Scans revealed a wave of cerebrospinal fluid being expelled from the brain moments after attention dropped and returning a second or so after the lapse ended. Such waves are normally seen in deep sleep and are thought to help the brain flush out metabolic waste that builds up during the day.
Other measurements showed that the pupils of people’s eyes constricted about 12 seconds before the fluid left the brain and returned to normal after the lapse. Breathing and heart rate also fell, the researchers report in Nature Neuroscience.
While more questions remain, the lapses seem to happen when the brain tries to juggle normal cognitive functioning with essential maintenance that is normally carried out during sleep. “It’s your brain trying to take a break,” Yang said.
Gallant says the findings contradict two beliefs nonscientists commonly have about the brain. First, that only the left hemisphere handles language. Second, that the brain has localized regions that handle specific tasks.
Edit: When you frequently access your word maps with the help of your FIML partner, both of you will become much more conscious of how these maps are structured and how they function during acts of communication.
This allows partners to make conscious meta-decisions to change and improve these maps in any way they want.
The meaning held in semantic maps (or semiotic maps) is the very meaning of your life as you understand it.
Not only do your maps form the basis of your communication with others, they also form the basis of how you understand yourself. How you communicate with yourself.
Gaining access to these maps is extremely liberating because it allows a degree of control over your own mind that few of us ever experience.
When we say that FIML has no content, no required beliefs, this can be understood as meaning that FIML gives us access to our own maps and control over them.
What you do with this access is entirely up to you and your partner.
“Our memory is not like a video camera,” Bridge said. “Your memory reframes and edits events to create a story to fit your current world. It’s built to be current.” (Source)
The unreliability of human memory is not a new topic, but this study fairly convincingly shows how our memories conform to what we are doing and/or how we have been using them.
One can plausibly extrapolate from this that humans change how they remember and understand themselves and others based on the data of now. A moment of extraneous frustration, for example, may cause us to see someone nearby us in a different light, through no fault of theirs.
If our frustration is with how we are being (mis)understood or with our difficulty in expressing our thoughts, the implications for how we understand the person we are speaking with may be even more serious.
Experienced FIML partners will surely have realized that even minor misunderstandings can lead to large acts of “reframing” events in an emotional way that can be seriously distorted.
Beyond innocent misunderstandings (which, unfortunately, can have tragic consequences), this area of shifting memories is where a good deal of interpersonal abuse occurs. In the worst cases, one (or both) partners abuse normal human malleability to lie. In less bad cases, one (or both) partners is easily excited by their own distortions and quickly comes to believe them, effectively lying to themselves as well as their partner.
In other cases, individuals or entire groups of people may decide to tell a significant lie (slanted history, for example) and then hurl their lie passionately at others. This frequently causes the person being lied to to react with shame or concern based on the liars’ emotional display and not on the facts of the matter. A person being subjected to such verbal abuse will often conclude that if the other person is so passionate, they must have a serious point that should be considered; and this can cause large distortions of well-known facts in the victim’s mind.
All of this is a major reason the Human Realm is characterized by delusion and a large part of Buddhist practice is geared toward removing delusion.
Despite the intuition that strongly held beliefs are particularly difficult to change, the data on error correction indicate that general information errors that people commit with a high degree of belief are especially easy to correct.(Emphasis added.)
According to the study, this happens due to:
…enhanced attention and encoding that results from a metacognitive mismatch between the person’s confidence in their responses and the true answer.
This is exactly what happens when a FIML query shows the questioner that his/her assumptions about what their partner’s thoughts or intentions were, were wrong.
Initially, FIML partners may experience some embarrassment or disbelief at being wrong. But since FIML queries are generally based on negative impressions, after some practice being shown to be wrong will typically produce feelings of relief and even delight.
A FIML query will generally arise out of a state of “enhanced attention” and usually further increase it by being spoken about. Incidentally, this is probably the most difficult aspect of FIML practice—controlling the emotions that accompany enhanced attention, especially when that attention concerns our own emotional reactions.
With continued practice of FIML, however, even strongly held erroneous interpersonal beliefs will be fairly easily corrected whenever they are discovered during a FIML discussion. Correcting core false beliefs (mistaken interpretations) has a wide-ranging, beneficial effect on all aspects of a person’s life.
Since the hypercorrection effect discussed in the linked study only occurs during moments of enhanced attention, the FIML technique of focusing quickly on good data agreed upon by both partners can be seen as a way of inducing states of enhanced attention that will lead to deep changes in both partners. This technique (using good data) also turns the discussion from one about feelings to one about “information,” which the study finds makes errors “especially easy to correct.”
Furthermore, since FIML practice tends to deal with very small incidents, the enhanced attention FIML induces works like a laser that quickly and painlessly excises erroneous thoughts and feelings while they are still small and have not been allowed to grow into full-blown emotional reactions.
The FIML approach to human psychology considers humans as existential networks of signals, some internal and some external.
A core concept in FIML is that cognition relies on semiotic networks. Semiotics are meaningful or communicable signals.
The purpose of FIML practice is the optimization of interpersonal communication. An important part of this process involves removing what we usually call “misinterpretations.” Some synonyms, depending on context, for misinterpretation are neurosis, emotional suffering, emotional confusion, disordered thinking, wrong views, and so on. The main point is that the sufferer of a misinterpretation is making some sort of mistake in how they perceive, cognize, or react to the world around them.
Misinterpretations are fundamentally rooted in meaning. A misinterpretation is not fundamentally emotional, but meaningful. From the mistaken meaning flows emotions, perceptions, reactions, psychological confusion.
A friend sent me a fascinating Wikipedia entry on ideasthesia:
Ideasthesia (alternative spelling ideaesthesia) is a neuropsychological phenomenon in which activations of concepts (inducers) evoke perception-like sensory experiences (concurrents). The name comes from the Ancient Greek ἰδέα (idéa) and αἴσθησις (aísthēsis), meaning ‘sensing concepts’ or ‘sensing ideas’. The notion was introduced by neuroscientist Danko Nikolić, but can be seen in examples in the Ethics of Spinoza (especially in the third part of the Ethics[1]), as an alternative explanation for a set of phenomena traditionally covered by synesthesia.[2]
While synesthesia meaning ‘union of senses’ implies the association of two sensory elements with little connection to the cognitive level, empirical evidence indicated that most phenomena linked to synesthesia are in fact induced by semantic representations. That is, the linguistic meaning of the stimulus is what is important rather than its sensory properties. In other words, while synesthesia presumes that both the trigger (inducer) and the resulting experience (concurrent) are of sensory nature, ideasthesia presumes that only the resulting experience is of sensory nature while the trigger is semantic.[3][4][5][6][7][8]
Note this from the section above—‘the linguistic meaning of the stimulus is what is important rather than its sensory properties… ideasthesia presumes that only the resulting experience is of sensory nature while the trigger is semantic.
“However, most phenomena that have inadvertently been linked to synesthesia, in fact are induced by the semantic representations i.e., the meaning, of the stimulus rather than by its sensory properties, as would be implied by the term synesthesia.”
If ideasthesia happens with simple perceptions, imagine how often it happens in our existential networks of cognition, semiotic perception, semiotic response and interpretation.
By correcting the core meanings of core misinterpretations, FIML practice corrects maladapted existential networks, thus relieving suffering while optimizing communication.
Absence of consciousness can occur due to a concussion, anesthetization, intoxication, epileptic seizure, or other fainting/syncope episode caused by lack of blood flow to the brain. However, some meditation practitioners also report that it is possible to undergo a total absence of consciousness during meditation, lasting up to 7 days, and that these “cessations” can be consistently induced. One form of extended cessation (i.e., nirodha samāpatti) is thought to be different from sleep because practitioners are said to be completely impervious to external stimulation. That is, they cannot be ‘woken up’ from the cessation state as one might be from a dream. Cessations are also associated with the absence of any time experience or tiredness, and are said to involve a stiff rather than a relaxed body. Emergence from meditation-induced cessations is said to have profound effects on subsequent cognition and experience (e.g., resulting in a sudden sense of clarity, openness, and possibly insights). In this paper, we briefly outline the historical context for cessation events, present preliminary data from two labs, set a research agenda for their study, and provide an initial framework for understanding what meditation induced cessation may reveal about the mind and brain. We conclude by integrating these so-called nirodha and nirodha samāpatti experiences—as they are known in classical Buddhism—into current cognitive-neurocomputational and active inference frameworks of meditation.
Introduction Many unique states of mind have been described by meditators and contemplatives. These can range from ecstatic and mystical absorptions to out-of-body experiences, and even states of so-called pure consciousness (Metzinger, 2020). However, as yet, no scientific papers that we are aware of have explored a meditation-induced event known in Pāli (the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism) as nirodha samāpatti (NS), which literally means “cessation attainment,” but often is rendered as “cessation of feeling and perception” (Nanamoli and Bodhi, 1995). Compared to other non-ordinary experiences that scientists might be tempted to dismiss due to their inherently subjective and variable nature, the NS experience is concrete: an internally induced absence of consciousness. The event is outwardly comparable to general anesthesia and differentiated from deep sleep in that after a NS event there is no sensation of time having passed, there are no dreams, and one cannot be ‘woken up’ by physical stimulation or pain (Nanamoli and Bodhi, 1995).a Clearly, in terms of understanding the mind and brain, the capacity to voluntarily turn off consciousness, analogously to general anesthesia, is immensely interesting, also given how rare the capacity is and its implications for our understanding of top-down processing in the brain.b There are also notable after-effects of NS (and other cessation) experiences involving a profound sense of clarity, which some meditators describe as a kind of inner “reset,” which further differentiates this experience from (coming out of) sleep or general anesthesia.
I am not well-versed in nirodha samāpatti, but I do believe that Buddhist practice at its best involves some form of serious, consistent meditation practice. ABN
TL;DR: Advanced meditators entering nirodha samāpatti—cessation of all mental activity—are now being tracked with ultra-high-field brain imaging. Results show the brain entering a globally reorganized, low-energy but highly polarized state, unlike sleep or anesthesia. From a Frequency Wave Theory (FWT) perspective, this is the first empirical glimpse of consciousness “switching off” and rebooting, validating Buddhist claims and opening the door to measurable enlightenment.
The Ancient Claim Meets Modern Science
For thousands of years, Theravāda Buddhism has described nirodha samāpatti as the pinnacle of meditation: a deliberate shutdown of all perception, thought, and sense of self. Practitioners reported this as the gateway to nirvana, the end of suffering. Until now, these were taken largely on faith or subjective report.
This new study changes that. Using 7-Tesla fMRI, researchers followed advanced meditators as they entered what they called Extended Cessation (EC). Participants described total silence of mind—no thoughts, no sensations, no self-awareness. Consciousness went offline by choice.
This is interesting. The Frequency Wave Theory needs more explanation. I am pretty sure the state achieved in this experiment is a samadhi state and not nirvana. Nonetheless, this is an interesting finding. If anyone has more information on this, please post in the comments. ABN
Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistics (FIML) is the use of language to understand interpersonal communication.
More precisely, it is the use of language to completely understand real-world, real-time interpersonal communication events.
FIML disables psychological presupposition and framing whether emotional, psychological, intellectual, or other. This happens because FIML only uses data agreed upon by both partners.
Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is sometimes described as a “brain orgasm.” It is a feeling of profound clarity and may be accompanied by tingling sensations, pleasant light-headedness, or a sense that the blood and nerves are flushed with a clean feeling.
ASMR is often associated with tactile or sensory perceptions, but a successful FIML event can also produce ASMR sensations.
The pleasure of a successful FIML event comes from a state of psychological disarray resolving into everything being in the right place, all the pieces coming together as they should.
Once experienced during FIML practice, ASMR acts as an additional reward to having resolved a state of confusing communication into something wonderful. It is a pleasure to figure something out with FIML and also it is an even greater pleasure to have that accompanied by an ASMR brain orgasm.
UPDATE: Anti-immigration is spreading across the first world. The sooner the better because waiting only makes it worse.
For readers who understand FIML, it should at some point become very clear that all people everywhere live mentally inside psycholinguistic cages and have essentially no way to escape except to crawl into yet another psycholinguistic cage.
It is ultimately this massive flaw in human language processing that will lead to societal chaos and civil wars.
The people in Japan opposing the importation of another kind of people trapped in an alien psycholinguistic (and semiotic) cage are right. They may not fully understand why, but they are protecting Japan against the gradual and inevitable annihilation the West is now experiencing.
It’s still not too late for the West, but the hour is late. ABN
A new study on post traumatic stress disorder shows that PTSD sufferers actually perceive meaning or emotional valence within fractions of a second.
This study bolsters the FIML claim that “psychological morphemes” (the smallest psychological unit) arise at discrete moments and that they affect whatever is perceived or thought about afterward.
The study has profound implications for all people (and I am sure animals, too) because all of us to some degree have experienced many small and some large traumas. These traumas induce a wide variety idiosyncratic “meaning and emotional valence” that affects how we perceive events happening around us, how we react to them, and how we think about them.
It is thus based on a clearly defined pool of people with “similar” extreme experiences and finds that:
…attentional biases in PTSD are [suggestively] linked to deficits in very rapid regulatory activation observed in healthy control subjects. Thus, sufferers with PTSD may literally see a world more populated by traumatic cues, contributing to a positive feedback loop that perpetuates the effects of trauma.
Of course all people are “traumatized” to some degree. And thus all people see “a world populated by traumatic cues, contributing to a positive feedback loop that perpetuates the effects of trauma.”
If we expand the word trauma to include “conditioned responses,” “learned responses,” “idiosyncratic responses,” or simply “training” or “experience” and then consider the aggregate all of those responses in any particular individual, we will have a fairly good picture of what an idiosyncratic individual (all of us are that) looks like, and how an idiosyncratic individual actually functions and responds to the world.
FIML theory claims that idiosyncratic responses happen very quickly (less than a second) and that these responses can be observed, analyzed, and extirpated (if they are detrimental) by doing FIML practice. Observing and analyzing idiosyncratic responses whether they are detrimental or not serves to optimize communication between partners by greatly enhancing partners’ ranges of emotion and understanding.
In an article about the linked study (whose main author is Rebecca Todd), Alva Noë says:
…Todd’s work shows that soldiers with PTSD “process” cues associated with their combat experience differently even than other combat veterans. But what seems to be driving the process that Todd and team uncovered is the meaningfulness or emotional valence of the cues themselves. Whether they are presented in very rapid serial display or in some other way, what matters is that those who have been badly traumatized think and feel. And surely we can modify how we think and feel through conversation?
Indeed, what makes this work so significant is the way it shows that we can only really make sense of the neural phenomena by setting them in the context of the perceptual-cognitive situation of the animal and, vice-versa, that the full-import of what perceivers say and do depends on what is going on in their heads. (Source)
I fully agree with the general sense of Noë’s words, but want to ask what is your technique for “modifying how we think and feel through conversation?” And does your technique comport well with your claim, which I also agree with, that “we can only really make sense of the neural phenomena by setting them in the context of the perceptual-cognitive situation of the animal”?
I would contend that you cannot make very good “sense of neural phenomena” by just talking about them in general ways or analyzing them based on general formulas. Some progress can be made, but it is slow and not so reliable because general ways of talking always fail to capture the idiosyncrasy of the “neural phenomenon” as it is actually functioning in real-time during a real “perceptual-cognitive situation of the animal.”
The FIML technique can capture “neural phenomena” in real-time and it can capture them during real “perceptual-cognitive situations.” It is precisely this that allows FIML practice to quickly extirpate unwholesome responses, both small and large, if desired.
Since all of us are complex individuals with a multitude of interconnected sensibilities, perceptions, and responses, FIML practice does not seek to “just” remove a single post traumatic response but rather to extirpate all unwholesome responses.
Since our complex responses and perceptions can be observed most clearly as they manifest in semiotics, the FIML “conversational” technique focuses on the signs and symbols of communication, the semiotics that comprise psychological morphemes.
FIML practice is not suited for everyone and a good partner must be found for it to work. But I would expect that combat veterans with PTSD who are able to do FIML and who do it regularly with a good partner will experience a gradual reduction in PTSD symptoms leading to eventual extirpation.
The same can be said for the rest of us with our myriad and various traumas and experiences. FIML done with a good partner will find and extirpate what you don’t want knocking around in your head anymore.
By analyzing minute emotional reactions in real-time during normal conversation, FIML practice disrupts the consolidation, or more often the reconsolidation, of “neurotic” responses.
In FIML, a neurotic response is defined as “an emotional response based on a misinterpretation.” The misinterpretation in question can be incipient (just starting) to long-standing (been a habit for years).
The response is disrupted by FIML practice and, thus, tends not to consolidate or reconsolidate, especially after several instances of learning that it is not valid.
A neurotic response is a response based on memory. The following study on fear memories supports the above explanation of FIML practice.
Memories become labile when recalled. In humans and rodents alike, reactivated fear memories can be attenuated by disrupting reconsolidation with extinction training. Using functional brain imaging, we found that, after a conditioned fear memory was formed, reactivation and reconsolidation left a memory trace in the basolateral amygdala that predicted subsequent fear expression and was tightly coupled to activity in the fear circuit of the brain. In contrast, reactivation followed by disrupted reconsolidation suppressed fear, abolished the memory trace, and attenuated fear-circuit connectivity. Thus, as previously demonstrated in rodents, fear memory suppression resulting from behavioral disruption of reconsolidation is amygdala-dependent also in humans, which supports an evolutionarily conserved memory-update mechanism. (Source: Disruption of Reconsolidation Erases a Fear Memory Trace in the Human Amygdala)
FIML practice works by partners consciously and cooperatively disrupting reconsolidation (and initial consolidation) of neurotic memory (and associated behaviors). FIML both extirpates habitual neurotic responses and also prevents the formation of new neurotic responses through conscious disruption of memory consolidation.
FIML probably works as well as it does because humans have “an evolutionarily conserved memory-update mechanism” that favors more truth. Obvious examples of this update mechanism can be seen in many simple mistakes. For instance, if you think the capital of New York State is New York City and someone shows that it is Albany, you will likely correct your mistake immediately with little or no fuss.
Since FIML focuses on small mistakes made between partners, corrections are rarely more difficult than the above example though they may be accompanied by a greater sense of relief. For example, if you thought that maybe your partner was mad at you but then find (through a FIML query) that they are not, your sense of relief may be considerable.
A new study seems to show that the brains of rats—and by extension ours as well—use a spatial “mapping” system to encode more than just space.
This suggests that mammalian brains encode “continuous, task-relevant variables” in “common circuit mechanisms” that can “represent diverse behavioural tasks, possibly supporting cognitive processes beyond spatial navigation.” (Mapping of a non-spatial dimension by the hippocampal–entorhinal circuit)
It does seem that we do a lot of thinking, remembering, and associating in systematic or roughly systematic ways. And it does seem that these systems resemble spatial ones.
Ever notice how amazing it can feel to stumble upon a new view of a spatial system you already know well? “So that’s where the duct goes through the wall!” Or, “I never realized that Bob’s Street intersects Jones right here!”
When we explore our psychological “maps” in interpersonal settings using FIML techniques, we gain access to details that reorganize those “maps” in a similar way to the example above. Small insights can yield amazing results.
Typically, normal psychological maps are distorted impressions of the psychological space around us. FIML allows us to see in our psychological “maps” a level of detail or resolution that cannot be gained in any other way.
Understanding verbal, emotional, semiotic, and associative details is key to understanding our “psychological locations” in this world.
On this site we have claimed many times that words and semiotics are held together in networks. We have further hypothesized that “psychological morphemes” are also held together in networks.
A “psychological morpheme” is the smallest meaningful unit of a psychological response. It is the smallest unit of communication that can give rise to an emotional, psychological, or cognitive reaction.
Of course word networks, semiotic networks, and emotional, psychological, and cognitive networks all intertwine with each other.
FIML practice is designed to help partners untangle unwanted emotions from these intertwined networks. FIML practice focuses on psychological morphemes because they are small and thus rather easily understood and rather easily extirpated from real-time contexts (when partners are interacting in real life in real-time).
The hard part about FIML practice is it is done in real life in real-time. But the easy or very effective part about FIML is that once partners learn to do it, results come quickly because the practice is happening in real life in real-time. It is not just a theory when you do it in that way. It is an experience that changes how you communicate and how you understand yourself and others.
In FIML practice partners are mindful of their emotional reactions and learn that when one occurs, it is important to query their partner about it. They are mindful of psychological morphemes and as soon as one appears, but before the morpheme calls up a large network leading to a strong reaction, they query their partner about it.
This practice leads to a fairly smooth and effortless extirpation of unwanted psychological responses. This happens because the data provided by the partner that “caused” the reaction shows the partner who made the FIML query that the psychological morpheme in question arose due to a misinterpretation. Seeing this repeatedly for the same sort of neurotic reaction causes that reaction and the psychological network that comprises it to become extinguished.
A fascinating study from the University of Kansas by Michael Vitevitch shows that removing a key word from a linguistic network will cause that network to fracture and even be destroyed. An article about the study and a link to the study (pay wall) can be found here:Keywords hold vocabulary together in memory.
Vitevitch’s study involves only words and his analysis was done only with computers because, as he says, ““Fracturing the network [in real people] could actually disrupt language processing. Even though we could remove keywords from research participants’ memories through psycholinguistic tasks, we dared not because of concern that there would be long-term or even widespread effects.”
FIML is not about removing key words from linguistic networks. But it is about dismantling or removing psychological or semiotic networks that cause suffering.
Psychological or semiotic networks are networks rich in emotional meaning. When those networks harbor unwanted, inappropriate, or mistaken interpretations (and thus mistaken or unwanted emotions), they can cause serious neurotic reactions, or serious mistaken interpretations.
We believe that these mistaken interpretations and the emotions associated with them can be efficiently extirpated by revealing to their holder the “key” psychological morphemes that set them off.
The psychology of a semiotic network hinges on repeated reactions to key psychological morphemes and that this process is analogous to the key words described in Vitevitch’s study.
Vitevitch did not remove key words from actual people because it would be unethical to do so. But it is not unethical for consenting adults to help each other find and remove key psychological morphemes that are harmfully associated with the linguistic, semiotic, cognitive, and psychological networks that make up the individual.
The uncertainty in working memory may be linked to a surprising way that the brain monitors and uses ambiguity, according to a recent paper in Neuron from neuroscience researchers at New York University. Using machine learning to analyze brain scans of people engaged in a memory task, they found that signals encoded an estimate of what people thought they saw — and the statistical distribution of the noise in the signals encoded the uncertainty of the memory. The uncertainty of your perceptions may be part of what your brain is representing in its recollections. And this sense of the uncertainties may help the brain make better decisions about how to use its memories.
…the idea that we are walking around with probability distributions in our heads all the time has a certain beauty to it. And it is probably not just vision and working memory that are structured like this, according to Pouget. “This Bayesian theory is extremely general,” he said. “There’s a general computational factor that’s at work here,” whether the brain is making a decision, assessing whether you’re hungry or navigating a route.
FIML practice works precisely with the probabilistics of working memory. If the range of doubt in a perception is stronger than normal, it may prompt a query. If the range is stronger than normal and may indicate danger, a query is more likely. It would make sense that our assessments of these factors would be Bayesian. When perceptions are psychologically important, any Bayesian analysis will require assessing the subjective context into which the perception enters, which implies further Bayesian analyses. It would be wonderful if we had machines that could do this for us, but they will only be invented years from now if ever. For now, we can use our own minds to accomplish this through FIML practice. If you can understand the linked article, you should be able to see the value of FIML which collapses a Bayesian probability curve into the certainty of a single point. Psychologically, when this is done hundreds of times, the results are extremely satisfying. ABN
American Buddhist Net 