Road to Perception

 

Anomalies of any kind (name the anomalous phenomenon you want) have always been considered as part of an anomalous perception. This, which seems obvious, tells us that when an anomalous phenomenon appears, it is due to an “anomalous perception” of it, but perhaps through the “anomalous” stimulation of our senses, which we remember are basically five: sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. But as you know, I tend to go a bit “free-wheeling”, and using this scheme, I am going to give this hypothesis a twist.

Well, as we were saying, anomalous phenomena are sometimes considered “anomalous perceptions”; in fact, if you look in the literature or bibliography, this is the term that normally appears: to put it simply, these senses would pick up stimuli that they do not normally pick up and they are the ones that would then be integrated in a normal way using the pathways that each of these senses have. That is, if you see, it would be the auditory pathway, if you hear, the auditory pathway, if you smell, the olfactory pathway, and so on. In other words, what is anomalous is the reception of the information.

And now I am going to give my opinion (not yet a hypothesis because it needs a lot of thought) on this subject: and I would like you to recall the first image: if you remember it, it tells us that there are two ways in which the brain has access to what happens both around it (external environment) and inside it (internal environment). That is, we have “sensors” for both the external and internal environment. And each has its specific pathways: normally the sensors of the internal environment work autonomously, through the so-called autonomic nervous system.

Classically, this system is composed of two subsystems, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems: of both, the one I would like you to focus your attention on is the parasympathetic: and why? Because this system has four components that we could call "the aristocracy" of the nervous system, which are called cranial nerves: in a simple way and without much technicality, they are large nerves that originate in the brain stem, that is, they are part of the central nervous system. (Remember this point).

Four of these cranial pairs belong to the parasympathetic system: the oculomotor (III), facial (VII), glossopharyngeal (IX) and vagus (X). This is important because from now on we are going to introduce another variable into our equation: what in anatomy is called “anatomical variables”, which are nothing more than differences in the normal arrangement of certain components of our body: some of them have a very important significance, as is the case of Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which causes a potentially fatal cardiac disorder.

From these wickerwork, I am going to state the idea: what if what really happened was not an anomalous perception but an “anomalous integration” of information? What if anomalous phenomena were “perceived” through alterations in the internal environment and not the external one? And the next question you would ask me would be: if so, how would it be done? Well, here I am going to present one of the most important nerves that exist in our body, with a name that does not do it justice: the Tenth Cranial Nerve or Vagus Nerve.

As we can see, the vagus nerve is anything but vague, it is perhaps one of the most important nerves in our body. But what interests me now is how it integrates information: normally, we do not need to think about breathing, or making our heart beat: this is regulated automatically, and it does so through specific pathways. It does so through a set of cells in the brain stem called “nuclei”, in this case, the dorsal nucleus of the vagus nerve. If we look at the image, its afferent fibers (from the receptors) and efferent fibers (that come out) do not go beyond the brain stem.

As a result, we never become “conscious” of the mechanisms that regulate the functions assigned to this nerve. But now comes my proposal: what if there were some anatomical variability in some people that connected these brain stem cells with higher structures? What if what people with certain sensitivities did was to integrate differently the information that reaches them from the internal environment, and once it entered the sensory integration pathways, this information was treated normally?.

That is to say, it would not be an “anomalous perception” of the senses that is responsible for the anomalous phenomena, but rather an “anomalous integration” of the information carried out through pathways that are not the usual ones for the integration of these senses: it would be a process analogous to synaesthesia, which as we know is the integration of the information of a sense through a pathway other than the one to which it corresponds: to be exact, we would not be talking about synaesthesia, but rather a “xenointegration” of the information not from the “external” senses, but from the “internal” ones.

To start, let's stop here: I think that any contribution you want to make may be interesting: the fact of what and how the internal receptors are altered is another question that we will leave aside for now: for now I only talk about how it would be integrated (in this case through an anomalous integration pathway). I hope you liked it and I look forward to your comments.

 A historic future

I think we all know that ability that some people have to “presume” or “guess” the future: this is what some people call precognition. In theory we can say that precognition is the ability to foresee events that are about to occur. In turn, we could speak of a large subdivision within precognition: those that extend over time (capable of knowing events that will occur well in advance) and those that occur in events that are about to occur or that will occur in a short space of time. We sometimes call the latter hunches. And I am sure that we have all had one at some time. But perhaps this phenomenon of the short-term hunch may be something physiological, and although you may not believe it, it is related to the integration of information that our brain makes from the data that is collected by the sensory organs. And if you allow me, I will try to explain it to you, because in reality, we constantly live in the past and exercise a certain ability to guess the future.

But to try to explain this apparent paradox, we first need to comment on something curious that happens to all of us, and that is the so-called reaction time. This is the time that elapses between the stimulation of a sensory organ and the beginning of a response, that is, as long as it is conscious (we will not consider reflexes, many of which are regulated by autonomous processes and therefore remain outside the realm of consciousness). In turn, this reaction time can be of various types:

• Simple reaction time, when a single stimulus is used and the time until the beginning of the response is measured.
• Choice reaction time, when two stimuli are presented, each with a specific response (for example, pressing with the left hand if we see a dot and with the right if we see a dash)
• Selection reaction time, when several stimuli are presented but only one is responded to (for example, pressing the right hand only if we hear a certain word)

Some factors affect this reaction time, such as the amount of data to be integrated to give a response, or the sensory modality that generates the response: the visual modality requires more time than the auditory one. Other factors that affect this time are drowsiness, illness, emotional or mood state or even the level of stress. In addition, it can be “trained” in a certain way, as happens with athletes who try to react as quickly as possible once they hear the starting shot.

The usual reaction time is around 0.75 seconds: this may seem like a short time, but this time is very important, for example when driving a vehicle, which in this case becomes the so-called reaction distance, which is the distance that the vehicle travels until we initiate an action, and which depends on the speed at which we are driving:

If we look at it carefully, we never really know the present moment, since we always react with a delay of ¾ of a second: and that means that our brain makes a continuous prediction exercise about our world, foreseeing how it will change and provoking our reaction, always in the past, what is happening in the now is not integrated until that time has passed, so in a certain way we live in the past. But I am sure you will be wondering, what does this have to do with consciousness and precognition? Well, as I always say, from now on we will talk about hypotheses and opinions, so if you allow me, I will put up the sign that warns that it is only my opinion:

If you allow me, let's go back to the beginning, when we were talking about the types of precognition, and to be exact, I mentioned that one of them would be the one that is capable of predicting a future event with a small margin of time: knowing what we know now about reaction time, could we come to think that these premonitions or hunches are the integration of certain information that is acquired by our consciousness but not through the senses that we could call classic? In fact, this type of sensations are usually associated with stomach disorders, or accelerations of the pulse. What if what we can anticipate is nothing more than a kind of reaction time but that is moving forward in time? This idea also opens up a possible model for experimentation: could we come to follow up on these hunches by altering certain biological markers? What we can say, if you have come this far, is that you should remember that you and I and all of us live in a historical future, because it has already been ¾ of a second since it happened. Thank you very much and see you next time.

 The Human Haarp

Summer is slowly coming to an end, at least in this part of the world, and slowly everything is returning to normal; it has been a somewhat strange summer even in time. And I was precisely thinking about this summer that has closed with a curious earthquake (near where I live, today is August 26, 2024) and it has made me think about that ability that some living beings have to "foresee" certain events, and now I will explain the idea that I had. And for that, the first thing is to comment on one of the most classic (although lately quite abandoned) conspiracies that exist, and it is the famous HAARP project.

The HAARP project or High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program was aimed at studying the properties of the ionosphere in order to develop and improve the technology used for radio communications transmission and its use in strategic surveillance systems, for example, by detecting missiles. What interests us is its main instrument, and if you are patient, you will see how it relates to consciousness. This instrument is called the Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI). It is a powerful radio transmitter that is capable of altering the electromagnetic properties of a certain part of the ionosphere.

What I want you to focus on is not the functions of the IRI, but its structure; if you look at it carefully, it is nothing more than a gigantic network of cables. And this is exactly where I wanted to get to: because I would like to use this analogy about cables and “transfer” it to the human body. But as always, before getting into the subject, it is important to make it clear that everything you read from now on is nothing more than an opinion.

As we have all seen at some point, cables can, by their structure, become antennas that receive certain types of waves, whether radio or television. Some people may have the ability to act as “antennas”: but the question is, how would they achieve this effect? ​​Well, here is my idea, and the idea goes hand in hand with a nerve of the so-called cranial pairs, which are called that because they originate from the Central Nervous System, to be exact I am referring to the tenth cranial pair, or vagus nerve:

And why this nerve specifically? Well, I will develop this point in other posts, but broadly speaking, what makes this nerve so special is that it is one of the longest and most widely distributed nerves in the human body, regulating the entire parasympathetic system; secondly, because 80% of its branches are afferent, that is, they go from the periphery to the central nervous system; thirdly, because at its origin it ends up relating to more “noble” structures of the central nervous system, such as the hippocampal area, limbic system and even the cerebral cortex. And lastly, because if we compare it to a cable, it would be collecting information from both inside and outside the body: that is, we could say that the vagus nerve (among others) makes us a walking antenna.

If you allow me, for me, the human IRI would be the vagus nerve, the instrument through which we are able to collect data in an anomalous way and for these to travel to the information integration centers: but we will leave that part for later entries, because the idea is to put together the whole hypothesis and that little by little it will allow me to develop a possible experimental model to try to prove or reject this theory. Thank you if you have taken the trouble to get this far and until next time.