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Consciousness is supported by near-critical slow cortical electrodynamics

pnas.org

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

#21

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #17
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…

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.

a) Information complexity is a measurable physical quantity.

b) Unlike matter and energy, information complexity does not obey laws of conservation. (Demonstrably so.)

c) Ergo, an information complexity singularity can exist, and if it does - we would be reasonably correct in calling it "free will".

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

#22

Post by nefitty »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #17
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…

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.

Whatever people mean by free will, this feeling like we're driving our bodies and minds around usually, there's no mechanism by which it could exist.

Either the things in our brains follow deterministic patterns or they're random. Neither one of those gives me room to decide to get a glass of orange juice. In fact, any desire I have at all for an orange is dependent on that type of plant having emerged billions of years ago. I can imagine a fruit that doesn't exist, but I can't desire it and I can't buy it at the store. I had no say in any part of that causal chain whatsoever.

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

#23

Post by bell-cot »

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…

+1...but my reaction to folks who worry much about free will in a deterministic universe, "butterfly effect quasi-free will", etc. is that they really should have gotten outside to play more when they were kids.

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

#24

Post by markhahn »

This strikes me as totally unsurprising. How could it be otherwise? It's basically saying that a brain normally operates in an interesting dynamical mode: not chaotic, and not very regular. Wow? If it were chaotic, we wouldn't have coherent or consistent behavior at any scale. If overly regular, we'd be incredibly dull and unable to respond to the environment.

You could do this with a computer. If your signals coming from the computer are either too regular or too unexpected, then it's probably broken. This sort of thing might be useful diagnostically, but doesn't really provide us with greater understanding...

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

#25

Post by BizarroLand »

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.

I'm interpreting it as there is a point in the meatspace of your brain that is like a sailboat on a stormy sea. The Water is one level, the air is another, and your consciousness is the sailboat that glides around where the two meet.

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

#26

Post by alan-hn »

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).

Its a transition between distinct operational phases of a dynamic system, iirc these can be described with a (my terminology may be a bit off here) topological phase diagram

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/dynamical-systems-neuroscienc...

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

#27

Post by alan-hn »

inpdx wrote: post #4

Can anyone ELI5 this?

So to put things simply, this comes from a view of a neuron (or network of neurons) as a dynamical system with various states. These states are constantly in flux and we can describe the states as patterns that are seen from plotting the pieces of the instantaneous state of the system in question. These patterns will repeat and change over time based on inputs and such, hence the term "phase change"

At least that's my current understanding of the matter, coming from the mouth of an undergrad late in a biochem degree with a focus on neuro

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

#28

Post by unfocussed_mike »

awb wrote: post #16
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.

> “Unresponsive dude” lol. Interesting descriptor.

Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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

#30

Post by tomrod »

markhahn wrote: post #24

This strikes me as totally unsurprising. How could it be otherwise? It's basically saying that a brain normally operates in an interesting dynamical mode: not chaotic, and not very regular. Wow? If it were chaotic, we wouldn't have coherent or consistent behavior at any scale. If overly regular, we'd be incredibly dull and unable to respond to the environment. You could do this with a computer. If your signals coming…

A captured signal may represent a pathway for intervention, a cause, or a margin to address.

Imagine if we found that schizophrenia or other potentially debilitating mental health condition were 99.9999% correlated with this signal being weak or strong. That would be telling. If only for diagnosis, and possibly as a cause.

EDIT: a word - "would be telling"

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