Mid-Monday morning. You are sitting in the
shade of a tree facing east at the upper earth dam lot at Pine Hill Lakes. Carol is on her mostly daily walk. You
had a strange dream this morning, and one you don’t wish to acknowledge because
only two main characters one in it, Jean N. your high school classmate and Bill
M. It appeared to be Bill M. dream though you were Bill M.’s point of view.
0956 hours. I don’t wish to discuss the dream because it was
not my dream. I don’t even know what I was doing there. In one slice of the
dream Jean was asking Bill if he wanted a cookie cut up so he could eat it with
a fork. I thought, ‘why would I want to eat it with a fork; just hand me the
cookie, thank you.’ The setting was at a lonely resort along what appeared to
be Lake Erie or at the edge of a wide river, one as wide as Lake Erie is. The
lodge was mostly empty, sometimes it looked like we were in a school hallway
but there were no lockers. Maybe it was an abandoned military facility. Nothing
spooky – just lonely. Bill (myself) was in a wheel chair running it backwards
down the hallway using his feet to push it like it was a fun toy. The waters
would rise and fall. The somewhat decrepit boats were not running (maybe that’s
decrypted boats). How did I just write this without remembering the dream?
Weird. Amorella, this is just plain weird. It’s nonsense.
Sometimes dreams are that way, boy.
Nonsense. – Amorella
1008 hours. I don’t have memorable dreams too often. Rarely
is the setting so bleak except for Bill having fun with the wheelchair. That
was just before I woke up in the bedroom chair, which was disorienting for a
moment because I thought I was in bed. I had gotten up with Carol about
seven-thirty but Jadah wanted warmed up so I sat in the chair with her before
going downstairs and I didn’t wake up until eight-thirty. It was one of those
mornings I guess.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, boy. –
Amorella
1014 hours. At least it wasn’t a Freudian dream, nothing
worth overanalyzing.
Later dude. – Amorella
1107 hours. Seems like there may be water on Mars. We’ll
know shortly via NASA.
Pumped.
**
**
Science and Environment -
BBC
Martian salt streaks 'painted by liquid water'
By
Jonathan Amos
BBC
Science Correspondent
1 hour ago
- From the section
Science & Environment
Scientists think they can now tie dark streaks seen on the
surface of Mars to periodic flows of liquid water.
Data from a Nasa satellite shows the features, which appear on
slopes, to be associated with salt deposits.
Crucially, such salts could alter the freezing and vaporisation
points of water in Mars's sparse air, keeping it in a fluid state long enough
to move.
Lujendra Ojha and colleagues report the
findings in the journal Nature Geoscience.
There are implications for the existence of life on the planet
today, because any liquid water raises the possibility that microbes could also
be present. And for future astronauts on Mars, the identification of water
supplies near the surface would make it easier for them to "live off the
land".
Researchers have long wondered whether liquid water might
occasionally flow across the surface today.
Secret source
It is not a simple proposition, because the temperatures are
usually well below zero Celsius and the atmospheric pressure is so low that any
liquid H2O will rapidly boil.
But the observation over the past 15 years of gullies and
surface streaks that appear to change with the seasons has heightened the
speculation.
Dr Ojha has now presented new data from the US space agency's
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that seems to solve the conundrum.
MRO has an instrument called Crism that can determine the
chemistry of surface materials.
It has looked at four locations where dark streaks are seen to
come and go during Martian summer months.
Crism finds these "recurring slope lineae" (RSL) to be
covered with salts.
They are salts - magnesium perchlorate, chlorate and chloride -
that can drop the freezing point of water by 80 degrees and its vaporisation
rate by a factor of 10.
The combination allows briney water to stay stable long enough
to trickle down hillsides and crater walls.
Quite where the water is coming from to make the streaks is
still unclear, however. The locations studied by MRO are equatorial, and any
stored water in this region of Mars, perhaps in the form of ice, is thought to
exist only at great depth.
One possibility is that the salts actually pull the water out of
the atmosphere. The Curiosity rover has found some
strong pointers to this mechanism. But again, it is not known
whether there is a sufficient supply in the air to facilitate a decent flow.
Another theory is that local aquifers are breaking up to the
surface, but this does not really fit with streaks that appear from the tops of
peaks.
It is conceivable that streaks are being formed from different
sources in different parts of Mars.
Contamination question
Dr Joe Michalski is a Mars researcher at the Natural History
Museum in London. He called the announcement an exciting development,
especially because of its implications for the potential of microbes existing
on the planet today.
"We know from the study of extremophiles on Earth that life
can not only survive, but thrive in conditions that are hyper-arid, very saline
or otherwise 'extreme' in comparison to what is habitable to a human. In fact,
on Earth, wherever we find water, we find life. That is why the discovery of water
on Mars over the last 20 years is so exciting."
An interesting consequence of the findings is that space
agencies will now have some extra thinking to do about where they send future
landers and rovers.
Current internationally-agreed rules state that missions should
be wary of going to places on Mars where there is likely to be liquid water.
A UK space agency expert on Mars landing sites, Dr Peter
Grindrod, told BBC News: "Planetary protection states that we can't go
anywhere there is liquid water because we can't sterilise our spacecraft well
enough to guarantee we won't contaminate these locations. So if an RSL is found
within the landing zone of a probe, then you can't land there. That would be
kind of ironic for Europe's forthcoming ExoMars rover because it's designed to
look for life."
Selected and edited from – BBCDOTCOM
** **
Post,
boy. – Amorella
**
**
Post,
boy. – Amorella
1215 hours. This is very cool stuff, Amorella. And, I
found another cool BBC article on consciousness.
** **
Future – BBC
In Depth / Neuroscience
“Blindsight: the strangest
form of consciousness”
Some people who have lost their vision find a “second sight”
taking over their eyes – an uncanny, subconscious sense that sheds light into
the hidden depths of the human mind.
By David Robson
28 September 2015
When Daniel first walked into London’s National Hospital,
ophthalmologist Michael Sanders could have had little idea that he would
permanently alter our view of human consciousness.
Daniel turned up saying that he was half blind. Although he had
healthy eyes, a brain operation to cure headaches seemed to have destroyed a
region that was crucial for vision. The result was that almost everything to
the left of his nose was invisible to him. It was as if he were looking out of
a window, with the curtains drawn across half of his world.
Daniel was adamant that he could not see a thing, yet somehow
his unconscious mind was guiding him correctly
And yet, as Sanders began testing him, he noticed something very
strange: Daniel could reach out and grab Sanders’ hand, even when it must have
fallen right behind his blind spot. It was as if some kind of “second sight”
was guiding his behaviour, beyond his conscious awareness.
Intrigued, Sanders referred Daniel to the psychologists
Elizabeth Warrington and Lawrence Weiskrantz, who confirmed the hunch with a series of
clever tests. They placed a screen in front of Daniel’s blind
spot, for instance, and asked him to point at a circle, when it appeared in
different places. Daniel was adamant that he could not see a thing, but
Weiskrantz persuaded him to just “take a guess”. Surprisingly, he was almost
always right. Or Weiskrantz and Warrington would present a single line on the
screen, and Daniel had to decide whether it was horizontal or vertical. Again,
Daniel was adamant that nothing had appeared before his eyes, yet his accuracy
was around 80%, much more than if he had been guessing randomly.
Clearly, despite his blindness, Daniel’s healthy eyes were still
watching the world and passing the information to his unconscious, which was
guiding his behaviour. Publishing a report in 1974, Weiskrantz coined the term
“blindsight” to describe this fractured conscious state. “Some were sceptical,
of course, but it has held its own and become an accepted phenomenon,”
Weiskrantz says today. And over the following decades, the condition has come
to answer some fundamental questions about the human mind.
Just how many of our decisions occur out of our awareness, even
when we have the illusion of control? And if the conscious mind is not needed
to direct our actions, then what is its purpose? Why did we evolve this vivid
internal life, if we are almost “zombies” acting without awareness?
“These cases open a window into parts of the brain that are
normally not visible,” says Marco Tamietto, who is based at Tilburg University.
“They offer a view to functions that are difficult to observe – that are
normally silent.”
Unravelling the mind
Consciousness is so deeply intertwined with everything we do,
that many scientists had previously believed it would be impossible to study.
How can you pick apart the rich fabric of our minds to find the one thread that
gives rise to the vivid sense of awareness, of feeling and “being” and
experiencing the world, without unravelling everything else around it?
Daniel, whose name has been changed for this article and is
known in the literature simply as DB, offered some of the first clues. “What
you want to do is to look at something that is as close to consciousness as
possible, but which is lacking that specific quality, that subjective
experience,” says Christopher Allen at Cardiff University. “And that’s what
blindsight gives you. The participant is still perceiving, but they lack
awareness of perception.”
Despite their blindness, these people can somehow sense emotions
in a face – and they even start to unconsciously mimic the expressions
One of the first tasks was to test exactly what blindsight
patients are capable of without their conscious visual awareness – and the
results have been quite remarkable. Of particular interest has been the fact
that they can sense emotion: when presented with faces, they can tell whether
it is happy or sad, angry or surprised, and they even start to unconsciously
mimic the expressions. “Even though they did not report anything at a conscious
level, we could show a change in attitude, a synchronisation of emotional
expressions to the pictures in their blind field,” says Tamietto, who has
worked extensively with Weiskrantz.
Besides mirroring expressions, they also show physiological
signs of stress when they see a picture of a frightened face. “The plan for the
future is to try to train them to pay attention to bodily reactions,” says
Tamietto. It might be helpful to notice if they are in danger, for instance.
“They can use the bodily changes to understand what’s going on in the world –
as an indication that there is something interesting or problematic.”
In 2008, Tamietto and Weiskrantz’s team put another blindsight
patient through the most gruelling test yet. Unlike Daniel, he was blind across
the whole of his visual field, and normally walked with a white cane. But the
team took away his cane and then loaded a corridor with furniture that might
potentially trip him up, before asking him make his way to
the other side. “Despite saying he wasn’t able to see, we saw
him shooting by on his very first attempt,” says Tamietto. You can watch it for
yourself, on the video below.
Importantly, the participant claimed that not only was he not
aware of having seen anything; he was not even aware of having moved out of the
way of the objects. He insisted he had just walked straight down the hallway.
According to Beatrice de Gelder, who led the work, he was “at a loss to
explain or even describe his actions”.
It was like seeing a black shadow moving against a completely
black background
Only in very rare circumstances do they come close to being
aware of what they are seeing. For instance, one subject was able to
distinguish movement in fast, high-contrast films; he described it as being
like “a black shadow
moving against a completely black background” – a “sense of
knowing” that there was something beyond. But even then, he could not describe
the content itself, meaning that his experience lacked almost everything we
would normally associate with vision. “There’s a lot of controversy about
whether those reports truly reflect visual experiences,” says Kentridge.
Reversible blindness
Of all the questions these studies have posed, the most pressing
has been why? What causes the conscious and unconscious to decouple so
spectacularly? Tellingly, all the blindsight subjects had suffered damage to a
region known as V1, at the back of the head, suggesting that it is this region
that normally projects the stream of images into our awareness.
To test their ideas, scientists can use a form of non-invasive
brain stimulation that disrupts different brain regions, in an attempt to
induce a reversible form of blindsight in healthy participants. Keen to know
how it feels, I recently took part in one of those experiments at Allen’s lab
in Cardiff, UK. (You can see a video of the procedure below.)
The technique is called “transcranial magnetic stimulation”,
which uses a strong magnetic field to scramble the neural activity underneath
the skull. “The advantage is that you don’t have to cut someone’s head open to
demonstrate the same behavioural characteristics as clinical blindsight,” Allen
told me before the experiment.
Eventually I noticed a fleeting dark line cross my vision, a bit
like an old TV monitor just after you pressed the off switch
The experiment began with Allen placing a magnet over the back
of my skull, just above V1. Next, he began applying the magnetic field for
short intervals at increasing strengths. At first, all I could feel was a
slight tapping sensation (the effect of the magnetic field on my skin) but
eventually I did notice a fleeting dark line crossing the centre of my vision,
a bit like an old TV monitor just after you pressed the off switch. It only
lasted less than a second, however, and although it gave me a small shock, I
soon became used to the sensation.
After Allen had found the right power, I sat in front of a
computer screen, and he flashed up pictures of arrows for a split second: my
job was to say whether they pointed left or right. The pictures were sometimes
timed with the TMS signals causing the temporary blindness – and like Daniel in
those original experiments, I often saw nothing and felt that I was guessing.
Nevertheless, once I had finished, Allen told me that I had answered many more
correctly than would be expected by chance alone, suggesting the TMS had succeeded
in giving me blindsight.
Through studies such as this, Allen has found tentative evidence
that the visual information is funnelled through the “lateral geniculate
nucleus”, deep in the centre of the brain – a bypass around V1 that allows the
information to be processed unconsciously in areas involved in emotion or
movement.
Eventually, the researchers may even understand how the brain
creates visual consciousness itself – and why V1 is so crucial. One idea is
that consciousness relies on communication to and from many areas of the brain
– and maybe V1 is working as a hub that helps orchestrate that broadcast.
Picking apart the experience may also reveal further clues about
the power of unconscious mind. To understand how, imagine that you are part of
a strange puppet show. You have been blindfolded, and your limbs are tied to
invisible strings. Every so often, they are tugged here or there by a hidden
puppet master, leading you through a complicated dance. To the audience, it
looks like you are in full control of your actions, but you don’t have the
foggiest idea of what you’ve just done.
The non-conscious mind acts as the puppet master, pulling the
strings without their knowledge
That puppet show is essentially what happens when someone with
blindsight navigates their way past obstacles – with the non-conscious mind
acting as the puppet master. “It shows that awareness isn’t the whole story,”
says Tamietto. “Very often we believe we have decided something, but our brain
has made the decision for us before that – in many ways, and in many contexts.”
Juha Silvanto at the University of Westminster agrees:
“Consciousness is just a summary of all the information coming
in, but the fact the subconscious can guide behaviour suggests that elaborate
processing is going on without us being aware of it.” Indeed, some philosophers
have gone as far as to wonder whether we could be little more than “zombies”
acting on mostly unconscious impulses.
Some philosophers have gone as far as to claim that we could be
little more than “zombies” acting on mostly unconscious impulses
This, in turn, begins to cast doubt on some long-held
assumptions about the very nature, and purpose, of consciousness. After all, it
is by no means certain that other animals have a rich inner life like us, so it
must have emerged for some reason. Previously, psychologists had proposed that
we have a kind of “spotlight of attention” that sweeps over our vision, and
when it lands on an object, the object pops into consciousness. In this way,
our heightened awareness helps highlight the most important parts of a scene,
giving us the chance to respond.
Except Robert Kentridge at the University of Durham has evidence
to suggest this too may be wrong. His insight came when he was talking to a
blindsight subject in between some of the basic visual tests, in which he
flashed different images at different parts of the blind spot. The subject had
said that he thought he would do better if we were told where, in the blind
spot, the image would appear. “It seemed very strange,” says Kentridge – since
they have no awareness of what is in their blind spots, they shouldn’t be able
to focus their attention there. “It’s as if you were trying to direct attention
around the back of head – you shouldn’t be able to do it,” he says.
Even so, he was happy to play along and design a separate
experiment where he could give the subject a clue about where the image might
appear. The results were a kind of
paradox: even though the participant was still not able to
actually see anything, his subconscious discrimination seemed to be quicker. In
other words, the subject really was “paying attention” – but without being
conscious of exactly what he was attending.
For this reason, Kentridge thinks we need to rethink our ideas
about consciousness and attention. Rather than it acting as a spotlight to
boost perception, he instead suspects that consciousness may have evolved to
boost memory, drawing together all the different pieces of information into a
cohesive picture that is easier to remember. “You need to encode what’s
happening in the world in a single package,” he says.
These are just the first of many clues that may eventually solve
the riddles of human consciousness. Sadly, Daniel will not be taking part in
those further experiments. “He passed away last November, but was a willing
subject for many years,” Weiskrantz tells me. By gently reaching into his
darkness, however, he has shown the way for others to follow, guiding us
through some of the biggest mysteries of the human mind.
Selected and edited from -- http://www.bbcDOTcom/future/story/20150925-blindsight-the-strangest-form-of-consciousness
** **
1232
hours. I seem to have a ‘sense’ of this, an understanding of the article even
though I am not blind. My sense of understanding comes from how an intuitive
moment feels. It is a similar feeling, or appears to be.
1541
hours. We had a late lunch at Piada Street Italian then went to Montgomery
Family Medicine at Montgomery Road and Cornell for our annual flu vaccine and
feel better for having it done early.
Carol is on page 251, Chapter 36 of David Baldacci’s
The Escape. You are at the far north lot of Pine Hill Lakes. You have
been forcing yourself not to think about the coincidences of my comments on alien
microbes yesterday and the announcement of flowing water on Mars today. And, on
how you mentioned ‘grok’ and the reference to ‘water’ and Mars earlier in the
post. – Amorella
1549 hours. It is embarrassingly silly to think on but I had
no choice – such seeming coincidences just pop up. I have been thinking more
consciously about ‘where’ the blind spot was in their head’. I think back to
the lady expert told me my subconsciousness would ‘connect with a favorite
color’ (mine is orange) when reading aloud more quickly than I usually can. It
worked and I imagine still does. I can read aloud more easily and with fewer
errors if I think of the color orange when reading aloud. She demonstrated this
in front of my peers (educators) while at an Indian Hill School District
meeting. When I have an ‘event’ of similar kind I attempt to consciously and
otherwise ‘view’ what part of the brain is enacting this information. I do not
need physical eyes to ‘see’ some things. It is not the same as the blindsight
for the blind but I understand the correlation. Essentially, I grok it. – rho
Your word choices show a lack of vocabulary
to explain how you ‘see’ intuitive-like events without eyes, but essentially
what you are saying has been witnessed by me, the Amorella.
1606 hours. I am sure that somewhere in all these posts
there are examples of me intimating that I am seeing something without using my
eyes. If I weren’t so lazy I’d look up a couple as examples.
1647
hours. I did find one reference to “without eyes” in August but Merlyn is
talking, so obviously, it’s in a fiction. I stopped looking before June 2015.
Well, what does this show me? It shows me that I mix my personal self with my
fictional character(s).
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