Meta-Meta: Artificial Neural Network Sees Optical Illusions

New Scientist is reporting about a paper by David Corney and R. Beau Lotto, in which a computer has been tricked into observing optical illusions in much the same manner as humans.

For some time, scientists have believed one class of optical illusions result from the way the brain tries to disentangle the colour of an object and the way it is lit. An object may appear brighter or darker, either because of the shade of its colour, or because it is in bright light or shadows.

The brain learns how to tackle this through trial and error when we are babies, the theory goes. Mostly it gets it right, but occasionally a scene contradicts our previous experiences. The brain gets it wrong and we perceive an object lighter or darker than it really is – creating an illusion.

Corney and Lotto modeled a computer program to "learn" to predict the lightness of an image, based on past experience.

From their abstract:

Artificial neural networks were trained to predict the reflectance of surfaces in a synthetic ecology consisting of 3-D “dead-leaves” scenes under non-uniform illumination. The networks learned to solve this task accurately and robustly given only ambiguous sense data. In addition—and as a direct consequence of their experience—the networks also made systematic “errors” in their behaviour commensurate with human illusions, which includes brightness contrast and assimilation—although assimilation (specifically White's illusion) only emerged when the virtual ecology included 3-D, as opposed to 2-D scenes. Subtle variations in these illusions, also found in human perception, were observed, such as the asymmetry of brightness contrast. These data suggest that “illusions” arise in humans because (i) natural stimuli are ambiguous, and (ii) this ambiguity is resolved empirically by encoding the statistical relationship between images and scenes in past visual experience. Since resolving stimulus ambiguity is a challenge faced by all visual systems, a corollary of these findings is that human illusions must be experienced by all visual animals regardless of their particular neural machinery. The data also provide a more formal definition of illusion: the condition in which the true source of a stimulus differs from what is its most likely (and thus perceived) source. As such, illusions are not fundamentally different from non-illusory percepts, all being direct manifestations of the statistical relationship between images and scenes.

As New Scientist sums up:

Most creators of machine vision try to copy human vision because it is so well suited to a variety of environments. The new findings suggest that if we want to exploit its advantages, we also have to suffer its failings. It will be impossible to create a perfect, superhuman robot that never makes mistakes.

Ridden by the LOA

Physicist Fred Alan Wolf, author of such books as The Dreaming Universe, The Eagle's Quest, and The Yoga of Time Travel, and commentator in the movie What the Bleep Do we Know?! has weighed in on the Law of Attraction, as popularized in the film The Secret.

There is a big difference between just thinking 1) "I want a big car" 2) "I am not good enough" or 3) "I am good" or 4) "I am ugly" or 5) "I am happy" and taking an appropriate action to do something about them. The LOA (Law of Attraction) seems to imply that merely thinking such thoughts will attract the object of those thoughts to you. I don't think the universe works this way. When you think those thoughts you tend to act according to them and those actions will attract you to those objects and modify your behavior accordingly. There is no magic field "out there" or magic genii "out there" that will answer those thoughts by granting your wishes as the film seems to imply. That magic field or genii is yourself.

This is important, and Fred's closing paragraph is even more important (I"m not reposting it here - go read it yourself). Over the past year I've heard people mistakenly think that the Hindu concept of karma is proof of "the Secret," and I've heard people use the LOA to justify the very real physical danger they have been placed in by abusive relationships. "I must have manifested his stalking behavior, for some reason or another. I guess there's a lesson I need to learn."

As Fred says,

If you believe this, then you will always find a rationalization for whatever random events occur in your life. That is certainly not science, but is humans trying to deal with our indeterminant universe with hindsight. If something good happens, you will tell yourself "I was using the LOA to attract good." If something bad happens, you will say "I was using the LOA to attract something bad." Both are simple and human rationalizations and in fact not based on any scientific fact or experiment and certainly not on quantum physics...In brief, people are attracted or repulsed by your behavior not your thoughts. Things are not. Stuff happens-- good and bad-- to all of us.

Furthermore, if you're going to dabble in this stuff (and I've had more than a few instances in my life where there has been no explainable reason for certain things to suddenly materialize in my life after thinking of them), there needs to be some sort of ethics involved. I can "put it out there" that I want a million dollars (and if anybody wants to send it to me, please e-mail me or go to the contact page), yet if I don't attach some structure to this desire, then it's entirely possible that it could easily come at the cost of the lives of loved ones. You can "put it out there" that you want to win the lottery. But if you don't buy lottery tickets, it ain't gonna happen. When I was growing up, the Maryland lottery used to have a slogan: "You have to play, to win." Desire is the first step. But if you want real change, you have to work for it as well - set things in motion, prime the environment.

I don't know if there really is a "law of attraction" or not. I've had some really strange things happen in my life that could be explained by such a thing, but not EVERYTHING is explained by it. If there is, in fact, a "law of attraction," I would venture two things:

It isn't about material gain.

It isn't about the accumulation of objects.

Get out there and live life. Get out there and listen to other people. Share your dreams. Buy someone a beer.

That's the real "Secret."

Retreat

I will be away from the computer for the weekend. I'll be at Mount Madonna for a 3 day retreat.

I'm sure I'll have something to post by Sunday evening when I return.

Have a good weekend!

50th Annual Parapsychological Association Convention coverage continues

Annalisa at Public Parapsychology has published another installment of her coverage of the 50th Annual Parapsychological Association Convention.

This installment provides a summary of a group of presentations on mediumship, and covers presentations by Alexander Moreira-Almeida, William G. Roll, Elizabeth C. Roxbourgh, and Sergio Schilling.

Once again, Annalisa's posts are the next best thing to having been there.

Blade Runner

Because Hollywood never seems content to leave well enough alone, Ridley Scott is doing yet another remix of his 1982 film Blade Runner. This time, it is being marketed as "The Final Cut," and normally, while I'm kind of opposed to this sort of thing (ever since the Star Wars remixes), I'm actually really looking forward to this. There is also a colossally huge dvd set coming out in December, featuring every version ever released, as well as a massive documentary, and tons of other goodies.

Wired has an interview with Mr. Scott, about why he chose to revisit the film yet again, and why it still continues to linger in our minds, 25 years later.

Catland and Louis Wain

MindHacks is calling foul over the use of Louis Wain's paintings to diagnose his schizophrenia.

The five pictures are from an original series of eight which were collected by Dr Walter Maclay who was interested in the effect of mental illness on art.

However, the pictures were undated and, as Rodney Dale notes in his biography of Wain (Louis Wain: The Man Who Painted Cats; ISBN 1854790986), "with no evidence of the order of their progression, Maclay arranged them in a sequence which clearly demonstrated, he thought, the progressive deterioration of the artist's mental abilities."

Wain's artwork was popularized(?) in recent years by David Tibet of Current 93, who not only name-dropped him in a song, but used one of his cat pictures for an album cover.

More Louis Wain artwork can be found here.

Oliver Sacks Interview

Wired has an interview with Oliver Sacks this morning, discussing his new book about music.

Music doesn't represent any tangible, earthly reality. It represents things of the heart, feelings which are beyond description, beyond any experience one has had. The non-representational but indescribably vivid emotional quality is such as to make one think of an immaterial or spiritual world. I dislike both of those words, because for me, the so-called immaterial and spiritual is always vested in the fleshly — in "the holy and glorious flesh," as Dante said.

I have been long fascinated by the interactions of music, sound, and consciousness. I have certainly had transcendent experiences listening to music. The first time I heard Lisa Gerrard perform live practically reduced me to tears. I have a very visceral experience listening to Einstürzende Neubauten. Coil have consistently taken me into varying altered states of consciousness through sound alone.

Sacks mentions

wondering if the incidence of earworms and musical hallucinations is higher now, with background music in every public place. You can't go to a restaurant without music, and they get offended if you ask them to turn it off. They feel it's part of their creativity — they're doing it for you.

And this is intriguing, too. While we can all talk about our favorite bands, and "transcendent" and "beautiful" music experiences, and while we eventually all hit that point of deciding that "the music these kids listen to these days is CRAP" (I remember the first time I made that announcement, and I still stand by it), it becomes easy to get lost in the beauty and not take a step back and look at the larger beauty of the phenomenon in both it's "good" and "evil" incarnations.

Muzak, for instance, has done some incredible research about the effects of things such as tempo, rhythm, melody, instrumentation, and more on the minds of listeners. They have found ways to make workers more productive, and consumers to purchase more, just by the music they have programmed into the background. Joseph Lanza's book Elevator Music gives some fascinating background on this research.

The use of music and sound as non-lethal weaponry is also well noted.

Perhaps the larger fundamental issue is whether or not sound waves might have something to do with the inherent structure of things? Hans Jenny pioneered the field of Cymatics, which looks at this possibility as well.

I, myself, am a bit of a music fiend. My father was a musician, and I've been exposed to it all of my life. I even worked in the music biz for several years, and used to do radio. While I no longer define myself by the bands I listen to (most likely due to getting older, or more apathetic about such things - as a dear friend once said: "You can be a black sheep, but you're still a sheep. Wearing black."), I still enjoy finding new musical experiences.

It's just that the stuff these kids listen to these days is crap. ;)

The Devil's Bible

The Codex Gigas, or "The Devil's Bible" was created in the 13th Century.

From WikiPedia:

It includes the entire Latin Bible in a pre-Vulgate version, Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae, Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, Cosmas of Prague's Chronicle of Bohemia, various tractates (from history, etymology and physiology), a calendar with necrologium, a list of brothers in Podlažice monastery, magic formulae and other local records. The entire document is written in Latin.

According to legend the scribe was a monk who breached his monastic code and was sentenced to be walled up alive. In order to forbear this harsh penalty he promised to create in one single night a book to glorify the monastery forever, including all human knowledge. Near midnight he became sure that he could not complete this task alone, so he sold his soul to the devil for help. The devil completed the manuscript and the monk added the devil's picture out of gratitude for his aid.

You can now peruse the Codex online.

New Series in Salon...First up: fMRI, Brain States, and Consciousness

MindHacks is reporting on Salon's new series Mind Reader, by neurologist Robert Burton.

Burton's first column discusses the possibility of consciousness in a vegetative state. As Salon is correct to point out, this has major ramifications, if so.

In a recent article in the Archives of Neurology, a team of British and Belgian neuroscientists describe a clinically unconscious accident victim who can, on command, imagine herself playing tennis and walking around her house. By showing that her functional brain imaging studies (fMRI) are indistinguishable from those of healthy volunteers performing the same mental tasks, the researchers claim that the young woman's fMRI "confirmed beyond any doubt that she was consciously aware of herself and her surroundings, and was willfully following instructions given to her, despite her diagnosis of a vegetative state."

Naturally this calls to mind the Terry Schiavo case.

Salon notes

Yet the study's conclusions are not beyond a doubt. There are plenty of questions about whether this young woman is conscious and capable of choice...While inside an fMRI scanner, the unresponsive woman was asked by the researchers to perform three mental tests: relax, imagine playing tennis, and imagine walking around the various rooms in her home. The tasks were chosen because of their ability to activate different areas of the brain. Imagining playing tennis would light up the supplementary motor area, a region involved in imagining as well as performing coordinated movements. In contrast, imagining moving from room to room in a house activated those regions, such as the posterior parietal lobe, that contribute to imaginary or real spatial navigation.

At first glance, the results are startling. The patient was able to activate the same general brain regions as conscious volunteers serving as controls in the test; according to the authors, the images were statistically indistinguishable.

But is she "conscious"? The answer to this question will have tremendous consequences. Burton points out

Tens of thousands of patients in a persistent vegetative state linger in long-term care facilities. Others remain under the radar, being cared for at home by their families. The estimated annual cost of medical treatment for them is between $1 billion and $7 billion a year. Once larger numbers of patients are evaluated via fMRI, it is quite likely that we will find others with similar degrees of activation on a variety of mental tasks. Family members will be asked to understand, interpret and act on the scan reports. I cannot imagine a worse medical nightmare than being told that a clinically unconscious spouse or child has been shown on fMRI to have an active imagination and substantial self-awareness, especially when the findings don't alter the grim prognosis or substantiate the value of greater rehabilitative efforts. Before putting a family through such agonizing dilemmas, we neurologists should be reasonably certain that what the fMRI shows does correspond to actual mental states in the seemingly unconscious.

I heartily concur with Burton on this. I think part of the problem at hand is that we have no definition of "consciousness." The very mystery of it is what drew me into the field in the first place. In many ways, this is no different from the problem I blogged about yesterday facing Israel, over how to define "death."

Even if we use the quick and dirty definitions above, "aware of one's surroundings" and "capable of choice", we are entering a huge minefield. A Roomba, to a degree, is "aware" of its surroundings. As for "capable of choice," that debate has been raging for centuries.

There are two other issues at hand here, which both resolve around being the person diagnosed with being in a persistent vegetative state. Does the person want to live, or does the person want to die? Being unable to communicate these wishes is a horrifying thought.

On the one hand, there is the Johnny Got His Gun scenario, where the narrator of Dalton Trumbo's book is a veteran whose face and limbs have been lost in the war. He is painfully aware, but unable to communicate his desire for death to the outside world, until he figures out to bob his head on a pillow in morse code.

On the other hand, there's what I call the Stephen Hawking scenario. What if computer technology had not been what it was, to enable Stephen Hawking to communicate? How would he be have been treated?

The one thing the Terry Schiavo case, hammered home for me was the need to set up a living will. I think ultimately, despite whether this research pans out or not, until some sort of technology exists to allow for communication, beyond the simple mirroring of brain states, the best we can hope to do is to make sure our wishes are known well in advance.

Defining "life", "death", and "consciousness" becomes trickier and trickier with each passing day. This whole exercise shows just how much is tied up in how we use these words.

Burton is correct to point out that

Consciousness isn't generated by a specific brain area that can be directly visualized. The fMRI can show us the precursors of a perception: It cannot tell us if the person is actually aware of that perception.

While there are certainly neurophysical correlates of consciousness, we cannot safely say that consciousness is a result of these correlates anymore than we can say a radio somehow mysteriously "generates" music. We can remove large chunks of brain and cause a cessation of consciousness. I can also remove large chunks of radio and cause a cessation of music.

Here's a link (.pdf) to the article Burton is discussing.

Music and Learning

Scientific American is reporting on a recent study by Nina Kraus and her team that finds that music training might enhance the ability to read and speak by triggering changes in the brain stem, as well as the cortex.

Scientists previously believed that the strength of neuron connections in the brainstem was fixed, but the new findings suggest otherwise. "What we are showing here is the very basic circuitry of the brain is in fact more malleable than we previously thought," Kraus says. "What you do with your senses actually shapes what the circuitry becomes; [it] tunes your sensory apparatus."

"I think of music as being kind of quintessential multisensory activity," she adds, owing to elements of performance, as musicians follow cues from others and must read, feel and hear concurrently.

Kraus's team conducted experiments on 29 subjects averaging 25 years of age, 16 of whom had been playing instruments from the age of five. The subjects donned scalp electrodes localized to each's brain stem region to measure the activity of neurons there while they were exposed to different stimuli. In one case, the participants viewed someone saying syllables of speech, such as the sound "da" or they watched someone bow a cello. In the second construct, the subjects heard the sounds from the previous films while they watched an unrelated, silent movie designed only to keep their attention.

Their findings are being published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

Defining Death in Israel

Ha'aretz has an interesting history of how death has been defined medically through the ages.

Modern medical technology enables us to extend life despite various diseases, and also blurs the border between life and death. On the other hand, the constant need for organs for transplants obligates us to determine the moment of death with great precision, via an agreed process, and as quickly as possible, even in cases when the deceased's heart continues to beat.

The article traces efforts to pinpoint death back to Plato and Galen, who seemed to think 3 days was sufficient time. Things have become much trickier in modern times.

The complicated issues of defining the moment of death continue to plague us to this day. The modern medical conception of death is that it is not a momentary event but rather a gradual process that occurs at a different rate in the body's various cells and tissues. Inasmuch as death is a process that sometimes lasts hours or even days, doctors must determine with certainty that the process has indeed begun, and that the patient is at an irreversible stage in the process - that there is no turning back, even if not all the body's tissues have actually died.

This history is presented in the context of some debate in Israel at the moment, over how to define death, specifically so that organs may be harvested for donation.

Presumably, the adoption of the brain death protocol by the Chief Rabbinate would add more communities to the pool of organ donors, making such adoption a national priority. Unfortunately, in the 20 years since 1987, the doctors and the rabbis have not reached an understanding or a consensus, with each side digging in its heels and accusing the other of obtuseness and egocentric considerations.

The article is written by Avinoam Reches, a neurologist at Hadassah University Hospital and chairman of the Israeli Medical Association's Ethics Committee

Help Requested: Déjà Vu Portal

Since this site went live, I've been e-mailing with Art Funkhouser in Bern, Switzerland.

Back in 2004, Art put up a questionnaire on the web (which you can fill out, too!) as an initial attempt to find out what people's experiences are like when they say they have had déjà vu (even though he is not entirely satisfied with the term - see, for instance, http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~mdlee/dejavu.htm).

Looking at the data, Art realized that the only way we are going to learn what people are actually experiencing is if they have a chance to submit accounts of what has happened to them.

From Art:

There is also the problem that for some their deja vu occurrences are connected with an underlying neurological problem and they should see medical attention while for others (the majority) their déjà vu's are within normal bounds). I now envision setting up a Déjà Vu Web portal where information about this intriguing phenomenon (or better, phenomena) can be made accessible and personal accounts can be collected.

Art is looking for help in creating such a web portal.

I am hoping to find others with such skills who would be willing to collaborate on setting up such a portal (along the lines of Wikipedia). Should you or someone you know has such skills and the time and interest to work with me in putting such a portal together, I would be very grateful if you would get into contact with me at art (at) funkhouser (dot) ch.

This sounds like a fun, exciting project. I would consider jumping into the fray myself, if I didn't already have too many plates spinning. If you'd like to get involved, please contact Art Funkhouser at the above e-mail address.

Pandora's Box

In case you happen to have a few years worth of free time at your disposal, I thought I'd drop two massive resources on you.

First, is Free Science Online's video collection of lectures on Cognitive Computing, Consciousness, Science, Philosophy and Mind. These are all hosted in various spots, and feature an impressive array of topics and researchers, including John Searle, and V.S. Ramachandran. There are also links to episodes of the Closer To Truth series, with Marilyn Schlitz, David Chalmers, Fred Alan Wolf, Dean Radin, Charles Tart, Stuart Hameroff, and more. Literally hours and hours worth of video.

Second, is the rather daunting list of Consciousness-related links at psyche.com. There are also equally impressive arrays of links to a wide range of other topics, as well. The website is boasting over 15,000 links, and I'm going to take them at their word.

follow ups

I just returned home from a very nice afternoon at The Dream Institute in Berkeley. It was your basic open house, food, beverages, mingling, and some fascinating synchronicities. Thanks to attendees there, I have a few new sources to look at for my Master's thesis - because one can never have too many sources.

*ahem*

I opened up my e-mail upon returning home, and found a note from Ryan at the Dream Studies Portal. He's arrived at his new secret Dream Lair, and has weighed in on the New York Times article I'd written about last Monday. This is a fine bit of writing that makes me proud to have Ryan as a friend and colleague. Prepare to have your preconceptions of "the purposes" of lucid dreaming messed with.

Finally, another follow-up. Annalisa at Public Parapsychology has published a third part to her series on the 50th Annual Parapsychological Association Convention. This is another excellent opportunity to live vicariously through her.

Reminder: Psiber Dreaming Online Conference Starts Today

Just a reminder...

The Sixth Annual PSIber Dreaming Conference presented by the International Association for the Study of Dreams begins this weekend.

The Online Conference begins on Today, and runs until October 7.

The full schedule can be found here.

From the IASD:

Throughout recent history, many famous artists, scientists, politicians and others have recorded dreams which led them to life-changing discoveries and creative work. This list includes (but is not limited to): Mark Twain, Buckminster Fuller, Albert Einstein, Mary Shelley, Alice Walker, Isabel Allende, Sting, John Lennon and Carl Jung. Most of these dreams contained an element of psi: telepathy, precognition, psychopompic dreaming.

This year's PsiberDreaming Conference will present papers and workshops, special events and discussions focusing on how some of these creative dreams might have come about--and how any of us might use dreaming for creative endeavors.

Conference Rates

General Public $40 (US Dollars)

IASD Members $35

Students with Valid I.D. $25

To register, go here:

Presenters include Deirdre Barrett, Art Funkhouser, Dale Graff, Ed Kellogg, Stanley Krippner, and more.

50th Annual Conference of the Parapsychological Association

Annalisa at Public Parapsychology has started posting a series of summaries from the 50th Annual Parapsychological Association Conference in Nova Scotia.

The first two parts (part 1, part 2) are now online.

The presentations for the panel "Forgotten Pioneers of Parapsychology" are especially interesting to me, as I've been digging deep into the early days of the Society for Psychical Research as background material for part of my own research on Visitation Dreams. I've become rather enamored of the history of the field in the process.

I couldn't attend the PA Conference this year, but Annalisa's photos and her write-ups make me almost feel like I'm there.

Seeking Free Will in Our Brains: A Debate

The Dana Foundation has posted a fascinating debate between Mark Hallett and Paul R. McHugh about the meaning of Free Will, and whether brain science can now, or ever, explain it.

Big questions are being asked: Does Free Will exist? Do we freely choose to move? ("Consciousness can be deceptive, so is it possible that our sense of willing a movement, is incorrect in regard to when it actually happened in the brain?")

Important points are being brought up:

We have no grasp of any aspects of the elements underlying consciousness that can through their nature be tied to the anatomy or physiology of neurons, receptors, or brain systems. Much is correlated, particularly as brain imaging technology has grown, but nothing is explained.

and

The topic of free will is not solely a philosophical issue anymore. It is possible to gather objective data about it. Moreover, it is important to do so, because the consequences are moral, social, medical, and legal.

Why not exercise a little Free Will and check it out?

Or would my telling you to, cause you to do it?

"Birdbrains"...maybe not an insult anymore

A few days ago, I mentioned that Alex the Parrot had died. Alex was the focus of cognitive research by Irene Pepperberg, at Brandeis University.

An article in the Boston Globe talks about how birds in general, not just Alex are increasingly becoming the subjects of research.

Scientists are now studying various birds to explore everything from spatial memory to the grammatical structure of human language. This research is helping to reveal the secrets of the human brain. But it is also overturning the conventional evolutionary story of intelligence, in which all paths lead to the creation of the human cortex. The tree of life, scientists are discovering, has numerous branches of brilliance.

...For the most part, the clustered anatomy of the bird brain is organized very differently from the layered anatomy of the primate brain. For scientists, that's part of what makes the bird brain so fascinating. It's a different anatomical solution to the same evolutionary problem of how to live as a social species.

There's a lot more in the article, and it makes for a good read. There seems to be a lot more to avian intelligence than previously believed.

When Mecca is Below You

PhysOrg.com is reporting about guidelines being developed for the Malaysian astronauts who will be heading into space during Ramadan.

A 20 page booklet has been prepared by Malaysian Department of Islamic Development to assist the two astronauts, who are Muslim.

Because the space station circles the Earth 16 times a day, theoretically a Muslim would have to pray 80 times a day while staying there.

But the guidelines stipulate that the astronaut need only pray five times a day, just as on Earth, and that the times should follow the location where the spacecraft blasted off from -- in this case, Baikonur in Russia.

There are also suggestions on how to pray in a zero-gravity environment.

"During the prayer ritual, if you can't stand up straight, you can hunch. If you can't stand, you can sit. If you can't sit, you should lie down," according to the booklet.

Muslims are required to eat food that is halal, which rules out pork and its by-products, alcohol and animals not slaughtered according to Koranic procedures are forbidden -- but again in Space there is flexibility.

"If it is doubtful that the food has been prepared in the halal manner, you should eat just enough to ward off hunger," the booklet said.

While these astronauts are not the first Muslims in space, they are the first to launch during Ramadan.

Dream Institute Open House

The Dream Institute in Berkeley, California is having a Fall Equinox Open House on Sunday, September 23 from 2-4pm.

The Open House will feature refreshments, live music, an art exhibit, and a book sale.

Jana Hutcheson will be performing on guitar, and there will be a half-hour dramatic rendition of actual dreams starting at 3:30.

The Dream Institute is located at 1672 University Avenue in Berkeley, and can be reached at 510-845-1767.

Those of you who read my post earlier today, may want to make special note of the date.

How To Sleep (circa June, 1953)

One of my favorite blogs is Modern Mechanix, which scans and posts articles from various old Popular Science type magazines telling us about all the amazing innovations that will make living in the future far more exciting than it has actually turned out to be.

Today's post is from the June 1953 issue of Mechanix Illustrated, and features an article on "How to Sleep" by West F. Peterson.

"My system is sure-fire," said an advertising man. "Just before going to bed I eat a tremendous slice of Bermuda onion. It lulls my brain and I drop off immediately. My wife benefits too. The fumes seem to knock her out and she's asleep as soon as I am."

User Illusions

The Neural Correlate Society is calling for submissions for their 4th annual Best Visual Illusion Contest.

Direct queries to: Susana Martinez-Conde (Illusion Contest Coordinator, Neural Correlate Society)

The Contest will be held May 11, 2008 in Naples, Florida at the Vision Sciences Society Meeting.

23 Skidoo and the Baader-Meinhof Gang

According to Blogger this morning, this post will be Post #23.

23 is one of those numbers that seems to show up everywhere, once it has made itself known to you.

Once again, I will claim agnosticism about the whole thing, but I will admit that the number does seem to pop up in my life pretty frequently.

The question, obviously, is do you notice it because it's there, or is it there because you notice it?

And while we're on that subject (and before you head out the door and start seeing 23s everywhere too), I leave you with an article from damninteresting.com, about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, which might explain it all a bit.

You may have heard about Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon before. In fact, you probably learned about it for the first time very recently. If not, then you just might hear about it again very soon. Baader-Meinhof is the phenomenon where one happens upon some obscure piece of information– often an unfamiliar word or name– and soon afterwards encounters the same subject again, often repeatedly. Anytime the phrase "That's so weird, I just heard about that the other day" would be appropriate, the utterer is hip-deep in Baader-Meinhof.

Funny... I was just thinking about that a couple of days ago...

Danah Zohar talk

Danah Zohar, author of The Quantum Self and The Quantum Society, and co-author of Who's Afraid of Schroedinger's Cat? will be speaking at the University of Delaware on Friday.

The seminar will present Zohar's theory of a biologically embedded notion of consciousness, or “unitive thinking.” According to Zohar, this spiritual intelligence underlies our beliefs, values and daily actions and can be transformed into capital to create a new business culture driven by fundamental values and a sense of purpose in which wealth is accumulated to generate a profit while also working for the common good.

If you would like to attend, the talk will be at 3 p.m., Friday, Sept. 21, in 115 Purnell Hall.

The event is sponsored by the Leadership Program of UD's School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy through the Unidel Foundation and UD's Center for Community Research and Service.

All members of the UD community are encouraged to attend. For more information, contact Alain Noghiu at alain@udel.edu.

REM Rebound in Scientific American

Scientific American has an interesting article about "REM Rebound," or greater dream intensity through sleep deprivation.

The SciAm article refers to Tore Neilsen's 2005 research showing that losing 30 minutes of REM one night can lead to a 35 percent REM increase the next night—subjects jumped from 74 minutes of REM to a rebound of 100 minutes.

Neilsen is the director of the Dream & Nightmare Laboratory at the Sacré-Coeur Hospital in Montreal. If I succeed in my mission of attending next year's IASD Conference, I may have to see about taking a field trip. Anything called the Dream & Nightmare Laboratory sounds like a fascinating place to visit, let alone work.

Exhibit at the Melbourne Museum in Australia

This makes me wish I was a little closer to Australia...

The Melbourne Museum is hosting an exhibition called The Mind: Enter the Labyrinth, through 2010. There is also another exhibit called Bodyscape: Mapping the Body and the Mind, as well.

The Herald Sun in Australia describes the Enter the Labyrinth as a "mind-bending trip through simulated varying states of consciousness, 'mood pods', 'consciousness couches' and isolation cells."

Straitjackets, a Hubbard E Meter used by Scientologists and art produced by psychiatric patients sit beside a human brain.

The exhibition also explores conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia, allowing people to step into the mind of a person with a mental illness.

I wish I could go. Note to self: try to make it to Melbourne before 2010.

I want a "consciousness couch."

and in other news...

There is, of course, the old joke about men thinking with certain parts of their anatomy.

Well, it turns out that this may not be as much of a, um, "stretch," after all.

The Globe and Mail is reporting that researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland have found a way to identify stem cells in the testicles of mice. These stem cells can be turned into brain cells, muscle cells, heart cells, blood cells and even blood vessels.

From the Globe and Mail:

One day, they say, male patients may be able to turn to their own testicles as a source of stem cells to repair an ailing heart or kidney or to fix the brain damage caused by Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease.

To be filed under "morbidly fascinating":

There was another, somewhat gruesome sign that testicular stem cells might turn into other types of cells quite easily. Testicular tumours, Dr. Seandel says, are sometimes found with hair, teeth or other tissue in them. The same is true for ovarian tumours, he says. But women don't have the equivalent of sperm-producing stem cells.

Regardless of the barrage of jokes this research will probably generate (to which I only hinted at in the opening sentences of this post), it is rather remarkable, and seems to hold a lot of promise. Especially considering how difficult it is to locate these stem cells in men. They make up only 0.01% of the cells in the testicles.

Politics

I am trying to keep this site and blog as apolitical as possible, because there are plenty of political blogs out there with a wide spectrum of views. I'm human, and therefore, like everyone else, I certainly have my own political views, and can get rather worked up about them at times. But, I wanted this site and this blog to be a place where politics entered into the discussion somewhat minimally, if at all. Perhaps some posts here and there highlighting some of the good going on in the world, and proactive constructive ideas about how to make the world a better place.

But as I write this, I realize that things like ethics, and rights also play into discussions about consciousness.

So with all of this in mind (and more that I'm not putting into words here), I am making this post "for informational purposes only." I know nothing about The Psychotechnology Research Institute in Russia, other than what has been reported in Wired this morning. Even if some of us are not inclined to take their work seriously (at this point, I'm claiming agnosticism with a promise to look into them further) the fact remains that apparently the United States government is taking them seriously. From Wired:

What's gotten DHS' attention is the institute's work on a system called Semantic Stimuli Response Measurements Technology, or SSRM Tek, a software-based mind reader that supposedly tests a subject's involuntary response to subliminal messages.

SSRM Tek is presented to a subject as an innocent computer game that flashes subliminal images across the screen -- like pictures of Osama bin Laden or the World Trade Center. The "player" -- a traveler at an airport screening line, for example -- presses a button in response to the images, without consciously registering what he or she is looking at. The terrorist's response to the scrambled image involuntarily differs from the innocent person's, according to the theory.

"If it's a clean result, the passengers are allowed through," said Rusalkina, during a reporter's visit last year. "If there's something there, that person will need to go through extra checks."

Psychotechnology Research Institute founder Igor Smirnov implores visitors to their website to

Exercise extreme care in using our methods. Do not relish your power over your patients, and do not misuse your technical might, by extracting information from persons bypassing their volition and placing your command instructions in their unconscious.

To give you an idea of how this technology has been used before, Wired reports that:

The slow migration of Smirnov's technology to the United States began in 1991, at a KGB-sponsored conference in Moscow intended to market once-secret Soviet technology to the world. Smirnov's claims of mind control piqued the interest of Chris and Janet Morris -- former science-fiction writers turned Pentagon consultants who are now widely credited as founders of the Pentagon's "non-lethal" weapons concept.

in 1993 Smirnov rose to brief fame in the United States when the FBI consulted with him in hope of ending the standoff in Waco with cult leader David Koresh. Smirnov proposed blasting scrambled sound -- the pig squeals again -- over loudspeakers to persuade Koresh to surrender.

But the FBI was put off by Smirnov's cavalier response to questions. When officials asked what would happen if the subliminal signals didn't work, Smirnov replied that Koresh's followers might slit each other's throats, Morris recounted. The FBI took a pass, and Smirnov returned to Moscow with his mind control technology.

There are at least some nay-sayers, among them University of Maryland neuroscientist Geoff Schoenbaum.

"There's no question your brain is able to perceive things below your ability to consciously express or identify," Schoenbaum said. He noted for example, studies showing that images displayed for milliseconds -- too short for people to perceive consciously -- may influence someone's mood. "That kind of thing is reasonable, and there's good experimental evidence behind it."

The problem, he said, is that there is no science he is aware of that can produce the specificity or sensitivity to pick out a terrorist, let alone influence behavior. "We're still working at the level of how rats learn that light predicts food," he explained. "That's the level of modern neuroscience."

Whether I believe or you believe that Smirnov's work is valid or legitimate is ultimately a non-issue. What is the issue, is that people with considerably far more power than I have, or you have, seem to believe it works. If this is implemented, and there's no Minority Report, we are, as the Chinese curse goes, in for some "interesting times," indeed.

PSIber Dreaming Conference begins this weekend

The Sixth Annual PSIber Dreaming Conference presented by the International Association for the Study of Dreams begins this weekend.

The Online Conference begins on Sunday, September 23, and runs until October 7.

The full schedule can be found here.

From the IASD:

Throughout recent history, many famous artists, scientists, politicians and others have recorded dreams which led them to life-changing discoveries and creative work. This list includes (but is not limited to): Mark Twain, Buckminster Fuller, Albert Einstein, Mary Shelley, Alice Walker, Isabel Allende, Sting, John Lennon and Carl Jung. Most of these dreams contained an element of psi: telepathy, precognition, psychopompic dreaming.

This year's PsiberDreaming Conference will present papers and workshops, special events and discussions focusing on how some of these creative dreams might have come about--and how any of us might use dreaming for creative endeavors.

Conference Rates

General Public $40 (US Dollars)

IASD Members $35

Students with Valid I.D. $25

To register, go here:

Presenters include Deirdre Barrett, Art Funkhouser, Dale Graff, Ed Kellogg, Stanley Krippner, and more.

Research Help Request: Networks of Attractor Networks and the Contents of Awareness

Henning P. Henningsen is working on a piece about How Networks of Attractor-Networks Model the Process that Generates the Contents of Awareness, and is looking for input.

From his Abstract:

This essay provides a detailed description and analysis of a process that is capable of generating the contents of awareness. More specifically, we develop a model of a network of attractor-dominated networks of neurons and show how in such networks of attractor-networks a new higher level of “dynamics in attractor-space” can emerge, with the vector of the reigning attractors forming the principal component of higher-level state, and the higher-level dynamics being dominated by cascades of attractor-flips. The essay will demonstrate how this dynamics in attractor-space can lead to the emergence of entities called “percepts(NETofANs)” and “concepts(NETofANs)”, and make an extended case that these entities are the same as the percepts and concepts that constitute the contents of awareness.

All professionals in the field are invited to participate in a public, pre-publication seminar that will be conducted on the blog http://netofans101.blogspot.com. Henningsen's questions are posted on this blog under the heading “Author’s questions to readers”.

linguistic weirdness

William S. Burroughs once remarked that "language is a virus from outer space."

I've always been a big Burroughs fan, and it is one of my greater regrets that I never got to meet him before he died.

In the spirit of Bill Burroughs, though, there's been some recent strange news about language abilities.

The Daily Mail has a story about a Czech speedway rider named Matej Kus, who was knocked out for 45 minutes following a crash, and awoke with the ability to speak perfect English.

Peter Waite, the promoter for Kus's team, the Berwick Bandits, said: "I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

"It was in a really clear English accent, no dialect or anything. Whatever happened in the crash must have rearranged things in his head.

"Before his crash Matej's use of the English language was broken, to put it mildly.

"He was only just making a start on improving it and struggled to be understood, but was keen to learn.

"Yet here we were at the ambulance door listening to Matej talking to the medical staff in perfect English.

"Matej didn't have a clue who or where he was when he came round. He didn't even know he was Czech.

"It was unbelievable to hear him talk in unbroken English."

Apparently, this ability didn't last, and now he's back to only being able to speaking primarily Czech, with no memory of the accident or what followed.

ThisIsLondon.co.uk also has a story of some recent strangeness, about a young boy, William McCartney-Moore, aged 9, who, following emergency brain surgery for an abscess on his brain caused by a rare strain of meningitis, completely lost his Yorkshire accent, and began speaking in the Queen's English.

During recovery,

"William was playing on the beach," said Mrs McCartney-Moore.

"He suddenly said, 'Look, I've made a sand castle' but really stretched the vowels out, which made him sound really posh.

"We all just stared back at him - we couldn't believe what we had just heard because he had a northern accent before his illness.

"But the strange thing was that he had no idea why we were staring at him - he just thought he was speaking normally."

Mrs McCartney-Moore, who took 18 months off work to nurse her son back to health, added: "He went from being such a bright, lovely, wonderful boy who was confident and socially aware, to being like a two-year-old who followed me everywhere like a toddler.

"It was such a shock because he had always been such a sparky, healthy little boy."

William has since returned to normal in everything but the way he speaks.

Lucid Dreaming

Ryan at the Dream Studies Portal is on the road at the moment, so I'm hoping he won't mind me jumping into this fray, as this is really more his area of expertise, than mine (though I do have lucid dreams somewhat regularly, and have some background in the material).

MindHacks linked to an article in the New York Times (you'll probably have to set up an account and sign in for it, but it's worth it) about lucid dreaming. Kudos to the NYT for talking to Stephen LaBerge, and Jayne Gackenbach and mentioning the International Association for the Study of Dreams.

While I realize that it is inevitable to have a nay-sayer in a news piece, I have to wonder why Dr. Rodney Radtke felt it necessary to add a dismissive comment like “Only in New York or California do they worry about this stuff.”

The NYT article also seems to think that Radtke is the only researcher mentioned worth alluding to as "established," though Dr. LaBerge and Dr. Gackenbach have both been researching lucid dreaming for well over 20 years. How long does it take to be "established"? I don't mean to pick on Dr. Radtke specifically. He does admit that lucid dreams do occur, and are a real, valid phenomenon.

In addition, the NYT also claims "Established sleep researchers say lucid dreaming is occasionally reported by subjects, though it is difficult to validate scientifically." Unfortunately, MindHacks also toes this line.

Lucid Dreaming has been "occasionally" reported since Aristotle. Not to mention Tibetan Dream Yoga.

LaBerge and his research teams have also been able to validate lucid dream states pretty regularly. While the techniques of validation might involve a degree of difficulty and complexity, the validation itself that these states exist has not been "difficult."

Finally, this last bit is aimed specifically for Ryan at the Dream Studies Portal (because I know he'll probably have something to say about it), I want to quote this bit from the NYT article:

A student at Stanford University, where Dr. LaBerge conducted much of his research, wrote in The Stanford Daily: “In one of my earliest experiences with lucidity, I announced to an auditorium full of people that I was their god (wasn’t I?). When they did not respond deferentially, I used telekinesis to send one of them flying across the room.”

Overall, the NYT article is pretty decent, and I'm happy to see it. The movie they're promoting within it (which I haven't even mentioned - has to do with lucid dreaming, directed by Jake Paltrow, starring Gwynneth Paltrow, premieres Oct. 5) might be good. I'll probably post a review once I see it.

For more on lucid dreaming, http://lucidity.com is a good place to start.

hydranencephaly and primary consciousness

via MindHacks (with a thank you to Annalisa from Public Parapsychology for sending it along to me):

There seems to be some discussion lately over hydranencephaly, where rather than a brain cortex developing, the space is filled with fluid. Neuroscientist Bjorn Merker published a paper in last February's Behavioural and Brain Sciences (preprint .pdf available here) suggesting that the brain stem might support a certain level of conscious thought, or "primary consciousness."

Usually, children diagnosed with hydranencephaly do not live long, but there have been cases of survival up to 20 years.

Science News Online has more about Merker's work, with some fascinating stories.

Gualtiero Piccinini of the University of Missouri also has some commentary in The Ontology of Creature Consciousness: A Challenge for Philosophy.

Alex the Parrot passes on

NPR reports that Alex the Parrot has passed away at age 31.

Alex was an African gray parrot who had been the subject of cognition research conducted by Irene Pepperberg. He had a vocabulary of 150 words, and appeared to have significantly high cognitive development, being able to distinguish between different colors and shapes, as well as quantities. He could also identify various objects presented to him.

More information about Alex can be found at the Alex Foundation Website.

Cornell University's Witchcraft Collection Online

Cornell University has put a part of their extensive collection of witchcraft related materials online.

This isn't your usual Silver Ravenwolf Teen Witch type material. Rather it's an incredible historical archive of scanned primary sources from centuries ago.

From their website:

The Cornell University Library Witchcraft Collection is an online selecton of titles from the Cornell University Library's extensive collection of materials on Witchcraft. The Witchcraft Collection is a rich source for students and scholars of the history of superstition and witchcraft persecution in Europe. It documents the earliest and the latest manifestations of the belief in witchcraft as well as its geographical boundaries, and elaborates this history with works on canon law, the Inquisition, torture, demonology, trial testimony, and narratives. Most importantly, the collection focuses on witchcraft not as folklore or anthropology, but as theology and as religious heresy.

The archive can be found at http://dlxs2.library.cornell.edu/w/witch/. Their reader is a little annoying at times (I would love the ability to download some of this stuff as .pdf's), but the content more than makes up for my complaints.

Besides, they just don't make book titles like they did in 1711. Can you imagine going into Barnes & Noble and asking for A History of the Ridiculous Extravagancies of Monsieur Oufle; Occasion'd by his reading Books treating of Magick, the Black-Art, Daemoniacks, Conjurers, Witches, Hobgoblins, Incubus's, Succubus's and the Diabolical-Sabbath; of Elves, Fairies, Wanton Spirits, Genius's, Spectres and Ghosts; of Dreams, the Philosopher's-Stone, Judicial Astrology, Horoscopes, Talismans, Lucky and Unlucky Days, Eclipses, Comets, and all sorts of Apparitions, Divinations, Charms, Enchantments and other Superstitious Practices. With Notes containing a multitude of Quotations out of those Books, which have either Caused such Extravagant Imaginations, or may serve to Cure them by Laurent Bordelon?

Update on REM Intrusion and NDE's

From The International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS):

Because of the amount of media activity recently given to the subject of REM intrusion, IANDS is taking the unusual step of posting on our website a recent article from the quarterly IANDS print publication Journal of Near-Death Studies (JNDS).

Several flurries of media attention have erupted since the respected journal Neurology published two articles linking NDEs and the sleep condition called REM intrusion. REM intrusion is a fairly common occurrence in which dream images intrude into wakeful consciousness just before falling asleep or just after awakening.

The Neurology articles were by Kentucky neurologist Dr. Kevin Nelson and his colleagues, with a letter to the editor questioning some of the paper's conclusions from researchers (and IANDS past directors) Drs. Bruce Greyson and Jeffrey Long. In May of 2007 we alerted IANDS members to an article in New Scientist magazine that covered this ongoing story .

In the recently published JNDS article, Long and Jan Holden, EdD, former president of IANDS, challenge many of the findings of the Kentucky study. Because of the media attention that study has received and the resulting likelihood that many members of the public have accepted these researchers’ conclusions uncritically, IANDS is posting the Long and Holden critique on our website at http://www.iands.org/research/important_studies/ so that professionals and the general public alike can have direct access to “the other side” of this important debate.

We encourage our readers to forward this link to others who might be interested.

We invite feedback from all our readers.

IASD 2008 Conference - Dreams Without Borders: Call for Presentations

Call for Presentations
for the 25th Annual Conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams.

Tuesday July 8, through Saturday July 12, 2008 at the Hotel Auberge Universel Montreal

DEADLINE for submissions: DECEMBER 15, 2007.

Complete information is available at http://www.asdreams.org/2008, updates and registration information will also be at this address as they become available.

The Venue
Hotel Auberge Universel Montreal
5000 Sherbrooke Street East
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H1V 1A1
Tel: 514-253-3365, Toll Free: 1-800-567-0223

Located right next door to the Olympic Stadium and Village, the Auberge Universel is also right across the street from Montreal's beautiful Botanical Gardens. This location really captures the feeling of Montreal. It is a five-minute subway ride to Downtown, and Old Montreal's cobble stoned streets and harbor. To view the hotel, go to: http://www.auberge-universel.com. To view info about Montreal and its many attractions, go to: http://www.tourisme-montreal.org/B2C/00/default.asp.

Submission Instructions
While all good proposals with any theme will be actively considered, DREAMS WITHOUT BORDERS offers a chance to demonstrate how dreams speak to us in an international language in an era when international tensions are rising.

The theme presents an excellent opportunity to produce work based on cooperative international research, as well as work that examines the cross-cultural implications of dreams.

It is encouraged that submissions fall into one of the following tracks:

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