i miss RP
So, I'm reading this book. It's called Mind Hacks, and is very informative. I kind of killed a yellow highlighter in my pursuit of knowings, and then I took notes. I'm typing them up here because my handwriting is absolute shit and I'm sure someone out there might be interested. (I suggest reading the book, though; it's fabulous.)
-resolution of visual selective attention
-heightened; probably only to the point that resolution is spread more evenly across modalities (while remaining spatially relegated)
-result: everything grabs attention, nothing can be relegated ignorable (especially emotional stimuli)
-?? possible damage to the superior colliculus
-attentional blink
-remains, possibly even more pronounced because of trauma; OR considerably shortened so that all noticed stimuli are brought up to conscious attention
-visual short term memory
-increased capacity limit (baseline is about four, I doubt she'd be much higher; maybe ten at the v. most); possible side effect in inattention blindness more severe and noticeable. Everything (almost) is brought to conscious attention, but without the ability to to consciously or subconsciously prioritize, stimuli not able to sit within the limits of VSTM gets completely ignored. (brings up issues like forgetting normal routines (food, hair brushing, social interaction when in a social setting, etc.) unless someone is able to bring those issues to her attention long enough to take hold and prioritize itself by force)
-negative priming
-in general, has a stronger and more lasting effect; leads to avoidance (???)
-++hearing and location
-canting head to the side = taking multiple readings of a sound source, overlaps ambiguities and builds a composite, interpolated set of evidence on where a sound is coming from
-++attention = allocated in physical space
-horizon of simultaneity
-touch can enhance visual discrimination (one example of cross-modality; still applies to other combinations of modalities) as long as they happen within the same time (400ms??) to constitute having witnessed a true event
-coupled with attention issues, probably helped by experiencing events through two modalities (leads to fun creepy staring and touching things (see also: object affordances))
-broken escalator phenomenon
-the brain automatically disassociates between conscious knowledge and its control of motor function
-heightened; disassociation becomes a particularly disorienting experience and occurs more often
-object affordances
-damage to the frontal lobes/dorsal stream (??) may result in an inability to control impulses regarding acting on objects (object memory is stored concurrently with memory of what action that object requires; damage leads to an inability to separate the two)
-frequencies v. probabilities
-baseline = working on prediction through basic analysis of frequencies as a default; being psychic = more adept and defaults to prediction through probabilities
-social needs during healing
-"the presence of social support during recovery shifts the balance of the conflict because some of the burden of preventing further harm is transferred from the sick person to those around them"
-common fate
-grouping of events leads to false positives on true connections between them; mostly due to inability to properly delegate attentional resources
-++the blinding problem
-"how the brain correctly connects together all the information it is dealing with; all the things that are happening in different parts of the world, detected by different senses, whose component parts have properties represented in different cortical areas, all of which have to be knitted together into a coherent perception."
-object agency
-personification of important objects becomes a natural extension of object affordances
-causality and spatial separation
-distance between objects/timing is less of a hindrance to understanding cause/effect relationship between them
-perception of willed movement
-insight and conscious will for many actions truncated; related to overtaxed attentional resources and impulse control
-priming and association
-"that which we noticed, even briefly and then forgot, influences both what we think /and/ what we notice in the future."
-memories/thoughts from others will play a large role in what/how she thinks even after their immediate influence is gone (linear effect: stronger the thought, the faster and more powerfully it will command attention and pull up associations, but will plateau once all attentional resources are maxed out)
-fluent processing
-"the parahippocampal gyrus (part of the limbic system, adjacent to the hippocampus in the temporal lobe)"..."damage to temporal lobe regions impair both recognition and recall memory"
-false fluency and/or inability to consciously register true fluency with some objects and memories (possibly esp. those pre-Academy)
-non-holistic memories
-memory features get mixed-up and confused between one another; most pronounced in older memories and false/taken memories
-confabulation
-"damage to the posterior occipital cortex...[may] cause insistent confabulation by...damage to the motivational system"..."damage to the brain region warps this mechanism so all memories are marked [as "pertains to now"]. Any memory brought to consciousness is accompanied by a deep subjective feeling of relevance."
-leads to false connections seeming true and found memories taking precedence over those more relevant but unable to take up attentional resources
-memory without appropriate context
-as above, possible additional confusion with memories of the same type that either share neural signature or exist in the brain without a distinct neural signature as those properly learned
-the hippocampus
-need to decide if it was damaged or somehow enhanced to increase the ability to know where she is in spatial relation to objects around her
-tempero-parietal junction
-possibly damaged; damage leads to intermittent inability to distinguish between ego-centric (through the eyes) point of view and a limited kind of out of body experience
-the hypnagogic state
-occurs pre-sleep, a state of the progressive defocusing of attention; with River, a similar state possibly occurs during normal waking hours, especially at times when medicated with anything that dampens sensory input or any kind of barbituate and is made even more confusing while around others experiencing a natural state of hypnagogia. "cause[s] a reduction in normal perception filtering, resulting in loosely connected thoughts and unusual experiences."
-amygdala and fear
-"While the amygdala... is traditionally considered the emotion area, it is tied most closely to fear."
-damage to the limbic system and socially coordinated emotions
-leads to trouble controlling emotions in a way that will reliably afford her the ability to coordinate with those around her and the psychic influence leads to, instead of natural coordination, a kind of emotional mimicry of those around her
-++propranolol
-a drug that prevents physiological arousal by blocking beta-adrenegic receptors (preventing increase in heart rate and release of adrenaline, essentially cutting off emotional stimuli)
Holy shit that's a lot.
-resolution of visual selective attention
-heightened; probably only to the point that resolution is spread more evenly across modalities (while remaining spatially relegated)
-result: everything grabs attention, nothing can be relegated ignorable (especially emotional stimuli)
-?? possible damage to the superior colliculus
-attentional blink
-remains, possibly even more pronounced because of trauma; OR considerably shortened so that all noticed stimuli are brought up to conscious attention
-visual short term memory
-increased capacity limit (baseline is about four, I doubt she'd be much higher; maybe ten at the v. most); possible side effect in inattention blindness more severe and noticeable. Everything (almost) is brought to conscious attention, but without the ability to to consciously or subconsciously prioritize, stimuli not able to sit within the limits of VSTM gets completely ignored. (brings up issues like forgetting normal routines (food, hair brushing, social interaction when in a social setting, etc.) unless someone is able to bring those issues to her attention long enough to take hold and prioritize itself by force)
-negative priming
-in general, has a stronger and more lasting effect; leads to avoidance (???)
-++hearing and location
-canting head to the side = taking multiple readings of a sound source, overlaps ambiguities and builds a composite, interpolated set of evidence on where a sound is coming from
-++attention = allocated in physical space
-horizon of simultaneity
-touch can enhance visual discrimination (one example of cross-modality; still applies to other combinations of modalities) as long as they happen within the same time (400ms??) to constitute having witnessed a true event
-coupled with attention issues, probably helped by experiencing events through two modalities (leads to fun creepy staring and touching things (see also: object affordances))
-broken escalator phenomenon
-the brain automatically disassociates between conscious knowledge and its control of motor function
-heightened; disassociation becomes a particularly disorienting experience and occurs more often
-object affordances
-damage to the frontal lobes/dorsal stream (??) may result in an inability to control impulses regarding acting on objects (object memory is stored concurrently with memory of what action that object requires; damage leads to an inability to separate the two)
-frequencies v. probabilities
-baseline = working on prediction through basic analysis of frequencies as a default; being psychic = more adept and defaults to prediction through probabilities
-social needs during healing
-"the presence of social support during recovery shifts the balance of the conflict because some of the burden of preventing further harm is transferred from the sick person to those around them"
-common fate
-grouping of events leads to false positives on true connections between them; mostly due to inability to properly delegate attentional resources
-++the blinding problem
-"how the brain correctly connects together all the information it is dealing with; all the things that are happening in different parts of the world, detected by different senses, whose component parts have properties represented in different cortical areas, all of which have to be knitted together into a coherent perception."
-object agency
-personification of important objects becomes a natural extension of object affordances
-causality and spatial separation
-distance between objects/timing is less of a hindrance to understanding cause/effect relationship between them
-perception of willed movement
-insight and conscious will for many actions truncated; related to overtaxed attentional resources and impulse control
-priming and association
-"that which we noticed, even briefly and then forgot, influences both what we think /and/ what we notice in the future."
-memories/thoughts from others will play a large role in what/how she thinks even after their immediate influence is gone (linear effect: stronger the thought, the faster and more powerfully it will command attention and pull up associations, but will plateau once all attentional resources are maxed out)
-fluent processing
-"the parahippocampal gyrus (part of the limbic system, adjacent to the hippocampus in the temporal lobe)"..."damage to temporal lobe regions impair both recognition and recall memory"
-false fluency and/or inability to consciously register true fluency with some objects and memories (possibly esp. those pre-Academy)
-non-holistic memories
-memory features get mixed-up and confused between one another; most pronounced in older memories and false/taken memories
-confabulation
-"damage to the posterior occipital cortex...[may] cause insistent confabulation by...damage to the motivational system"..."damage to the brain region warps this mechanism so all memories are marked [as "pertains to now"]. Any memory brought to consciousness is accompanied by a deep subjective feeling of relevance."
-leads to false connections seeming true and found memories taking precedence over those more relevant but unable to take up attentional resources
-memory without appropriate context
-as above, possible additional confusion with memories of the same type that either share neural signature or exist in the brain without a distinct neural signature as those properly learned
-the hippocampus
-need to decide if it was damaged or somehow enhanced to increase the ability to know where she is in spatial relation to objects around her
-tempero-parietal junction
-possibly damaged; damage leads to intermittent inability to distinguish between ego-centric (through the eyes) point of view and a limited kind of out of body experience
-the hypnagogic state
-occurs pre-sleep, a state of the progressive defocusing of attention; with River, a similar state possibly occurs during normal waking hours, especially at times when medicated with anything that dampens sensory input or any kind of barbituate and is made even more confusing while around others experiencing a natural state of hypnagogia. "cause[s] a reduction in normal perception filtering, resulting in loosely connected thoughts and unusual experiences."
-amygdala and fear
-"While the amygdala... is traditionally considered the emotion area, it is tied most closely to fear."
-damage to the limbic system and socially coordinated emotions
-leads to trouble controlling emotions in a way that will reliably afford her the ability to coordinate with those around her and the psychic influence leads to, instead of natural coordination, a kind of emotional mimicry of those around her
-++propranolol
-a drug that prevents physiological arousal by blocking beta-adrenegic receptors (preventing increase in heart rate and release of adrenaline, essentially cutting off emotional stimuli)
Holy shit that's a lot.