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Category: neuroscience – Page 862

Towards The Cybernetic Theory of Mind | Part V of Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind Documentary

Watch the full documentary on TUBI (free w/ads):
https://tubitv.com/movies/613341/consciousness-evolution-of-the-mind.

IMDb-accredited film, rated TV-PG
Director: Alex Vikoulov.
Narrator: Forrest Hansen.
Copyright © 2021 Ecstadelic Media Group, Burlingame, California, USA

*Based on The Cybernetic Theory of Mind eBook series (2022) by evolutionary cyberneticist Alex M. Vikoulov, available on Amazon:

as well as his magnum opus The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution (2020), available as eBook, paperback, hardcover, and audiobook on Amazon:

“You can’t explain consciousness in terms of classical physics or neuroscience alone. The best description of reality should be monistic. Quantum physics and consciousness are thus somehow linked by a certain mechanism… It is consciousness that assigns measurement values to entangled quantum states (qubits-to-digits of qualia, if you will). If we assume consciousness is fundamental, most phenomena become much easier to explain.

The Mind-Body dilemma has been known ever since René Descartes as Cartesian Dualism and later has been reformulated by the Australian philosopher David Chalmers as the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. Western science and philosophy have been trying for centuries now, rather unsuccessfully, to explain how mind emerges from matter while Eastern philosophy dismisses the hard problem of consciousness altogether by teaching that matter emerges from mind. The premise of Experiential Realism is that the latter must be true: Despite our common human intuitions, Mind over Matter proves to be valid again and again in quantum physics experiments.

From the Digital Physics perspective, particles of matter are pixels, or voxels if you prefer, on the screen of our perception. Your Universe is in consciousness. And it’s a teleological process of unfolding patterns, evolution of your core self, ‘non-local’ consciousness instantiating into the phenomenal mind for the duration of a lifetime.

Continue reading “Towards The Cybernetic Theory of Mind | Part V of Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind Documentary” | >

Inferring the size of a collective of self-propelled Vicsek particles from the random motion of a single unit

Collective dynamics are ubiquitous in the natural world. From neural circuits to animal groups, there are countless instances in which the interactions among large numbers of elementary units bestow surprisingly complex patterns of tantalizing beauty on the collective. One of the longstanding goals of researchers in many fields is to understand behaviors of a large group of individual units by monitoring the actions of a single unit. For example, an ornithologist can learn many things about the behaviors of a flock by monitoring only a single bird.

Of greater difficulty is understanding the size of a collection of units by observing a single unit. No matter how many birds one tags with monitoring equipment, one can never be assured of having tagged the entire flock. Yet, while the ability to calculate the size of a collective from individual behaviors would be a key tool for any field, there are only a handful of recent papers trying to tackle the seemingly unsolvable problem.

In a newly published study appearing in Communications Physics, investigators led by Maurizio Porfiri, Institute Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Biomedical Engineering, and a member of the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering; and Pietro De Lellis of the University of Naples, Italy, offer a paradigm to solve this problem, one that builds upon precepts that can be traced back to the work of Einstein.

Magic mushroom compound increases brain connectivity in people with depression

The new results, taken from two combined studies, reveal that people who responded to psilocybin-assisted therapy showed increased brain connectivity not just during their treatment, but up to three weeks afterwards. This “opening up” effect was associated with self-reported improvements in their depression.

Psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms, helps to “open up” depressed people’s brains, even weeks after use, a study has found.

These are the findings of a new analysis of brain scans from close to 60 people receiving treatment for depression, led by Imperial College London’s Centre for Psychedelic Research. The team behind the study believes it may have untangled how psilocybin exerts its therapeutic effects on the brain.

Psilocybin is one of a number of psychedelics being explored as a potential therapy for psychiatric disorders. Several studies have trialled a synthesised form of the drug to treat patients with depression and anxiety, with promising results.

Infectious Etiology of Alzheimer’s Disease Workshop — Day 1

The goal of this virtual workshop is to discuss whether microbial pathogens may represent a causal component of Alzheimer’s disease, review knowledge gaps, and establish scientific priorities to address these gaps. The workshop discussed gaps in current knowledge and explored new opportunities for research in the areas intersecting infectious organisms and Alzheimer’s disease.

All comments must conform to NIA’s comments policy: https://go.usa.gov/xtqAQ

A Single Memory Is Stored Across Many Connected Brain Regions

Summary: Brain mapping study reveals memory engrams are widely distributed throughout the brain, including among regions not previously realized.

Source: picower institute for learning and memory.

A new study by scientists at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT provides the most comprehensive and rigorous evidence yet that the mammalian brain stores a single memory across a widely distributed, functionally connected complex spanning many brain regions, rather than in just one or even a few places.

Psychophysicists: Your Brain Might Not Be as Conscious as You Think

“Conscious processing is overestimated,” lead author Michael Herzog said in a press release. “You should give more weight to the dark, unconscious processing period. You just believe that you are conscious at each moment of time.”

When we ride a bike, Herzog mused, our bodies automatically make minute adjustments to keep from falling over without consciously thinking about it. But even with his team’s two-step model, some of the secondary questions surrounding the ancient debate remain. Questions about how long these discrete moments of consciousness last, or how they differ among people, don’t have answers.

“The question for what consciousness is needed and what can be done without conscious? We have no idea,” Herzog said.

Study shows important change in B-cells in women with PPD

A study published in Molecular Psychiatry is the first to look at multiple levels of biology within women with postpartum depression (PPD) to see how women with the condition differ from those without it. PPD affects 1 in 7 women and has negative mental health consequences for both mother and child. However, the precise biological mechanisms behind the disorder are unknown.

“We don’t have PPD figured out,” said lead author Jerry Guintivano, Ph.D., assistant professor in the UNC Department of Psychiatry. “A lot of biological research focuses on candidate genes and hormones, and we do have a lead on some PPD-specific medications, but it’s important to take multiple avenues to target this condition. Not every manifestation of PPD is the same.”

That’s why Guintivano led a team of researchers from the UNC School of Medicine to conduct the largest transcriptome-wide association study for PPD to date. Previous studies have only analyzed whole blood samples. This study took a deeper look and examined the different components of blood. They took blood samples from 1,500 racially and ethnically diverse from across North Carolina who had given birth within the past six weeks, 482 of whom were diagnosed with PPD. Researchers used RNA sequencing, DNA genotyping, and assessment of DNA methylation—amounting to three levels of basic biology evaluation—to look for differences in components of the from women with PPD versus women without PPD.

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