligent systems
• Open question: what is the role of the substrate? How close must a successful interpretation of the brain (in a technical sense) be to its underlying bio-chemical processes
Intelligence is a technology and a strategy for
• robust and flexible problem solving
• under resource limitations (time, energy)
• in complex environments (natural and artificial)
• the brain is the only intelligent system that we know of
• robots with rich environmental interaction provide us for the 1st time with the
means to study and verify large-scale hypotheses on brain-like intelligence
• our approach is to build the brain to understand the brain – the analysis by synthesis principle
• the brain is the most complex structure ever investigated by science
• it is not suitable to the most successful scientific analysis by decomposition
• the brain exhibits structural, chemical, plastic and dynamical complexity all intertwinned on different levels
• all processes in the brain are a result of information processing in a bio-chemical environment
• understanding the brain means unravelling the meaning of ourselves(related to cosmology)
brain = control system for organizing behavior
1) animals without cortex: autonomous systems (reflex automatons)
• genetically encoded reflex hierarchy with the limbic system at the top
• value system = genetically encoded mapping of sensory trigger features to behavioral prototypes
2) animals with cortex: flexible autonomous systems (learning systems)
reflex automaton +
• general memory architecture for storing experience
• genetically encoded self-referential control architecture
The stack [like OSI stack]:
A)Evo/Devo
Function:
• task embedded controlled cellular growth
• evolvable structures of spiking neural systems
• evolution of learning
• extract principles of simple brain evolution
Principles:
• co-evolution of genetic control and information expression
• evolutionary situated design
• selection driven interaction between evolution and learning
• major structural transitions of the co-evolution of early nervous systems and morphology
B) Microscopic Control Level
Function:
• elementary cortical processor
• rapid forward processing
• mixing prediction into afferent stream
• epochs of clocked, within asynchronous processing
Principles:
• spiking neurons
• cortical columnar architecture
• relative latency encoding
• rhythmic control of spike processing
Cortical development
• System architecture develops top-down.
• The basic control structure of the final system is present from the beginning.
• Development is marked by increasing sensory resolution and specialization of analysis, representation and control.
Self-referential Control Architecture
Minicolumn as elementary cortical processor
• mediates mixing of experience into afferent stream
• generates and synchronises rhythmic control for self-referential decomposition and learning
• relative spike latency encoding to control association width
The interplay between cortex and hippocampus increases memory capacity.
How does the cortex learn with:
• high memory capacity,
• fast retrieval speed, and
• high noise tolerance?
1. Store association A→B with HC (low memory capacity)
2. HC replays A→B to induce structural plasticity in cortex
3. Association A→B is stored in high-capacity cortical connections.
⇒ Structural plasticity leads to
- 10-20x memory capacity
- faster recall
- sparse connectivity
Short term memory is photographic — limited and inefficient — for a limited number of objects. Transferred to long term with more efficient and robust encoding.
C) Mesoscopic Control Level
Exploring, Learning and Understanding Visual Scenes
Function:
• active vision: fixation, saccading, tracking
• robust recognition and autonomous learning
• working memory and internal simulation
• self-organization of knowledge representation
Principles:
• columnar organization of multi-layered networks
• integration of different sensory analysis pathways
• stacked associative memories
• flexible selection of best-performing modular processing architecture (prediction, system monitoring)
• knowledge representation in task-related metric
Active Vision
• Decompose the sensory input into features & objects
• Use motion to distinguish foreground and background
• Compose a description of a scene
• Fixation by bottom-up & top-down attention
• Scan path & tracking
• Segmentation & prediction from movement
• Dynamic scene memory
D) Macroscopic Control Level
Function:
• self-development of practical intelligence
• autonomous interaction with environment
• a system that evolves itself from few innate abilities towards an autonomous and socially compliant partner
Principles:
• macroscopic architecture of the human brain
• child-like developmental strategy of learning
• integration of system components in a growing architecture
• self-referential control of learning
• a priori value system shaped by experience
Developing Intelligence
• Child-like Acquisition of Representation and Language
Crossing the Levels
A-B) evolution of spiking neural systems
B-C) mixing of top-down prediction into afferent signal stream and active sensing and
online learning
A-D) evolutionary optimisation of functional modules
This research team in Frankfurt: 36 full time scientists + 52 students and interns
Q&A:
Q: How about building in a heart, or the machines will destroy us?
A: With emotion: we show our internal state
Value system. Map unknown input to output. Interaction with environment
Q from Stanford Prof. about vision:
A: We take several views of a 2D representation instead of building a 3D model
Q from Lloyd Watts: Do you use a spiking neuron model?
A: No. Open question: spiking neuron model, is it important? We are limited by computational resources.
Q from IBM Almaden: Can’t Asimo can use better arithmetic engines than the human brain
A: Hmmm…. We have not thought about teaching Asimo arithmetic. Good question. I will keep it in mind and pose the question to the robot.
Honda’s History of Humanoids provides a slider linking to great photos of their 20 year developmental effort.
Here are some tips on how to eat to preserve your memory and keep your brain healthy.
Key Points
Limiting candy in your diet may support brain health, as high added sugar intake could increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
A brain-healthy lifestyle includes regular exercise, managing chronic diseases, staying socially engaged and following diets like the MIND diet.
Making mindful dietary and lifestyle choices can enhance cognitive health and overall well-being over time.
More than 55 million people have dementia worldwide, with Alzheimer’s disease being the most common form, contributing to 60% to 70% of dementia cases. Having Alzheimer’s disease means living with a progressive disorder that causes brain cells to degenerate and die, leading to a continuous decline in memory, thinking skills and the ability to perform everyday tasks. Sadly, as the disease progresses, even basic activities and communication become challenging.
Several factors influence the risk of developing dementia, with some being completely beyond your control. Aging is the most significant risk factor, as individuals over the age of 65 are more susceptible. Genetics also play a crucial role, with specific genetic mutations directly linked to Alzheimer’s disease. However, along with unchangeable factors, certain lifestyle choices can help lower the risk of cognitive decline, with diet being a pivotal piece of the puzzle. “Some of the best foods for brain health are antioxidant-rich wild blueberries, salad greens for B vitamins, salmon for its anti-inflammatory fatty acids, fiber-rich black beans, and walnuts, the best source of plant-based omega-3 ALA among nuts,” says Maggie Moon, M.S., RD. There are some foods you should avoid when focusing on brain health support too, with candy being the #1 food on that list.
Why You Should Limit Candy for Brain Health
Taking steps to reduce dementia risk is one positive step for brain health. While there isn’t one food that will cause dementia, high-added-sugar candy tops the list of foods that should be limited on a brain-healthy diet.
“Candies are not your brain’s friend,” Moon says. She points to a study that found that eating too much added sugar more than doubled the risk for dementia. “That includes added sugar from candies, as well as other sweets like pastries, sweetened café drinks and sodas,” she says. Researchers think that high blood sugar and insulin levels are risk factors for Alzheimer’s because insulin resistance may also occur in the brain, which may impact memory.
Never Miss What's New. Follow EatingWell.
Of course, everything can be eaten in moderation in a healthy, balanced eating plan. “While fine once in a while, research has found that a diet that is consistently high in added sugar may increase the amyloid plaque buildup in the brain,” says Laura M. Ali, M.S., RDN. "These plaques disrupt the communication system in our brain, and scientists have found that people with Alzheimer’s disease tend to have more of these plaques.”
In fact, says Ali, one study found that every 10 grams of added sugar consumed per day (equivalent to 2½ teaspoons of sugar or 8 gummy candies) was associated with a 1.3% to 1.4% increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Those with the highest daily added sugar intake had 19% higher odds of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Don't Miss
The #1 Habit to Start Now to Reduce Your Dementia Risk
Other Ways to Reduce Your Risk of Dementia
Limiting sweetened candy doesn't guarantee that you won't get dementia, but it is a positive step forward. Along with limiting added sugar in your diet, here are some other ways to reduce your dementia risk:
Exercise by participating in both aerobic activity and resistance exercise.
If you smoke cigarettes, take the first steps to quit.
Limit alcohol intake. If you regularly drink alcohol, try to do so in moderation. Excessive drinking is linked to cognitive decline. Moderate drinking means two drinks or less in a day for men and one drink or less in a day for women.
Stay socially engaged. Maintaining social connections builds your cognitive reserve to maintain good brain function with age.
If you have chronic diseases, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, make sure you’re managing these well. Stiffness in arteries and blood vessels can damage the brain. If you need help or individualized advice, reach out to a healthcare professional.
Include brain-healthy foods in your diet. The MIND diet emphasizes foods like whole grains, nuts, berries, vegetables and olive oil, which research shows may help support brain health. “The brain-healthy MIND diet limits foods high in saturated fats and added sugars because both are linked to oxidative stress, inflammation and the brain plaques and tangles associated with Alzheimer’s disease,” says Moon. She clarifies that this diet limits—but does not eliminate—fried foods, pastries and sweets, red meat, whole-fat cheese and butter.
Our Expert Take
Nothing will guarantee that you will live a life free from dementia. But certain steps may help reduce your risk, with your dietary choices being one factor. And along with eating brain-healthy foods, limiting your candy intake can help keep you cognitively sharp. Enjoying a small handful of candy corn on Halloween or conversation hearts on Valentine’s Day won’t “cause” dementia. “It’s important to remember that no single food eaten once, or even once in a while, is going to make or break your brain health,” Moon adds.
8 Sources:
World Health Organization. Dementia.
Alzheimer’s Association. What is Alzheimer’s Disease?
National Institute on Aging. Thinking about your risk for Alzheimer’s Disease? Five questions to consider.
Dhana K, James BD, Agarwal P, Aggarwal NT, et al. MIND Diet, Common Brain Pathologies, and Cognition in Community-Dwelling Older Adults. J Alzheimers Dis.;83(2):683-692. doi: 10.3233/JAD-210107.
Agarwal P, Ford CN, Leurgans SE, Beck T, Desai P, Dhana K, Evans DA, Halloway S, Holland TM, Krueger KR, Liu X, Rajan KB, Bennett DA. Dietary sugar intake associated with a higher risk of dementia in community-dwelling older adults. J Alzheimers Dis. 2023;95(4):1417-1425. doi:10.3233/JAD-230013
Liu L, Volpe SL, Ross JA, Grimm JA, Van Bockstaele EJ, Eisen HJ. Dietary sugar intake and risk of Alzheimer's disease in older women. Nutr Neurosci. 2022 Nov;25(11):2302-2313. doi:10.1080/1028415X.2021.1959099
Alzheimer’s Association. Risk reduction.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dietary guidelines for alcohol.
Persistent vegetative state
SpecialtyNeurology
A persistent vegetative state (PVS) is a disorder of consciousness in which patients with severe brain damage are in a state of partial arousal rather than true awareness. After four weeks in a vegetative state (VS), the patient is classified as in a persistent vegetative state. This diagnosis is classified as a permanent vegetative state some months (three in the US and six in the UK) after a non-traumatic brain injury or one year after a traumatic injury. Today, doctors and neuroscientists prefer to call the state of consciousness a syndrome,[1] primarily because of ethical questions about whether a patient can be called "vegetative" or not.[2]
Contents
1Definition
1.1Medical definition
1.2Lack of legal clarity
1.3Vegetative state
1.4Persistent vegetative state
2Signs and symptoms
2.1Recovery
3Causes
4Diagnosis
4.1Diagnostic experiments
4.2Misdiagnoses
5Treatment
5.1Zolpidem
6Epidemiology
7History
8Society and culture
8.1Ethics and policy
8.2Notable cases
9See also
10References
11External links
Definition[edit]
There are several definitions that vary by technical versus layman's usage. There are different legal implications in different countries.
Medical definition[edit]
A wakeful unconscious state that lasts longer than a few weeks is referred to as a persistent (or 'continuing') vegetative state.[3]
Lack of legal clarity[edit]
Unlike brain death, permanent vegetative state (PVS) is recognized by statute law as death in very few legal systems. In the US, courts have required petitions before termination of life support that demonstrate that any recovery of cognitive functions above a vegetative state is assessed as impossible by authoritative medical opinion.[4] In England and Wales the legal precedent for withdrawal of clinically assisted nutrition and hydration in cases of patients in a PVS was set in 1993 in the case of Tony Bland, who sustained catastrophic anoxic brain injury in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.[3] An application to the Court of Protection is no longer required before nutrition and hydration can be withdrawn or withheld from PVS (or 'minimally conscious' – MCS) patients.[5]
This legal grey area has led to vocal advocates that those in PVS should be allowed to die. Others are equally determined that, if recovery is at all possible, care should continue. The existence of a small number of diagnosed PVS cases that have eventually resulted in improvement makes defining recovery as "impossible" particularly difficult in a legal sense.[6] This legal and ethical issue raises questions about autonomy, quality of life, appropriate use of resources, the wishes of family members, and professional responsibilities.
Vegetative state[edit]
The vegetative state is a chronic or long-term condition. This condition differs from a coma: a coma is a state that lacks both awareness and wakefulness. Patients in a vegetative state may have awoken from a coma, but still have not regained awareness. In the vegetative state patients can open their eyelids occasionally and demonstrate sleep-wake cycles, but completely lack cognitive function. The vegetative state is also called a "coma vigil". The chances of regaining awareness diminish considerably as the time spent in the vegetative state increases.[7]
Persistent vegetative state[edit]
Persistent vegetative state is the standard usage (except in the UK) for a medical diagnosis, made after numerous neurological and other tests, that due to extensive and irreversible brain damage a patient is highly unlikely ever to achieve higher functions above a vegetative state. This diagnosis does not mean that a doctor has diagnosed improvement as impossible, but does open the possibility, in the US, for a judicial request to end life support.[6] Informal guidelines hold that this diagnosis can be made after four weeks in a vegetative state. US caselaw has shown that successful petitions for termination have been made after a diagnosis of a persistent vegetative state, although in some cases, such as that of Terri Schiavo, such rulings have generated widespread controversy.
In the UK, the term is discouraged in favor of two more precisely defined terms that have been strongly recommended by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP). These guidelines recommend using a continuous vegetative state for patients in a vegetative state for more than four weeks. A medical determination of a permanent vegetative state can be made if, after exhaustive testing and a customary 12 months of observation,[8] a medical diagnosis is made that it is impossible by any informed medical expectations that the mental condition will ever improve.[9] Hence, a "continuous vegetative state" in the UK may remain the diagnosis in cases that would be called "persistent" in the US or elsewhere.
While the actual testing criteria for a diagnosis of "permanent" in the UK are quite similar to the criteria for a diagnosis of "persistent" in the US, the semantic difference imparts in the UK a legal presumption that is commonly used in court applications for ending life support.[8] The UK diagnosis is generally only made after 12 months of observing a static vegetative state. A diagnosis of a persistent vegetative state in the US usually still requires a petitioner to prove in court that recovery is impossible by informed medical opinion, while in the UK the "permanent" diagnosis already gives the petitioner this presumption and may make the legal process less time-consuming.[6]
In common usage, the "permanent" and "persistent" definitions are sometimes conflated and used interchangeably. However, the acronym "PVS" is intended[by whom?] to define a "persistent vegetative state", without necessarily the connotations of permanence,[citation needed] and is used as such throughout this article. Bryan Jennett, who originally coined the term "persistent vegetative state", has now recommended using the UK division between continuous and permanent in his book The Vegetative State, arguing that "the 'persistent' component of this term ... may seem to suggest irreversibility".[10]
The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council has suggested "post coma unresponsiveness" as an alternative term for "vegetative state" in general.[11]
Signs and symptoms[edit]
Most PVS patients are unresponsive to external stimuli and their conditions are associated with different levels of consciousness. Some level of consciousness means a person can still respond, in varying degrees, to stimulation. A person in a coma, however, cannot. In addition, PVS patients often open their eyes in response to feeding, which has to be done by others; they are capable of swallowing, whereas patients in a coma subsist with their eyes closed (Emmett, 1989).
Cerebral cortical function (e.g. communication, thinking, purposeful movement, etc) is lost while brainstem functions (e.g. breathing, maintaining circulation and hemodynamic stability, etc) are preserved. Non-cognitive upper brainstem functions such as eye-opening, occasional vocalizations (e.g. crying, laughing), maintaining normal sleep patterns, and spontaneous non-purposeful movements often remain intact.
PVS patients' eyes might be in a relatively fixed position, or track moving objects, or move in a disconjugate (i.e., completely unsynchronized) manner. They may experience sleep-wake cycles, or be in a state of chronic wakefulness. They may exhibit some behaviors that can be construed as arising from partial consciousness, such as grinding their teeth, swallowing, smiling, shedding tears, grunting, moaning, or screaming without any apparent external stimulus.
Individuals in PVS are seldom on any life-sustaining equipment other than a feeding tube because the brainstem, the center of vegetative functions (such as heart rate and rhythm, respiration, and gastrointestinal activity) is relatively intact (Emmett, 1989).
Recovery[edit]
Many people emerge spontaneously from a vegetative state within a few weeks.[10] The chances of recovery depend on the extent of injury to the brain and the patient's age – younger patients having a better chance of recovery than older patients. A 1994 report found that of those who were in a vegetative state a month after a trauma, 54% had regained consciousness by a year after the trauma, whereas 28% had died and 18% were still in the vegetative state. But for non-traumatic injuries such as strokes, only 14% had recovered consciousness at one year, 47% had died, and 39% were still vegetative. Patients who were vegetative six months after the initial event were much less likely to have recovered consciousness a year after the event than in the case of those who were simply reported vegetative at one month.[12] A New Scientist article from 2000 gives a pair of graphs[13] showing changes of patient status during the first 12 months after head injury and after incidents depriving the brain of oxygen.[14] After a year, the chances that a PVS patient will regain consciousness are very low[15] and most patients who do recover consciousness experience significant disability. The longer a patient is in a PVS, the more severe the resulting disabilities are likely to be. Rehabilitation can contribute to recovery, but many patients never progress to the point of being able to take care of themselves.
There are two dimensions of recovery from a persistent vegetative state: recovery of consciousness and recovery of function. Recovery of consciousness can be verified by reliable evidence of awareness of self and the environment, consistent voluntary behavioral responses to visual and auditory stimuli, and interaction with others. Recovery of function is characterized by communication, the ability to learn and to perform adaptive tasks, mobility, self-care, and participation in recreational or vocational activities. Recovery of consciousness may occur without functional recovery, but functional recovery cannot occur without recovery of consciousness (Ashwal, 1994).
Causes[edit]
There are three main causes of PVS (persistent vegetative state):
Acute traumatic brain injury
Non-traumatic: neurodegenerative disorder or metabolic disorder of the brain
Severe congenital abnormality of the central nervous system
Medical books (such as Lippincott, Williams, and Wilkins. (2007). In A Page: Pediatric Signs and Symptoms) describe several potential causes of PVS, which are as follows:
Bacterial, viral, or fungal infection, including meningitis
Increased intracranial pressure, such as a tumor or abscess
Vascular pressure which causes intracranial hemorrhaging or stroke
Hypoxic ischemic injury (hypotension, cardiac arrest, arrhythmia, near-drowning)
Toxins such as uremia, ethanol, atropine, opiates, lead, colloidal silver[16]
Trauma: Concussion, contusion
Seizure, both nonconvulsive status epilepticus and postconvulsive state (postictal state)
Electrolyte imbalance, which involves hyponatremia, hypernatremia, hypomagnesemia, hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia, hypercalcemia, and hypocalcemia
Postinfectious: Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM)
Endocrine disorders such as adrenal insufficiency and thyroid disorders
Degenerative and metabolic diseases including urea cycle disorders, Reye syndrome, and mitochondrial disease
Systemic infection and sepsis
Hepatic encephalopathy
In addition, these authors claim that doctors sometimes use the mnemonic device AEIOU-TIPS to recall portions of the differential diagnosis: Alcohol ingestion and acidosis, Epilepsy and encephalopathy, Infection, Opiates, Uremia, Trauma, Insulin overdose or inflammatory disorders, Poisoning and psychogenic causes, and Shock.
Diagnosis[edit]
Despite converging agreement about the definition of persistent vegetative state, recent reports have raised concerns about the accuracy of diagnosis in some patients, and the extent to which, in a selection of cases, residual cognitive functions may remain undetected and patients are diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state. Objective assessment of residual cognitive function can be extremely difficult as motor responses may be minimal, inconsistent, and difficult to document in many patients, or may be undetectable in others because no cognitive output is possible (Owen et al., 2002). In recent years, a number of studies have demonstrated an important role for functional neuroimaging in the identification of residual cognitive function in persistent vegetative state; this technology is providing new insights into cerebral activity in patients with severe brain damage. Such studies, when successful, may be particularly useful where there is concern about the accuracy of the diagnosis and the possibility that residual cognitive function has remained undetected.
Diagnostic experiments[edit]
Researchers have begun to use functional neuroimaging studies to study implicit cognitive processing in patients with a clinical diagnosis of persistent vegetative state. Activations in response to sensory stimuli with positron emission tomography (PET), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and electrophysiological methods can provide information on the presence, degree, and location of any residual brain function. However, use of these techniques in people with severe brain damage is methodologically, clinically, and theoretically complex and needs careful quantitative analysis and interpretation.
For example, PET studies have shown the identification of residual cognitive function in persistent vegetative state. That is, an external stimulation, such as a painful stimulus, still activates "primary" sensory cortices in these patients but these areas are functionally disconnected from "higher order" associative areas needed for awareness. These results show that parts of the cortex are indeed still functioning in "vegetative" patients (Matsuda et al., 2003).
In addition, other PET studies have revealed preserved and consistent responses in predicted regions of auditory cortex in response to intelligible speech stimuli. Moreover, a preliminary fMRI examination revealed partially intact responses to semantically ambiguous stimuli, which are known to tap higher aspects of speech comprehension (Boly, 2004).
Furthermore, several studies have used PET to assess the central processing of noxious somatosensory stimuli in patients in PVS. Noxious somatosensory stimulation activated midbrain, contralateral thalamus, and primary somatosensory cortex in each and every PVS patient, even in the absence of detectable cortical evoked potentials. In conclusion, somatosensory stimulation of PVS patients, at intensities that elicited pain in controls, resulted in increased neuronal activity in primary somatosensory cortex, even if resting brain metabolism was severely impaired. However, this activation of primary cortex seems to be isolated and dissociated from higher-order associative cortices (Laureys et al., 2002).
Also, there is evidence of partially functional cerebral regions in catastrophically injured brains. To study five patients in PVS with different behavioral features, researchers employed PET, MRI and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) responses to sensory stimulation. In three of the five patients, co-registered PET/MRI correlate areas of relatively preserved brain metabolism with isolated fragments of behavior. Two patients had suffered anoxic injuries and demonstrated marked decreases in overall cerebral metabolism to 30–40% of normal. Two other patients with non-anoxic, multifocal brain injuries demonstrated several isolated brain regions with higher metabolic rates, that ranged up to 50–80% of normal. Nevertheless, their global metabolic rates remained <50% of normal. MEG recordings from three PVS patients provide clear evidence for the absence, abnormality or reduction of evoked responses. Despite major abnormalities, however, these data also provide evidence for localized residual activity at the cortical level. Each patient partially preserved restricted sensory representations, as evidenced by slow evoked magnetic fields and gamma band activity. In two patients, these activations correlate with isolated behavioral patterns and metabolic activity. Remaining active regions identified in the three PVS patients with behavioral fragments appear to consist of segregated corticothalamic networks that retain connectivity and partial functional integrity. A single patient who suffered severe injury to the tegmental mesencephalon and paramedian thalamus showed widely preserved cortical metabolism, and a global average metabolic rate of 65% of normal. The relatively high preservation of cortical metabolism in this patient defines the first functional correlate of clinical–pathological reports associating permanent unconsciousness with structural damage to these regions. The specific patterns of preserved metabolic activity identified in these patients reflect novel evidence of the modular nature of individual functional networks that underlie conscious brain function. The variations in cerebral metabolism in chronic PVS patients indicate that some cerebral regions can retain partial function in catastrophically injured brains (Schiff et al., 2002).
Misdiagnoses[edit]
Statistical PVS misdiagnosis is common. An example study with 40 patients in the United Kingdom reported 43% of their patients classified as PVS were believed so and another 33% had recovered whilst the study was underway.[17] Some PVS cases may actually be a misdiagnosis of patients being in an undiagnosed minimally conscious state.[18] Since the exact diagnostic criteria of the minimally conscious state were only formulated in 2002, there may be chronic patients diagnosed as PVS before the secondary notion of the minimally conscious state became known.
Whether or not there is any conscious awareness with a patient's vegetative state is a prominent issue. Three completely different aspects of this should be distinguished. First, some patients can be conscious simply because they are misdiagnosed (see above). In fact, they are not in vegetative states. Second, sometimes a patient was correctly diagnosed but is then examined during the early stages of recovery. Third, perhaps some day the notion itself of vegetative states will change so to include elements of conscious awareness. Inability to disentangle these three example cases causes confusion. An example of such confusion is the response to a recent experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging which revealed that a woman diagnosed with PVS was able to activate predictable portions of her brain in response to the tester's requests that she imagine herself playing tennis or moving from room to room in her house. The brain activity in response to these instructions was indistinguishable from those of healthy patients.[19][20][21]
In 2010, Martin Monti and fellow researchers, working at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge, reported in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine[22] that some patients in persistent vegetative states responded to verbal instructions by displaying different patterns of brain activity on fMRI scans. Five out of a total of 54 diagnosed patients were apparently able to respond when instructed to think about one of two different physical activities. One of these five was also able to "answer" yes or no questions, again by imagining one of these two activities.[23] It is unclear, however, whether the fact that portions of the patients' brains light up on fMRI could help these patients assume their own medical decision making.[23]
In November 2011, a publication in The Lancet presented bedside EEG apparatus and indicated that its signal could be used to detect awareness in three of 16 patients diagnosed in the vegetative state.[24]
Treatment[edit]
Currently no treatment for vegetative state exists that would satisfy the efficacy criteria of evidence-based medicine. Several methods have been proposed which can roughly be subdivided into four categories: pharmacological methods, surgery, physical therapy, and various stimulation techniques. Pharmacological therapy mainly uses activating substances such as tricyclic antidepressants or methylphenidate. Mixed results have been reported using dopaminergic drugs such as amantadine and bromocriptine and stimulants such as dextroamphetamine.[25] Surgical methods such as deep brain stimulation are used less frequently due to the invasiveness of the procedures. Stimulation techniques include sensory stimulation, sensory regulation, music and musicokinetic therapy, social-tactile interaction, and cortical stimulation.[26]
Zolpidem[edit]
There is limited evidence that the hypnotic drug zolpidem has an effect.[27] The results of the few scientific studies that have been published so far on the effectiveness of zolpidem have been contradictory.[28][29]
Epidemiology[edit]
In the United States, it is estimated that there may be between 15,000 and 40,000 patients who are in a persistent vegetative state, but due to poor nursing home records exact figures are hard to determine.[30]
History[edit]
The syndrome was first described in 1940 by Ernst Kretschmer who called it apallic syndrome.[31] The term persistent vegetative state was coined in 1972 by Scottish spinal surgeon Bryan Jennett and American neurologist Fred Plum to describe a syndrome that seemed to have been made possible by medicine's increased capacities to keep patients' bodies alive.[10][32]
Society and culture[edit]
Ethics and policy[edit]
An ongoing debate exists as to how much care, if any, patients in a persistent vegetative state should receive in health systems plagued by limited resources. In a case before the New Jersey Superior Court, Betancourt v. Trinitas Hospital, a community hospital sought a ruling that dialysis and CPR for such a patient constitutes futile care. An American bioethicist, Jacob M. Appel, argued that any money spent treating PVS patients would be better spent on other patients with a higher likelihood of recovery.[33] The patient died naturally prior to a decision in the case, resulting in the court finding the issue moot.
In 2010, British and Belgian researchers reported in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that some patients in persistent vegetative states actually had enough consciousness to "answer" yes or no questions on fMRI scans.[34] However, it is unclear whether the fact that portions of the patients' brains light up on fMRI will help these patient assume their own medical decision making.[34] Professor Geraint Rees, Director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, responded to the study by observing that, "As a clinician, it would be important to satisfy oneself that the individual that you are communicating with is competent to make those decisions. At the moment it is premature to conclude that the individual able to answer 5 out of 6 yes/no questions is fully conscious like you or I."[34] In contrast, Jacob M. Appel of the Mount Sinai Hospital told the Telegraph that this development could be a welcome step toward clarifying the wishes of such patients. Appel stated: "I see no reason why, if we are truly convinced such patients are communicating, society should not honour their wishes. In fact, as a physician, I think a compelling case can be made that doctors have an ethical obligation to assist such patients by removing treatment. I suspect that, if such individuals are indeed trapped in their bodies, they may be living in great torment and will request to have their care terminated or even active euthanasia."[34]
Notable cases[edit]
Tony Bland – first patient in English legal history to be allowed to die
Paul Brophy – first American to die after court-authorization
Sunny von Bülow – lived almost 28 years in a persistent vegetative state until her death
Gustavo Cerati – Argentine singer-songwriter, composer and producer who died after four years in a coma
Prichard Colón – Puerto Rican former professional boxer and gold medal winner who spent years in a vegetative state after a bout
Nancy Cruzan – American woman involved in a landmark United States Supreme Court case
Gary Dockery – American police officer who entered, emerged and later reentered a persistent vegetative state
Eluana Englaro – Italian woman from Lecco whose life was ended after a legal case after spending 17 years in a vegetative state
Elaine Esposito – American child who was a previous record holder for having spent 37 years in a coma
Lia Lee – Hmong child who spent 26 years in a vegetative state and was the subject of a 1997 book by Anne Fadiman
Haleigh Poutre
Karen Ann Quinlan
Terri Schiavo
Aruna Shanbaug – Indian woman in persistent vegetative state for 42 years until her death. Due to her case, the Supreme Court of India allowed passive euthanasia in the country.
Ariel Sharon
Chayito Valdez
Vice Vukov
Helga Wanglie
Otto Warmbier
See also[edit]
Anencephaly
Brain death
Botulism
Catatonia
Karolina Olsson
Locked-in syndrome
Process Oriented Coma Work, for an approach to working with residual consciousness in patients in comatose and persistent vegetative states
References[edit]
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This article contains text from the NINDS public domain pages on TBI. [1] and [2].
External links[edit]
Sarà, M.; Sacco, S.; Cipolla, F.; Onorati, P.; Scoppetta, C; Albertini, G; Carolei, A (2007). "An unexpected recovery from permanent vegetative state". Brain Injury. 21 (1): 101–103. doi:10.1080/02699050601151761. PMID 17364525.
Canavero S, et al. (2009). "Recovery of consciousness following bifocal extradural cortical stimulation in a permanently vegetative patient". Journal of Neurology. 256 (5): 834–6. doi:10.1007/s00415-009-5019-4. PMID 19252808.
Canavero S (editor) (2009). Textbook of therapeutic cortical stimulation. New York: Nova Science. ISBN 9781606925379.
Canavero S, Massa-Micon B, Cauda F, Montanaro E (May 2009). "Bifocal extradural cortical stimulation-induced recovery of consciousness in the permanent post-traumatic vegetative state". J Neurol. 256 (5): 834–6. doi:10.1007/s00415-009-5019-4. PMID 19252808.
Connolly, Kate. "Car crash victim trapped in a coma for 23 years was conscious", The Guardian, November 23, 2009.
Machado, Calixto, et al. "A Cuban Perspective on Management of Persistent Vegetative State". MEDICC Review 2012;14(1):44–48.
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Dr Judy Ho, Ph. D., ABPP is a licensed and board certified Clinical Psychologist based in Los Angeles. She lends her psychology expertise as a panelist on a variety of national television shows and provides professional services in Psychological Testing and Forensic Expert work. She is a tenured professor of psychology at Pepperdine University.