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A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

sciencemag.org

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Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#41

Post by User23 »

Xenograph wrote: post #16

> In contrast, when shown numbers with embedded faces, the number’s effect apparently swamped that of the face: RFS reported seeing neither; everything looked like spaghetti. Yet an EEG still showed the characteristic N170 spike for registering faces. Somehow, his brain was still processing and identifying a face—a fairly high-level skill—even though his conscious mind was oblivious. This deficit shows high-level cog…

Makes me think of this silliness I saw today: https://mobile.twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/12892831187305...

I recommend first watching it with you eyes closed and after that seeing how you can manipulate your perception. It was easy to hear “brain needle” with my eyes closed.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#42

Post by Marsymars »

Reading is weird.

I've never had migraines, but a few years ago suddenly, and briefly, lost the ability to read and write. After a number of doctors and tests ruling out a TIA, best guess is one-time transient aphasia from a migraine aura.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#43

Post by mojuba »

apoorvkumar wrote: post #36
mojuba wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I" is something that knows its place in space and time, the here-and-now, but also has a memory of here-and-now moments of the past. As such "I" is an illusion. If a quantum clone of you is created both I's will have the same memory of the past here-and-now moments, so both will be you at the same. So probbaly something similar happens if a brain is split.

About your analogy - quantum cloning may not be allowed by laws of nature. That would make any consciousness unique at any point in time. Also I feel the experiment suggests split brains would most likely become 2 very different (new?) entities with different behavior after losing integrity.

> quantum cloning may not be allowed by laws of nature

It might be that the original should be destroyed, I understand. So be it, destroy the original and create N clones. But the thought experiment is an interesting one regardless.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#44

Post by Marsymars »

djhaskin987 wrote: post #27

> That he could still interpret letters, Schubert says, lends support to the idea that the brain has a specialized module for processing numbers. This makes a lot of sense to me. I have almost no trouble at all remembering long strings of numbers, but I have the opposite problem with names. I cannot remember names to save my life unless I use them on a daily basis. I feel like this is a flip-flop from how most people…

Remembering names is generally not a thing that humans are good at.

My intro physics prof had a party trick where he'd memorize the names of everyone in the class within the first couple weeks based on their school ID picture, but he was quick to point out that he didn't have any natural affinity for remembering names, he just brute forced it.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#45

Post by outerouterspace »

Marsymars wrote: post #42

Reading is weird. I've never had migraines, but a few years ago suddenly, and briefly, lost the ability to read and write. After a number of doctors and tests ruling out a TIA, best guess is one-time transient aphasia from a migraine aura.

Same thing happened to me in college, although I never went to the doctor about it. I thought it was a drug flashback at first, and was terrified it was permanent, but it went away after about two hours.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#46

Post by djhaskin987 »

randcraw wrote: post #29
djhaskin987 wrote: post #27

> That he could still interpret letters, Schubert says, lends support to the idea that the brain has a specialized module for processing numbers. This makes a lot of sense to me. I have almost no trouble at all remembering long strings of numbers, but I have the opposite problem with names. I cannot remember names to save my life unless I use them on a daily basis. I feel like this is a flip-flop from how most people…

I too. If a name is unfamiliar to me, even if it's no more than 5-6 letters long, I can't for the life of me recall it. But I can remember random sequences of numerals up to length 12. Why? I wonder if there's some term for this malady, like 'literophasia' or 'numeraphilia'? I wonder too if it occurs equally as often in both genders. I would guess not.

To add some color to this, if it's a common name it's really hard to remember but if it's a foreign name to me or something I've never heard of, it's as if my brain thinks it's a random sequence of sounds and I'll remember it forever. Indian names, native Hawaiian names, no problem, but forget about it if your name is George. It's just the common names I'm used to that I have a hard time with.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#47

Post by aaron-santos »

> eventually mastered an entirely new digit system (where ⌊ stood for 2, ⌈ for 8, etc.)

Why invent a specialized number system? How difficult would it have been to teach him Chinese numerals for example.

Also very curious on his perception of Roman numerals.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#48

Post by fao_ »

eddytrex_ wrote: post #26
the8472 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his brain was still processing and identifying a face—a fairly high-level skill Is it? I thought the brain has specialized parts for identifying faces (hence prosopagnosia) which makes this more of an automatism than higher reasoning.

Yeah, I remember learn that in this playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyGKBDfnk-iAQx4Kw9JeV... very cool

Thank you for this, it's fascinating!

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#49

Post by ladberg »

User23 wrote: post #41
Xenograph wrote: post #16

> In contrast, when shown numbers with embedded faces, the number’s effect apparently swamped that of the face: RFS reported seeing neither; everything looked like spaghetti. Yet an EEG still showed the characteristic N170 spike for registering faces. Somehow, his brain was still processing and identifying a face—a fairly high-level skill—even though his conscious mind was oblivious. This deficit shows high-level cog…

Makes me think of this silliness I saw today: https://mobile.twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/12892831187305... I recommend first watching it with you eyes closed and after that seeing how you can manipulate your perception. It was easy to hear “brain needle” with my eyes closed.

This is insane. Does anyone know where I could read about how this works or how the audio is generated?

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#50

Post by jb775 »

User23 wrote: post #41
Xenograph wrote: post #16

> In contrast, when shown numbers with embedded faces, the number’s effect apparently swamped that of the face: RFS reported seeing neither; everything looked like spaghetti. Yet an EEG still showed the characteristic N170 spike for registering faces. Somehow, his brain was still processing and identifying a face—a fairly high-level skill—even though his conscious mind was oblivious. This deficit shows high-level cog…

Makes me think of this silliness I saw today: https://mobile.twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/12892831187305... I recommend first watching it with you eyes closed and after that seeing how you can manipulate your perception. It was easy to hear “brain needle” with my eyes closed.

I heard "brain needle" with my eyes closed also. I could hear "green needle" but couldn't hear "storm" at all.
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