Things as they are

Hello everyone:

Perhaps one of the strangest, and at the same time most challenging, problems of modern science is what is called “the hard problem of consciousness”. I am sure that if you follow me you will have already understood that mine is a “problem of consciousness” and that I have sometimes commented on this very problem, but following a curious video that I saw on the social network X, it has led me to think a little about this problem and especially about the problem of perception. But to begin with, let us comment on what is the famous hard or difficult problem of consciousness.

The famous “hard or difficult problem of consciousness” was born from the idea of ​​David John Chalmers, an Australian philosopher who, studying consciousness, came to something he could not explain, and that was why the way in which a certain phenomenon affects us depends on our subjectivity with respect to it. We can give a simple example that I am sure everyone will understand if we see what happens when two teams with a great rivalry face each other and a relevant event occurs in the confrontation: for one group of fans the decision taken will be clear and consistent, for another it will be a “real robbery” and for another large group of “indifferent” people neither one nor the other: it will be an event without significance for them.

It is still an unsolvable problem for now, but curiously recently, as I mentioned at the beginning of this entry, I came across a curious video that was not really about consciousness, but about statistics, and if you allow me, I will show it to you before continuing with the argument.

What you are seeing is a series of points that draw different images, but which curiously have several parameters in common: the mean of the X coordinate, the mean of the Y coordinate, the standard deviation of X, the standard deviation of Y and the correlation coefficient between both variables. And I am sure that you will be asking yourself with good judgment: what does this have to do with consciousness and its problem? Well, that is where I wanted to get to: and it is the “sacrosanct” perception.

We think that the reality we live in is a unique reality, but the facts show us the opposite: and it is true, since what we perceive is not reality itself, but as shown in the image above, a way we have of “interpreting” what surrounds us and that depends on many factors, both physical, biological and even psychological. A beautiful landscape can lead us to emotion, as long as we can integrate it into our visual center; but what really happens in the perception process? Well, I think that from now on we enter what we could call “the hypothetical area” because I warn you that from now on what you are going to read is only my opinion. Therefore you have two options, either continue reading or stop doing it… like in a certain very famous movie.

In my opinion, what the perception process really does is integrate information that is collected by the “sensors” of the different senses: whether it be the eyes for vision, the Pacinian corpuscles for pain and pressure, the olfactory cells of the cribriform plate of the ethmoid, etc. In other words, our cortical areas perform an information integration function.

And it is precisely in these places where the “miracle” of perception takes place, since we integrate the information that, as we have said, reaches them from the senses: in a way analogous to the theory of integrated information, our consciousness would be in charge of “integrating” this large amount of information, discarding that which “in its opinion” was not important and keeping that which really is: the mystery now emanates from knowing what it is and how this informative consciousness decides what is relevant, or to put it another way, what part of the message that is transmitted by the sensory pathways has relevant information and what is noise, leaving it therefore as “not relevant” and dispensable:

And now we return to the video I mentioned at the beginning. As I was saying, it was a video where several points formed different figures despite having certain common values ​​(mean, median and correlation coefficient); that is, different images can be “summarized” in the same way; and this point leads me to ask myself, could the opposite occur? Could certain phenomena be capable of being integrated differently depending on how our consciousness decides which part of that information is essential and which is “noise”? In everything paranormal (and anomalous) this duality often appears: two witnesses who observe a phenomenon may “perceive” it differently: using our example, the same mean, standard deviation and correlation coefficient of several points “draws” different images in one witness or another.

And the hard problem of consciousness? In my opinion, it is precisely this capacity for different integration of each phenomenon despite having the same characteristics that would be responsible for this subjectivity of perception. But as always, these ideas end up creating even more questions, because in this case, what decides the “dot drawing” of the phenomenon? Does it depend on our education, our memory, our experiences or our lack of them? As you can see, it is still a fascinating field and unfortunately it is not so striking, at least in our environment. I hope you like it and until next time.

You must choose a door

I would like to explain a curious phenomenon about one of the most important symptoms in medicine, and one that has become a workhorse for human beings over the centuries: pain. First of all, let's define what is called a symptom and a sign in medicine: a symptom is everything that the patient reports but that we cannot objectively verify: a classic example is pain: unfortunately we do not have a machine that allows us to measure it objectively; and a sign is everything that we can objectively record in a patient, for example, fever: we have a thermometer that measures it and, above all, we have a scale that allows us to compare some temperatures with others.

Once this is established, how could we define pain? Classically, pain has been seen as a defensive mechanism, which allows us to get away from what hurts us or could be harmful to us. Having a life full of pain is just as negative as not having the systems that cause it, since it fulfills many functions that we do not normally see. But like everything in medicine, there are two general types of pain: acute pain (somatic) and chronic pain (visceral). And we are going to explain each of them. Let's start with somatic pain.

Somatic or acute pain is what we feel when, for example, we prick ourselves with a needle or get hit: it is usually well defined, that is, the person who suffers it can tell us exactly where it hurts; it is faster and sometimes generates responses without the need for the pain itself to be integrated by higher centers such as the cortex: for example, if something pricks us, we reflexively pull our hand away, even before we are aware that we have pricked ourselves: this is what is called the “reflex arc”.

Visceral or chronic pain is a pain with special characteristics, such as the fact that it cannot be located with certainty, that it is not usually very intense, but because it is always present, and because of its integration, it has effects on the mood of the people who suffer from it. Of all the pains, this is perhaps the greatest enemy we face, because while the former has a great “defensive” component, in the case of chronic pain, this component disappears, because we cannot “run away” from what causes it. So this is the pain that most of the time represents a real challenge for those who practice and fight against pain.

And within this world that we are only just beginning to take a very brief look at (I can assure you that it is and continues to be one of the leading fields in both research and treatment in current medicine), I am going to focus on something curious about pain. I don't know if you remember that not long ago I spoke about the duality of pain with respect to consciousness, because it allows us to both emerge from unconsciousness (like when we wake up when we are hurt) and to fall into it when the pain is very intense (the so-called cardiogenic shock). But as I mentioned, there is another curious aspect of pain that I will later try to apply to the determination of anomalous integrations of information by consciousness. And this very curious fact that affects pain is the so-called "gate theory."

And to explain it, we are going to talk about something that is very mundane and that we have all suffered at some point: tickling. You may not know that tickling is a low-intensity pain, so low that it is not integrated as pain, but as another sensation, which we classically call tickling; in fact, remember the famous “Chinese martyrdom” of tickling: it is a pain and like any pain, over time it becomes annoying; and how do we get rid of tickling? Well, by scratching ourselves. But what mechanism does scratching follow to make tickling go away? Well, this is where the theory of the gates of pain comes in.

What we do when we scratch ourselves is to cause ourselves a pain of greater intensity than that produced by the sensation of tickling, and then, magically, the less intense pain (the tickling) disappears. But how is this possible? Well, I'm going to try to explain it in a way that we can understand. This theory was proposed by Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall, and as always, it deals with information (in this case painful) that can be transmitted to higher centers where it becomes conscious.

This theory states that there are a series of doors (or gates) that work in the same way as a circuit: they can be open or closed when it is necessary to transmit one impulse or another: when a pain has greater intensity and somatic characteristics (as we do when we scratch ourselves) the gate is “closed” for chronic or less intense pain. But these gates are not only affected by pain, but also by each person’s mood; I am sure that many of you have suffered a traffic accident, initially with nerves, we do not feel any pain: our state of excitement or nervousness causes the gate that takes the pain to the cortex to integrate it (the information) to remain closed. As time passes, our nervousness decreases, and therefore, the gate opens allowing the painful information to pass through the spinal cord and be integrated in the form of pain: it begins to “annoy” us. Something similar is described by some soldiers who, when wounded in war, remain unchanged in the heat of battle: their body has “closed” the door that allows passage to pain.

Well, so far we have talked about pain, but now it is time to talk about what you already know I like, which is nothing other than consciousness. So remember that from now on it is only a hypothesis and personal opinion, it is not even a theory. Let us recall what we know about pain and the gate theory. Pain is a sensation, and we can think that there are other sensations that have the same “control” mechanism. And now let us take a somersault: could the anomalous integration of information that would explain some anomalous phenomena follow a process analogous to that of the gate theory of pain?

In this case, the sensations that we could call “normal” signals are those that prevent the door leading to the anomalous perception of information (in any sense) from being opened. When this “sensation” of greater intensity disappears, the door manages to “open” for the integration of the anomalous information: could this idea then explain the fact that whenever an anomalous phenomenon occurs, a kind of “sensory vacuum” is produced, either through sensory isolation (as occurs in Ganzfeld) or through the famous “vacuum bell” that many witnesses claim precedes certain anomalous phenomena? If this is so, it would really remain to be seen whether this “anomalous sensory noise” is present in all people, how it is produced and where it is integrated in the higher pathways. But as for now it seems enough to me, let’s stop here and leave for another occasion what possibilities we have for this anomalous integration of information coming from the data collected by the sense organs and who knows if by other organs.

 An inner voice

I’m sure you’ve heard (pun intended) about the “inner voice”; but today I’m going to allow myself to tell you something about another inner voice, which also (as always) is linked to the anomalous integration of sensory data and ultimately to #consciousness (gotcha!). And I’m going to do so by talking to you about a disease that some of you may know, which also affects a sensory organ and gives rise to a curious paradox: I’m going to start talking to you about otosclerosis.

We could very quickly define otosclerosis as an “arthrosis” of the chain of ossicles in the middle ear: yes, the famous hammer, anvil and stirrup. These tiny ossicles have a fundamental function: they are the transducers that transform the vibrations of the eardrum into waves inside the saccule of the inner ear, to be exact in a liquid called endolymph, through the so-called oval window, and that make the famous “snail” vibrate with a fundamental frequency according to these waves: a whole system that nature has designed to make us aware (note the importance of the word) of two important circumstances, namely, sound, but also our position in space. These waves then travel through the auditory pathway to the auditory center and allow us to hear, by integrating the information that reaches it to the auditory cortex, which as I think you know is located in the temporal area of ​​the brain (and this detail that seems to be of no importance is very important).

In some people, these little bones end up changing their shape, so that they stop performing their function: so the person has what we call non-central deafness, that is, they lose hearing ability (because they still have some) due to a failure in what we could call the sensor that collects data from the outside (sound waves), and it gives rise to hearing loss, as well as other symptoms such as peripheral vertigo, which is very annoying for people who suffer from it, because we must remember that the ear is not only the organ of hearing, but also of balance, or if you prefer, the organ of positioning ourselves in space. But in addition, this disease gives rise to a curious paradox, which I think will surprise you.

I don't know if you know that we hear in two ways: through what is called the air conduction and through the bone conduction: this double hearing is responsible for why when we hear our voice on a recording it sounds so strange to us: in fact, normally our voice is the one we hear "internally" together with the external voice, while those who listen to us speak can only hear the external voice (for this reason I have always admired people who can imitate others so perfectly despite the fact that they have double hearing). Well, the fact is that these patients, despite the fact that they don't hear well, normally use a very low volume of their voice, so much so that sometimes those of us who are supposed to hear well have to ask them to raise their voice, and this is precisely because unconsciously (this is where I wanted to get to) their vocal system adjusts the volume of their voice in relation to the volume they perceive directly: they "hear" themselves perfectly because they are using the bone conduction for hearing (remember that this is independent of the chain of ossicles), while they have a natural "mute button" on all outside noise: the result is that they automatically lower the volume of their voice.

And you may wonder (not without reason), what could this have to do with anomalous integrations? First of all I want you to remember that these people unconsciously regulate the volume of their voice: now we are going to carry out what we could call a “mental experiment” (it is only speculation): think for example of the case of a person who claims to have the ability to have certain “sensations” that others cannot: could it be that this increase in sensitivity is due to an alteration of some sensory organs? What if some senses always need to lose “external” sensitivity in order to gain “internal” sensitivity? In other words, a kind of sensory “mute” is necessary, and what reason would there be for this “external isolation”? If we analyze it from a neurological point of view, the brain (to be exact, the cerebral cortex, which until now is the only part of the central nervous system that we know is capable of shedding the light of “consciousness” on what surrounds us) would be constantly “integrating” the information it receives from not only the sense organs as such, but from the multiple sensors (temperature, pressure, chemical components, etc.) that are distributed throughout our economy (the way we health professionals call our body) and that are used to determine both the external and internal situation. This creates a kind of “background noise”, like the noise that accompanies us during the day and prevents us from hearing certain sounds that become more evident at night, when there is less activity and allows the brain to interpret and integrate those signals that are no longer diluted into a signal of greater intensity.

I don’t know if you have noticed that most of the time people who have a certain capacity, for example “precognitive”, are represented with their eyes covered, when they are not directly blind: is it a coincidence or does it have some relation with that need to “silence” what we could call “sensory noise” to allow certain signals to be integrated in an anomalous way by the integration pathways of perception? Would this fact support again that for the manifestation of Psi capacities one of the factors is the absence of sensory noise? If not, let's go to another characteristic that we could call "disturbing" that accompanies some phenomena in this case of sightings of UAPs, UFOs or FANIs depending on the nomenclature you like best: and it is the phenomenon of the so-called "Bell of silence", which also occurs in a not so frequent way in other cases of anomalous or paranormal events, where the witness claims that in an unusual way, both the noise, as well as the thermal sensations, or the wind, etc., stopped being so evident. If we analyze it carefully, we are faced with a "sensory silence". However, what is not very clear is whether this silence is the reason why we can "notice" the anomalous phenomenon or is the anomalous phenomenon itself that causes this situation: that is, what came first, the chicken or the egg?

I hope that these questions will make you think, because they also give us the opportunity to design various experimental or quasi-experimental models to test this hypothesis. By the way, I would like to take this opportunity to leave you with a link to a magazine on Transcommunication that I sometimes collaborate with and that I think may be of interest to you. I hope you liked this story and see you next time.

Leo Aitu #3

The eye with which you look at God

 The eye with which you look at God

Hello everyone and welcome:

Through a wonderful musical composition I have come to know one of the most unknown theologians, Master Eckhart: born in Thuringia in 1260, he was a German Dominican, known for his work as a theologian and philosopher, creator of what would later be known as Rhenish mysticism. I would like you to hear it and read the lyrics because it is worthwhile. Here is the link:

What has led me to write this short article is his thought that says: “The eye through which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me: my eye and God’s eye are one eye.” Apart from the profound metaphysical and religious implications that this phrase has, as you know that I am passionate about the world of consciousness, neuroscience and everything that surrounds it, this phrase led me to ask myself a question: when we face the sacred, the spiritual, is the way we do it capable of molding this world that is beyond the material? And if so, then can we say that there are various types of spiritual worlds but with a common base?

Within the hypotheses of consciousness, there is still a kind of “somersault” that continues to create problems for us: the so-called difficult (or hard) problem of consciousness: how is it possible that each of us is capable of having really different experiences from the same sensory inputs? What makes an experience pleasant or unpleasant depending on how it is seen?.

Imagine that you and your best friend are watching a football match (let's think live, because watching it on television is another post): each of you supports a team: the fact that one wins and the other loses makes the same match create totally different emotions in you and your friend. How is that possible?

However, there is something that is common to many cultures, and that is that most of them have a very special way of connecting with the spiritual world, and that way is through music. To see each one, let's start with the Hindu world, which for many represents perhaps the first union between the spiritual and material worlds: I would like you to please watch this short video about a Hindu melody, and keep it in your head for a moment:

I am sure that it will have produced a sensation of serenity and relaxation, brief but intense. It seems that there are certain notes that make our consciousness immediately disconnect from the continuous noise: it is as if we were taking a moment. But if you allow me, I am going to go a step further, and we are going to another spiritual world: now I ask you to listen to this one:

Yes, you got it right, it is Gregorian chant: again, it is as if a parenthesis is put in the “worldly noise”: this type of music brings us back to a state of introspection, where in a certain way we are able to reject external stimuli. As we see, it has a lot in common with Hindu music when we refer to its effect, but let’s go one step further: let’s go to zikir:

It is one of the most impressive Sufi ceremonies: through repetition and breathing, the participants enter into an altered state of consciousness, which again separates them from the material world and brings them into communion with God (Allah in this case). But we are not done yet: I am going to put, if you allow me, an extract from a film, which I think you all know, here it goes:

Although this is a film (and what a film!), we return to the same thing: music exerts a certain effect that consists of isolating the person, avoiding the stimuli of the world that we could call material so that he comes into contact with divinity, or at least, with that spiritual side that is normally prevented from being accessed by the flow of information that is constantly being generated by the sensory apparatus. And now, as it could not be another point, comes the twist on the anomalous perception or integration of information coming from sensory data.

Perhaps we need this silence to be able to access that “spiritual” world (for now I can’t find another way to define it), but it may be that certain people have the ability to recognize within the great flow of information that part that is present but is hidden by the material sensory noise: perhaps it is what is called sensitivity, which for some is artistic, and for others it is of a more complicated and unknown type, which is sometimes difficult to describe for those of us who do not have that ability, in the same way that it is very difficult for you to describe the color red to a person born blind.

I hope I have not bored you too much and that little by little we will expand the complexity of what consciousness itself is.