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People with psychosis may have one or more of the following: hallucinations, delusions, catatonia, or a thought disorder, as described below. Impairments in social cognition also occur.
A hallucination is defined as sensory perception in the absence of external stimuli. Hallucinations are different from illusions, or perceptual distortions, which are the misperception of external stimuli. Hallucinations may occur in any of the five senses and take on almost any form, which may include simple sensations (such as lights, colors, tastes, and smells) to experiences such as seeing and interacting with fully formed animals and people, hearing voices, and having complex tactile sensation,
Psychosis may involve delusional beliefs, some of which are paranoid in nature. Put simply, delusions are false beliefs that a person holds on to, without adequate evidence. It may be difficult to change the belief even with evidence to the contrary. Common themes of delusions are persecutory (person believes that others are out to harm him/her), grandiose (person believing that he or she has special powers or skills) etc. Depressed persons may have delusions consistent with their low mood e.g., delusions that they have sinned, or have contracted serious illness etc. Karl Jaspers has classified psychotic delusions into primary and secondary types. Primary delusions are defined as arising suddenly and not being comprehensible in terms of normal mental processes, whereas secondary delusions may be understood as being influenced by the person's background or current situation (e.g., ethnicity; religious, superstitious, or political beliefs).
Catatonia describes a profoundly agitated state in which the experience of reality is generally considered impaired. There are two primary manifestations of catatonic behavior. The classic presentation is a person who does not move or interact with the world in any way while awake. This type of catatonia presents with waxy flexibility. Waxy flexibility is when someone physically moves part of a catatonic person's body and the person stays in the position even if it is bizarre and otherwise nonfunctional (such as moving a person's arm straight up in the air and the arm stays there).
Thought disorder describes an underlying disturbance to conscious thought and is classified largely by its effects on speech and writing. Affected persons show loosening of associations, that is, a disconnection and disorganization of the semantic content of speech and writing. In the severe form speech becomes incomprehensible and it is known as "word salad".
Psychiatric disorder
From a diagnostic standpoint, organic disorders were those believed caused by physical illness affecting the brain (that is, psychiatric disorders secondary to other conditions), while functional disorders were considered disorders of the functioning of the mind in the absence of physical disorders (that is, primary psychological or psychiatric disorders). The materialistic view of the mind–body problem holds that mental disorders arise from physical processes; in this view, the distinction between brain and mind, and therefore between organic and functional disease, is an artificial one. Subtle physical abnormalities have been found in illnesses traditionally considered functional, such as schizophrenia. The DSM-IV-TR avoids the functional/organic distinction, and instead lists traditional psychotic illnesses, psychosis due to general medical conditions, and substance-induced psychosis.
Primary psychiatric causes of psychosis include the following:
schizophrenia and schizophreniform disorder
affective (mood) disorders, including severe depression, and severe depression or mania in bipolar disorder (manic depression). People experiencing a psychotic episode in the context of depression may experience persecutory or self-blaming delusions or hallucinations, while people experiencing a psychotic episode in the context of mania may form grandiose delusions.
schizoaffective disorder, involving symptoms of both schizophrenia and mood disorders
brief psychotic disorder, or acute/transient psychotic disorder
delusional disorder (persistent delusional disorder)
chronic hallucinatory psychosis
Psychotic symptoms may also be seen in
schizotypal disorder
certain personality disorders at times of stress (including paranoid personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, and borderline personality disorder)
major depressive disorder in its severe form although it is possible and more likely to have severe depression without psychosis
bipolar disorder in severe mania and/or severe depression although it is possible to have severe mania and/or severe depression without psychosis as well, in fact that is more commonly the case
post-traumatic stress disorder
induced delusional disorder
Sometimes in obsessive-compulsive disorder
Stress is known to contribute to and trigger psychotic states. A history of psychologically traumatic events, and the recent experience of a stressful event, can both contribute to the development of psychosis. Short-lived psychosis triggered by stress is known as brief reactive psychosis, and patients may spontaneously recover normal functioning within two weeks. In some rare cases, individuals may remain in a state of full-blown psychosis for many years, or perhaps have attenuated psychotic symptoms (such as low intensity hallucinations) present at most times.
"You cannot think about thinking, without thinking about thinking about something."
-- Seymour Papert
Papert is a respected computer scientist who studies artificial intelligence. Or he might be a mathematician. I'm not sure. But I liked this quote a lot, and I also like this book, 'The Society of Mind' by Marvin Minksy.
Art and Science are two highly sophisticated endeavors of the human brain that are apparently unbridgeable. Most artists spare their worries of Science and scientists who express artistically are relegated to the fringes by their intellectual colleagues. Therefore, a genuine rift has settled in between those who seek knowledge and those who express it. However, both Art and Science arise from the same cocoon of the human brain. Despite your urge to stop indulging in this heresy urgently, I urge you to read on and decide for yourself.
Let’s roll some words out: Moody, volatile, intense, temperamental and overly imaginative. You will probably agree that this description fits a typical poet, writer or a musician quite well. However, these are some clinical symptoms of manic depression and bipolar disorder also. Madness, my friend, is the womb of most artistic temperaments. Creativity, that crazy urge to conceive something beautiful from the surrounding chaos, is often the brighter face of the same coin whose darker side is complexities such as manic depression and bipolar disorder. You see, there are these neurotransmitter molecules (like norepinephrine) which are chemical verses of neurons in the brain. Levels of these chemical monologues rise and fall in patients of manic depression. When abundant, these molecules drive the brain circuits into a frenzy of activity leading to what is clinically diagnosed as mania and poetically referred to as ‘being inspired’. Name any one of these extraordinary geniuses (Burton, Blake, Dickens, Shelley, Hemingway, Michelangelo, van Gogh, Schumann…) and there is enough evidence out there to identify them as patients of major mood and cognition disorders.
But that is only half the story. The ‘creativity’ of mad geniuses often rises from reconciliation of opposite emotional and cognitive states in their minds. While mania (or hypomania) explains artistic manifestations, dark curses remain to be experienced during depression. During these times artistic minds are suicidal, feel worthless, and suffer from excessive and often inappropriate guilt and indecisiveness. There is very little art in these depressed minds which endure nothing but unspeakable pain. As pitiful as it may sound, that is how it is. When was an artistic enterprise worth anything unless it was based on pain that tugged at the very fiber of existence? The beautiful is created by the scatterbrain only after it is scattered by depressive episodes. Mania brings creation and depression urges to destroy. Flip-flopping between these extremes, disorderly brains are able to hold certain moments of life in a higher light unattainable otherwise.
It is here where Science needs to reconcile with Art before it is too late. Major efforts are being initiated to find ‘cures’ for these diseases. While eliminating mental suffering is humane and should be pursued by all means, where will we end up if our gene therapies cure all future van Goghs, Shelleys and Schumanns? How will art look on anti-psychotics? Should we make room for a mediocre category of lithium-art? I have no idea but standing at this event horizon between Art and Science, I would assume that a poet would never touch anything that could destroy his pain and the scientist would never rest unless he gets the poet his medical option.
PS: If you have cared to read so far then may I recommend you two books along these lines? The first is by the bipolar psychologist Kay Jamison (Touched with Fire) and the second is by Hershman & Lieb (Manic Depression and Creativity).
PS, again. Madness is not a pre-requisite or tell-tale sign of artistic abilities. The above monologue, please note, is about absolute extremes in two spectrums of human behavior: madness and creativity. The relationship elaborated here, I believe, doesn't apply linearly along the length of each spectrum.
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.
Mulier in ruinam.
Cannibalistic repente animo sustinuit burning vast,
humourless blind langanir neðan eldsofninn þínum,
approaches death on ασάφειες φανταχτερά τραγούδια,
l'anagramme de l'incompréhension personnel æhtspédig besingan,
нечестия думающие depravities cruel,
deep irritations madness mørke dypet,
maledicta amaritudines breaks on cuisses tremblantes goitreux,
offensive irreconcilability's frivolous imaginations hell,
unálýfednes bræwas bloodthirsty sublieme gruwelijke kisses cheeks,
fastidiosus virtutibus disgusting átorberende tokens confined,
böse zweifel incurable stronza grida notevolmente drudged bites,
rire descente falsehoods lamrind beliefs,
uvažuje o porušení devouryng foundations אמיתות,
ámyrðrian on crystal glory's universe,
strafen angreifen affirmations saeculi voluptates,
ίντριγκες ψυχολογία ανακατασκευή depravities rot,
sweorcan ætíewednes cognitions strofe inquietanti winks,
extreme widersprüche struggling melodramas miseries,
somniferous glupsk eksistens she splashes on thou's 傷跡.
Steve.D.Hammond.
you cant tell how much suffering is on a face thats always smiling
Bipolar disorder or manic–depressive disorder, also referred to as bipolar affective disorder or manic depression, is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood with or without one or more depressive episodes. The elevated moods are clinically referred to as mania or, if milder, hypomania. Individuals who experience manic episodes also commonly experience depressive episodes, or symptoms, or a mixed state in which features of both mania and depression are present at the same time. These events are usually separated by periods of "normal" mood; but, in some individuals, depression and mania may rapidly alternate, which is known as rapid cycling. Extreme manic episodes can sometimes lead to such psychotic symptoms as delusions and hallucinations. The disorder has been subdivided into bipolar I, bipolar II, cyclothymia, and other types, based on the nature and severity of mood episodes experienced; the range is often described as the bipolar spectrum.
Estimates of the lifetime prevalence of bipolar disorder vary, with studies typically giving values of the order of 1%, with higher figures given in studies with looser definitions of the condition. The onset of full symptoms generally occurs in late adolescence or young adulthood. Diagnosis is based on the person's self-reported experiences, as well as observed behavior. Episodes of abnormality are associated with distress and disruption and an elevated risk of suicide, especially during depressive episodes. In some cases, it can be a devastating long-lasting disorder. In others, it has also been associated with creativity, goal striving, and positive achievements. There is significant evidence to suggest that many people with creative talents have also suffered from some form of bipolar disorder. It is often suggested that creativity and bipolar disorder are linked.
Genetic factors contribute substantially to the likelihood of developing bipolar disorder, and environmental factors are also implicated. Bipolar disorder is often treated with mood stabilizing medications and, sometimes, other psychiatric drugs. Psychotherapy also has a role, often when there has been some recovery of the subject's stability. In serious cases, in which there is a risk of harm to oneself or others, involuntary commitment may be used. These cases generally involve severe manic episodes with dangerous behavior or depressive episodes with suicidal ideation. There are widespread problems with social stigma, stereotypes, and prejudice against individuals with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. People with bipolar disorder exhibiting psychotic symptoms can sometimes be misdiagnosed as having schizophrenia, a serious mental illness.
The current term bipolar disorder is of fairly recent origin and refers to the cycling between high and low episodes (poles).
A Haiku Note:
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Here see the Buddha
encircled in the sunlight
in meditation
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The Noble Eightfold Path describes the way to the end of suffering, as it was laid out by Siddhartha Gautama. It is a practical guideline to ethical and mental development with the goal of freeing the individual from attachments and delusions; and it finally leads to understanding the truth about all things. Together with the Four Noble Truths it constitutes the gist of Buddhism. Great emphasis is put on the practical aspect, because it is only through practice that one can attain a higher level of existence and finally reach Nirvana. The eight aspects of the path are not to be understood as a sequence of single steps, instead they are highly interdependent principles that have to be seen in relationship with each other.
1. Right View
Right view is the beginning and the end of the path, it simply means to see and to understand things as they really are and to realise the Four Noble Truths. As such, right view is the cognitive aspect of wisdom. It means to see things through, to grasp the impermanent and imperfect nature of worldly objects and ideas, and to understand the law of karma and karmic conditioning. Right view is not necessarily an intellectual capacity, just as wisdom is not just a matter of intelligence. Instead, right view is attained, sustained, and enhanced through all capacities of mind. It begins with the intuitive insight that all beings are subject to suffering and it ends with complete understanding of the true nature of all things. Since our view of the world forms our thoughts and our actions, right view yields right thoughts and right actions.
2. Right Intention
While right view refers to the cognitive aspect of wisdom, right intention refers to the volitional aspect, i.e. the kind of mental energy that controls our actions. Right intention can be described best as commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement. Buddha distinguishes three types of right intentions: 1. the intention of renunciation, which means resistance to the pull of desire, 2. the intention of good will, meaning resistance to feelings of anger and aversion, and 3. the intention of harmlessness, meaning not to think or act cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and to develop compassion.
3. Right Speech
Right speech is the first principle of ethical conduct in the eightfold path. Ethical conduct is viewed as a guideline to moral discipline, which supports the other principles of the path. This aspect is not self-sufficient, however, essential, because mental purification can only be achieved through the cultivation of ethical conduct. The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows: 1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully, 2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others, 3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently and to talk only when necessary.
4. Right Action
The second ethical principle, right action, involves the body as natural means of expression, as it refers to deeds that involve bodily actions. Unwholesome actions lead to unsound states of mind, while wholesome actions lead to sound states of mind. Again, the principle is explained in terms of abstinence: right action means 1. to abstain from harming sentient beings, especially to abstain from taking life (including suicide) and doing harm intentionally or delinquently, 2. to abstain from taking what is not given, which includes stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness, and dishonesty, and 3. to abstain from sexual misconduct. Positively formulated, right action means to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest, to respect the belongings of others, and to keep sexual relationships harmless to others. Further details regarding the concrete meaning of right action can be found in the Precepts.
5. Right Livelihood
Right livelihood means that one should earn one's living in a righteous way and that wealth should be gained legally and peacefully. The Buddha mentions four specific activities that harm other beings and that one should avoid for this reason: 1. dealing in weapons, 2. dealing in living beings (including raising animals for slaughter as well as slave trade and prostitution), 3. working in meat production and butchery, and 4. selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs. Furthermore any other occupation that would violate the principles of right speech and right action should be avoided.
6. Right Effort
Right effort can be seen as a prerequisite for the other principles of the path. Without effort, which is in itself an act of will, nothing can be achieved, whereas misguided effort distracts the mind from its task, and confusion will be the consequence. Mental energy is the force behind right effort; it can occur in either wholesome or unwholesome states. The same type of energy that fuels desire, envy, aggression, and violence can on the other side fuel self-discipline, honesty, benevolence, and kindness. Right effort is detailed in four types of endeavours that rank in ascending order of perfection: 1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, 2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, 3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and 4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.
7. Right Mindfulness
Right mindfulness is the controlled and perfected faculty of cognition. It is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness. Usually, the cognitive process begins with an impression induced by perception, or by a thought, but then it does not stay with the mere impression. Instead, we almost always conceptualise sense impressions and thoughts immediately. We interpret them and set them in relation to other thoughts and experiences, which naturally go beyond the facticity of the original impression. The mind then posits concepts, joins concepts into constructs, and weaves those constructs into complex interpretative schemes. All this happens only half consciously, and as a result we often see things obscured. Right mindfulness is anchored in clear perception and it penetrates impressions without getting carried away. Right mindfulness enables us to be aware of the process of conceptualisation in a way that we actively observe and control the way our thoughts go. Buddha accounted for this as the four foundations of mindfulness: 1. contemplation of the body, 2. contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive, or neutral), 3. contemplation of the state of mind, and 4. contemplation of the phenomena.
8. Right Concentration
The eighth principle of the path, right concentration, refers to the development of a mental force that occurs in natural consciousness, although at a relatively low level of intensity, namely concentration. Concentration in this context is described as one-pointedness of mind, meaning a state where all mental faculties are unified and directed onto one particular object. Right concentration for the purpose of the eightfold path means wholesome concentration, i.e. concentration on wholesome thoughts and actions. The Buddhist method of choice to develop right concentration is through the practice of meditation. The meditating mind focuses on a selected object. It first directs itself onto it, then sustains concentration, and finally intensifies concentration step by step. Through this practice it becomes natural to apply elevated levels of concentration also in everyday situations.
iss067e360648 (July 6, 2022) --- NASA astronaut and Expedition 67 Flight Engineer Bob Hines is seated inside the Columbus laboratory module participating in the GRIP experiment. The investigation explores how astronauts grip and maneuver a specialized device in response to pre-programmed stimuli so scientists can gain insights into a crew member’s cognition and perception during spaceflight.
iss067e360645 (July 6, 2022) --- NASA astronaut and Expedition 67 Flight Engineer Jessica Watkins is seated inside the Columbus laboratory module participating in the GRIP experiment. The investigation explores how astronauts grip and maneuver a specialized device in response to pre-programmed stimuli so scientists can gain insights into a crew member’s cognition and perception during spaceflight.
"The arts make vivid the fact that words do not, in their literal form or number, exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition." (Elliot W. Eisner)
Happy Labour Day, or Labor Day… North and South of the border!
While returning from a short rural road trip near the Saskatoon/Regina area my last stop was the small community of Rush Lake. A pair of gas pumps in full skeletal condition caught my attention, but most noticeable the overgrown trees seemed unusual. Were the leaves beginning that familiar rush to the exit, soon to fuel a sea of changing colours and combinations. A few hours back home hardly a hint of yellow.
I've decided rather than rush through this inevitable script, I'm hanging on to summer a few more weeks.
*Please view LARGE for best rural Saskatchewan detail
**Textures courtesy of various sources on Flickr
***Thank You for your generous support, visits, comments, favourites, and galleries.
[Rush Lake is a village in the south west part of Saskatchewan, Canada. Other towns in the area include Waldeck, Herbert, and the city of Swift Current. Located east of Swift Current, it's a small village with an approximate population of 50 people.]
i dont think therefore i am not
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
Explored
Today was rough. finished my business law homework. Gotta study for my memory and cognition class tomorrow. Good thing I had already finished my photography homework. Going to begin watching TV for news related info for module 4 test.
so i think my new bc pill is making me pms early. its horrible i hate it. oh wells well see for real how well i take it next week.
I gave the truck back to donnie. for those of you who know donnie took my car to Sarasota because his company sent him to school up there for a few days so i had his truck for the past two days. Let me tell you something.... i LOVED it.
i loved everything about it! it was HUGE!! well i mean its deff bigger than me. we bought his 07 f150 fx4 4-door flareside for a steal of a deal! 21k out the door. oh yes, im one helluva negotiator! anyways i had to give it back today :( its a good thing though. i had no idea how to park that thing at school and the gas was killer.
Project 365: day 148
TOTW: Rage, Anger, & Aggression!
Tuesday's Truth: I got suspended from high school for half a day in my sophomore year. I had pushed a girl down some bleachers for calling me a whore. the thing was that we were fighting over the fact that she called my best friend (her former best friend) a whore. I told her to take it back and she said,"well you're one too!" one thing lead to another and she went down some bleachers. and the worst part was... they became best friends again. Talk about some flaky people. Well you live, learn, fall, and get back up. Now that I'm in college and have rarely ANY time to spare I cant afford to waste my time on flaky and fake people. I just dont have the energy to devote to childish HS tactics. Why do some people carry their high school behavior and drama into college? Why does maturity take so long to harness?
Taken on December 11 at IIT Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa - Italy, During the Family Day 2015
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The iCub is the humanoid robot child designed to support researchers interested in the themes of learning, control, cognition, and interaction, both at IIT and worldwide. The goal of the iCub Facility is to foster the development of the iCub, arrange the construction of new versions, supervise the incorporation of new technologies.
--------------------------------
iCub è un robot androide costruito dall'Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) di Genova. Alto 104 cm e pesante 22 kg, la sua estetica e funzionalità ricordano quelle di un bambino di circa tre anni.
----------------------------------------
Sito ufficiale IIT:
www.iit.it/en/research/departments/icub-facility.html
Official website IIT:
www.iit.it/en/research/departments/icub-facility.html
Wikipedia italiano:
Wikipedia english:
-------------------------------
You can see my images on fluidr: click here
You can see my most interesting photo's on flickr: click here
You can see my web site as Nikon Photographer Advanced: click here
…we went upstairs into a spacious studio. The invigorating, nutty smell of
oil paint delighted my senses. It seemed as if I had stepped inside of the
painting. The enormous room dissolved the concentrated scent of oil paints and transformed into Asian perfume. Stepping inside an artist’s studio every time put me into the position of Alice in Wonderland. Surrounded by scattered paintings, brushes, pallets, paint tubes, roles of canvases, and sketch pads, I was searching for the special conversational piece. If I could only find the right piece, which would be the artist’s favorite, I knew it
would break the ice. The first painting that caught my attention put me suddenly under hypnosis and I don’t recall for how long I was staring at it, whether it was a minute or an hour. This is not, in any way, an exaggeration but a real-live experience.
Evidently, Jaisini noticed that I was trapped by one of his paintings and broke the silence.
-Do you like that piece, or are you looking for a starting point to criticize it?
However it is, I welcome your criticisms rather than flattery.
-Your painting develops in my mind like photosensitive paper in a developer. On second thought, I sense an aesthetic pleasure from just the color harmony, but I still need more time-I said.
-No problem, take your time while I finish a sketch.
I had to postpone the interview in order to get a better look at the painting
that captured me. The artist put on some classical music. I began taking notes about what I had seen while he was silently sketching. As time flew
by, it was getting dark outside and the music ended long ago. I glanced at
the watch and realized that 4 hours had already elapsed and I didn’t even start the interview.
Jaisini was still concentrating on his work and it was obvious that I should’ve called it a day. Setting the convenient time for tomorrow I left.
…we met at the café.
I could tell that Jaisini was in a good mood and the interview has a better chance today. Perhaps his work went well, I thought. Jaisini greeted me as someone he had already befriended….
…-Positively, the painting I was contemplating in your studio sticks to my mind
Jaisini answered;
-It happens to many. I like this cafe. It is always so picturesque. The people
here make it colorful. For example, do you see that waitress?
-The small blond in her late thirties?
-Yes, her name is Nancy. Three years ago she told me that she wanted to become famous and in her free time she writes a script for a movie, convincing me that it will be the first script of its kind, a love story based on
her memoir.
Jaisini smiled charmingly, adding: -Oh, no, I am not joking. I believe in her. Once I invited her to the studio, as
she seemed like such a peculiar person. I was just finishing my painting called “Organ Grinder”. She declared frankly and firmly: ”I want this picture. How much?”
I explained to her that I don’t sell paintings.
Then I experienced certain chemistry. When such a “simple” person, but still
the one who writes the script, says: “I want the “Organ Grinder”, it was the
strangest thing. I didn’t like the painting one bit and after that, all of a sudden, I started seeing it in a different light of something very pure and
divine. She wanted so badly to own the picture that she induced her desire on me. I think that to create this “divine” we have to get down with people, declass to become simple and understand art with awe. Even though Gleitzeit is not for regular people, it can be understood by a mailman who asked me for an autograph, by an immigrant who came to the US to earn
money, or by a priest from England who told me that this art is for intellectuals, not for ambitious people who say, “I understand this art while others don’t.”.
-Do you think that your pictures relate to people as if they are puzzles of human life?
-When a man is awake, a man is asleep; everything encloses. And when you enclose your line you create the reality in which the man truly exists not knowing that he is entrapped in a secluded world of his own doing which he cannot escape. The enclosed line may provoke the desire to breakout, to find an exit.
-The question arises, what is fine art now and who needs it? The elite?
-Yes, but people crave art too if a mailman asked me for my autograph on a postcard after I had to explain him about the picture he saw. Before I explained the painting the man felt scared of breaking his head over it. It is understandable when in schools art is taught as an entertainment, not as a psychological significance, a process of growth, a visualization of today’s reality, an analysis of social life and ancient history, or the world’s history that brought people to the technical progress.
- To build a family is more important for that man.
-Yes, he understands his purpose of trying to build a family of five with eighteen grandchildren. A man’s genetic structure is of a turtle’s and is directed to one, laying eggs by any means and returning in a year through six thousand miles across the ocean to lay eggs again at the same place. But pay attention that bravado of the civilized world brings a realization that everything is a sham. Real is what is encoded by nature; real is when you see a beautiful ocean, a beautiful sunrise, or the grace of a horse. This is real.
- Then what is fine art? Is fine beautiful or good?
-Beautiful. It began from nature, from the copying of beautiful bodies of people and horses…. My main direction in art is most progressive, to achieve in composition the grace of color combinations, an intellectual color climax, tone, contrast, and so on. The idea of the painting unites in itself everything we see in the real world, but in an intricate, puzzle-like concept.
-Art in America is a tendency for immediate recognition. The remembrance is strictly visual since there was no comprehension. First they want to see that it’s different. What about Gleitzeit, how do you see this visual effect expressed?
-A regular person, either a lady florist, my tennis partner, or a teenage cowboy comes to my studio and says: “I don’t understand this art and
I don’t want to see it, it’s not mine. When the lady florist starts seeing some figures in a painting, she shouts, “I see! Look! Look! I see it now!” like a child. A man denies what he doesn’t understand as an immediate reaction. An everyday man is brought up on the understanding of natural grace. He doesn’t assimilate it in an abstract
way. He sees an egg and a hen and points out which are the egg and the hen. In my picture he can’t say that this is an egg and this is a hen at first. Moreover, he can’t say what came first, the egg or the hen. He sees something very simple or very complicating. The man refuses to do an effort. Slowly, not even slowly, but pretty quickly the man can
transform if he learns.
-Do you want to change the process of art cognition? The judgment is not based on the appearance since ‘we’ve seen all there is to see’ with and without philosophy, like when they sell us Coca-Cola they tell us about the transcendental. We are understanding folks. Do you want this “flat” cognition to change?
- A man is looking for an escape. I try to attach him to a thread in the picture, which is twisted, to untangle it. What is next? Did he learn something? Yes, and he also begins to understand abstraction after the knot is undone. This is flexitime. Will the work turn blank? No, since it still has an idea. If it would be an automated drawing by a schoolchild that may look like something there is no concept. In my art you have an idea and mastership. The key is the artist’s mastership. A weak painting will not survive. What is left to the spectator is aesthetic pleasure and confidence.
-What if people ask you for a simpler art? Why do they have to untangle your art?
- I answer simply. It’s not my doing and decision. I didn’t decide it. The art critics said so, they who studied art all their life and read volumes of books. They say that they analyzed it and it has this and that meaning, non other. That an artist is a reflection of society.
- Do you consider yourself a reflection?
-No, I don’t. Philosophers try to understand what is art and life. I only
insist that grace will not diminish in value.
… and I caught myself on a thought that I wanted to know how the story with the scriptwriter waitress ended. If the painting is still in the artist’s holdings I would like to see it to know why she wanted it so badly. And I asked…From 48 hours of the Interview with Paul Jaisini in his New York studio
cargocollective.com/breelbourn
drown [droun]
verb. drowned, drown·ing, drowns
1. To deaden one's awareness of; blot out
un·con·scious [uhn-kon-shuhs]
adjective
1. not conscious; without awareness, sensation, or cognition.
2. temporarily devoid of consciousness.
3. not perceived at the level of awareness; occurring below the level of conscious thought: an unconscious impulse.
4. of or concerning the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one's actions and feelings.
Water symbolizes the personal unconscious–the locked trunk in the back of your brain filled with experiences you'd never (consciously) known you've experienced. Your personal unconscious works as a security guard to shelter your conscious self from earlier experiences deemed threatening by your subconscious self. In Drowning Unconscious Bre creates a space where her subjects–enclosed in a tub of foggy, unclear water–remain trapped alike their own subconscious thoughts and experiences. The series–consisting of 3 diptych's–portrays an aerial view of the subject in the bathtub, paired with dream-like portrait of them submerged in water. By using powdered milk to create cloudy water, Bre creates a metaphor for the personal unconscious and through a lack of clothing, her subjects are given another glimpse of vulnerability. While the mind and bathroom both represent private spaces, Bre encloses her subjects "permanently" within these spaces allowing them play prisoner to their own subconscious self.
Over the past decade, I have photographed Norwegian entrepreneur and roboticist Hans Peter Brøndmo many times, capturing him in settings that mirror his dual nature as both a visionary engineer and an artist at heart. This particular portrait was taken aboard the R/V Kinfish in the high Arctic, where the stark, elemental beauty of the surroundings seemed to reflect his own blend of precision and imagination.
Hans Peter is a rare subject—an inspirational leader in engineering and a dear friend. We share a deep passion for photography and art, and our conversations often drift between the mechanics of robotic autonomy and the aesthetics of light and form. His work at Everyday Robots for Google was transformational, leading efforts to create learning-based, adaptive robots that could navigate complex human environments. By integrating advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and embodied cognition, he sought to push beyond conventional automation and into a future where robots could assist in meaningful, intuitive ways.
Beyond Everyday Robots, Hans Peter’s entrepreneurial career has been defined by a deep understanding of both technology and human experience. As a serial entrepreneur, he has founded and led multiple ventures at the cutting edge of robotics, AI, and digital media. His ability to bridge technical breakthroughs with real-world applications has made him a sought-after leader in the field. Early in his career, he worked on pioneering internet technologies and later shifted his focus to robotics, recognizing the profound impact intelligent machines could have on industries ranging from healthcare to environmental monitoring.
His approach to robotics is as much philosophical as it is technical. He often speaks of the importance of creating systems that adapt, learn, and evolve—machines that are not rigidly programmed but instead develop a kind of digital intuition. One of his key lessons from years of work in the field is that the best robots are not those that seek to replace humans but those that enhance human capability, allowing people to focus on creativity, connection, and problem-solving.
There are few people who move so effortlessly between disciplines, who can speak as fluently about neural networks as they can about composition and exposure. Hans Peter embodies that rare synthesis of logic and intuition, of rigorous engineering and boundless creativity. Whether on the deck of a research vessel or in the depths of a machine-learning lab, he carries the same spark of curiosity—a restless pursuit of the next great challenge.
I had a terrible dream last night...
I was in the basement. I was the Minotaur, genetic monster. I was in a Labyrinth I built out of cardboard boxes. Like children do. Maybe I was Daedalus, the great ancient engineer, but I'm afraid...
So destructive, thrashing about. Looked in the mirror and had no cognition. Who is that? Dim forces fearing the light. Fly away. Fly away! So mired, so heavy.
Sleep in the light...
Also, check out my video on YouTube, Milk Bottle Reliquary. You will find it here:
You can also find my new book, The Circuit, here:
…we went upstairs into a spacious studio. The invigorating, nutty smell of
oil paint delighted my senses. It seemed as if I had stepped inside of the
painting. The enormous room dissolved the concentrated scent of oil paints and transformed into Asian perfume. Stepping inside an artist’s studio every time put me into the position of Alice in Wonderland. Surrounded by scattered paintings, brushes, pallets, paint tubes, roles of canvases, and sketch pads, I was searching for the special conversational piece. If I could only find the right piece, which would be the artist’s favorite, I knew it
would break the ice. The first painting that caught my attention put me suddenly under hypnosis and I don’t recall for how long I was staring at it, whether it was a minute or an hour. This is not, in any way, an exaggeration but a real-live experience.
Evidently, Jaisini noticed that I was trapped by one of his paintings and broke the silence.
-Do you like that piece, or are you looking for a starting point to criticize it?
However it is, I welcome your criticisms rather than flattery.
-Your painting develops in my mind like photosensitive paper in a developer. On second thought, I sense an aesthetic pleasure from just the color harmony, but I still need more time-I said.
-No problem, take your time while I finish a sketch.
I had to postpone the interview in order to get a better look at the painting
that captured me. The artist put on some classical music. I began taking notes about what I had seen while he was silently sketching. As time flew
by, it was getting dark outside and the music ended long ago. I glanced at
the watch and realized that 4 hours had already elapsed and I didn’t even start the interview.
Jaisini was still concentrating on his work and it was obvious that I should’ve called it a day. Setting the convenient time for tomorrow I left.
…we met at the café.
I could tell that Jaisini was in a good mood and the interview has a better chance today. Perhaps his work went well, I thought. Jaisini greeted me as someone he had already befriended….
…-Positively, the painting I was contemplating in your studio sticks to my mind
Jaisini answered;
-It happens to many. I like this cafe. It is always so picturesque. The people
here make it colorful. For example, do you see that waitress?
-The small blond in her late thirties?
-Yes, her name is Nancy. Three years ago she told me that she wanted to become famous and in her free time she writes a script for a movie, convincing me that it will be the first script of its kind, a love story based on
her memoir.
Jaisini smiled charmingly, adding: -Oh, no, I am not joking. I believe in her. Once I invited her to the studio, as
she seemed like such a peculiar person. I was just finishing my painting called “Organ Grinder”. She declared frankly and firmly: ”I want this picture. How much?”
I explained to her that I don’t sell paintings.
Then I experienced certain chemistry. When such a “simple” person, but still
the one who writes the script, says: “I want the “Organ Grinder”, it was the
strangest thing. I didn’t like the painting one bit and after that, all of a sudden, I started seeing it in a different light of something very pure and
divine. She wanted so badly to own the picture that she induced her desire on me. I think that to create this “divine” we have to get down with people, declass to become simple and understand art with awe. Even though Gleitzeit is not for regular people, it can be understood by a mailman who asked me for an autograph, by an immigrant who came to the US to earn
money, or by a priest from England who told me that this art is for intellectuals, not for ambitious people who say, “I understand this art while others don’t.”.
-Do you think that your pictures relate to people as if they are puzzles of human life?
-When a man is awake, a man is asleep; everything encloses. And when you enclose your line you create the reality in which the man truly exists not knowing that he is entrapped in a secluded world of his own doing which he cannot escape. The enclosed line may provoke the desire to breakout, to find an exit.
-The question arises, what is fine art now and who needs it? The elite?
-Yes, but people crave art too if a mailman asked me for my autograph on a postcard after I had to explain him about the picture he saw. Before I explained the painting the man felt scared of breaking his head over it. It is understandable when in schools art is taught as an entertainment, not as a psychological significance, a process of growth, a visualization of today’s reality, an analysis of social life and ancient history, or the world’s history that brought people to the technical progress.
- To build a family is more important for that man.
-Yes, he understands his purpose of trying to build a family of five with eighteen grandchildren. A man’s genetic structure is of a turtle’s and is directed to one, laying eggs by any means and returning in a year through six thousand miles across the ocean to lay eggs again at the same place. But pay attention that bravado of the civilized world brings a realization that everything is a sham. Real is what is encoded by nature; real is when you see a beautiful ocean, a beautiful sunrise, or the grace of a horse. This is real.
- Then what is fine art? Is fine beautiful or good?
-Beautiful. It began from nature, from the copying of beautiful bodies of people and horses…. My main direction in art is most progressive, to achieve in composition the grace of color combinations, an intellectual color climax, tone, contrast, and so on. The idea of the painting unites in itself everything we see in the real world, but in an intricate, puzzle-like concept.
-Art in America is a tendency for immediate recognition. The remembrance is strictly visual since there was no comprehension. First they want to see that it’s different. What about Gleitzeit, how do you see this visual effect expressed?
-A regular person, either a lady florist, my tennis partner, or a teenage cowboy comes to my studio and says: “I don’t understand this art and
I don’t want to see it, it’s not mine. When the lady florist starts seeing some figures in a painting, she shouts, “I see! Look! Look! I see it now!” like a child. A man denies what he doesn’t understand as an immediate reaction. An everyday man is brought up on the understanding of natural grace. He doesn’t assimilate it in an abstract
way. He sees an egg and a hen and points out which are the egg and the hen. In my picture he can’t say that this is an egg and this is a hen at first. Moreover, he can’t say what came first, the egg or the hen. He sees something very simple or very complicating. The man refuses to do an effort. Slowly, not even slowly, but pretty quickly the man can
transform if he learns.
-Do you want to change the process of art cognition? The judgment is not based on the appearance since ‘we’ve seen all there is to see’ with and without philosophy, like when they sell us Coca-Cola they tell us about the transcendental. We are understanding folks. Do you want this “flat” cognition to change?
- A man is looking for an escape. I try to attach him to a thread in the picture, which is twisted, to untangle it. What is next? Did he learn something? Yes, and he also begins to understand abstraction after the knot is undone. This is flexitime. Will the work turn blank? No, since it still has an idea. If it would be an automated drawing by a schoolchild that may look like something there is no concept. In my art you have an idea and mastership. The key is the artist’s mastership. A weak painting will not survive. What is left to the spectator is aesthetic pleasure and confidence.
-What if people ask you for a simpler art? Why do they have to untangle your art?
- I answer simply. It’s not my doing and decision. I didn’t decide it. The art critics said so, they who studied art all their life and read volumes of books. They say that they analyzed it and it has this and that meaning, non other. That an artist is a reflection of society.
- Do you consider yourself a reflection?
-No, I don’t. Philosophers try to understand what is art and life. I only
insist that grace will not diminish in value.
… and I caught myself on a thought that I wanted to know how the story with the scriptwriter waitress ended. If the painting is still in the artist’s holdings I would like to see it to know why she wanted it so badly. And I asked…From 48 hours of the Interview with Paul Jaisini in his New York studio
Origins of the concept
The songs of, the native priests of Bamileke, believe that telepathic messages are sent directly from one solar plexus to another. According to the Bamileke, the KE, or etheric body, of one person sends out a “finger” or thread of aka substance to the solar plexus of another. This sticky substance connects the two like a “silver spider web.” Telepathic messages are sent out along these threads. After the instinctive, or “low,” self receives the message, it relays the information to the rational, or “middle,” self, where it “rises in the mind” like a memory. When repeated contact is made, these threads eventually become braided into an aka “cord,” which creates a strong telepathic bond between two people. Aka threads can be sent to strangers by means of a glance or a handshake.The African Bamileke communicate in a similar way., the Bamilleke of the Cameroon believe that all living creatures are connected by a stream of energy that extends from one belly button to another and named this song SI. The Bamileke use these horizontal “lines” like telephone wires to send and receive telepathic messages.
In experiments dating back to the nineteenth century, scientists have validated two types of telepathy: instinctual, or feeling-based, telepathy and mental, or mind-to-mind, telepathy. According to the Wisdom teachings, there is also another, higher type of telepathy called soul-to-soul, or spiritual, telepathy.
According to historians such as Roger Luckhurst and Janet Oppenheim the origin of the concept of telepathy in Western civilization can be tracked to the late 19th century and the formation of the Society for Psychical Research.As the physical sciences made significant advances, scientific concepts were applied to mental phenomena (e.g., animal magnetism), with the hope that this would help to understand paranormal phenomena. The modern concept of telepathy emerged in this context. Psychical researcher Eric Dingwall criticized SPR founding members Frederic W. H. Myers and William F. Barrett for trying to "prove" telepathy rather than objectively analyze whether or not it existed.
Thought reading
In the late 19th century, the magician and mentalist, Washington Irving Bishop would perform "thought reading" demonstrations. Bishop claimed no supernatural powers and ascribed his powers to muscular sensitivity (reading thoughts from unconscious bodily cues).[15] Bishop was investigated by a group of scientists including the editor of the British Medical Journal and the psychologist Francis Galton. Bishop performed several feats successfully such as correctly identifying a selected spot on a table and locating a hidden object. During the experiment Bishop required physical contact with a subject who knew the correct answer. He would hold the hand or wrist of the helper. The scientists concluded that Bishop was not a genuine telepath but using a highly trained skill to detect ideomotor movements.Our etheric bodies are part of an interactive sea of energy that connects us to everyone and everything in our world. It is through our etheric bodies that we both send and receive telepathic information. In this article, I will describe each type of telepathy in detail and show you just how universal these teachings are. I will also show you how our pioneering scientists are, once again, validating this ancient wisdom.
Another famous thought reader was the magician Stuart Cumberland. He was famous for performing blindfolded feats such as identifying a hidden object in a room that a person had picked out or asking someone to imagine a murder scene and then attempt to read the subject's thoughts and identify the victim and reenact the crime. Cumberland claimed to possess no genuine psychic ability and his thought reading performances could only be demonstrated by holding the hand of his subject to read their muscular movements. He came into dispute with psychical researchers associated with the Society for Psychical Research who were searching for genuine cases of telepathy. Cumberland argued that both telepathy and communication with the dead were impossible and that the mind of man cannot be read through telepathy, but only by muscle reading. Instinctual Telepathy
Instinctual telepathy is the lowest type of telepathy. We share this type of telepathy with the animal kingdom, and it is still a common mode of communication in indigenous cultures. Instinctual telepathy utilizes the area around the solar plexus, the center of instinct and emotion. In this type of telepathy, one person registers the feelings or needs of another at a distance. As you will see below, this teaching can be found in a wide variety of cultures, both ancient and modern. In every culture, the area around the solar plexus is key.
Case studies
Gilbert Murray conducted early telepathy experiments.
In the late 19th century the Creery Sisters (Mary, Alice, Maud, Kathleen, and Emily) were tested by the Society for Psychical Research and believed to have genuine psychic ability. However, during a later experiment they were caught utilizing signal codes and they confessed to fraud. George Albert Smith and Douglas Blackburn were claimed to be genuine psychics by the Society for Psychical Research but Blackburn confessed to fraud:
For nearly thirty years the telepathic experiments conducted by Mr. G. A. Smith and myself have been accepted and cited as the basic evidence of the truth of thought transference... ...the whole of those alleged experiments were bogus, and originated in the honest desire of two youths to show how easily men of scientific mind and training could be deceived when seeking for evidence in support of a theory they were wishful to establish.
Between 1916 and 1924, Gilbert Murray conducted 236 experiments into telepathy and reported 36% as successful, however, it was suggested that the results could be explained by hyperaesthesia as he could hear what was being said by the sender.[21][22][23][24][25] Psychologist Leonard T. Troland had carried out experiments in telepathy at Harvard University which were reported in 1917. The subjects produced below chance expectations.
Arthur Conan Doyle and W. T. Stead were duped into believing Julius and Agnes Zancig had genuine psychic powers. Both Doyle and Stead wrote the Zancigs performed telepathy. In 1924, Julius and Agnes Zancig confessed that their mind reading act was a trick and published the secret code and all the details of the trick method they had used under the title of Our Secrets!! in a London newspaper.
In 1924, Robert H. Gault of Northwestern University with Gardner Murphy conducted the first American radio test for telepathy. The results were entirely negative. One of their experiments involved the attempted thought transmission of a chosen number, out of 2010 replies none were correct.
In February 1927, with the co-operation of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), V. J. Woolley who was at the time the Research Officer for the SPR, arranged a telepathy experiment in which radio listeners were asked to take part. The experiment involved 'agents' thinking about five selected objects in an office at Tavistock Square, whilst listeners on the radio were asked to identify the objects from the BBC studio at Savoy Hill. 24, 659 answers were received. The results revealed no evidence for telepathy.
A famous experiment in telepathy was recorded by the American author Upton Sinclair in his book Mental Radio which documents Sinclair's test of psychic abilities of Mary Craig Sinclair, his second wife. She attempted to duplicate 290 pictures which were drawn by her husband. Sinclair claimed Mary successfully duplicated 65 of them, with 155 "partial successes" and 70 failures. However, these experiments were not conducted in a controlled scientific laboratory environment.[35] Science writer Martin Gardner suggested that the possibility of sensory leakage during the experiment had not been ruled out:
In the first place, an intuitive wife, who knows her husband intimately, may be able to guess with a fair degree of accuracy what he is likely to draw—particularly if the picture is related to some freshly recalled event the two experienced in common. At first, simple pictures like chairs and tables would likely predominate, but as these are exhausted, the field of choice narrows and pictures are more likely to be suggested by recent experiences. It is also possible that Sinclair may have given conversational hints during some of the tests—hints which in his strong will to believe, he would promptly forget about. Also, one must not rule out the possibility that in many tests, made across the width of a room, Mrs. Sinclair may have seen the wiggling of the top of a pencil, or arm movements, which would convey to her unconscious a rough notion of the drawing.In our culture, the term gut feeling is the most common way to explain our instinctive feelings about a person or situation. We say, “I trusted my gut in making that decision” or, “My gut told me not to trust this or that person.” This term has long been used in the business and law-enforcement communities. Businessmen use the term gut hunch to describe their instinctive reactions to an idea or proposal, while police detectives refer to their “blue sense” as a way to describe their gut feelings about a crime.
In 2004, parapsychologists Dean Radin and Marilyn Schlitz conducted an experiment at the Institute of Noetic Sciences with twenty-six couples to determine if the gut response of one person could be felt by another. One person, designated as the sender, was shown a series of images designed to evoke “positive, negative, calming, or neutral emotions.” In another room, the reaction of the receiver was monitored by electrodes placed on the heart, skin, and stomach muscles. The experimenters found that the stronger emotions—both positive and negative—did produce measurable responses in the receiver and concluded that the gut has a “belly brain” with a “perception intelligence” of its own.[5]
The existence of a belly brain has also been backed up by medical research. It was first documented by the nineteenth-century German neurologist Leopold Auerbach and later rediscovered by Dr. Michael Gershon, a professor at Columbia University who wrote a book in the 1990s called The Second Brain. This second brain is made up of billions of nerve cells in the digestive tract. Some medical researchers now believe that the belly brain may be the source of the unconscious gut reactions that are later communicated to the main brain.[6]
Biologist Rupert Sheldrake, the author of two books on this subject, has done more than anyone to validate this type of telepathy scientifically. In The Sense of Being Stared At and Other Aspects of the Extended Mind, he summarizes his research on this subject. He also believes this type of telepathic communication to be instinctual, calling it part of our “evolutionary heritage, an aspect of our biological, animal nature.”[7]
Sheldrake and his associates have collected over five thousand case histories illustrating this type of telepathy. An additional twenty thousand people have participated in a variety of experimental tests— the most recent involving text and e-mail messages. While largely unconscious, this type of telepathic perception still plays an important role in modern life. Because it utilizes the center of emotion, instinctual telepathy depends on strong emotional bonds between two people. The most common examples are between parents and children, husbands and wives, lovers, and best friends. According to Sheldrake, the most striking examples of instinctive telepathy involve intense emotion—emergencies, death, or distress.[8]
In Ropes to God: Experiencing the Bushman Spiritual Universe, Keeney includes a Bushman’s description of this type of telepathy:
You cannot send a thought to another person without first being filled with heightened emotion. . . . In this state you mix your thought, message or directive with your intensified feeling and make the thought a pure feeling. It is concentrated in your belly where the intensity of your feeling escalates to a point where it can no longer be held. Then it is released along the line coming out of your belly and directed to another person’s belly. They immediately respond when you communicate in this way. It may seem like we send our thoughts, but we are actually sending our feelings. Not weak, arbitrary feelings, but intense, almost overwhelming feelings. . . . A thought, message or request is changed into a feeling. . . . The feeling is the carrier.[9]
In the late 1960s, Marcia Emery was driving in downtown Washington, DC, when her brakes suddenly failed. According to Marcia,
When I put my foot on the brake, it went right to the floor. The emergency brake didn’t work either. I had the choice of either crashing into the cars on the street or running into people on the sidewalk. I suddenly heard an inner voice say, “Make a quick right.” I turned into an alley and smashed into a wall between two men’s clothing stores, narrowly missing a pedestrian.
I survived with only scratches on my elbows and knees. My car was completely totaled—it crumpled like an accordion. On my way home, I decided not to tell my mother about the accident. I was planning to drive to Philadelphia to visit her in a few weeks and I didn’t want her to worry.
I was still shaking when I got home. As I walked through the door, the telephone rang. It was my mother and her first words were “How’s your car?” When I asked her how she knew, she said, “I don’t know; the words just came out of my mouth.”[10]
Sheldrake also collected stories of people who instantly knew that a loved one had died. While researching this chapter, I discovered that several of my friends have had this experience. One friend shared this story with me:
My mother died from endometrial cancer. When I got the call that the end was near, I flew from California to Wisconsin to say goodbye. I took a “red-eye” flight and fell asleep on the plane. When I woke up, tears were running down my cheeks and I knew, in that moment, that my mother had just died. When I got to Chicago to change planes, my brother was waiting at the airport. Before he could speak, I said, “I already know mom died.” I later saw that her death certificate recorded the exact time I woke up on that plane.
This kind of telepathy also operates in a more benign way with the people we are closest to. I had a birthday while working on this chapter. A few days before, while driving home from the library I was thinking about my interest in esoteric Christianity when the thought suddenly popped into my mind that I’d like to have a cross necklace. I thought of my one-year baby picture and the tiny gold cross I wore around my neck, a gift from my favorite uncle. A few days later, a cross necklace arrived in the mail—a birthday present from my sister. When I called to thank her, she said, “I don’t know why, but as soon as I saw that necklace, I just had to get it for you.”
Frederick Marion who was investigated by the Society for Psychical Research in the late 1930-1940s.
The Turner-Ownbey long distance telepathy experiment was discovered to contain flaws. May Frances Turner positioned herself in the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory whilst Sara Ownbey claimed to receive transmissions 250 miles away. For the experiment Turner would think of a symbol and write it down whilst Ownbey would write her guesses.The scores were highly successful and both records were supposed to be sent to J. B. Rhine; however, Ownbey sent them to Turner. Critics pointed out this invalidated the results as she could have simply written her own record to agree with the other. When the experiment was repeated and the records were sent to Rhine the scores dropped to average.
Another example is the experiment carried out by the author Harold Sherman with the explorer Hubert Wilkins who carried out their own experiment in telepathy for five and a half months starting in October 1937. This took place when Sherman was in New York and Wilkins was in the Arctic. The experiment consisted of Sherman and Wilkins at the end of each day to relax and visualise a mental image or "thought impression" of the events or thoughts they had experienced in the day and then to record those images and thoughts on paper in a diary. The results at the end when comparing Sherman's and Wilkins' diaries were claimed to be more than 60 percent.
The full results of the experiments were published in 1942 in a book by Sherman and Wilkins titled Thoughts Through Space. In the book both Sherman and Wilkins had written they believed they had demonstrated that it was possible to send and receive thought impressions from the mind of one person to another. The magician John Booth wrote the experiment was not an example of telepathy as a high percentage of misses had occurred. Booth wrote it was more likely that the "hits" were the result of "coincidence, law of averages, subconscious expectancy, logical inference or a plain lucky guess".A review of their book in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry cast doubt on their experiment noting "the study was published five years after it was conducted, arouses suspicion on the validity of the conclusions.
In 1948, on the BBC radio Maurice Fogel made the claim that he could demonstrate telepathy. This intrigued the journalist Arthur Helliwell who wanted to discover his methods. He found that Fogel's mind reading acts were all based on trickery, he relied on information about members of his audience before the show started. Helliwell exposed Fogel's methods in a newspaper article. Although Fogel managed to fool some people into believing he could perform genuine telepathy, the majority of his audience knew he was a showman.
In a series of experiments Samuel Soal and his assistant K. M. Goldney examined 160 subjects over 128,000 trials and obtained no evidence for the existence of telepathy. Soal tested Basil Shackleton and Gloria Stewart between 1941 and 1943 in over five hundred sittings and over twenty thousand guesses. Shackleton scored 2890 compared with a chance expectation of 2308 and Gloria scored 9410 compared with a chance level of 7420. It was later discovered the results had been tampered with. Gretl Albert who was present during many of the experiments said she had witnessed Soal altering the records during the sessions. Betty Marwick discovered Soal had not used the method of random selection of numbers as he had claimed. Marwick showed that there had been manipulation of the score sheets "all the experiments reported by Soal had thereby been discredited."
In 1979 the physicists John G. Taylor and Eduardo Balanovski wrote the only scientifically feasible explanation for telepathy could be electromagnetism (EM) involving EM fields. In a series of experiments the EM levels were many orders of magnitude lower than calculated and no paranormal effects were observed. Both Taylor and Balanovski wrote their results were a strong argument against the validity of telepathy.
Research in anomalistic psychology has discovered that in some cases telepathy can be explained by a covariation bias. In an experiment (Schienle et al. 1996) 22 believers and 20 skeptics were asked to judge the covariation between transmitted symbols and the corresponding feedback given by a receiver. According to the results the believers overestimated the number of successful transmissions whilst the skeptics made accurate hit judgments. The results from another telepathy experiment involving undergraduate college students (Rudski, 2002) were explained by hindsight and confirmation biases.
In parapsychology
Within the field of parapsychology, telepathy is considered to be a form of extrasensory perception (ESP) or anomalous cognition in which information is transferred through Psi. It is often categorized similarly to precognition and clairvoyance.[50] Experiments have been used to test for telepathic abilities. Among the most well known are the use of Zener cards and the Ganzfeld experiment.
Types
Parapsychology describes several forms of telepathy:
Latent telepathy, formerly known as "deferred telepathy",is described as the transfer of information, through Psi, with an observable time-lag between transmission and reception.
Retrocognitive,[failed verification] precognitive, and intuitive[failed verification] telepathy is described as being the transfer of information, through Psi, about the past, future or present state of an individual's mind to another individual.
Emotive telepathy, also known as remote influence or emotional transfer, is the process of transferring kinesthetic sensations through altered states.
Superconscious telepathy involves tapping into the superconscious to access the collective wisdom of the human species for knowledge
Zener Cards[edit]
Main article: Zener cards
Zener cards
Zener cards are marked with five distinctive symbols. When using them, one individual is designated the "sender" and another the "receiver". The sender selects a random card and visualize the symbol on it, while the receiver attempts to determine that symbol using Psi. Statistically, the receiver has a 20% chance of randomly guessing the correct symbol, so to demonstrate telepathy, they must repeatedly score a success rate that is significantly higher than 20%. If not conducted properly, this method can be vulnerable to sensory leakage and card counting.
J. B. Rhine's experiments with Zener cards were discredited due to the discovery that sensory leakage or cheating could account for all his results such as the subject being able to read the symbols from the back of the cards and being able to see and hear the experimenter to note subtle clues.Once Rhine took precautions in response to criticisms of his methods, he was unable to find any high-scoring subjects. Due to the methodological problems, parapsychologists no longer utilize card-guessing studies.
Dream telepathy
Parapsychological studies into dream telepathy were carried out at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York led by Stanley Krippner and Montague Ullman. They concluded the results from some of their experiments supported dream telepathy.However, the results have not been independently replicated. The psychologist James Alcock has written the dream telepathy experiments at Maimonides have failed to provide evidence for telepathy and "lack of replication is rampant."
The picture target experiments that were conducted by Krippner and Ullman were criticized by C. E. M. Hansel. According to Hansel there were weaknesses in the design of the experiments in the way in which the agent became aware of their target picture. Only the agent should have known the target and no other person until the judging of targets had been completed, however, an experimenter was with the agent when the target envelope was opened. Hansel also wrote there had been poor controls in the experiment as the main experimenter could communicate with the subject
An attempt to replicate the experiments that used picture targets was carried out by Edward Belvedere and David Foulkes. The finding was that neither the subject nor the judges matched the targets with dreams above chance level.Results from other experiments by Belvedere and Foulkes were also negative.
Ganzfeld experiment
When using the Ganzfeld experiment to test for telepathy, one individual is designated as the receiver and is placed inside a controlled environment where they are deprived of sensory input, and another person is designated as the sender and is placed in a separate location. The receiver is then required to receive information from the sender. The nature of the information may vary between experiments.
The Ganzfeld experiment studies that were examined by Ray Hyman and Charles Honorton had methodological problems that were well documented. Honorton reported only 36% of the studies used duplicate target sets of pictures to avoid handling cues. Hyman discovered flaws in all of the 42 Ganzfeld experiments and to access each experiment, he devised a set of 12 categories of flaws. Six of these concerned statistical defects, the other six covered procedural flaws such as inadequate documentation, randomization and security as well as possibilities of sensory leakage.Over half of the studies failed to safeguard against sensory leakage and all of the studies contained at least one of the 12 flaws. Because of the flaws, Honorton agreed with Hyman the 42 Ganzfeld studies could not support the claim for the existence of psi.
Possibilities of sensory leakage in the Ganzfeld experiments included the receivers hearing what was going on in the sender's room next door as the rooms were not soundproof and the sender's fingerprints to be visible on the target object for the receiver to see.
Hyman also reviewed the autoganzfeld experiments and discovered a pattern in the data that implied a visual cue may have taken place:
The most suspicious pattern was the fact that the hit rate for a given target increased with the frequency of occurrence of that target in the experiment. The hit rate for the targets that occurred only once was right at the chance expectation of 25%. For targets that appeared twice the hit rate crept up to 28%. For those that occurred three times it was 38%, and for those targets that occurred six or more times, the hit rate was 52%. Each time a videotape is played its quality can degrade. It is plausible then, that when a frequently used clip is the target for a given session, it may be physically distinguishable from the other three decoy clips that are presented to the subject for judging. Surprisingly, the parapsychological community has not taken this finding seriously. They still include the autoganzfeld series in their meta-analyses and treat it as convincing evidence for the reality of psi.
Hyman wrote the autoganzfeld experiments were flawed because they did not preclude the possibility of sensory leakage.In 2010, Lance Storm, Patrizio Tressoldi, and Lorenzo Di Risio analyzed 29 ganzfeld studies from 1997 to 2008. Of the 1,498 trials, 483 produced hits, corresponding to a hit rate of 32.2%. This hit rate is statistically significant with p < .001. Participants selected for personality traits and personal characteristics thought to be psi-conducive were found to perform significantly better than unselected participants in the ganzfeld condition. Hyman (2010) published a rebuttal to Storm et al. According to Hyman "reliance on meta-analysis as the sole basis for justifying the claim that an anomaly exists and that the evidence for it is consistent and replicable is fallacious. It distorts what scientists mean by confirmatory evidence." Hyman wrote the ganzfeld studies have not been independently replicated and have failed to produce evidence for telepathy. Storm et al. published a response to Hyman claiming the ganzfeld experimental design has proved to be consistent and reliable but parapsychology is a struggling discipline that has not received much attention so further research on the subject is necessary.Rouder et al. 2013 wrote that critical evaluation of Storm et al.'s meta-analysis reveals no evidence for telepathy, no plausible mechanism and omitted replication failures.
A 2016 paper examined questionable research practices in the ganzfeld experiments.
Twin telepathy
Twin telepathy is a belief that has been described as a myth in psychological literature. Psychologists Stephen Hupp and Jeremy Jewell have noted that all experiments on the subject have failed to provide any scientific evidence for telepathy between twins.According to Hupp and Jewell there are various behavioral and genetic factors that contribute to the twin telepathy myth "identical twins typically spend a lot of time together and are usually exposed to very similar environments. Thus, it's not at all surprising that they act in similar ways and are adept at anticipating and forecasting each other's reactions to events."
A 1993 study by Susan Blackmore investigated the claims of twin telepathy. In an experiment with six sets of twins one subject would act as the sender and the other the receiver. The sender was given selected objects, photographs or numbers and would attempt to psychically send the information to the receiver. The results from the experiment were negative, no evidence of telepathy was observed.
The skeptical investigator Benjamin Radford has noted that "Despite decades of research trying to prove telepathy, there is no credible scientific evidence that psychic powers exist, either in the general population or among twins specifically. The idea that two people who shared their mother's womb — or even who share the same DNA — have a mysterious mental connection is an intriguing one not borne out in science."
Scientific reception
A variety of tests have been performed to demonstrate telepathy, but there is no scientific evidence that the power exists. A panel commissioned by the United States National Research Council to study paranormal claims concluded that "despite a 130-year record of scientific research on such matters, our committee could find no scientific justification for the existence of phenomena such as extrasensory perception, mental telepathy or 'mind over matter' exercises... Evaluation of a large body of the best available evidence simply does not support the contention that these phenomena exist." The scientific community considers parapsychology a pseudoscience.There is no known mechanism for telepathy. Philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge has written that telepathy would contradict laws of science and the claim that "signals can be transmitted across space without fading with distance is inconsistent with physics".
Physicist John Taylor has written the experiments that have been claimed by parapsychologists to support evidence for the existence of telepathy are based on the use of shaky statistical analysis and poor design, and attempts to duplicate such experiments by the scientific community have failed. Taylor also wrote the arguments used by parapsychologists for the feasibility of such phenomena are based on distortions of theoretical physics as well as "complete ignorance" of relevant areas of physics.
Psychologist Stuart Sutherland wrote that cases of telepathy can be explained by people underestimating the probability of coincidences. According to Sutherland, "most stories about this phenomenon concern people who are close to one another - husband and wife or brother and sister. Since such people have much in common, it is highly probable that they will sometimes think the same thought at the same time." Graham Reed, a specialist in anomalistic psychology, noted that experiments into telepathy often involve the subject relaxing and reporting the 'messages' to consist of colored geometric shapes. Reed wrote that these are a common type of hypnagogic image and not evidence for telepathic communication.
Outside of parapsychology, telepathy is generally explained as the result of fraud, self-delusion and/or self-deception and not as a paranormal power. Psychological research has also revealed other explanations such as confirmation bias, expectancy bias, sensory leakage, subjective validation and wishful thinking.[94] Virtually all of the instances of more popular psychic phenomena, such as mediumship, can be attributed to non-paranormal techniques such as cold reading. Magicians such as Ian Rowland and Derren Brown have demonstrated techniques and results similar to those of popular psychics, without paranormal means. They have identified, described, and developed psychological techniques of cold reading and hot reading.
Psychiatry
The notion of telepathy is not dissimilar to two clinical concepts: delusions of thought insertion/removal. This similarity might explain how an individual might come to the conclusion that they were experiencing telepathy. Thought insertion/removal is a symptom of psychosis, particularly of schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder or substance-induced psychosis. Psychiatric patients who experience this symptom falsely believe that some of their thoughts are not their own and that others (e.g., other people, aliens, demons or fallen angels, or conspiring intelligence agencies) are putting thoughts into their minds (thought insertion). Some patients feel as if thoughts are being taken out of their minds or deleted (thought removal). Along with other symptoms of psychosis, delusions of thought insertion may be reduced by antipsychotic medication. Psychiatrists and clinical psychologists believe and empirical findings support the idea that people with schizotypy and schizotypal personality disorder are particularly likely to believe in telepathy.
cargocollective.com/breelbourn
drown [droun]
verb. drowned, drown·ing, drowns
1. To deaden one's awareness of; blot out
un·con·scious [uhn-kon-shuhs]
adjective
1. not conscious; without awareness, sensation, or cognition.
2. temporarily devoid of consciousness.
3. not perceived at the level of awareness; occurring below the level of conscious thought: an unconscious impulse.
4. of or concerning the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one's actions and feelings.
Water symbolizes the personal unconscious–the locked trunk in the back of your brain filled with experiences you'd never (consciously) known you've experienced. Your personal unconscious works as a security guard to shelter your conscious self from earlier experiences deemed threatening by your subconscious self. In Drowning Unconscious Bre creates a space where her subjects–enclosed in a tub of foggy, unclear water–remain trapped alike their own subconscious thoughts and experiences. The series–consisting of 3 diptych's–portrays an aerial view of the subject in the bathtub, paired with dream-like portrait of them submerged in water. By using powdered milk to create cloudy water, Bre creates a metaphor for the personal unconscious and through a lack of clothing, her subjects are given another glimpse of vulnerability. While the mind and bathroom both represent private spaces, Bre encloses her subjects "permanently" within these spaces allowing them play prisoner to their own subconscious self.
As machine intelligence compute architectures mimic the cortex, the fundamentals of a planar manufacturing process (semiconductors and the solid-state quantum computers of today) bring the interconnect constraint into sharp focus. Today, a cutting-edge chip has 10-13 layers of metal and 30 miles of wires (SemiEngineering). These are the interconnect lines, and if you want to map a 3D construct, like the cortex to an essentially flat chip, the problem is apparent when you consider that the average adult neuron connects to 1,000 others (and 10,000 as an infant). That 1000x synapse-to-neuron fanout means pure biomimicry of the brain implies ~1000 interconnect lines for each compute element.
Pictured here is D-Wave's latest quantum computer interconnect topology, called Pegasus (best seen in this animated GIF). They have evolved from nearest neighbor connectivity to the most-connected commercial system in the world, scaling to 5,000 qubits, as unveiled today (TechCrunch, HPCwire).
In-memory compute from Mythic and QML from D-Wave are already based on massively distributed, memory-centric architectures, much like the brain. I am still on the search for a disruptive breakthrough in interconnect, having first blogged about that as the conclusion here, 14 years ago, as D-Wave was just starting to scale up from their 2 to 4 qubit processor.
From my 2005 post:
“As a former chip designer, I kept thinking of comparisons between the different “memories” – those in our head and those in our computers. It seems that the developmental trajectory of electronics is recapitulating the evolutionary history of the brain. Specifically, both are saturating with a memory-centric architecture. Is this a fundamental attractor in computation and cognition? Might a conceptual focus on speedy computation be blinding us to a memory-centric approach to artificial intelligence? ….
Weaving these brain and semi industry threads together, the potential for intelligence in artificial systems is ripe for a Renaissance. Hawkins ends his book with a call to action: “now is the time to start building cortex-like memory systems. The human brain is not even close to the limit” of possibility.
Hawkins estimates that the memory size of the human brain is 8 terabytes, which is no longer beyond the reach of commercial technology. The issue though, is not the amount of memory, but the need for massive and dynamic interconnect. I would be interested to hear from anyone with solutions to the interconnect scaling problem. Biomimicry of the synapse, from sprouting to pruning, may be the missing link for the Renaissance.”
Faith, the fundamental mode of sapiential knowing, is a knowing in darkness, an affirmative cognition of mystery. What is known is “the mystery,” and the knowing is consequently obscure even as it is certain.
-The Future of Wisdom: Toward a Rebirth of Sapiential Christianity, Bruno Barnhart, Cynthia Bourgeault, and Cyprian Consiglio
John T. Cacioppo's, University of Chicago, 2008 book, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, outlines five distinct pathways through which social isolation contributes to increased illness and early death. He also offers an evolutionary rational for why the subjective sense of social isolation--loneliness--is so profoundly disruptive to human physiology that it impairs cognition and will power, alters DNA transcription in immune cells, and leads over time to high blood pressure.
Catarina is a young girl and photographer, with big dreams and determination to do what she really wants. But, there's one little thing that makes Catarina... a little bit different from the others. She has Asperger's Syndrome. If you don't know, Asperger's Syndrome is a psychological condition linked to autism, characterized
by significant difficulties in social interaction and communication, and
repetitive patterns of behaviour and restricted interests.
It differs from other autism disorders by the development of language and cognition.
This project is about the emotions, thoughts, actions that Catarina usually make and her positive evolution over the years with teraphys and battles of life.
Catarina is still making positive progress to reach her balance and calm to lead with the things that life give to us.
Also, she wants to inspire and help other people with her writing and photography in this project.
Catarina made this project with the support of APSA - Associação Portuguesa de Síndrome de Asperger. And the project also includes many images of some of the young people with Asperger's Syndrome that have therapy in APSA.
Catarina calls herself a "complex mind". Like many other people with Asperger's Syndrome. Being complex, in some way is something amazing. Because they see the world in a different way, and they live in a way that they only understand.
If it has some bad things... yes, it has some bad things. But remember, inside of a "complex mind" there is a wonderful universe that could change something in this world or just be different from the normal.
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.
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.
Minster House located at the University of Lincoln's Chemistry, Pharmacy and Life Sciences research and laboratory facilities. Part of the University of Lincoln's Science and Innovation Park. On Beevor Street in Lincoln, Lincolnshire.
Minster House is used as the research facilities of the University of Lincoln's Animal Behaviour, Cognition and Welfare Research Group, a unique team of internationally-renowned researchers at the forefront of the animal behaviour field.
The Science and Innovation Park was built jointly by the Lincolnshire Coop and the University of Lincoln and part of a new College of Science. Lincoln Science & Innovation Park is built on the site of the fomer Ruston Bucyrus factory in the centre of Lincoln.
Lincoln’s southwest industrial quarter has been at the heart of the city’s prosperity for more than 150 years. Not only was it at the forefront of industrial plant development -it can claim to be the home of the original tank before WW1- by the middle of the Twentieth Century, it boasted Europe’s largest foundry. The Science Park has preserved much of this heritage by retaining the majority of the old HQ, Becor House, and the former substation that is now the reception area of Boole Technology Centre.
Lincoln Science and Innovation Park (LSIP) has been tasked by its founders, the University of Lincoln and the Lincolnshire Co-op, with reinvigorating this site as an engine of industry driven by science, technology and innovation.
Since it opened, Lincoln Science & Innovation Park has created 12,000m2 of renovated and purpose-built space that is home to a science and tech community. Phase Two of the park’s development aims to continue this success by creating an environment to engage larger and expanding businesses, it will offer bespoke developments for sole-occupancy to medium and large knowledge-intensive businesses.
More than £22 million has been spent on the project since 2013, principally on the Joseph Banks Laboratories and the Boole Technology Centre, supporting small and medium enterprises and the University of Lincoln’s College of Science. The new expansion will offer a new hub for private sector investment and innovation, alongside state-of-the-art academic research science facilities in the centre of Lincoln.
Buildings will range in size from 5,000 to 27,000 sq ft (500m2 to 2,500m2) over six landscaped acres of the current park, with access to its facilities and services. The land has outline planning consent for 12,000m2 of new development, however individual applications will be submitted.
Information soources:
cityx.co.uk/2019/03/work-on-phase-two-of-the-lincoln-scie...
thelincolnite.co.uk/2017/09/green-light-for-next-phase-of...
www.lincolnsciencepark.co.uk/about
www.lincolnsciencepark.co.uk/facilities/joseph-banks-labo...
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-:- ( 1 ) - ( 2 ) - ( 3 ) - ( 2X5 ) - ( 6 ) - ( 7 ) - ( 8 ) - ( 9 ) - (2X10) -:-
===================================================
With some Haiku Notes:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Other dimensions
providing information,
just don't look; but see.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Take aim and you'll see
truth behind reality
in both yin and yang
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's all in your mind
concentrate and be mindful
sense reality
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Noble Eightfold Path describes the way to the end of suffering, as it was laid out by Siddhartha Gautama. It is a practical guideline to ethical and mental development with the goal of freeing the individual from attachments and delusions; and it finally leads to understanding the truth about all things. Together with the Four Noble Truths it constitutes the gist of Buddhism. Great emphasis is put on the practical aspect, because it is only through practice that one can attain a higher level of existence and finally reach Nirvana. The eight aspects of the path are not to be understood as a sequence of single steps, instead they are highly interdependent principles that have to be seen in relationship with each other.
1. Right View
Right view is the beginning and the end of the path, it simply means to see and to understand things as they really are and to realise the Four Noble Truth. As such, right view is the cognitive aspect of wisdom. It means to see things through, to grasp the impermanent and imperfect nature of worldly objects and ideas, and to understand the law of karma and karmic conditioning. Right view is not necessarily an intellectual capacity, just as wisdom is not just a matter of intelligence. Instead, right view is attained, sustained, and enhanced through all capacities of mind. It begins with the intuitive insight that all beings are subject to suffering and it ends with complete understanding of the true nature of all things. Since our view of the world forms our thoughts and our actions, right view yields right thoughts and right actions.
2. Right Intention
While right view refers to the cognitive aspect of wisdom, right intention refers to the volitional aspect, i.e. the kind of mental energy that controls our actions. Right intention can be described best as commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement. Buddha distinguishes three types of right intentions: 1. the intention of renunciation, which means resistance to the pull of desire, 2. the intention of good will, meaning resistance to feelings of anger and aversion, and 3. the intention of harmlessness, meaning not to think or act cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and to develop compassion.
3. Right Speech
Right speech is the first principle of ethical conduct in the eightfold path. Ethical conduct is viewed as a guideline to moral discipline, which supports the other principles of the path. This aspect is not self-sufficient, however, essential, because mental purification can only be achieved through the cultivation of ethical conduct. The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows: 1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully, 2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others, 3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently and to talk only when necessary.
4. Right Action
The second ethical principle, right action, involves the body as natural means of expression, as it refers to deeds that involve bodily actions. Unwholesome actions lead to unsound states of mind, while wholesome actions lead to sound states of mind. Again, the principle is explained in terms of abstinence: right action means 1. to abstain from harming sentient beings, especially to abstain from taking life (including suicide) and doing harm intentionally or delinquently, 2. to abstain from taking what is not given, which includes stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness, and dishonesty, and 3. to abstain from sexual misconduct. Positively formulated, right action means to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest, to respect the belongings of others, and to keep sexual relationships harmless to others. Further details regarding the concrete meaning of right action can be found in the Precepts.
5. Right Livelihood
Right livelihood means that one should earn one's living in a righteous way and that wealth should be gained legally and peacefully. The Buddha mentions four specific activities that harm other beings and that one should avoid for this reason: 1. dealing in weapons, 2. dealing in living beings (including raising animals for slaughter as well as slave trade and prostitution), 3. working in meat production and butchery, and 4. selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs. Furthermore any other occupation that would violate the principles of right speech and right action should be avoided.
6. Right Effort
Right effort can be seen as a prerequisite for the other principles of the path. Without effort, which is in itself an act of will, nothing can be achieved, whereas misguided effort distracts the mind from its task, and confusion will be the consequence. Mental energy is the force behind right effort; it can occur in either wholesome or unwholesome states. The same type of energy that fuels desire, envy, aggression, and violence can on the other side fuel self-discipline, honesty, benevolence, and kindness. Right effort is detailed in four types of endeavours that rank in ascending order of perfection: 1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, 2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, 3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and 4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.
7. Right Mindfulness
Right mindfulness is the controlled and perfected faculty of cognition. It is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness. Usually, the cognitive process begins with an impression induced by perception, or by a thought, but then it does not stay with the mere impression. Instead, we almost always conceptualise sense impressions and thoughts immediately. We interpret them and set them in relation to other thoughts and experiences, which naturally go beyond the facticity of the original impression. The mind then posits concepts, joins concepts into constructs, and weaves those constructs into complex interpretative schemes. All this happens only half consciously, and as a result we often see things obscured. Right mindfulness is anchored in clear perception and it penetrates impressions without getting carried away. Right mindfulness enables us to be aware of the process of conceptualisation in a way that we actively observe and control the way our thoughts go. Buddha accounted for this as the four foundations of mindfulness: 1. contemplation of the body, 2. contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive, or neutral), 3. contemplation of the state of mind, and 4. contemplation of the phenomena.
8. Right Concentration
The eighth principle of the path, right concentration, refers to the development of a mental force that occurs in natural consciousness, although at a relatively low level of intensity, namely concentration. Concentration in this context is described as one-pointedness of mind, meaning a state where all mental faculties are unified and directed onto one particular object. Right concentration for the purpose of the eightfold path means wholesome concentration, i.e. concentration on wholesome thoughts and actions. The Buddhist method of choice to develop right concentration is through the practice of meditation. The meditating mind focuses on a selected object. It first directs itself onto it, then sustains concentration, and finally intensifies concentration step by step. Through this practice it becomes natural to apply elevated levels concentration also in everyday situations.
An Additional Haiku Note:
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Take time be aware
we are no-thing but our thoughts
so said the Buddha
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Personal Thoughts from August 07, 1976
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Energy is one.
Individuals are parts of that one.
Individuals through a source such as Love
(or other emotion or virtue) are one.
Thoughts are a source of energy.
Energy is neither created or destroyed.
Thoughts are neither created or destroyed.
Individuals are tuned-in to thoughts.
We do not think; we experience thought.
Our level of development is how we use
these thoughts to experience other
thoughts.
We are actually experiencing energies.
Our level of development is how we can
tune-in to these energies.
Our true purpose is to think and develop;
think and develop; become the source of energy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Psychology is the science of mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand behavior and mental processes by researching and establishing both general principles and specific cases. For many practitioners, one goal of applied psychology is to benefit society. In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist, and can be classified as a social scientist, behavioral scientist, or cognitive scientist. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, while also exploring the physiological and neurobiological processes that underlie certain functions and behaviors. Psychologists explore such concepts as perception, cognition, attention, emotion, phenomenology, motivation, brain functioning, personality, behavior, and interpersonal relationships. Some, especially depth psychologists, also consider the unconscious mind.a Psychologists employ empirical methods to infer causal and correlational relationships between psychosocial variables. In addition, or in opposition, to employing empirical and deductive methods, some—especially clinical and counseling psychologists—at times rely upon symbolic interpretation and other inductive techniques. Psychology incorporates research from the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities, such as philosophy.
While psychological knowledge is often applied to the assessment and treatment of mental health problems, it is also applied to understanding and solving problems in many different spheres of human activity. Although the majority of psychologists are involved in some kind of therapeutic role (clinical, counseling, and school positions); many do scientific research on a wide range of topics related to mental processes and behavior (typically in university psychology departments) and/or teach such knowledge in academic settings; and some are employed in industrial and organizational settings, and in other areas such as human development and aging, sports, health, the media, law, and forensics
Distinguishing Cognitions.
Kritische intelligente Manuskript Gründung verändert Texte vorläufige Augen,
llafariaid uffernol lledaenu darnau tafodau tragwyddol yn ymddangos,
conclusioni stridenti incisione lettere pietoso disperdenti linee immagini miserabili,
odkażone metody insynuacje dotyczące pytania mieszczące niezliczone mity,
auto dreptate ipocriți chinuie animalele tot,
túlnyomó étkezési tudás irányító angyalok magas,
страстные приятно избавление мучитель обвиняющие предки горящие пожары кровь,
μηρυκαστικά ενταφιάστηκε δηλητηρίαση πεινασμένος ευρύχωρα ψευδείς μυαλά διαμάχες του,
inbuktning rimmar skiljetecken reverser störningar studerar vanor höga,
déclaration rhéteur difficultés métaphysiques rigoureux pour protester contre la poésie responsable argumentative explorées,
vermoedens verspreid veeleisende reckonings overmatige vennoten sympathiserende nederige zoetste odes fair,
filologic profesori de geniu erudit absurdități generații elaborate început,
喜びの悲惨なフラグメントを点滅説得力の擬人は投げ.
Steve.D.Hammond.
Throughout cultual history the color red has represented strength, love, and protection. The color of blood that upon cognition demands immediate respect and honor.
I was drawn to it's power and attempted to capture it's magic.
The Psychological Study of Smiling
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By Eric Jaffe
A smile begins in our sensory corridors. The earcollects a whispered word. The eyes spot an old friend on the station platform. The hand feels the pressure of another hand. This emotional data funnels to the brain, exciting the left anterior temporal region in particular, then smolders to the surface of the face, where two muscles, standing at attention, are roused into action: The zygomatic major, which resides in the cheek, tugs the lips upward, and the orbicularis oculi, which encircles the eye socket, squeezes the outside corners into the shape of a crow’s foot. The entire event is short — typically lasting from two-thirds of a second to four seconds — and those who witness it often respond by mirroring the action, and smiling back.
Other muscles can simulate a smile, but only the peculiar tango of the zygomatic major and the orbicularis oculi produces a genuine expression of positive emotion. Psychologists call this the “Duchenne smile,” and most consider it the sole indicator of true enjoyment. The name is a nod to French anatomist Guillaume Duchenne, who studied emotional expression by stimulating various facial muscles with electrical currents. (The technique hurt so much, it’s been said, that Duchenne performed some of his tests on the severed heads of executed criminals.) In his 1862 book Mecanisme de la Physionomie Humaine, Duchenne wrote that the zygomatic major can be willed into action, but that only the “sweet emotions of the soul” force the orbicularis oculi to contract. “Its inertia, in smiling,” Duchenne wrote, “unmasks a false friend.”
Psychological scientists no longer study beheaded rogues — just graduate students, mainly — but they have advanced our understanding of smiles since Duchenne’s discoveries. We now know that genuine smiles may indeed reflect a “sweet soul.” The intensity of a true grin can predict marital happiness, personal well-being, and even longevity. We know that some smiles — Duchenne’s false friends — do not reflect enjoyment at all, but rather a wide range of emotions, including embarrassment, deceit, and grief. We know that variables (age, gender, culture, and social setting, among them) influence the frequency and character of a grin, and what purpose smiles play in the broader scheme of existence. In short, scientists have learned that one of humanity’s simplest expressions is beautifully complex.
A True ‘Sign of Enjoyment’
Duchenne’s observations took some time to catch on with behavioral scientists. In 1924, Carney Landis, then a psychology student at the University of Minnesota, published a classic — and by today’s standards, ethically dubious — study of human facial expressions. Landis took pictures of study participants engaged in a series of activities that ranged from sacred to profane: listening to jazz music, reading the Bible, looking at pornography, and decapitating live rats. He evaluated the photographed reactions but found no evidence that certain expressions characterized certain emotions. As for smiles, Landis failed to connect them with satisfaction; in fact, smiling occurred so ubiquitously that Landis considered it an evergreen response — ”typical of any situation,” he wrote in the Journal of Comparative Psychology.
For decades, many psychologists agreed that smiles reflected a vast array of emotions rather than a universal expression of happiness. This belief persisted until the 1970s, when Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen, psychologists at the University of California at San Francisco, captured the precise muscular coordinates behind 3,000 facial expressions in their Facial Action Coding System, known as FACS. Ekman and Friesen used their system to resurrect Duchenne’s distinction, by that time forgotten, between genuine smiles of enjoyment and other types of smiles.
In subsequent research, conducted with Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin, Ekman and Friesen confirmed the unique link between positive emotion and the true Duchenne smile. The researchers attached electrodes to the heads of test participants and then showed them a series of short films. Two shorts, designed to produce positive emotions, displayed frolicking animals; two others, meant to evoke negative responses, came from a nurse training video depicting amputated legs and severe burns.
Using FACS, the researchers catalogued viewer reactions and found that Duchenne smiles correlated with the pleasant films. The neural data revealed that Duchenne smiles produced greater activity in the brain’s left anterior temporal region, an area with clear connections to positive affect. (They also recorded an increase in the left parietal region, typically stimulated by verbal activity.) All told, scientists were wrong to lump smiles together as a “single class of behavior,” the trio concluded in a 1990 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. “Clearly the Duchenne smile…is a better sign of enjoyment than other kinds of smiles.”
A renewed appreciation for Duchenne and his unique sign of joy emerged. Mental health researchers soon noticed that wherever positive emotions went, Duchenne smiles followed. Patients with depression brandished more Duchenne smiles on their discharge interviews than during their admissions, and Duchenne smiling alone — not other types of grins — was found to increase over the course of psychotherapy. Even casual, untrained observers could identify Duchenne-style faces, and based on these looks alone, assigned highly positive traits to the personality behind them.
Some researchers now believe that genuine smiles are not transient sparks of emotion but rather clear windows into a person’s core disposition. University of California at Berkeley psychological scientists LeeAnne Harker and Dacher Keltner used FACS to analyze the college yearbook photos of women, then matched up the smile ratings with personality data collected during a 30-year longitudinal study. Women who displayed true, Duchenne-worthy expressions of positive emotion in their 21-year-old photo had greater levels of general well-being and marital satisfaction at age 52. “People photograph each other with casual ease and remarkable frequency, usually unaware that each snapshot may capture as much about the future as it does the passing emotions of the moment,” Harker and Keltner wrote in a 2001 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. A related study, published in a 2009 issue of Motivation and Emotion, confirmed a correlation between low-intensity smiles in youth and divorce later in life.
In a more recent study, published this year in Psychological Science, Ernest Abel and Michael Kruger of Wayne State University extended this line of research from emotional outcomes to a biological one: longevity. Abel and Kruger rated the smiles of professional baseball players captured in a 1952 yearbook, then determined each player’s age at death (46 players were still alive at the time of the study). The researchers found that smile intensity could explain 35 percent of the variability in survival; in fact, in any given year, players with Duchenne smiles in their yearbook photo were only half as likely to die as those who had not.
A ‘Vehicle for All Ambiguities’
Landis was correct about smiles in one regard: not all of them are genuine expressions of happiness. In addition to the Duchenne smile, Ekman described seventeen other types of smiles in his 1985 book, Telling Lies. Herman Melville understood this, once calling a smile “the chosen vehicle for all ambiguities.” People smile when they’re frightened, are flirting, horrified, or mortified. An embarrassed smile reveals itself through an averted gaze, a facial touch, and a tilt of the head down and to the left.
People also smile when they’re lying, a fact not lost on Shakespeare: Hamlet marvels at how “one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.” In the late 1960s, Ekman and Friesen theorized that a trained expert could discern a lying face from an honest one. To put this idea to the test, the researchers asked a group of young nurses to watch a disturbing video then tell an interviewer that they had actually seen a pleasant one. Their facial expressions during this lie were videotaped and FACS analyzed.
Compared to smiles taped during honest interviews, the nurses gave fewer genuine, Duchenne smiles when lying, Ekman and Freisen reported in a 1988 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, coauthored with Maureen O’Sullivan of the University of San Francisco. The deceitful grins were betrayed by either a raised upper lip, revealing a hint of disgust, or lowered lip corners, displaying a trace of sadness. Ekman’s work with lies later inspired the television show “Lie to Me,” in which investigators solve criminal cases by interpreting facial expressions.
It’s not unusual for moments of sadness, or even bereavement, to cause a smile. The world’s best-known smile is intriguing precisely because it could indicate a range of moods; Bob Dylan described Mona Lisa as having the “highway blues.” (Harvard neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone argued, in an article in Science from 2000, that La Gioconda’s smile exists in your peripheral visual field, but vanishes when you look directly at her mouth, see sidebar.)
However, it seems that smiling through tough times does a body good. Keltner and George Bonanno of Catholic University have measured the facial expressions of people who discuss a recently deceased spouse. In a 1997 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the researchers reported lower levels of distress in those who displayed genuine, Duchenne laughter during the discussion, compared to those who did not.
The benefits of smiling through grief appear to occur on a biological level as well. Barbara Fredrickson and Robert Levenson once observed the facial expressions made by 72 people watching a funeral scene from the tear-jerker Steel Magnolias. Not only did fifty of the participants smile at least once during the clip, the authors reported in a 1998 paper in Cognition and Emotion, but those who did recovered their baseline cardiovascular levels more quickly than others who failed to crack a grin.
A ‘Contingent Social Display’
Smiling certainly seems built into our nature. No less an authority than Darwin, whose 1872 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals is considered a foundational text of smiling research, proposed that facial expressions are universal products of human evolution rather than unique lessons of one’s culture. The zygomatic major has a long evolutionary history, says expression researcher Jeffrey Cohn of the University of Pittsburgh, and facial muscles used for smiling are found in all humans. “There’s good evidence that the motor routine involved in smiling is inborn,” says Cohn. “The hardware is there.”
No surprise, then, that newborns can dispense and interpret facial expressions with great precision. At just 10 months, for instance, an infant will offer a false smile to an approaching stranger while reserving a genuine, Duchenne smile for its mother. Decades ago, Cohn observed how 3-month-olds reacted to changes in their mother’s expression. When mothers feigned depression, infants threw up their tiny fists in distress, and after just 3 minutes of smile-free interaction they became withdrawn.
As infants mature, their tendency to smile diverges along gender lines. The ability to produce Duchenne smiles is parceled out equally between the sexes, but men say they smile less than women and both sexes think this to be the case. So do behavioral scientists, who are nearly unanimous in their belief that women smile more than men. Broadly speaking, that seems to be true. But the differences in smiling behavior between men and women hinge on several key factors. A few years ago, a research team led by Yale psychologist Marianne LaFrance performed a massive meta-analysis of smiling research analyzing data from 162 studies and more than 100,000 participants in all, and isolated three variables that influence sex-smiling disparities.
One moderator is gender norms: When people know they’re being watched, triggering this norm, sex differences in smiling are greater than when people believe they’re alone. A second is situational constraint: When men and women share a task or role that follows rigid social rules — like those requiring flight attendants to smile and funeral directors to remain somber — the grin gap diminishes. A third moderator is emotional climate: Embarrassing or socially tense situations cause females to smile more than males, but happy or sad situations have no such effect. Smiling, LaFrance and her collaborators concluded in a 2003 issue of Psychological Bulletin, “is a highly contingent social display.”
“If you ask people who smiles more, everyone will say, ‘Women, of course,’” says LaFrance, whose book on smiling research, Lip Service, is scheduled for publication by W.W. Norton next summer. “What people don’t consider as much — both within the field of psychology and outside of it, is how variable smiling is as a function of the context of a social situation.”
Part of this variability is the cultural background of the beholder. A study published in a 2007 issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology highlights the different ways that Americans and Japanese perceive smiles. When viewing emoticons, Americans located expression at the mouth, seeing as happy and as sad, while Japanese found it in the eyes, seeing ^_^ as joyful and ;_; as tearful. The variation may reflect an American tendency to express emotions and a Japanese tendency to suppress them; after all, as Duchenne knew, the mouth can be manipulated into a smile more easily than the eyes (see photographs on facing page). A supporting study, published earlier this year, found that Japanese participants emphasized the upper half of a face when determining its trustworthiness, whereas Americans focused on the lower half.
The presence of those around us can influence our smiles as well. An experiment led by Robert Kraut, published in a 1979 issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, reported that bowlers smiled more often when facing their friends in the pit than when facing the pins on the lane. Of course people do smile to themselves, but many believe that social context pulls more strongly at our lips than pure, isolated emotion. Alan Fridlund of University of California, Santa Barbara, has found that people smile more when they imagine others around them than when they’re alone — even when their overall levels of happiness remain the same.
Signifying Altruism and Attraction
It stands to reason that if social settings influence our smiles, then smiles probably serve a social purpose. One such function, recent evidence suggests, may be to indicate altruism. To test this notion, a team of researchers led by British behavioral scientist Marc Mehu observed the smiles of test participants told to share some of the fee they received from the study with a friend. When people were engaged in this sharing activity they exhibited more Duchenne smiles than during a neutral scenario. Perhaps people issue genuine grins as a way to “reliably advertise altruistic intentions,” Mehu and his collaborators concluded in a 2007 issue of Evolution and Human Behavior.
That Duchenne smiles would announce a cooperative nature makes sense. After all, one’s level of commitment has obvious social value, and genuine smiles are difficult to feign. The ability to identify a truly group-minded person would be particularly useful to those prone to social exclusion. With this in mind, a group of researchers from Miami University of Ohio recently asked test participants to rate various smiles as genuine or fake. Before the task, some were primed for exclusion through an essay task that required them to write about a time they were rejected. Compared with a control group and others primed for inclusion, the excluded participants showed an enhanced ability to distinguish Duchenne smiles from false ones, the authors reported in Psychological Science in 2008.
Not only do people deduce useful information from smiles, they also use this knowledge to direct their own behavior. In a follow-up experiment, published in 2010 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the same researchers found that people primed for exclusion showed a greater preference to work with individuals displaying genuine Duchenne smiles than those bearing cheap grins. “Duchenne smiles are a signal of cooperation, altruisim,” says Michael Bernstein, now at Penn State Abington, lead author of both papers. “Non-Duchenne smiling isn’t necessarily bad — it doesn’t mean you’re nefarious — but it’s not a great signal. [Socially rejected people] should be looking for the best signal, and Duchenne smiles offer a better one.”
Another function of smiling (and one that anecdotal evidence supports) is that it enhances our attractiveness. One of the most famous characters in American letters, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby, had an irresistible smile that “assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.” For its part, science has identified part of the reason for a great smile’s allure. A recent fMRI study found that viewing attractive faces activated the brain’s orbitofrontal cortex, a region involved in processing sensory rewards. While this held true for all pretty mugs, the activity in this region was even stronger when the face in focus wore a smile. “The presence of a smile may provide an important signal that a reward is or is not attainable,” the researchers wrote in a Neuropsychologia (2003). Although some might argue that the brain, in seeing a smile, has already considered the reward attained.
This article inspired me to the point of exaggeration. Being a storyteller and imaginative artist, I’ve found your insight almost to the limits of my imagination. This is where I prefer to reside. Thank you for the insight and the inspiration in a new address to whom ever might enjoy the smile.
I’ll cut right to the chase and you can go back to whatever you were doing: smile, relax, sit up straight. You’re welcome.
In case you’re interested, here’s a little more context. Scientists have known for a long time that emotions are accompanied by numerous changes in the body, from elevation in the heart rate to flexion of the zygomatic major muscle (i.e. smiling). However, we’ve come to understand more recently that it’s a two way street. Your brain actually pays attention to what your body is doing, and it affects your emotions. This was first called the “facial feedback hypothesis”, but it applies to more than just muscles of the face. The good news is that while it’s sometimes hard to control our emotions, it’s much easier to control our muscles. So to teach you how to use your body to trick your brain, I’ll be releasing a series of quick tips for boosting your happiness, tranquility and confidence.
Smile. Seriously, just do it. You’ll enjoy this post more if you do. (If you’re thinking “Screw that, I don’t want to enjoy this post more” then feel free to stop reading). Your smile is a powerful tool. Most people think that we smile because we feel happy, but it can go the other way as well: we feel happy because we smile.
One of the best experiments to demonstrate this came from the late '80s. The researchers did not want to influence the results by telling subjects that the study was about emotion, so they devised an ingenious way to get the subjects to flex certain muscles of their face without knowing why. They had subjects hold a pencil in one of three ways. The first group held the pencil widthwise between their teeth, forcing a smile. The second group held the pencil in their lips lengthwise, which means they couldn’t smile, and were actually making kind of a frown. The control group held the pencil in their hand. Then the subjects looked at some cartoons, and rated how funny they were. The “smile” group gave the cartoons much higher “funny” ratings than the “frown” group, while the control group was somewhere in the middle.
In a more recent study, subjects were presented with a series of faces, which had either happy, neutral or angry expressions. The subjects were told that the study was attempting to measure reaction time of facial muscles, but they were really studying emotion. Regardless of the image, subjects were instructed to either “raise their cheeks” (aka smile) or “contract their eyebrows” (aka frown). The instructed facial expression influenced how the images were perceived. When subjects smiled they found the images more pleasant than when they frowned. On top of that, the effects of the brief smile even persisted 4 minutes later.
Facial feedback works because the brain senses the flexion of certain facial muscles (like the zygomatic major, which is required to smile) and interprets it as “Oh I must be happy about something.” Similarly, if that muscle isn’t flexed then your brain thinks, “Oh, I must not be happy”.
In addition to the direct neural feedback, in the real world you also get the added advantage of social feedback. Smiles are infectious (perhaps another post on mirror neurons in the future). So even if you don’t feel much happier, the people around you are more likely to smile, and that can improve your mood as well.
Lastly, if you can work up the energy to actually smile, you’ll probably have an even bigger benefit. While the zygomatic major controls the corners of your mouth, there is a muscle at the corner of the eyes called the orbicularis oculi that only flexes when you’re actually smiling. So if you really want to get the biggest facial feedback benefit, find something to laugh about (perhaps the fact that you’re trying to flex certain muscles to trick your brain into thinking you’re happy). That will likely generate a true smile. This is also a great tip for becoming more photogenic (trust me, I mean look at that profile pic). The reason many people think their smiles look fake in pictures is that their smiles are fake. The corners of their eyes are not flexed.
So next time you want to improve your mood a little, all you have to do is flex your zygomatic major muscles to raise the corners of your mouth. Although, if you want to win America’s Next Top Model (is that show still on?) you’ll have to flex those orbicularis oculi.
Check back soon for the next quick tip on increasing tranquility.
Which products or business processes can be expressed as a game, and thus, might be ripe for the new wave of automation?
About a year ago, I wrote about the “edge of automation” (MIT Tech Review), noting that many of the new jobs in the new economy (like Uber drivers and Mechanical Turkers) are cognition tasks just a bit beyond the realm of automation, and thus, are ever so ephemeral against the march of Moore’s Law. And since they are recently architected jobs, they are surrounded by modern digital interfaces, so much so that if your Uber driver were to be replaced by a mute body model from WestWorld, you might not even notice.
But the Toronto Deep Learning conference helped refine that edge, and suggest where we may likely find it — the edge of gamification.
Deep Learning applies particularly well to games, literally as the Deep Mind team demonstrated before the Google acquisition and through homologous problems as they have been demonstrating afterward. The training of Alpha Go was particularly prophetic: a learning algorithm can be more rapidly trained if the human trainer is replaced by another learning algorithm.
We have also seen this in our startup portfolio in the field of autonomous vehicles. You can add billions of miles of driving experience, and hone the tricky corner cases, by building a Matrix for the vehicles’ sensors, feeding the computer the same digital streams that the camera and radar and LIDAR see when navigating real roads, but synthesized from the point cloud of a simulation not dissimilar to GTA. The big auto companies are doing the same to try to catch up with the leaders.
Deep Reinforcement Learning is one of the promising subsets of machine intelligence that has delivered many of the recent gaming wins. Karpathy gives a good overview of RL and refines the type of gameplay that currently lends itself to automation: “there are many games where Policy Gradients would quite easily defeat a human, in particular, anything with frequent reward signals that requires precise play, fast reflexes, and not too much long-term planning, as these short-term correlations between rewards and actions can be easily noticed by the approach, and the execution meticulously perfected by the policy.” But that is for now; as memory structures roll into these models, the human knack for rapid abstract model building may also tip over the edge of gamification.
So what’s next?
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Imagine, you enter a small shop that is specialized in gift items and sales of 500 different kinds of tea. The various teas develop a wonderful fragrance, which you receive when you enter the store. Here you have to just linger, look, smell and taste.
Kind and patient, we are advised by a young lady who let us smell various teas as long until we had decided on three different varieties. We joke, if she did have tried all the 500 types of tea. No, really not all, she only worked for 2 months in this shop. We talk about the teas and a pleasant conversation and a real 'feel-good atmosphere" developed. This is due to the smell of tea and especially to the friendly nature of the young saleswoman. At this point I knew actually that I have to ask this likeable young lady for a photo. Just the timing seemed to me inappropriate, because many other customers were inside the store.
Shortly before closing time (which was my mistake) we return. I headed straight for the nice young lady and explained what is my concern.
So I met here Franziska. Spontaneous agreed Franziska, we still decorated new the shop, so Franziska could pose for me in front of a plain background (a door). Franziska explained to me, that she have not too much time, because she must catch her train home. So I quickly unpacked the camera, placed the flash unit (is a whole new experience for me, because I had photographed outdoors up to now) and off we went. As patient, as Franziska had previously shown us the teas, as patiently she posed in front of my camera now.
In between, however, she looked at her watch, and I knew of course I have to take care on the brief time of Franziska. I could not forgive myself, if she would miss her train because of me. I asked Franziska with all due expediency still a few questions, which she answered friendly.
Franziska lives near Bad Nauheim, is 20 y/o and has been working for two months here in this little tea and gift shop. Franziska described herself as radiant, positive and sporty, (I think, it's a very accurate description ). On a lonely island Franziska would take:
-good tasteful tea (no wonder)
-a good book (what would it be: "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman
-and her dog Abby
I asked Franziska, what is the essence of the book and what she has learned for herself from it: The author raises the question of how people make decisions today and which mistakes and miscalculations they do in this way. He starts from an interplay of two thought systems: a fast, intuitive, that often leads to wrong decisions, and a second, analytically, that we often deal unconscious.
Franziska tried to make the unconscious decisions conscious, she wants not to fall into the trap of a hasty wrong decisions.
Now the time was really tight. I handed out my card and we commited, that she writes a mailto me, so I can ask further questions. I thanked her warmly. I explained, that only on the weekend, I have time to edit and upload the photos. We left the shop. A minute later Franziska passed us and we saw how she hurried towards the train station. At this point I was really worried and had a guilty conscience. That was on Wednesday.
On Thursday Franziska wrote to me! It was a very very nice mail, Here I like to quote excerpts of her mail, because Franziska has given me permission to reproduce this; so here we go:
"I've been playing football (soccer) since 14 years, I am a licensed Tae Bo instructor, active referee to the district league in men's area and drive passionately motorbike - preferably together with my parents. Also, I have 3 dogs, Abby (the dog, which goes on the lonely island), Winnie the Pooh and Biene Maja. Currently I am studying Economics at the Goethe University in Frankfurt and also working in Cha-Lo (the gift and tea store), which belongs to my aunt.
If you want to know more about me, just ask! "
This I will do and add here. Franziska was involved with my photos and the project already and was enthusiastic about the idea (and also of my photos, can I write this here?)
Finally Franziska wrote:
"I am delighted to be part of your project and I am looking forward to the pictures!
The train, by the way, I have just caught, haha
But if not, the world would not be lost."
Just the last sentence shows, how Franziska is blessed with patience, understanding and kindness. Hats off, for this likeable young woman and lucky for me that I was allowed to take the pictures.
On Friday I had the opportunity to look at the photos on my computer. I was very disappointed because the pictures do not fit my "quality standards". That has nothing to do in any way with Franziska, but exclusively with the poor light conditions and lack of exercise with my flash!!!
What to do? I did something I've never done before, because in the past the encounters I never met again . So now I went back to the place of our accidentally encounter. I hoped, Franziska again helps in the shop. And yes, she was there. Hopefully she will agrees to a second photo shoot (outdoor I proposed) and hopefully Franziska will have time for me.
Luck was on my side. I met Franziska in the Cha-Lo actually. However, it was very busy inside (it's already the Christmas season dawned). Franziska recognized me (good) and was spontaneously willing to additional time for the photo project. We made an appointment for a later time when the bustling activity has abated somewhat.
Said and done, at the appointed time I picked up Franziska at the store. She was waiting, and we went outside. Previously I had already found a suitable location, 200 meters away.
A happy, relaxed shooting developed. My wife held the reflector and very patiently Franziska posed in front of my camera. While we photographed, Franziska told still something of her live. Here are some keywords:
- with 16 I had been one year in Montreal as a guest student and have there made my high school diploma there
- Back in Germany I did my College graduate and the International Baccalaureate
- Then I started in London Natural Sciences with "Brain, Behaviour and Cognition" as main course of study and Mathematics and Statistics as a secound course of study, but I was there very unhappy because London was too noisy, stressful and cramped.
- So I was half a year in New Zealand backpacking and then I started to study economics in Frankfurt
- Also, I did an internship in a car repair services, which I thought was absolutely great, because I have learned a lot of practical things, such as changing tires and what should I look for when buying a car, really great; that was useful in New Zealand.
- What makes me happy ?: A trip with the family (motorcycle tour, hike with the dogs, etc.) and to travel.
Franziska has a truly impressive life story already in these early years. In this, or perhaps because she has remained friendly, open, life-affirming and lovable. She has also a great patience, I think that Franziska had forgotten in her own characterization.
As she told, Franziska is a family human who needs the family as a safe haven. On her journey in New Zealand Franziska has maintained contact with her family and her loved ones via Skype and a blog.
Thank you for this wonderful encounter Franziska. A stranger, like you, I've never met before, you're my # 1 and hard to beat. We keep in touch. My questions and copies of your photos -without watermark- are on the way. All the best and love, remain as you are, and I wish you of course a lot of success in your future life. Thank you for the time in Bad Nauheim and your lovely emails.
Wow, my text is pretty long for this brief encounter. But I hope you can understand, what wonderful human being I've met in Bad Nauheim. :-))
This photo is my 7th submission to new group "The Human Family".
Visit "The Human Family" here and have a look on the photos of the other photographers:
www.flickr.com/groups/thehumanfamily/
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Stellt Euch vor, Ihr betretet ein kleines Geschäft, das sich auf Geschenkartikel und den Verkauf von 500 verschiedenen Teesorten spezialisiert hat. Die verschiedenen Tees entfalten einen wunderbaren Duft, der Dich beim Betreten des Ladens empfängt und einnimmt. Hier muss man einfach verweilen, schauen, riechen und probieren. Freundlich und geduldig werden wir von einer jungen Dame bedient, der es nicht zu viel ist, uns an diversen Tees schnuppern zu lassen, solange bis wir uns für drei verschiedene Sorten entschieden hatten. Wir scherzen, ob sie denn schon alle 500 Teesorten probiert hätte. Nein, wirklich noch nicht alle, sie arbeitet erst seit 2 Monaten in diesem Geschäft. Wir plaudern etwas über die Tees und es entwickelt sich ein angenehmes Gespräch und eine richtige „Wohlfühlatmosphäre“. Dies ist dem Duft der Tees und aber besonders der sympathischen Art der Verkäuferin geschuldet. An dieser Stelle war mir eigentlich schon klar, dass ich diese sympathische junge Dame ansprechen und um ein Foto bitten muss. Nur schien mir der Zeitpunkt unpassend, da noch viele andere Kunden sich im Laden aufhielten.
Kurz vor Ladenschluss (das war mein Fehler) kehrten wir zurück. Ich steuerte direkt auf die nette junge Dame zu und erklärte, was mein Anliegen ist.
Ich begegnete hier also Franziska. Spontan stimmte Franziska zu, wir dekorierten noch etwas das Geschäft um, damit Franziska vor einem einfarbigen Hintergrund (einer Tür) für mich posieren konnte. Franziska erklärte mir, dass sie allerdings nicht allzu viel Zeit habe, da Sie Ihre Bahn nach Hause erwischen müsse. Also schnell die Kamera ausgepackt, Blitzgerät aufgesteckt (ist eine ganz neue Erfahrung für mich, da ich bisher nur im Freien fotografiert hatte) und los ging es. So geduldig, wie Franziska uns zuvor die Tees gezeigt hatte, so geduldig posierte sie jetzt vor der Kamera. Zwischendurch schaute sie allerdings auf die Uhr, und mir war klar, dass ich natürlich auf die knappe Zeit von Franziska Rücksicht nehmen muss. Ich könnte mir nicht verzeihen, wenn sie wegen mir ihren Zug verpassen würde. Ich stellte Franziska bei aller gebotenen Eile noch ein paar Fragen, die Sie wiederum freundlich beantwortet.
Franziska lebt in der Nähe von Bad Nauheim, ist 20 Jahre jung und arbeitet seit zwei Monaten hier in diesem kleinen Tee-und Geschenkeladen. Franziska beschreibt sich als strahlend, positiv und sportlich, (ich glaube, Franziska hat sich sehr gut beschrieben).
Auf eine einsame Insel würde Franziska mitnehmen:
guten Tee (kein Wunder)
Ein gutes Buch (was wäre das: "Thinking, Fast and Slow" von Daniel Kahneman
Und ihren Hund Abby
Ich fragte Franziska, um was es in dem Buch geht und was Sie für sich daraus gelernt hat: Der Autor stellt die Frage, wie Menschen heute Entscheidungen treffen und welchen Irrtümern und Fehleinschätzungen sie dabei unterliegen. Er geht dabei von einem Zusammenspiel zweier Denk-Systeme aus: einem schnellen, intuitiven, dass häufig zu falschen Entscheidungen führt, und einem zweiten, analytischerem , dass wir erschütternd oft unbewusst umgehen.
Franziska versucht sich die unbewussten Entscheidungen bewusst zu machen, um nicht in die Falle einer vorschnellen falschen Entscheidung zu tappen.
Jetzt wurde die Zeit wirklich knapp. Ich überreichte Franziska meine Karte und wir verabredeten, dass sie mir eine Mail schreibt, damit ich weitere Fragen stellen können. Ich bedankte mich ganz herzlich, erklärte noch, dass ich erst am Wochenende Zeit habe, die Fotos zu bearbeiten und hochzuladen. Wir verließen das Geschäft. Eine Minute später überholte uns Franziska und wir sahen, wie sie Richtung Bahnhof rannte. Da hatte ich wirklich Sorge und ein schlechtes Gewissen. Das war am Mittwoch.
Am Donnerstag hat mir Franziska geschrieben! Es war ein sehr sehr nettes Mail, das ich hier gerne auszugsweise zitiere, weil Franziska mir die Erlaubnis gegeben hat, dies so hier wiederzugeben:
„Ich spiele seit 14 Jahren Fußball, bin lizenzierte Tae Bo Trainerin, aktive Schiedsrichterin bis in die Kreisoberliga im Herrenbereich und fahre leidenschaftlich gerne Motorrad - am liebsten mit meinen Eltern zusammen. Außerdem habe ich insgesamt 3 Hunde, Abby (die ja mit auf die einsame Insel kommt), Winnie Puh und Biene Maja. Momentan studiere ich Wirtschaftswissenschaften an der Goethe Universität in Frankfurt und arbeite nebenbei im Cha-Lo, welches meiner Tante gehört.
Wenn Sie noch mehr über mich wissen wollen, fragen Sie einfach!“
Das werde ich auch noch tun und hier ergänzen. Franziska hatte sich auch schon mit meinen Fotos und dem Projekt beschäftigt und war begeistert von der Idee (und auch von meinen Fotos, darf ich das hier schreiben?)
Zum Schluss schrieb Franziska:
Ich freue mich, Teil Ihres Projekts sein zu dürfen und warte schon gespannt auf die Bilder!
Den Zug habe ich übrigens gerade noch erwischt, haha :D
Aber wenn nicht, wäre die Welt auch nicht untergegangen.
Allein der letzte Satz zeigt, mit welcher Geduld, Verständnis und Freundlichkeit Franziska gesegnet ist. Hut ab, vor dieser sympathischen jungen Frau und ein Glück für mich, dass Franziska mir ihre Zeit geopfert hat und ich die Fotos machen durfte.
Am Freitag hatte ich Gelegenheit, mir die Fotos auf meinem Rechner anzusehen. Ich war sehr enttäuscht, weil die Bilder meinen "Qualitätsansprüchen" wirklich nicht genügten. Das hat in keinster Weise etwas mit Franziska zu tun, sondern ausschließlich mit den schlechten Lichtverhältnissen und meiner mangelnden Übung mit dem Blitz!!!
Was tun? Ich machte etwas, was ich bisher noch nie gemacht habe, weil die Begegnungen bisher einmalig waren und ich meine Fremden dann nie wieder getroffen hatte. Jetzt also bin ich zurück gefahren an den Ort unseres zufälligen Treffens. Ich hatte die Hoffnung, dass Franziska wieder in dem Geschäft aushilft. Hoffentlich ist sie einverstanden mit einem zweiten Fotoshooting (diesmal Outdoor) und hoffentlich hat Franziska überhaupt Zeit.
Ich hatte unverschämtes Glück. Ich traf Franziska in dem Cha-Lo tatsächlich an. Allerdings war viel Betrieb (es ist ja auch schon die Vorweihnachtszeit angebrochen). Franziska erkannte mich wieder (schon mal gut) und war wieder spontan bereit, mir für die Fotos zur Verfügung zu stehen. Wir verabredeten uns auf eine spätere Zeit, wenn der Betrieb etwas nachgelassen hat.
Gesagt getan, zur verabredeten Zeit holte ich Franziska im Laden ab. Sie wartete schon und wir gingen nach draußen. Vorher hatte ich mir schon eine passende Lokation -ca. 200 m vom Geschäft entfernt- für die Fotos ausgesucht und ich bat Franziska dorthin.
Es entwickelte sich eine fröhliches, lockeres Shooting. meine Frau hielt den Reflektor und sehr geduldig posierte Franziska vor meiner Kamera. Während wir fotografierten erzählte Franziska noch etwas aus ihrem Leben. Hier einige Stichworte:
- ich bin mit 16 1 Jahr in Montreal als Gastschülerin gewesen und habe dort meinen High School Abschluss gemacht
- zurück in Deutschland habe ich mein Abitur und das International Baccalaureat gemacht
- dann habe ich in London angefangen Natural Sciences mit Brain, Behaviour and Cognition als Haupt- und Mathematics and Statistics als Nebenfach zu studieren, war dort aber sehr unglücklich, da mir London zu laut, stressig und eng war.
- also war ich ein halbes Jahr in Neuseeland Backpacken und habe dann in Frankfurt angefangen Wirtschaftswissenschaften zu studieren
- Außerdem habe ich ein Praktikum in einem KFZ-Meisterbetrieb gemacht, was ich total klasse fand, da ich dadurch viele praktische Dinge gelernt habe, wie Reifenwechseln und worauf ich beim Kauf eines Autos achten muss, richtig klasse
- was mich glücklich macht?: Ein Ausflug mit der Familie (Motorrad-Tour, Wanderung mit den Hunden, etc.), Reisen
Franziska hat eine wirklich beeindruckende Vita schon in diesen jungen Jahren. Dabei oder gerade deswegen ist sie freundlich, offen, lebensbejahend und liebenswert geblieben. Außerdem zeichnet sie eine große Geduld aus, ich glaube, das hat Franziska in der eigenen Charakterisierung vergessen.
Wie sie uns auch erzählte, ist Franziska ein Familienmensch, der die Familie als Ruhepol und sicheren Hafen braucht. Auf Ihrer Reise in Neuseeland hat Franziska via Skype und einem Blog Kontakt zu ihrer Familie und ihren Lieben gehalten.
Vielen Dank Franziska für diese wunderbare Begegnung. Eine Fremde, wie dich, habe ich bisher noch nie getroffen, Du bist meine #1 und schwer zu toppen. Wir bleiben bestimmt in Kontakt. Meine Fragen und die Kopien der Fotos –ohne Wasserzeichen- sind auf dem Weg. Alles Gute und Liebe,bleib wie Du bist und natürlich viel Erfolg in Deinem weiteren Leben. Danke, für die Zeit in Bad Nauheim und Deine netten E-Mails.
Wow, ganz schön lang geworden mein Text für diese kurze Begegnung. Aber ich hoffe, ihr könnt verstehen, welchen wunderbaren Menschen ich hier getroffen habe.
Dies ist mein 7. Beitrag zu der neuen Gruppe The Human Family. Mehr Fotos von anderen Fotografen findest Du hier:
This summary graphic from the Royal Society shows the long-range neuronal sprouting that occurs with psilocybin; the untreated brain on the left shows a number of regions with the synaptic connections arranged in a ring of nearest-neighbor connectivity. On the right, you can see the dramatic change, with new spanners across formerly disconnected regions. Instead of a mental model of brain damage, imagine the neuronal sprouting that we associate with fetal development or neural plasticity.
Researchers Robin Carhart-Harris and team also found that that some of these changes in neuronal wiring were permanent.
The effect of this is a more flexible and open mind and visual hallucinations of colored words, numbers or sounds... much like the fascinating condition called synaesthesia.
I first learned of this condition from V.S. Ramachandran, and so I read his book Phantoms in the Brain. Some tidbits from his Bio-X symposium: 1 in 50 people have it. It's 8x as prevalent among artists, poets, novelists and creative people. Shakespeare was a master: “Juliet is the sun.”
“A word is just a penumbra of associations… a syntactic juggling in the head.”
Often blamed on drugs: “The incidence does go up on LSD, and there are more cases in Berkeley than Stanford.”
Suspected to be a cross wiring in the fusiform gyrus that has a genetic basis given its hereditary pattern in families. The typical synaptic pruning is interrupted by some mutation.
Why doesn’t it disappear from genetic drift? Why would it persist? “They are the outliers in the population. They are more creative. They may be gaining, but evolution moves slowly.” [cue Apple Ad]
At the time, I thought that the mastery of evocative metaphor, in written or visual form, seems like a touch of synaesthesia. Great artists can tap into their internal cross talk, and synaesthesia is the extreme example of what might lie along a spectrum from rationalist to artiste.
It also seems that young children are better at this than the average adult. Given the 10x reduction in synaptic connections at the age of 2 to 3 years, perhaps the benefits of crosstalk are lost in the carvings of maturity.
Here are summary quotes from the new mushroom research:
“The two pictures are simplified cartoons of the placebo (a) and psilocybin (b) scaffolds. The nodes are organized and coloured according to their community membership in the placebo scaffold. This is done in order to highlight the striking difference in connectivity structure in the two cases.
One possible by-product of this greater communication across the whole brain is the phenomenon of synaesthesia, which is often reported in conjunction with the psychedelic state. Synaesthesia is described as an inducer-concurrent pairing, where the inducer could be a grapheme or a visual stimulus that generates a secondary sensory output—like a colour for example. Drug-induced synaesthesia often leads to chain of associations, pointing to dynamic causes rather than fixed structural ones as may be the case for acquired synaesthesia. Broadly consistent with this, it has been reported that subjects under the influence of psilocybin have objectively worse colour perception performance despite subjectively intensified colour experience .
The results show that the homological structure of the brain’s functional patterns undergoes a dramatic change post-psilocybin, characterized by the appearance of many transient structures of low stability and of a small number of persistent ones that are not observed in the case of placebo.
A simple reading of this result would be that the effect of psilocybin is to relax the constraints on brain function, ascribing cognition a more flexible quality, but when looking at the edge level, the picture becomes more complex…these functional connections support cycles that are especially stable and are only present in the psychedelic state. This further implies that the brain does not simply become a random system after psilocybin injection, but instead retains some organizational features, albeit different from the normal state.
To summarize, we presented a new method to analyse fully connected, weighted and signed networks and applied it to a unique fMRI dataset of subjects under the influence of mushrooms. We find that the psychedelic state is associated with a less constrained and more intercommunicative mode of brain function, which is consistent with descriptions of the nature of consciousness in the psychedelic state.”
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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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^ Royal College of Physicians 2013 Prolonged Disorders of Consciousness: National Clinical Guidelines
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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.
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im sick of bi polar its fucking amazing
Bipolar disorder or manic–depressive disorder, also referred to as bipolar affective disorder or manic depression, is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood with or without one or more depressive episodes. The elevated moods are clinically referred to as mania or, if milder, hypomania. Individuals who experience manic episodes also commonly experience depressive episodes, or symptoms, or a mixed state in which features of both mania and depression are present at the same time. These events are usually separated by periods of "normal" mood; but, in some individuals, depression and mania may rapidly alternate, which is known as rapid cycling. Extreme manic episodes can sometimes lead to such psychotic symptoms as delusions and hallucinations. The disorder has been subdivided into bipolar I, bipolar II, cyclothymia, and other types, based on the nature and severity of mood episodes experienced; the range is often described as the bipolar spectrum.
Estimates of the lifetime prevalence of bipolar disorder vary, with studies typically giving values of the order of 1%, with higher figures given in studies with looser definitions of the condition. The onset of full symptoms generally occurs in late adolescence or young adulthood. Diagnosis is based on the person's self-reported experiences, as well as observed behavior. Episodes of abnormality are associated with distress and disruption and an elevated risk of suicide, especially during depressive episodes. In some cases, it can be a devastating long-lasting disorder. In others, it has also been associated with creativity, goal striving, and positive achievements. There is significant evidence to suggest that many people with creative talents have also suffered from some form of bipolar disorder. It is often suggested that creativity and bipolar disorder are linked.
Genetic factors contribute substantially to the likelihood of developing bipolar disorder, and environmental factors are also implicated. Bipolar disorder is often treated with mood stabilizing medications and, sometimes, other psychiatric drugs. Psychotherapy also has a role, often when there has been some recovery of the subject's stability. In serious cases, in which there is a risk of harm to oneself or others, involuntary commitment may be used. These cases generally involve severe manic episodes with dangerous behavior or depressive episodes with suicidal ideation. There are widespread problems with social stigma, stereotypes, and prejudice against individuals with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. People with bipolar disorder exhibiting psychotic symptoms can sometimes be misdiagnosed as having schizophrenia, a serious mental illness.
The current term bipolar disorder is of fairly recent origin and refers to the cycling between high and low episodes (poles). A relationship between mania and melancholia had long been observed, although the basis of the current conceptualisation can be traced back to French psychiatrists in the 1850s. The term "manic-depressive illness" or psychosis was coined by German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin in the late nineteenth century, originally referring to all kinds of mood disorder. German psychiatrist Karl Leonhard split the classification again in 1957, employing the terms unipolar disorder (major depressive disorder) and bipolar disorder.
Elephant cognition is the study of animal cognition as present in elephants. Most contemporary ethologists view the elephant as one of the world's most intelligent animals. With a mass of just over 5 kg (11lb), an elephant's brain has more mass than that of any other land animal, and although the largest whales have body masses twenty times those of a typical elephant, a whale's brain is barely twice the mass of an elephant's brain. In addition, elephants have around 257 billion neurons. Elephant brains are similar to humans' and many other mammals' in terms of general connectivity and functional areas, with several unique structural differences. Although initially estimated to have as many neurons as a human brain, the elephant's cortex has about one-third of the number of neurons as a human brain.
Elephants manifest a wide variety of behaviours, including those associated with grief, learning, mimicry, play, altruism, use of tools, compassion, cooperation, self-awareness, memory, and communication. Further, evidence suggests elephants may understand pointing: the ability to nonverbally communicate an object by extending a finger, or equivalent. It is thought they are equal with cetaceans and primates in this regard. Due to such claims of high intelligence and due to strong family ties of elephants, some researchers argue it is morally wrong for humans to cull them.
Aristotle described the elephant as "the animal that surpasses all others in wit and mind."
"Witches, like saints, are solitary stars that shine with a light of their own; they depend on nothing and no one, which is why they have no fear and plunge blindly into the abyss with the assurance that instead of crashing to earth, they will fly back out. They can change into birds and see the world from above, or worms to see it from within, they can inhabit other dimensions and travel to other galaxies, they are navigators on an infinite ocean of consciousness and cognition." - Isabel Allende
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Self-portrait • September 2017
Spider monkeys are found in tropical forests of Central and South America, from southern Mexico to Brazil. The genus contains seven species, all of which are under threat; the black-headed spider monkey and brown spider monkey are critically endangered.
Disproportionately long limbs and long prehensile tails make them one of the largest New World monkeys and give rise to their common name. Spider monkeys live in the upper layers of the rainforest, and forage in the high canopy, from 25 to 30 m (82 to 98 ft). They primarily eat fruits, but will also occasionally consume leaves, flowers, and insects.Due to their large size, spider monkeys require large tracts of moist evergreen forests, and prefer undisturbed primary rainforest. They are social animals and live in bands of up to 35 individuals but will split up to forage during the day.
Recent meta-analyses on primate cognition studies indicated spider monkeys are the most intelligent New World monkeys. They can produce a wide range of sounds and will "bark" when threatened; other vocalisations include a whinny similar to a horse and prolonged screams.
[Wikipedia]
After eating some plants with the CEO and Strategy Director of MAPS (the public benefit corp. taking MDMA through FDA clinical trials for PTSD), we were struck by the chemicals adorning our kitchen wall at work.
It reminds me of Michael Pollan, in his new book This is Your Mind on Plants: “How incredible is it that plants have evolved the precise molecular key to unlock your consciousness?”
It’s not an analog or mimic. Plants and fungi and bacteria synthesize our exact neurotransmitters, perhaps some evolutionary inheritance from signaling in the early days of federating single-cell organisms. 90 percent of human serotonin is made by the bacteria in our gut, not in our brain. Gut bacteria produce and respond to the same neurochemicals—such as GABA, serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine, acetylcholine and melatonin—that the brain uses to regulate mood and cognition. Respect, on the kitchen wall.
Every culture on Earth has discovered and used a plant or fungus, often several, that alters consciousness. (Pollan notes one exception: the Inuit who live where nothing interesting grows)
Tim Ferriss interviewed Michael Pollan about his new book, and it’s quite good, here.
Dr. Maria Furtwängler-Burda (Schirmherrin DLDwomen), Prinzessin Auguste von Bayern (Zoologin /Avian cognition/Avian intelligence University of Oxford), Steffi Czerny (Gründerin und Gastgeberin DLD)
/ DLDwomen Chairwomen´s Party am Wittelsbacherplatz in München am 15.07.2013 / Foto: BrauerPhotos © Sabine Brauer