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Where is The Mind?: Science gets puzzled and almost admits a non-local mentalscape.

Where is The Mind?: Science gets puzzled and almost admits a non-local mentalscape.
This will be the last "home-produced" blog entry for a while [save the short "Everyday Spirituality" which will follow it as a sign-off] . West Virginia beckons tomorrow morning and off I will go to whatever that entails. As I said in one of the commentary responses the other day, I hope that reading two journal runs "cover-to-cover" will bring up a few thoughts worth sharing. This day's entry was inspired by two articles bumped into coincidentally which had scientists puzzling about a holographic universe and a non-local mind. Those scientists would cringe to see how I've taken their sign-posts-on-the-path, but that is their hang-up, not mine. The first of these articles [both from the New Scientist] was "Where in the World is the Mind?" That brings in the second serendipitous article. It reminded me then, also, of a moment when I was able to spend a [too short] time with David Bohm, the famous theoretical physicist. Related:  Where's My Mind?

Physicists Say Consciousness Might Be a State of Matter — NOVA Next It’s not enough to have a brain. Consciousness—a hallmark of humans, mammals, birds, and even octopuses—is that mysterious force that makes all those neurons and synapses “tick” and merge into “you.” It’s what makes you alert and sensitive to your surroundings, and it’s what helps you see yourself as separate from everything else. So MIT’s Max Tegmark is championing a new way of explaining it: he believes that consciousness is a state of matter. Theoretical physicist Max Tegmark says that consciousness is a state of matter, undulating through phases of change based on surrounding mathematical conditions. By “matter,” he doesn’t mean that somewhere in the deep recesses of your brain is a small bundle of liquid, sloshing around and powering your sense of self and your awareness of the world. Most neuroscientists agonize over consciousness because it’s so difficult to explain. Tegmark calls his new state of matter “perceptronium.”

Exceptional Memory Explained: How Some People Remember What They Had for Lunch 20 Years Ago Researchers from the University of California, Irvine reported in 2006 on a woman named Jill Price who could remember in great detail what she did on a particular day decades earlier. James McGaugh, Larry Cahill and Elizabeth Parker put the woman through a battery of tests and ascertained that she was not using any of the memory tricks that have been known to mnemonists for millennia. Word got out, the media descended and the lab now receives calls every day from people who say they have the same ability as Price. Of the hundreds of people interviewed, 22 appear to exhibit what the researchers call highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), the detailed recollection of events that occurred in the distant past. A question that has persisted about this line of research is whether the brains of these people are distinct from the organs of others who can’t remember yesterday’s lunch, let alone trivial events from 20 years back. Source: University of California, Irvine

Row Three » Brave New Worldview – 30 Science Fiction Films of the 21st Century A decade into the 21st Century and we have arrived at the future. The promise of Tomorrow. But instead we have looming energy crises, endless middle east conflict and more disappointing, we have no flying cars, Heck, for all the bright and clean future promised in 2001: A Space Odyssey, none of the real companies used as brands in the film even exist anymore. Even moving from the late 1960s to the mid 1980s, nobody makes DeLoreans (although they occasionally sell on Ebay), but cloning and tablet computing (as promised by Star Trek: The Next Generation) have more or less come to pass in this century. It is not the gizmos or the distopian aesthetics, that have brought Science Fiction into the new millennium, but the questions it asks of people or society in a future time or place and how they reflect on our own times. There have been a surprising number of excellent science fiction films to come about in the past decade that do this and do this well. The Fountain 28 Weeks Later The Host

Try It: Hemispheric Specialization The left and right hemispheres of the brain have specialized functions for most people. The left hemisphere is a language center while the right hemisphere processes spatial information. These differences are most obvious in those rare individuals whose corpus callosum was surgically severed to help control a severe form of epilepsy. But are these differences apparent in the behavior of individuals with an intact corpus callosum? You will need a cooperative volunteer for this demonstration. Is Chicago north of Washington, D.C.? (for the curious, the answers are: 1.

8 Famous People Whose Creativity & Innovation Was Inspired By LSD Source: www.collective-evolution.com | Original Post Date: Growing up, I was conditioned to believe that LSD was one of the worse drugs, with its dangers and addictive properties following close behind those of heroin. This would all change when I fell severely ill in my twenties. After conventional medicine had failed me, I decided to embark on a journey with plant medicine. This eventually led to an interest in the healing properties of psychedelics, particularly psilocybin, which ultimately cured my depression. However, at the time I vowed never to explore LSD, as it was ‘synthetic’ and in my opinion could not be considered a natural medicine. So, imagine the surprise of those closest to me when I announced the inevitable –my interest in psychedelics finally piqued my interest in LSD. What I learned was that although LSD may not exactly be “natural,” when it opens the doors of perception, it simultaneously opens much more. Famous People Inspired by LSD 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Sources:

The Brain: A Body Fit for a Freaky-Big Brain | Mind & Brain Aiello and Wheeler noted that this dramatic increase in brain size would seem to have required a dramatic increase in metabolism—the same way that adding an air-conditioning system to a house would increase the electricity bill. Yet humans burn the same number of calories, scaled to size, as other primates. Somehow, Aiello and Wheeler argued, our ancestors found a way to balance their energy budget. As they expanded their brains, perhaps they slimmed down other organs. The scientists compared the sizes of organs in humans and other primates. Relatively speaking, our liver is about the same size as a baboon’s. Aiello and Wheeler christened their idea “the expensive tissue hypothesis.” Then William Leonard, a biological anthropologist at Northwestern University, put the expensive tissue hypothesis to a new test. This suggested that the gut-shrinking phenomenon within the primate groups was probably too subtle to explain our increase in brain size completely.

The Primacy of Consciousness | Documentary Heaven | Watch Free Documentaries Online The Primacy of Consciousness The fundamental nature of reality is actually consciousness. In his documentary Peter Russell explores the reasons why consciousness may be the fundamental essence of the Universe. This documentary basically seeks answers for these questions: What is consciousness? Report: The Primacy of Consciousness Processing your request, Please wait.... Share: The Primacy of Consciousness Related Documentaries From The Web

How Do You Get Sexual Orientation and Gender in Humans? : Greg Laden's Blog Humans appear to have a reasonable amount of diversity in their sexual orientations, in what is often referred to as “gender” and in adult behavior generally. When convenient, people will point to “genes” as the “cause” of any particular subset of th is diversity (or all of it). When convenient, people will point to “culture” as the “cause” of … whatever. The “real” story is more complicated, less clear, and very interesting. Prior to birth there are a number of factors than can influence things like gender or sexuality in a human. Then there is the stuff that happens after birth. And so it goes throughout development; At numerous stages along the way, a human is affected by hormones, bathed in gendered behavior, and eventually, starts to observe her or his own environment and act accordingly. There are many factors that would determine a person’s gender over a lifetime. And I could go on. Self-Help Books) 3See this study and references therein: Moore and Morelli, 1979.

Jung's Active Imagination The following atrticle is excerpted from Jung the Mystic, now available from Tarcher/Penguin. There was a method to Jung's madness: active imagination. It, along with the transcendent function, are the two most important discoveries Jung made in the years leading up to World War One. I would even argue that they were the most important discoveries of Jung's career, and that everything that came later had its roots in these two fundamental insights. This being so, they warrant a bit of attention. Strangely, Jung seems to have done everything he could to hide these discoveries from all but his closest colleagues. Some suggest Jung kept quiet about active imagination because he considered it possibly dangerous. What, then, is active imagination? More abstractly, it's a method of consciously entering into a dialogue with the unconscious, which triggers the transcendent function, a vital shift in consciousness, brought about through the union of the conscious and unconscious minds. Notes:

Brain Atlas - Introduction The central nervous system (CNS) consists of the brain and the spinal cord, immersed in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Weighing about 3 pounds (1.4 kilograms), the brain consists of three main structures: the cerebrum, the cerebellum and the brainstem. Cerebrum - divided into two hemispheres (left and right), each consists of four lobes (frontal, parietal, occipital and temporal). The outer layer of the brain is known as the cerebral cortex or the ‘grey matter’. – closely packed neuron cell bodies form the grey matter of the brain. Cerebellum – responsible for psychomotor function, the cerebellum co-ordinates sensory input from the inner ear and the muscles to provide accurate control of position and movement. Brainstem – found at the base of the brain, it forms the link between the cerebral cortex, white matter and the spinal cord. Other important areas in the brain include the basal ganglia, thalamus, hypothalamus, ventricles, limbic system, and the reticular activating system. Neurons

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