# life: ghostly psyche revisited; ghosts, zombies, gris-gris, and so on ...

<< Most people imagine philosophers as rational thinkers who spend their time developing abstract logical theories and strongly reject superstitious beliefs. But several 20th-century philosophers actively investigated spooky topics such as clairvoyance, telepathy – even ghosts.

Many of these philosophers, including Henri Bergson and William James, were interested in what was called “psychical research”. This was the academic study of paranormal phenomena including telepathy, telekinesis and other-worldly spirits. These thinkers attended seances and were attempting to develop theories about ghosts, life after death and the powers exhibited by mediums in trances. >>

AA << recent archival research has been looking at how these topics shaped 20th-century philosophy. >>️

Matyas Moravec. Many important 20th-century philosophers investigated ghosts – here’s how they explained them. Oct 24, 2024. 

https://theconversation.com/many-important-20th-century-philosophers-investigated-ghosts-heres-how-they-explained-them-241635

Also: ethno, gris-gris, neuro, zombie, perception, psychedelic, delirium, in https://www.inkgmr.net/kwrds.html 

Keywords: ethno, gris-gris, neuro, zombie, perception, psychedelic, delirium 

FonT: even G.A. Romero's zombie filmography - which, as with other "spooky" themes, I have always marginalized - still seems relevant.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_A._Romero

# brain: the sense of hearing, the sense of silence.

<< Do we only hear sounds? Or can we also hear silence? These questions are the subject of a centuries-old philosophical debate between two camps: the perceptual view (we literally hear silence), and the cognitive view (we only judge or infer silence). >>

<< In all cases (concerning seven experiments), silences elicited temporal distortions perfectly analogous to their sound-based counterparts, suggesting that auditory processing treats moments of silence the way it treats sounds. Silence is truly perceived, not merely inferred. >>️

️

Rui Zhe Goh, Ian B. Phillips, Chaz Firestone. The perception of silence. 

PNAS. 120 (29) e2301463120. Jul 10, 2023. 

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2301463120

Roberto Molar Candanosa. The sound of silence? Researchers prove we can  hear it. Johns Hopkins University - HUB. Jul 11, 2023. 

https://hub.jhu.edu/2023/07/11/can-we-hear-silence 

Researchers Prove We Hear the 

Sound of Silence. Jul 10, 2023. 

https://youtu.be/nCRosndUfMc

Also: silence, pause, sound, noise, perception, brain, in https://www.inkgmr.net/kwrds.html 

Keywords:  brain, perception, sound, noise, pause, silence

# brain: jazzy perceptions inside, there’s more to all the noise; even in the dark, neurons of the visual cortex chat

<< Scientists are now rethinking how they study and conceive of perception. >>

<< At every moment, neurons whisper, shout, sputter and sing, filling the brain with a dizzying cacophony of voices. Yet many of those voices don’t seem to be saying anything meaningful at all. They register as habitual echoes of noise, not signal; as static, not discourse. >>️

<< But over the past decade, that view has changed. (..) There’s more to all the noise, scientists realized, than they had assumed. >>️

<< Now, by analyzing both the neural activity and the behavior of mice in unprecedented detail, researchers have revealed a surprising explanation for much of that variability: Throughout the brain, even in low-level sensory areas like the visual cortex, neurons encode information about far more than their immediately relevant task. They also babble about whatever other behaviors the animal happens to be engaging in, even trivial ones — the twitch of a whisker, the flick of a hind leg. Those simple gestures aren’t just present in the neural activity. They dominate it. >>️

<< Our brains aren’t just thinking in our heads. Our brains are interacting with our bodies and the way that we move through the world. >> Cris Niell. 

<< Wait — maybe the brain isn’t noisy. Maybe it’s actually much more precise than we thought, >> David McCormick️.️

Jordana Cepelewicz. ‘Noise’ in the Brain Encodes Surprisingly Important Signals. Quantamag. Nov 7, 2019. 

https://www.quantamagazine.org/noise-in-the-brains-vision-areas-encodes-body-movements-20191107/

Salkoff DB, Zagha E, McCarthy E, McCormick DA. Movement and Performance Explain Widespread Cortical Activity in a Visual Detection Task. Cereb Cortex. 2020 Jan 10;30(1):421-437. doi: 10.1093/ cercor/bhz206. 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31711133/

Also

keyword 'perception' in FonT

https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/search?q=perception

keyword 'percezione' | 'percezioni' in Notes (quasi-stochastic poetry)

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/search?q=percezione

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/search?q=percezioni

keyword 'error' | 'fuzzy' | 'noise'  in FonT 

https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/search?q=error

https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/search?q=fuzzy

https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/search?q=noise

keywords 'errore' | 'errori' in Notes (quasi-stochastic poetry)

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/search?q=errore

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/search?q=errori

keyword 'jazz' in FonT

https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/search?q=jazz

keyword 'jazz' in Notes (quasi-stochastic poetry):

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/search?q=jazz

Keywords: brain, perception, visual cortex, noise

# life: apropos of transitions (in visual perceptions), 'when the reasoning mind melts away, only shapes remain'.

<< Those who drink the hallucinogenic ayahuasca report seeing two-dimensional patterns or throbbing, three-dimensional hexahedral cells. When the reasoning mind melts away, only shapes remain. >>

<< Geometry gives us a world unclad. "Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare," wrote Edna St. Vincent Millay. That feeling of mystical revelation — of a shimmering, underlying order that we can apprehend if we purify our perception — might explain the mutual affinity between poets and geometers.  (..) Many of the mathematicians cited in Ellenberg’s book (Jordan Ellenberg,  'Shape' ) wrote verse. >>

<< “I prove a theorem,” the poet Rita Dove wrote, “and the house expands.” >>️

️

Parul Sehgal. ‘Shape’ Makes Geometry Entertaining. Really, It Does. NYT. May 20, 2021.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/books/review-shape-geometry-jordan-ellenberg.html

Jordan Ellenberg. Shape. The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else. 463 pages. Penguin Press.

https://www.nytimes.com/column/books-of-the-times

Also

keyword 'ayahuasca'  | 'magic string' in FonT

https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/search?q=ayahuasca

https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/search?q=magic+string

keyword 'transition' in FonT

https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/search?q=transition

keyword 'transition' | 'transizion*' in Notes (quasi-stochastic poetry)

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/search?q=transition

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/search?q=transizione

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/search?q=transizioni

# gst: immediate 'shot', the three second time window in art, music, poems and language processing

<< Is there a universal time constant for poetic lines when people read them aloud or recite them by heart? Turner and Pöppel (1988) collected over 20 types of poetry, varying from East to West and from modern societies to indigenous cultures, and found a constant of ~3 s for the duration of poetic lines. >>️

<< This observation indicates a production– perception synchrony of ~3 s, which means that we not only tend to recite poems  (and speech in a more general sense; discussed later) with a 3-s pattern but also appreciate poems aesthetically within the same temporal frame. This temporal preference for a 3-s pattern and not a 1-s or a 10-s pattern, which linguistically would be possible, indicates presumably a profound evolutionary basis. The temporal modulation effect of the 3-s window on aesthetic appreciation may also motivate to look for other concepts and phenomena of the cognitive and neural basis of aesthetic perception in general and in detail, as has been partly already done for decision processes, the visual arts, and music (Avram et al., 2013; Bao et al., 2016; Bao et al., 2017; Park et al., 2014; Park et al., 2015; Pöppel, 1989a). >>

Xinchi Yu, Yan Bao. The three second time window in poems and language processing in general: Complementarity of discrete timing and temporal continuity.  PsyCh Journal. Vol 9, Issue 4 p. 429-443. doi: 10.1002/ pchj.390. Aug 26, 2020. 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pchj.390

<< the composer Peter Michael Hamel  (..) decided to compose a string quartet, which he called The Time Frame. This time window (the three second time window), which is an anthropological universal, provides an operative basis for effortless communication, empathic relationships to others, and it is the brain's way to integrate continuity and simultaneity of what is experienced in a complementary mode. >>️

Peter Michael Hamel. Through the self to music: The self as the creative origin for composing in time frames. Psych J. 10(2):249-253. doi: 10.1002/ pchj.446. Apr 12, 2021

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33847070/

Also 

Ramificata tinnula (di carmina fluitantia). Notes (quasi-stochastic poetry). Jun 09, 2005.

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/2005/06/1668-ramificata-tinnula-di-carmina.html

Elettrico Charlie (Seven come eleven). 

Notes (quasi-stochastic poetry). Feb 01, 2007. 

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/2007/02/2116-elettrico-charlie-seven-come.html

Il pseudomotore di Shostakovich. Notes (quasi-stochastic poetry). Nov 15, 2006. 

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/2006/11/2087-il-pseudomotore-di-shostakovich.html 

keyword 'jazz' in Notes (quasi-stochastic poetry)

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/search?q=jazz

FonT 

Queste considerazioni di Xinchi Yu e  Yan Bao potrebbero anche indicare una sorta di predisposizione neurofisiologica individuale all' 'immediato Satori' ... 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satori

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_(awareness)

# brain: related noise in perception, like a type of "groupthink"

<< The findings, (..) offer new insights into the limits of perception and could aid in the design of so-called neuroprosthetics-devices that enable people to regain some lost sensory capabilities. >>

<< because neurons are highly interconnected, when one randomly responds incorrectly and misidentifies an image, it can influence other neurons to make the same mistake. >>

<< You can think of correlated noise like a type of 'groupthink,' in which neurons can act like lemmings, with one heedlessly following another into making a mistake, >> Surya Ganguli

<< Remarkably, the visual system is able to cut through about 90% of this neuronal noise, but the remaining 10% places a limit on how finely we can discern between two images that look very similar. >>

<< With this study, we've helped resolve a puzzle that's been around for over 30 years about what limits mammals-and by extension humans-when it comes to sensory perception, >> Mark Schnitzer

Adam Hadhazy. Misfiring from jittery neurons sets fundamental limit on perception.  Stanford University. Apr 9, 2020.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-misfiring-jittery-neurons-fundamental-limit.html

Rumyantsev OI, Lecoq JA, et al. Fundamental bounds on the fidelity of sensory cortical coding. Nature 580, 100–105 doi:.10.1038/ s41586-020-2130-2. Mar 18, 2020.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2130-2