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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

#71

Post by sradman »

henriquemaia wrote: post #57

> Somehow, his brain was still processing and identifying a face—a fairly high-level skill—even though his conscious mind was oblivious. I'm maybe wrong about this, but isn't the ability to recognize faces a fairly low-level skill? Case is point being other social animals having it, like apes, monkeys, or even sheep [1] (who can even recognize human faces [2]). So maybe they're here referring to the ability of seeing…

The paper describes “event-related potential (ERP)” [1] measured via EEG.

“The N170 is a component of the event-related potential (ERP) that reflects the neural processing of faces, familiar objects or words.” [2]

They also measured the inverse of recognition “...improbable events will elicit a P3b, and the less probable the event, the larger the P3b.” [3]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event-related_potential

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/N170

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3b

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

#72

Post by Izkata »

whalabi wrote: post #64
User23 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Whoa. I get the green/brain bit and can kinda tweak my perception to hear both, but needle and storm? When I hear both from the same audio they sound so very different and I can't fathom how they come from the same waves.

This looks like one of the early posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmagicfuckery/comments/8jxzee/y...

Deep in the comments, someone posted this:

> If you slow down the audio/video to about 25% speed, you'll notice that the sound for 'needle' begins a fraction earlier than 'storm'. This is because the 's'-sound (in storm) actually begins in the 'ee'-gap of 'needle'. The 't'-sound of 'storm' atches with the 'dl'-sound of 'needle'. The whooshing sound during the 'ee'-gap of the 'needle' sound is heard by our brains as an 's'-sound and - since the brain is already primed for 'storm' - we hear the rest accordingly.

The toy is supposed to be saying Brainstorm: https://ben10.fandom.com/wiki/Brainstorm

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

#74

Post by zestyping »

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 encountered this a while ago, and it's still astonishing that it's possible to hear such different things.

"Brain" and "green" are so similar that mistaking one for the other is not interesting. The really interesting pair is "storm" and "needle" — they seem wildly different.

I think what's going on is that the "ee" vowel sound and the hissing sound of an "s" both have a lot of high frequencies. It might be that an "ee" from a high-pitched speaker sounds similar to an "s" from a lower-pitched speaker, so the interpretation depends on what you infer the speaker's vocal frequency range to be.

And then when you notice that "needle" and "needo" sound almost the same, the "o" in "storm" is not that much of a stretch. "eedle" ~= "eeto" ~= "sto".

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

#76

Post by irthomasthomas »

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 don't get it, all I can hear is some noise followed by 'brain storm'.

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

#77

Post by ketzo »

stormdennis wrote: post #75

When they gave him the foam 8 he didn't recognize it and they speculated it was because the brain prioritised sight over the sense of touch. Surely they tried the same experiment after asking him to close his eyes first?

Oh man, I wonder what he pictured in his head if he tried to picture an 8 instead of read one? Nothing? Squiggles? Headache?

Honestly, I could ask a billion more questions about this situation. So fascinating.

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

#78

Post by macleginn »

henriquemaia wrote: post #57

> Somehow, his brain was still processing and identifying a face—a fairly high-level skill—even though his conscious mind was oblivious. I'm maybe wrong about this, but isn't the ability to recognize faces a fairly low-level skill? Case is point being other social animals having it, like apes, monkeys, or even sheep [1] (who can even recognize human faces [2]). So maybe they're here referring to the ability of seeing…

There is a difference between “low level” and “human specific”. Faces are highly complex geometrically, while numbers, such as 8, are simple. Animals sure can recognise simple shapes (https://docsmith.co/2007/01/can-animals-recognize-shapes/), but they cannot endow them with abstract meanings, such as "number 8". The person in the article lost the basic ability of recognising very simple shapes while still being able to recognise more complex shapes, like faces, and to operate with abstract concepts.

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

#79

Post by dumbneurologist »

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…

You nailed it.

This is a reported piece, so the description could be completely off the mark. But the quote from the neuroscientist is

> “What it tells me,” says Christof Koch, a neuroscientist at the Allen Institute who specializes in consciousness, “is that … you can get dissociation between cognition and consciousness.”

which is a wild overintepreretation.

Gerstmann syndrome is the same kind of deficit where you have preserved consciousness and severe impairments in one very specific cognitive domain. Aphasia is a more common version of a focal neurological deficit which is equally analogous.

This whole article is just pop science nonsense (although it's entirely possible the underlying research has merit; it's not easy to tell based on an article about it).

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

#80

Post by yourkin »

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 started with my eyes closed and heard nothing but noise. With eyes open I caught a glimpse of the brainstorm label and started to hear that and only that. No green needle, as much as I tried to make it flip, it did not.
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