How the brain decides what to focus conscious attention on.

http://www.sciammind.com/article.cfm?articleID=00001590-CDCC-14C7-8DCC83414B7F0000

well i'd like to see a follow-up on how the a.d.d. brain differs in its internal activity from the 'normal' brain, in terms of 'intention' and the possibility of the a.d.d. brain having much higher instances of 'attention blinks.'

interesting she didn't mention attention deficit disorder. i'm starting my cognitive psychology course tomorrow and maybe i will be able to look into this!

- N'N -

... another quality find with
neuronal sync ->- attention
or reduction of attention to a kinda' coherence between waveforms - being just so *it* - and whilst it sinks in - can I ask whether the idea of mRNA acting as an electron sink has occurred beyond the source you mentioned previously?

Thanks - and good find {again}

:-) -it's happening - a complete switch in our understanding of mind - with ADDer freaks like Koch and Crick leading the way. Way cool! Whey to go. Way Hey!!! - the times they are a'changin' ... :-) ...

s

Praise the flawed!

...'the reinforced rhythmic synchronization in the gamma band that we measured seems to be a good indicator of active attention'.

cool!!!

~s~

... of the a.d.d. brain having much higher instances of 'attention blinks.' ...?...
Great point - the answer'll be yes - and the reason being something along the lines of:
"The downside though - time to solution" [source (http://www.addforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=337978&postcount=7)]

Sensory Input ->- Processed ->- Motor Output
1ensory Input ->- 2rocessed ->- 3otor Output

In ADD (2) becomes more sophisticated - more processing - 'better processing' - however since the {quote from above} - there'll be a tendency towards 'much higher instances of 'attention blinks' ... as (1) (the sensory input subsystem) awaits cpu time.

SB.

Any information about an ape that hit their retinas was out of sync with neuronal expectations, found no resonance and went unnoticed.Preconceptions during experiences ->- pattern of filtering within the sensorium ->- the observation ... as Nova writes, that ... 'we create our own reality' ...
Our reality at any given point is a function of our internal rrreality at that point in time, of our sum of experiences - of our mind.

Experiencing *more* can only arise by giving up self - or rather all of those divisions which we store in self - to define ourselves - I don't like X, I am Y ... ... ... these arbitrary divisions which individuals erroneously believe that they need to be *somebody* - arbitrary divisions which individuals erroneously believe that they need to be somebody *simply* serve to narrow the experiential realm which is open to the individual for sampling.

SB.

To Infinity and (http://www.addforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=338468&postcount=57) Beyond

SB.

Haha !

I only post the articles, SB...I didn't write them, LOL !

Glad you likey.

In my opinion, the word 'preconception', should be classified under the heading of 'swear' words... (0:

Quotes from article;
My responses:

The Principles of Psychology. James concluded that the capacity of consciousness is limited, which is why we cannot pay attention to everything at once. Attention is much more selective: it impels consciousness to concentrate on certain stimuli to process them especially effectively.


Well this explains the troubles with me I am not conscious because when I am not medicated every thing assaults me at once, I don’t think consciousness is the same as attention? Or is it?. Hey isn’t the last line some thing we have said before about attention which by the way for me is only selective when I take medications other wise it isn’t selective at all. So I lack an attention "impel-er" thing a ma jig?


Some of them are "self-created": a penetrating odor, a loud siren, a woman in a bright red dress amid people clad in black. (Many researchers now call this process "bottom-up," because the stimuli battle their way into our consciousness automatically because they are so striking.) Alternatively, we can actively and deliberately control our focus (called "top-down," because higher brain regions are involved at the outset). For example, at a noisy party, we can tune out background noise to listen to the conversation at the next table.


I don’t think I have top down thing because it simply doesn’t happen like this for me. It reminds me of one of those threads from a while back between Barbyma and Stabile.


We were surprised, however, when we found a difference in the limbic system--in the amygdala, to be precise, which is normally involved in processing emotional reactions. The state of our emotional system probably influences the control of attention and which sensory signals are allowed to reach consciousness.

Gosh could this mean attitude is meaningful. It does effect our mood in a big way.

Neuronal synchronization brings order to the chaotic mental world. In fact, cognitive deficits and disordered thoughts among schizophrenic patients appear to be connected to disturbed gamma-band coupling. The healthy brain is, however, anything but a passive receiver of news from the environment. It is an active system, one that controls itself via a complex internal dynamic. Our experiences, intentions, expectations and needs affect this dynamic and thus determine how we perceive and interpret our environment.


Yep there is the answer to that question I asked in my last post in another thread. . . . .perhaps I was in the wrong thread . . . . .there is that naughty *mind*attitude*internal thing that isn’t scientifically significant mentioned in a scientific study hmmmmmm I think these guys must be reading my post ! I find it odd that I simply know some things ya know okay I am surprized I know any thing some days :p


Thanks Nova, and nice to be among the civilization again is it not SB? ;)

Ho Lordy
{yes}

... ... ... praise be {yes, yes} to Ana {{N'Nueva}} {yes, yes, yes}

... affirmative General {ADD}

... :-) ... Major ADD ... :-) ...

Silly SB...

Thought we agreed that:

"Conscious" is the same as attention.

Not consciousness. (0;

'Silly SB'
'1000 lines - boy'
'Silly SB gotta be way!!! more clear'


Thought we agreed that:"Conscious" is the same as attention.
Not consciousness. (0;
Ho Lordy {yes} ... ... ... praise be {yes, yes} to Ana {{N'Nueva}} {yes, yes, yes}
... affirmative General {ADD} ... :-) ... Major ADD ... :-) ...


Thanks Nova, and nice to be among the civilization again is it not SB? ;)
Ho Lordy {yes} ... ... ... praise be {yes, yes} to Ana {{N'Nueva}} {yes, yes, yes}
... affirmative General {ADD} ... :-) ... Major ADD ... :-) ...

Silly SB gotta be way!!! more clear
Silly SB gotta be way!!! more clear

{geeze - this is easy on a computer}

... :-) ...

Silly SB gotta be way!!! more clear

SB (Silly)

<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

con science
-anybody who tells you that precedent is all we need

conscience
-morality borne through integrity* of mind
*logical structure, structural integrity
usage::kinda' like the opposite of 'she canny take n'more,Captain'

conscious
... the dance between threads of attention {and back again}
~my doggy is conscious.
woof!

consciousness
woof! grrr! woof growl! woof!
-my doggy appears not to recognize this critter.

SB.

Dude...

You're killing me here...

I can't be laughing this loudly at work, silly !!!!

Otherwise, you're going to have to make me your employee...

-?-
So ... consciousness is an evolution of conscious, the very evolutionary event from which mind arose.
-?-
It's the process by which we become conscious of threads of conscious.
-?-or better-?-
It's the process by which we become conscious of our own threads of attention {attentional threads}.
-?-
Attentional threads are going to transmute into the task - the task of 'multi-tasking' - which we observe to be one of the two components of mind of ADDer {the metamodel web, being the other} ... ... ... multi-threaded thought (a synonym for ADDer multi-tasking) relates to throwing multiple attentional threads ... within, of course ... {conscious} space ... ... ... or better ... multiple cognitive processes within cognitive cortical pyramidally ...

"I don’t think I have top down thing":o:p :o :eek: :o :p :faint:

... neuronally over-endowed sub-skull subspace.
-?-
It's the second thread of attention which was required for mind.

The ADD mind is an evolution from basic mind.
We've tackled the metamodel web - but I've stalled over the idea of multi-tasking and its correlation with throwing multiple threads of attention - I believe that Ana N'N has delivered the idea to this thread - that mind could only arise through greater than one thread of attention/conscious ... ... ...

SB.

silly !!!!Let's just scrap hierarchical physical structures within the work environment.

I'm wiggling my nose - and if you wiggle your nose ...

{}

... ... ... we'll both be wiggling our noses.

SB.

...whoopsy...
... ... ... nearly forgot!!!... ... ...

~And maybe things'll change~

Nobody is better than anybody else.
Nobody is cleverer than anyone else.

Is our evolution towards No body?
No va?
No way???

No(che) [bueno]

well i'd like to see a follow-up on how the a.d.d. brain differs in its internal activity from the 'normal' brain, in terms of 'intention' and the possibility of the a.d.d. brain having much higher instances of 'attention blinks.'

interesting she didn't mention attention deficit disorder. i'm starting my cognitive psychology course tomorrow and maybe i will be able to look into this!
I'd be interested in seeing what results you come up with.

Btw: I live very close to Seattle, it's my favorite big city, at least when it's not raining :rolleyes:

well zach, get ready for at least 9 months of rain coming up..... the summer spoiled us though!

i already emailed the article to my professor! in about a week we'll be talking about it.

about consciousness...when psychology first became a discipline in the 1880s, william james was the psychologist who described consciousness as a "stream" when the rest of psychology tried to structure/organize/name/limit consciousness as something finite.

i think james captured the reality of human consciousness in general (and the choas AND order of the ADD brain) with his interpretation of a constant flowing, steady, moving, unpredictable concept of human motive/thought/understanding/reason/feeling.

i love psych :p

i think j...
... ... ... and you'd be correct ... ... ...

... :-) ...

sb.

http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/9356/CognitionCogsInMind.gif


... ...

All I got out of this was:

overendowedtopdown

:faint:

Which I'm sure, isn't what you were talking about ...but still exemplified my 'pinhead' attention span.

And right now...I'm going to claim that's a form of a goofy defense mechanism, in itself...

Considering it's rush hour...and I'm about to be right in the middle of it, leaving work, now.

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=565 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=home vAlign=top align=left colSpan=3>Scientific American {mind} Oct 05

The Movie in Your Head (http://www.sciammind.com/article.cfm?articleID=00019F6C-E9EC-1329-A41C83414B7F0000)


</TD></TR><TR><TD class=home vAlign=top align=left colSpan=3>By Christof Koch </TD></TR><TR><TD class=home vAlign=top align=left colSpan=3>Is consciousness a seamless experience or a string of fleeting images, like frames of a movie? The emerging answer will determine whether the "real world" is merely an illusion


Christof Koch is professor of computation and neural systems at the California Institute of Technology and is a passionate runner and mountain climber. More of his work can be found at www.klab.caltech.edu (http://www.klab.caltech.edu/)


</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
... and friend to Crick - the Nobel prize winning DNA dude!

Clearly - the mind does not exist.
Because if it did - we might have a Scientific American series entitled {mind}
Whoa! ... Wait a minute! ... But we do ...
Maybe it's a metaphysical publication which has stolen the name of a respected scientific journal.
Well ... no ... no - that's not it at all ...
Geeze! Did we actually ever witness a debate over whether the mind exists, here?
Stranger than fiction.
*~-s-t-r-a-n-g-e-r_t-h-a-n_f-i-c-t-i-o-n-~*

Tams - dude - when the insane take over the asylum - and find that it's all sdrawkcab - sdrawkcab ylsselepoh - smaT ezeeg - backwards!


SB.

I noted that article on that site, SB !

Scrawkcab, commented on that subject a while ago on here, too !

{...}... thank you,
{{{:-).(o:}}}
~S~

Yeah..well don't thank me just yet. (0:

Atoms and all subatomic particles/waves-comprised of consciousness.

mindmatter

One word.
No hyphen found.

Throwing out Daykartays agreement.
3 1/2+ cents too 'long'.

oi vey!!!

...hmmm ... what's in there ...?...
m'noggin is rolling about like in the Exorcist
~ps~
{{{boo!!!}}}


...sorry!

:-[ ) -<- false moustache ->- see ->- :-)

...So...quantum consciousness ... first.

?super-emergence? (with little cute underpants on the outside - not those big ugly parachutes).
... which serve an aesthetically useful rather than just plain plain plain functional utilitarian role lin evolution.

why?

just strikes me that in a single manifold (one piece of string) of the following structure ...

{{{{etc...}}}}{{{{{etc...}}}}}

... where ...
{}{} ->3,4,13-> {} and {} ->emergence-> {{}{}}

{{}{}} ->- individuality maintained [ {} and {} ]whereas information content increased [ { and } ]... emergence of characters summarised by the idea emergence generates a structure which is 'greater than the sum of its parts' ... ... ...

So ?

{{{{etc...}}}}{{{{{etc...}}}}}

... At some point ...{*\ _ _ _ _ _ _ / *}

whereby

*\>_>_>_>_>_>_> / *

or

*\_ ->->->- _/*

{{{Hold those thoughts ...1...}}} ... :-) (for a second)
(... not sure what I want to write just yet)

oi vey!!!

Now where?

I've got Tammy's mind's brain's mind of her it's her own.

:eek:

so put it on the floor
put your hands up
and step away from the ...

:-)

ahhh!

the Holy Trinity except ...

{{{father, son and the Holy ghost}}}

father-ghost-son

...father
.+ ghost ->- son

->-

...metalevel
.+ detail ->- level

-
- -
- - -

{{{Hold those thoughts ...2...}}} ... :-) (for a second)
(... not sure what I want to write just yet)


How about?
{{{{etc...}}}}{{{{{etc...}}}}}

{*\ _ _ _ _ _ _ / *}

... awareness of self presupposes change - and yet since the extremes of self have been reached - ie ...
*\>_>_>_>_>_>_> / *

... so ... we must move on

{}{}

->->->- ->->->- ->->->-

[]
[]
[]

...kinda' like ATP ... {our serendipitous line}
P P P

->->->-

... something rather special ...

->- noting the relationship of ->-

{{{Hold those thoughts ...3...}}} ... :-) (for a second)
(... not sure what I want to write just yet)

Ahhh!!!
I ***know*** what I want to write.

...father
.+ ghost ->- son

->-

...metalevel
.+ detail ->- level

->- special instance ->-

...metalevel
.+ detail ->- level

->- noting ->-

...metalevel ->- real domain (mathematics)
. level->- complex,imaginary domain (mathematics)

->- noting ->-

...metalevel
.+ detail ->- level

^..................^
|................../
LIGHT..........DARK
LIGHT..........LIGHT

->-
AUTONOMOUSLY POWERED

... so ...
:-)

wtf!!!

... am I going on about ...?...

:-)

... ... ... the metamind can satisfy its own need to rationalize rrreality - and so completes a cycle in a process which never ends.
An iterative process of repeating three dimensional x 3 evolutionary jumps up from abstraction layer to abstraction layer ... tending towards but never reaching infinity ...

{{{it never ends}}}

... placing the metamind as an end 13'n structure or 1'n+1 ... necessitates that the jump is made ->-

1'n+1 ->- [3'n+1 {{{->- 4,13 ->- ->- ->-}}}

->- ->- ->- ->- ->- ->- ->- ->- ->- ->- ->- ->-

...mother
.+.{{{}}} ->- daughter

... prosaically correcting the problem which was introduced into society by the evolutionarily conserved psychologically propagated behaviour of men towards women - which arose from the first act of violence ...
virus + mycobacterium ->- a 'rape' of sorts
which sadly
... Homo sapiens were unable to correct ...
... to purge from their minds ...

... ... ... because the pattern which evolution takes is towards deleting only those characteristics for which there is a n actual functional clash ...

- which arose from the first act of violence ...
-this is entitled 'original sin' in some texts ... and took place in the garden ...

... ... ... and so we needed to get ourselves 'back to the garden'
... ... and give it another go
... Homo neosapiens

... the story of man.

~The end~
...ps...
:-)

The Smiths
------------------------------.......
'sweet and tender hooligan'

Because he'll never, never, never, never, never, never do it again
And of course he won't
(oh, not until the next time)
... ... ... :-)


ADD (an endless thread of particles, life and love)

()... ... ...(.) (..) (...) ->- (...)->-{{{.}}}->-{} ->- {}

{}... ... ...{.}{..}{...} ->- {...}->-{{{.}}}->-[] ->- []

[]... ... ... ... ..[.][..][...] ->- [...]->-{{{.}}}->-() ->- ()

() == ()
... only 'better' - but not *that* definition
. 3d
.. 4d
... 13d

... emergent property may be understood on the appropriate level of abstraction as being of 3, 4 or 13-dimensional symplectic geometric structural topologies.

... understanding emergent properties on lower levels of abstraction
... where 'lower' like 'better' above is neither better nor worse - more fundamental - less complex ... if we prefer ...

Any problems which arise from understanding emergent properties on lower levels of abstraction - most notable - mass, waves, gravity, dark matter ...
can be solved by correcting our models for abstraction layer of first appearance of the emergent property.

-1-
particle
-2-
ATP
-3-
{{{.}}}

... just yet. (0:Nove Allerighty!
And now???

p:-)

Smilie liked his new baseball hat.

http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.asp?showID=11508

Acclaimed neuroscientist Christof Koch (http://www.klab.caltech.edu/%7Ekoch/) is renowned for his contributions to the quest for understanding the underlying mechanisms of consciousness. During a celebrated, sixteen-year collaboration with Francis Crick, he developed a pioneering account of the bases of visual perception, attention, and consciousness.

since he is mentioned in the article, a little late I know.. But I just read it.

Ha !

My 'attention', just realized how these 'articles', have a way of 'disappearing', after some *time*.

So it might be a good idea, for me to post the information in the article (i.e. the actual article, and not just the link), so people won't have the WT?? 'look', if it goes AWOL, later.


Here goes:









<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" summary=print_version border=0><TBODY><TR><TD align=left>Coming to Attention




</TD><TD vAlign=top align=left width=14>http://www.sciammind.com/media/struct/trans.gif</TD><TD vAlign=top align=middle width=14></TD></TR><TR><TD colSpan=3>http://www.sciammind.com/media/struct/trans.gif</TD></TR><TR><TD align=left>How the brain decides what to focus conscious attention on




</TD><TD vAlign=top align=left width=14>http://www.sciammind.com/media/struct/trans.gif</TD><TD vAlign=top align=middle width=14></TD></TR><TR><TD colSpan=3>http://www.sciammind.com/media/struct/trans.gif</TD></TR><TR><TD>by Andreas K. Engel, Stefan Debener and Cornelia Kranczioch






</TD><TD vAlign=top align=left width=14>http://www.sciammind.com/media/struct/trans.gif</TD><TD vAlign=top align=middle width=14></TD></TR><TR><TD colSpan=3>http://www.sciammind.com/media/struct/trans.gif</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top align=left>As cognitive neuroscientists, we would like to know what is behind such phenomena:



What happens in our brains when we deliberately concentrate on something?

Does some mechanism inside our heads decide which information reaches our consciousness--and which does not?

And do our intentions, needs and expectations influence what we perceive?

Recent research offers some fascinating insights.


Homing in on Attention

Psychologists began seeking answers to such questions as long ago as 1890, when American philosopher and psychologist William James wrote about important characteristics of attention in The Principles of Psychology.

James concluded that the capacity of consciousness is limited, which is why we cannot pay attention to everything at once.

Attention is much more selective:
it impels consciousness to concentrate on certain stimuli to process them especially effectively.


James and others also distinguished between types of attention.

Some of them are "self-created":
a penetrating odor, a loud siren, a woman in a bright red dress amid people clad in black.
(Many researchers now call this process "bottom-up," because the stimuli battle their way into our consciousness automatically because they are so striking.)

Alternatively, we can actively and deliberately control our focus
(called "top-down," because higher brain regions are involved at the outset).

For example, at a noisy party, we can tune out background noise to listen to the conversation at the next table.






Neuroscience did not take up this topic until much later.





In 1985 a research team led by Robert Desimone at the National Institute of Mental Health was first to observe how single neurons in the visual cortex of rhesus monkeys changed their activity depending on what the primates were looking at.



Desimone and his collaborator Jeffrey Moran discovered that certain neurons in the V4 area of the visual cortex--an area important for the perception of color--fired more frequently when the test animal gazed fixedly at a colored target.



The same nerve cells exhibited much weaker activity when the ape noticed the target but did not look right at it.





Other researchers later discovered that active attention was not only reflected in the higher levels of visual processing, such as in the V4 area, but could also be traced down to stimulus processing in the lowest levels in the cortical hierarchy.



Synchronous Firing

All these studies linked attention to an increase in the firing rate, or activity, of neurons.


Now the latest neurobiological research points to another significant factor in attention:
huge numbers of neurons synchronize their activity.



Many neuroscientists believe that study of this phenomenon will provide the answer to one of the biggest riddles of attention research, the so-called binding problem.




Imagine that a grasshopper suddenly lands on the table in front of you.



Before the insect can arrive in your consciousness as a fully realized, three-dimensional entity, several different areas of the brain must be active.



One processes the insect's color, another its size, yet another its location, and so on.



How does the brain bind all these individual characteristics together into a single impression of a green grasshopper?





Twenty years ago Christoph von der Malsburg, a computer scientist and brain theorist, now at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, suggested a solution.





By synchronizing their activities, nerve cells could join into effectively cooperating units--so-called assemblies.



Subsequently, a number of research teams, among them the group at Wolf Singer's laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, have demonstrated that this "ballet of neurons" in fact exists.





Peter Koenig, Singer and one of us (Engel) carried out an especially decisive experiment at the end of the 1980s.



We presented a cat with various targets to observe.



When we showed it a single object, neurons in its visual system responsible for analyzing characteristics synchronized their activities in a pronounced way.



When we gave the animal two separate objects to look at, however, the common rhythm broke down.





The synchronization changed to a pattern of rapid oscillatory fluctuations at characteristic frequencies between 30 and 100 hertz, a region that brain researchers call the gamma band.





Then, in the early 1990s, Nobel laureate Francis Crick (who died in 2004) and computational neuroscientist Christof Koch of the California Institute of Technology expanded on Malsburg's hypothesis with a then provocative idea.



The two scientists posited that only signals from "teams" of neurons that cooperated especially well possessed enough strength to reach the consciousness.



Recent findings lend empirical support to the Crick-Koch hypothesis.





Between 1995 and 1998, Pascal Fries--now at the F. C. Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging in Nijmegen, the Netherlands--and Singer, Engel and others at Max Planck carried out some of these experiments.





The investigators took advantage of an effect called binocular rivalry:

if the right eye and the left eye are equipped with special glasses that let each see only one of two very different images, the subject cannot meld them into a single perception.



The brain resolves this dichotomy by favoring input from one eye and suppressing input from the other.



As a result, the volunteers always saw just one of the pictures at a time.



First they would see one image and then, a few seconds later, the other.



Two Eyes Vying

How is binocular rivalry waged at the neuronal level?

We compared two groups of nerve cells in the visual cortices of cats:
one group dealt with the characteristics of the left image, the other with those of the right.

From an animal's behavior we could tell which image it was looking at during any given moment.

Whichever side occupied the feline's attention showed superior neuronal synchronization.

In contrast, when we then compared the neurons' firing rates, we observed no difference.


This result demonstrated that the degree of neuronal synchronization decisively influences which incoming signals are further processed and thus becomes relevant to the consciousness's perception.






<HR noShade SIZE=1>


What happens in our brains when we deliberately concentrate on something?
<HR noShade SIZE=1>






Fries also showed that active, intentional control of attention can influence gamma synchronization.





He worked in Desimone's lab with macaques that had learned to direct their attention to a particular spot on the monitor screen in response to a signal; a stimulus would appear at that location after a short delay.



If this stimulus appeared at the expected location, the gamma oscillations were clearly stronger.





Synchronization immediately weakened, however, as soon as the research animals switched their attention to other stimuli.







For humans, such experiments using implanted electrodes are possible only during brain surgery.



As a result we usually measure gamma activity by means of electroencephalography (EEG).



We recently carried out an attention experiment in which subjects read letters that flashed briefly on a computer monitor.



Most of the letters were black, but now and again we inserted a few green letters, which we asked the subjects to count.



Analysis of the EEG signals taken during the tests showed that only the unexpected appearance of green letters produced an increase in the
high-frequency part of the gamma band.



Expectant Neurons

The effect of expectation reveals itself especially clearly in an experiment using acoustic stimuli.


We asked listeners to pay particular attention to high tones in a series of more or less similar tones.

When they heard the target tone, a high-frequency gamma-band activity appeared in the brain; in contrast, unexpected loud noises, which automatically call attention to themselves, did not elicit this effect.




Regardless of which sensory system is -involved, the reinforced rhythmic synchronization in the gamma band that we measured seems to be a good indicator of active attention.





When a person deliberately directs attention to a stimulus, not only do the firing rates of individual neurons in the brain change, but the synchronization also improves for all the neurons taking part in the coding for the same stimulus.





We liken the effect to a symphony orchestra that soon arrives at a common tempo after the individual instruments begin playing.





In what ways might intentions and needs influence attention?



With the help of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we wanted to locate brain regions involved in conscious perception of a target stimulus.





To do so, we needed a research technique to compare two conditions:

one that led from active attention to conscious awareness of a stimulus, and a second, in which the same stimulus did not penetrate the consciousness.



We used a phenomenon called attention blink.







In the experiment we once again displayed a series of letters to subjects while we observed them with fMRI.



This time, however, only a single green letter appeared among rapidly changing black letters, and the subject had to tell us, at the end of the test run, whether or not it was a vowel.



At the same time, the subject was to look for a black X that popped up at different times after the green -letter.







During the experiment, the attention of our subjects showed clear gaps--the "blinks"--as a result of their intentional, conscious focus on the task.







If the black X appeared very soon--within a third of a second--after the green letter, about half the time the participants did not notice it.



If there was a longer period after the first stimulus, their recognition rate improved.



At the end of the experiment, we compared the fMRI values for each run-through in which the subjects perceived the X with those in which it was shown but not noticed.







We saw clear differences in activity in a few brain regions, all in the frontal and the parietal cortices.







Scientists have been aware of these regions' importance in controlling attention for a long time:

for example, some patients who suffer damage to certain parts of their parietal cortex from a stroke can no longer pay attention to any stimuli in certain areas of their visual fields, which means they cannot consciously perceive them.





We were surprised, however, when we found a difference in the limbic system--in the amygdala, to be precise, which is normally involved in processing emotional reactions.







The state of our emotional system probably influences the control of attention and which sensory signals are allowed to reach consciousness.





The experiments we describe provide another puzzle for researchers who are seeking the neuronal basis of consciousness:

the gamma oscillation that is closely associated with conscious perception does not just depend on external stimuli but also on the flexible inner dynamic of the brain.







We theorize that neurons are constantly and actively predicting where the visual stimuli they expect will appear.







Fries and other researchers have in fact measured the synchronization effect in the visual area of animals even before they were presented with an expected stimulus.







Probably, brain regions such as the frontal cortex or the limbic system exercise influence over synchronization in the sensory areas.



All incoming stimuli set their own temporal coupling patterns in motion.







If these stimuli correspond to those that the expectation has created, the incoming signals are reinforced by a resonance effect and conducted onward.



If the expectations are not met, however, the brain suppresses the incoming neuronal messages.







This process was at work in the gorilla experiment.



The subjects were not looking for a person in a gorilla suit.



Their brains were engaged in tracking the moving players in white.



Any information about an ape that hit their retinas was out of sync with neuronal expectations, found no resonance and went unnoticed.







Neuronal synchronization brings order to the chaotic mental world.





In fact, cognitive deficits and disordered thoughts among schizophrenic patients appear to be connected to disturbed gamma-band coupling.







The healthy brain is, however, anything but a passive receiver of news from the environment.







It is an active system, one that controls itself via a complex internal dynamic.





Our experiences, intentions, expectations and needs affect this dynamic and thus determine how we perceive and interpret our environment.



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Actually I had no problems accessing the hyper link in the initial thread, I needed a refresher read.


sorry got lost reading the articles onthe Koch WEB sire hyper linked in SB's post

brb. . .

caltech not to be confused with cow tech (http://www.klab.caltech.edu/refweb/paper/498.pdf )
The universe is causally closed; that is, any thing that happens happened because it was caused by some thing else. Given the causes the effect had to occur. There is no choice.

On the other hand, there is the profound experience of freedom of will. Except when drunk, hypnotized, under some powerful emotion (such as rage} or in a similar condition I am free at the psychological level

Can both be true? Many have argued that there is no freedom. To this Searle retorts “If I am in a restaurant and I am confronted with a menu and the waiter asked me what I would like I can not say I’m a determinist, I’ll just wait and see what happens, because even that utterance is only intelligible to me is an exercise of my free will.
***End Quote


So my ADD was caused by some thing (my parents having unprotected sex resulting in me, I guess) yet I have the freedom of choice to view it and use it (or not) as I choose.


Our experiences, intentions, expectations and needs affect this dynamic and thus determine how we perceive and interpret our environment.


It is all in the perception, IE don't worry honey it is all in your head.

It could somewhat explain, though, why I'm waaaaaaaaay Wiggly Piggly hyper, in some settings/situations, and not as in others...

I'm always Wiggly Piggly...prolly am while I'm fully sleepin' too..but I don't have a way of checkin' that, meself.