Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Consciousness is supported by near-critical slow cortical electrodynamics

pnas.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 109 posts

Re: Consciousness is supported by near-critical slow cortical electrodynamics

#11

Post by verisimi »

colechristensen wrote: post #6
inpdx wrote: post #4

Can anyone ELI5 this?

Eh, not really. It's hard to describe features of chaos / nonlinear dynamics simply. There are features of chaotic systems that undergo phase changes from one type of behavior to another. Think a signal on one side of the transition to look like a pure sine wave and on the other side of the transition to look like purely random white noise. What these guys are reporting is that they found a parameter, a signal they c…

"Think a signal on one side of the transition to look like a pure sine wave and on the other side of the transition to look like purely random white noise."

This reminds me of something Rupert Sheldrake says is possible - that consciousness is 'off-site', that the body is more of a radio receptor.

Re: Consciousness is supported by near-critical slow cortical electrodynamics

#12

Post by awb »

colechristensen wrote: post #6
inpdx wrote: post #4

Can anyone ELI5 this?

Eh, not really. It's hard to describe features of chaos / nonlinear dynamics simply. There are features of chaotic systems that undergo phase changes from one type of behavior to another. Think a signal on one side of the transition to look like a pure sine wave and on the other side of the transition to look like purely random white noise. What these guys are reporting is that they found a parameter, a signal they c…

> It's also the kind of thing that can open a backdoor for free will in a deterministic universe, your brain in this chaotic state might behave deterministically but the actual state would never be knowable with enough precision to predict the outcome of inputs for any amount of time (butterfly effect).

I think all it would mean is that the human brain is non-deterministic.

That’s different from free will though which is really an untestable, philosophical idea rather than a testable scientific hypothesis.

In any event, a random chaos state can be both non-deterministic and not intentional, or what many would call “free will”.

Re: Consciousness is supported by near-critical slow cortical electrodynamics

#14

Post by ghostly_s »

mlyle wrote: post #9
ghostly_s wrote: post #8

What does "a critical point or phase transition [of the] electrodynamics of the cortex" mean? Electricity doesn't have "phases" AFAIK (well there's two/three-phase power but I don't think that's what they're talking about).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_transition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_exponent The concept of phase transition is broader than the phases of matter.

Interesting, though the only example I see listed in that article that's not a change in the physical properties of matter is the ferromagneticparamagnetic phases.

Re: Consciousness is supported by near-critical slow cortical electrodynamics

#15

Post by robbedpeter »

verisimi wrote: post #11
colechristensen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, not really. It's hard to describe features of chaos / nonlinear dynamics simply. There are features of chaotic systems that undergo phase changes from one type of behavior to another. Think a signal on one side of the transition to look like a pure sine wave and on the other side of the transition to look like purely random white noise. What these guys are reporting is that they found a parameter, a signal they c…

"Think a signal on one side of the transition to look like a pure sine wave and on the other side of the transition to look like purely random white noise." This reminds me of something Rupert Sheldrake says is possible - that consciousness is 'off-site', that the body is more of a radio receptor.

There is no magic, nor room for it for any person that believes in the scientific method. There are a sufficient number of real mysteries and wonders not to waste time with pseudoscience. The brain is not a consciousness antennae, and there are no good reasons to think so.

Consciousness is an emergent phenomenon entirely dependent on and contained within the brain.

Re: Consciousness is supported by near-critical slow cortical electrodynamics

#16

Post by awb »

netsharc wrote: post #7

It's a weird feeling to realize how we're all just hardware, and it might be possible to wake up someone who's "brain dead"/vegetative by LSD (the paper mentions how psychedelics affect this cortical electrodynamics, and as this old article[1] mentions the LSD). Imagine someone flipping a switch (in the future where tech to control the electrodynamics exists) and you're awake and aware of your surroundings again. [1]…

> The idea of using LSD as a treatment has floated around the Internet for decades. There are rumors — totally unconfirmed — that an astronomical dose of LSD — "a quarter of a vial," or 25 hits — woke up an unresponsive dude and, after a few days, he was able to speak. It's entirely possible those stories are true.

“Unresponsive dude” lol. Interesting descriptor.

It doesn’t sound like anyone has tried it yet.

Re: Consciousness is supported by near-critical slow cortical electrodynamics

#17

Post by AnimalMuppet »

colechristensen wrote: post #6
inpdx wrote: post #4

Can anyone ELI5 this?

Eh, not really. It's hard to describe features of chaos / nonlinear dynamics simply. There are features of chaotic systems that undergo phase changes from one type of behavior to another. Think a signal on one side of the transition to look like a pure sine wave and on the other side of the transition to look like purely random white noise. What these guys are reporting is that they found a parameter, a signal they c…

For me personally, when I use the term "free will", I mean something stronger than "deterministic, but not provably so". That's more of a "free will of the gaps" - claiming that free will is hiding somewhere in the holes in our knowledge.

Re: Consciousness is supported by near-critical slow cortical electrodynamics

#18

Post by mlyle »

ghostly_s wrote: post #14
mlyle wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_transition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_exponent The concept of phase transition is broader than the phases of matter.

Interesting, though the only example I see listed in that article that's not a change in the physical properties of matter is the ferromagnetic paramagnetic phases.

Lots of the list are changes of physical properties of matter (e.g. breaking of physics symmetries in the cooling universe)... that are not conventional matter phase transitions between e.g. liquid and gas.

Re: Consciousness is supported by near-critical slow cortical electrodynamics

#19

Post by geijoenr »

This appears to be an indication of a new phenomenon correlated to criticality in cortical electrodynamics, that also correlates to consciousness as we understand it.

It looks to me is a huge step, because even the result is so far empirical, the first step to understand anything is being able to measure it.

Re: Consciousness is supported by near-critical slow cortical electrodynamics

#20

Post by darawk »

awb wrote: post #12
colechristensen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, not really. It's hard to describe features of chaos / nonlinear dynamics simply. There are features of chaotic systems that undergo phase changes from one type of behavior to another. Think a signal on one side of the transition to look like a pure sine wave and on the other side of the transition to look like purely random white noise. What these guys are reporting is that they found a parameter, a signal they c…

> It's also the kind of thing that can open a backdoor for free will in a deterministic universe, your brain in this chaotic state might behave deterministically but the actual state would never be knowable with enough precision to predict the outcome of inputs for any amount of time (butterfly effect). I think all it would mean is that the human brain is non-deterministic. That’s different from free will though whic…

> I think all it would mean is that the human brain is non-deterministic.

Chaotic systems are still deterministic. They're just extremely sensitive to their initial conditions/inputs.

Post reply on HN