Brain function and taking metaphor literally (Out-of-Body experiences etc)

[lightofdarkness]

We find in an article on neurological focus on Out-Of-Body experiences (http://www.innerworlds.50megs.com/obe.htm):

"The angular gyrus is thought to play a role in the way the brain analyzes sensory information that allow us to percieve our bodies. When it misfires, they suggest, the result can be a sense of floating, and seeing the world from outside of the body. The findings were published in the respected science journal "Nature".

While the angular gyrus is involved in our perception of our own bodies"

We then find from a recent paper ( http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-05/uoc--gmu052005.php ):

"What does it take to fathom a proverb ? catch the figurative meaning of "an apple doesn't fall far from the tree"?
According to research led by V. S. Ramachandran, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, a region of the brain known as the angular gyrus is probably at least partly responsible for the human ability to understand metaphor.

Ramachandran and colleagues tested four right-handed patients with damage to the left angular gyrus. Fluent in English and otherwise intelligent and mentally lucid, the patients showed gross deficits in comprehending such common proverbs as "the grass is always greener on the other side" and "an empty vessel makes more noise." Asked to explain the sayings, the patients tended give responses that were literal. The metaphorical meaning escaped them almost entirely.

When pressed to provide deeper or more general accounts, Ramachandran said, "the patients often came up with elaborate, even ingenious interpretations ? that were completely off the mark." "

Implication? OBEs are metaphors that can be taken literally and so 'feed' the concept of being able to 'escape' the body.

Chris.

[sunpuerh]

The eye is Holy to Li. This I Ching saying holds that traveling out of body is more easily done by hunter-gathers, especially thos who come in close contact with the patterns of light on water, are able to travel to the places, espcially those places associated with this activity which requires a good deal of silent watching with heightened awareness, This intense seeing may allow the person to travel there, an O.B.E. said to be common in ancient peoples. Anthropologists have noted that these type clans most of them can draw a very accurate map of the area with the hunting areas slightly exagerrated. Those that "see into tommorrow," literally are able to travel there in visions and dreams that portend great hunting or fishing, for example. The eye as a body organ is directly wired to the brain and to process much of the information when one lives in primordial chi of nature. They receive visual stimulation without having what the eye sees processed intellectually. Another perhaps more primitive area of the brain is stimulated. These visions and dreams are often shared within the group as they have close ties to one another.

the OBE"S of which you speak my indeed be suspect of not being inherently factual (as having not actually happened)

[lightofdarkness]

The mammallian/primate/human brain as a whole shows a marked adaptation to vision and so light processing. Included in that adaptation is the development of mirror neurons that allow for copying, mimicry etc (properties of the trigram of Lake) and so the 'reflection' of 'out there' 'in here'.

One of the causes of 'jumps' in evolution is reflected in the development in life forms of some internal map of 'out there' where the map allows for the pre-empting of local context events, and so their prediction and exploitation. Thus a formally 'reactive' life form becomes suddenly very 'proactive' as all of the dots are connected.

It is these sorts of maps that allow for those unaware of their existence to associate 'teleological' influences on the behaviours of life forms.

Combine all of this with our consciousness and its main method for adapting to future contexts - using imagination - and we have a rich source of 'meaning' as part of our neurology and so part of our species-nature. Our consciousness has been ignorant of this activity such that the use of science has led to a better understanding of what is going on 'in here' - prior to that a lot of 'projection' has been going on.

Past collectives were more attuned to this sort of map-making whereas we are now dependent on GPS etc!

The issue then comes where these forms of sensory metaphors, experiencing some local 'anomolies' in the neurology, can elicit images etc that are taken literally.

[martin]

"Implication? OBEs are metaphors that can be taken literally and so 'feed' the concept of being able to 'escape' the body."

I would rather turn that around. What is fed is the concept of being imprisoned in the body. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif
The sense of "floating" is more in accordance with how things really are but in our culture we learn to block (or at least not reinforce) such sensations.

[lightofdarkness]

:-) a predictable comment Martin! Your perspective fits in with the range of POSSIBLE perspectives given our differentiating/integrating dynamic (IDM) but the particular model you propose then needs validation through empirical studies.

That said, as I have mentioned before, there are observations in (a) identical twin research, (b) cancer cell research, and (c) old radio crystal development, that focuses on issues of 'purity' - Pauli's exclusion principle says no sharing of quantum states and so fermions cannot exist in the same space but there is nothing to say one thing cannot be in two places at the same time!

The problem with this sort of 'communication' is that it drops off really quickly - 1/2^n - such that it would require a probabilities approach to use it and that would be too costly when compared to what we can do with basic run-of-the-mill EM methods. However, it does get around the problem of transmitting over 'spacelike' distances. The issue is the sense of NOW that comes with maximising bandwidth where that maximisation would include purity as a property.

As paradox processing shows us, if we cannot maximise bandwidth to resolve the issue, we recruit time in the form of sensory oscillations across the elements of the paradox. The purity issue relates to 'something' that links one 'kind' regardless of distance/time - IOW the notion of distance is not considered, all that is considered is correlation - which is what we see in interpretations of EPR etc - but these all relate to our brains focus on NOW where that focus will marginalise time/distance considerations for the sake of 'clear' identification - all stemming from confusion in experimental design where the AND part is ignored in the XOR design and then 'shock' appears when we come face-to-face with the AND element!

The issue then comes down to SAMENESS. That sameness IS present in Physics in the interpretations of EM elements, all electrons (fermions) are the 'same', as are all photons (bosons). BUT the dynamics is fermions FROM bosons (as a pair) and that indicates a root in 'light' - but our brains have adapted to light in particular and we find the only absolute is light - spacetime is relative. IOW making light 'fundamental' makes its properties appear as if 'fundamental' - we find this adaptation in our brains in the form of AND states that are superpositions, all parts are in waveform and any WHOLE is a superposition where we use XOR to extract a particular that 'fits' the local context - and so a PARTICULAR DIFFERANCE is identified from out of the superposition. (see the comments on WAVE interpretations of hexagrams in http://www.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/icstruct.html)

This all gets down to XOR/AND dynamics in the neurology where that can be empirically demonstrated... and the work continues ;-)

Chris.