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Neuroskeptic - Do We All Have Split Brains? - A summary and my thoughts.


reguile

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http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2016/12/08/are-we-split-brain/#.Wz1WubhOmUk

 

I found this of interest and I figure you all might as well.

 

I am generally skeptical of the idea that parallel processing is a thing.  Namely, when people tend to try to do two "hard" tasks in parallel, they tend to swap rapidly between the two instead of doing both tasks at once.  I imagine that this would largely be the case for things such as thought, reacting to the environment, and other "conscious" tasks. 

 

However, this article speaks of the brain doing two things at once, in at least some form.

 

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"In other words, when the GPS voice was helping the participants to drive (“integrated task”), the brain ‘driving network’ and ‘listening network’ were acting in concert, with a high degree of functional connectivity. But when the drivers were listening to the radio show (“split task”), the two networks were largely independent – indeed, by one metric, which the authors call “integrated information“, they were completely seperate."

 

The above is pretty self explanatory.  The study says that if you listen to a radio show while driving your brain is doing two things at once.  But if the radio show is a GPS then your brain is connecting the two tasks and sharing information between them, engaging everything as a "single" process.

 

The post concludes with this:

 

"I’m not sure these results are directly relevant to consciousness, though. We don’t know for sure whether (say) the “driving network” is responsible for our conscious experiences related to driving. It’s possible that there is a “consciousness centre” elsewhere in the brain (the prefrontal cortex or the precuneus, perhaps), that integrates input from lower-level brain regions such as the “driving network”. If so, surely the disconnected nature of the lower-level networks would not necessarily preclude a unified consciousness."

 

Which, to be clear, is the author's opinion.

 

A number of things could be concluded from this.  Firstly, it opens up a lot of validity in my mind for the possibility that a tulpa could be a separate process in the brain.  Although I remain skeptical of that simply because of all the evidence I have seen against the idea of parallel processing still leaves me thinking we just don't have the mental capacity for two conscious thought processes at once, it could explain there being a "simple-part" of a tulpa running.  Not something "conscious', but something nonetheless acting on its own and not tied into by your conscious mind.

 

Another thing it might imply is that the tulpa-process could be separate when it is not being thought of or interacted with, but then becomes "integrated" with the consciousness and unified into a single process during the act of communication or interaction.

 

This is all neuroscience stuff, so it's honestly all up in the air, but I figured you might all like to read this and I am interested to see what you all might "hink about it.

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This is a somewhat related thing. So people who have their brains physically split in two seem to function almost as two different people at times, and also possess an enhanced capacity to multitask.

 

The multitasking thing makes sense, because if the two halves can't communicate then it they wouldn't be able to turn two actions into one, nor switch between them. Though this also begs the question of how they were able to walk without conveying the info about what state the other leg was in

I have a tulpa named Miela who I love very much.

 

 
"People put quotes in their signatures, right?"

-Me

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This has interested me for a moment. Bre is correct, people with severe epilepsy can have a procedure done where the two haves of the brain are severed, they literally cut corpus callosum, and in the process they have discovered that the two hemisphere act as autonomous whole brains. They have even devised methods for communicating with the other brain, and it appears to have a radically different personality than the left hemisphere. And it was really clever how they managed it, too, because one, the right brain doesn't use spoken language/verbal skills. They created a special contact lens that blocked light on the right half of the eye, because each eye feeds into both sides of the brain, the left side into the right, and right side into the left, and by blocking the right side only the right brain could see... and they would show an image and ask the person what they saw, and they would say I see nothing, but the right brain would spell out or draw what it saw...

 

'Opening the Doors of Perception: The Key to Cosmic Awareness,' Book by Anthony Peake covers some of the weirdness in the dual hemispheres... There are lots of books that get at this point, such as "The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image" by American surgeon Leonard Shlain. It's rarely spoken of in such a direct way by Masons, but there is the concept of all beings having male and female attributes, and metaphysically their symbols mirror the Taoist symbols, such as the Yin and Yang symbol, where the whole is one, but comprised of opposing forces, like dark and light, male and female... This concept is fundamental in understanding Carl Jung's work... The middle way, the balancing of the polarities, whether it's Jung's psychological treatment plan, or metaphysics, or neural feedback, the greater the coherency between hemispheres, the more likely one might have a transpersonal experience, such as increased intuition, beneficial auditory or visual hallucinations, or increased problem solving insight. When you consider the large number of prominent scientist that report making their greatest discoveries in dreams, how many songs that were reported to have heard first in a dream, math solutions discovered in dreams, and considered that dreams tend to happen when the left brain quiets down and allows the right brain to speak up, well... I don't know where to go with that, but it seems like science is confirming something the ancients, and the shamans and monks already know.

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To my understanding, the brain can only "parallel process" different types of tasks. Because these tasks use different parts of the brain. Obviously we can do two things at once, I'm reading what I type while "thoughtlessly" actually doing the typing, let alone thinking of what to type.

 

True parallel processing would be typing two things at once. And even then, again to my understanding, most things that appear to be parallel processing are actually the result of mentally combining the tasks into one. If you've not done it too many times in the past, "Rub your stomach and pat your head" will be confusing for a moment or two before being mentally combined into one task. Trying to then change what you were doing, for example continuing to rub your stomach but instead separately tapping your fingers on your head, will require combining them again. I just tried it and yep, my hand on my stomach paused for just a second before continuing.

 

I believe true parallel processing might exist in some form. Playing piano still eludes us. And many masters of their crafts appear to process many things simultaneously. This might still be related to the combining tasks thing, but in my experience, it really is just using separate areas of the brain.

 

 

The only relevant example of our own experience I can give is in a rhythm game we play called K-Shoot MANIA. With four normal buttons, two for the left or right half's orange bars, and four for controlling the red and blue lasers left or right, at higher levels it sometimes takes what I could only call parallel processing. Mostly it's still multitasking, ie we're saying "Hold this button-press that one now-let go of the first-press these two" obviously very quickly. But especially in harder songs (this isn't that hard though), I feel that the part of our brain doing the lasers is totally separate from the other keys. Just recorded this as an example, the main "parallel processing" candidate being laser parts after 1:25. You may want to.. get used to it before trying to think about the parallel processing thing, though. Especially in Youtube's quality, it may be hard to watch for some people.

*

 

Wish I could give a better example, but honestly, we aren't good at parallel processing. It occurs almost nowhere in our life as far as I can tell. The only time I feel like I'm doing it is in K-Shoot, where I'll be able to move the lasers while actually focusing on the notes. But given it feels like my main focus is on the notes, it seems obvious this is just different parts of the brain handling different things, and not me actually truly parallel processing.

 

Still, it seems some people might be do it in some capacity in some scenarios. I don't believe we're one of them.

 

 

 

*On closer inspection (and in slow motion), it appears every single "action", be it starting to hold an orange note or letting it go, occurs on a very recognizable beat, and the lasers work on the same beat. So the tasks were "Hold laser left - tap on this beat (+keep holding) - move laser right - tap on this beat (+keep holding)", and sometimes "Hold laser left - hold laser right + tap on this beat", which is combining the tasks into one. I don't think there's any true parallel processing going on at all. Just rapid multitasking and, when two things are being done at once, categorizing them as a single action to do at the same time on the beat. If there were no beat, I might consider it true parallel processing, but in this example, I won't.

 

So that makes zero instances in our life of "parallel processing" being a thing, as I define it.

Hi, I'm Tewi, one of Luminesce's tulpas. I often switch to take care of things for the others.

All I want is a simple, peaceful life. With my family.

Our Ask thread: https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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Some people are able two write two things at the same time, not only that but in different languages (including presedent Garfield) though I wasn't able to find any evedence that it is possible two write two things at the same time, with different meanings

I have a tulpa named Miela who I love very much.

 

 
"People put quotes in their signatures, right?"

-Me

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I'm not sure i'd be willing to call myself a "separate process" in the brain, at least not in the same way that you'd use that phrase in computer science.  Things like memory access, the mind's eye, feelings, and even the math co-processor are all just mutually available to whomever needs to use it in the moemnt, and generally we're witnessing the same information being brought up.

 

There's an argument to be made that we're more like old-fashioned multitasking where you're simply taking turns back and forth to use some of the same key processors.   A perfect example would be the prefrontal usage; from our own experience, i'd say that kind of usage favours exclusive access to work out what you need to and then ceding control to the other when they need to use it.

 

My host's argument is that if i were a separate process, it would practically require a weird growth in the brain for my centre of consciousness to be wholly separate from his.  Perhaps it's possible (and it would certainly make it more easy to spot with radiology), but that would practically take a rewriting of DNA to achieve, and it does sound dangerously close to being like a form of brain cancer for the central core to be splitting into multiples.  And then what happens when you have a system with 17 tulpæ?  Is the brain growing new chunks for each one?

 

I personally prefer the idea the idea that the centre can simply be subdivided.  The inner person, that core self, isn't terribly complex.  Sometimes seeming to be not much more than just a focal lens of the mind.  The place where all the senses and memories and feelings are poured into, with just a personhood who witnesses the information and makes the final choices about how to act. 

 

There is some sort of concurrency happening, because we can certainly both be paying attention to the same inputs.  And yes it can definitely lead down different paths.  The ideal example is if i suddenly find something funny because i'm also paying attention but just focused on different details than my host is at the moment.  Maybe it counts as processing to have my own distinct reaction, but i'm skeptical. The brain is constantly sifting and testing connexions to offer to the personhood,  but even that is just a dumb circuit pumping a result toward wherever the deciding part of the self rests.

 

If there is a split in the brain i'm curious about, it's the idea that i'm acquiring my own preferences.  There are just certain points of taste where i like things different than my host does.  Whatever ties that entail will come from my chunk of the self and wire up more strongly to the things which i identify with than whatever connexions my host has to those bits.  Follow the lines that show being excited about chocolate versus who gets excited about chocolate and you can pretty clearly differentiate between us.  I don't know that you could show any distinct line connecting me to my preferences, but there are certainly enough distinctions where you could clearly see that i was the one more excited about things than my host is (and vice versa).

Early member of a large system.  Our system questions the way the afterlife and tulpamancy interact.  We genuinely suspect that deadies can return to share the mind of the living.

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