We can't get away from models, can we? I love the stuff scientists come up with, food for thought and definitely our best bet for thinking about practical problems but I am always struck by how, at some point, the model "becomes" reality, even for some very smart scientists.

'That experimental design delivers, as best as we can achieve, real data about what the brain does under different circumstances in real-time.'

The 'real data' in the above is still a conceptual extrapolation based on a very narrow and partial 'view' of a great unknown. The on/off model is still a model. And science will forever be limited by our limited ability to think beyond the model.

I lost interest in trying to understand this logically after I became obssessed with circular and spherical models. I have an enso painting that may have sparked this but I became very interested in why we see the world as a sphere, given that perception happens in the brain and is not 'out there' in any real sense.
One day I 'saw' that the enso, my head and the world were all representations, and not very useful representations at that. I see the world as a sphere because I see my head that way.
This all sounds quite mad but it sent me looking for a better mind model–the self referential mobius strip comes closer–but is still a model. Religion of the mystic and gnostic variety have always had such models of course, merkaba, mandala, spiral, oroborus etc.

This of course proves nothing and is probably not too helpful to anyone without my rather weird brain but we are back to the old 'try to pull yourself up by your bootstraps' game –it can't be done. We are limited beings, trapped in thought, why not just relax and enjoy the ride?

I wish you wouldn't keep coming up with these interesting articles and then I would maybe not derail the topic–

Studies on feral children, particularly those that have lived with animals, are quite illuminating. If these children are not taught language skills and how to view the world in a human manner by about age 7, a brain developmental stage passes and they are no longer able to aquire these skills. Those that have lived closely with animals continue to conceptualise the world in an animal fashion, the way they were taught, by example, at the critical time of the developing brain.

There is also a well known tale, true or not, of islanders who had never seen a boat being unable to see Spanish galleons when they arrived at the island. The galleons were there in front of their eyes but their brains had no boat concept so they simply did not see the galleons.
I would say that good science is saying what the best meditation teachers have been saying for centuries: nobody knows—- but that's worth finding out experientially for yourself.

For the sake of something-or-other, the story about the indigenous people not seeing the Spanish ships is complete fiction. If it were true, children, who have no concept of MOST things, would never utter the phrase, "Mommy, what's that?" Plus there are no first-person reports of this story. AND, the population in question (South Americans) had, possibly, already sailed to Africa and back by the time the Spanish arrived. But, anyway…
I'd have to see the studies on feral children (how many are there, really?) to comment specifically.

It is true that the brain goes through phases where it's better wired to learn. It's rarely the case that, after that time, you're screwed. The brain continues to adapt, but it needs more applied effort to make those changes once we're out of the "learning" stage. One study from Joy Hirsch showed that people who learn a 2nd language after the age of 11 "split" their language region in half, while children who learn 2 languages at the same time before that age "share" the same brain area.

'If it were true, children, who have no concept of MOST things, would never utter the phrase, "Mommy, what's that?"'

I'm not pretending to know how concepts are formed but children who speak for the first time have been previously subjected to an intensive programme of adults and others speaking around and to them. The adults are generally emotionally invested in priming the child to speak. Children who, by some anomaly, do not get this input generally have considerable difficulty aquiring these supposedly innate skills and display a very limited emotional range in later life.
Being 'human' as opposed to animal is aquired through learning and the unexamined acceptance of culturally sanctioned concepts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

Scientific experiments on children are hampered by the very real moral dilemma that willingly depriving a growing child of this process would be devastating to the child but a number of studies have been carried out on baby monkeys who exhibit behavioural problems when deprived of the usual monkey-rearing process that in humans would be attributed to emotional and cultural deprivation.

"Why is it so horrific a thought when it's YOU, too?"

Because that means "I" am going to die as well as Life has no Meaning or Purpose.

I don't know about you, but I still can't get over the nagging thought that "I" am somehow Immortal despite the obvious observation based inference that I am not.

One can note that EEG and PET scans do provide real time brain data, though they too have similar limitations to fMRI in experimental design and a looking-through-a-keyhole effect of data collection and what amounts to allowable inference from the data.

So there is legitimate scientific speculation in keeping with the mathematics which is then often followed by further non-scientific speculation by add-on bits not derived from the data by way of metaphor, metaphorical inference not being as constrained as mathematical inference.

(Just to complicate that last statement, George Lackoff in his book on mathematics from the POV of cognitive linguistics shows how mathematical reasoning is just a special form of metaphorical reasoning. That implies only a very small cognitive difference between logical inference and wild speculation, so small i figure most people can't tell the difference.)

"Why is it so horrific a thought when it's YOU, too?"

Because I am attached to the idea of 'me' as an entity in itself. And it's probably not a good idea to tamper too deeply with that identification. I might acknowledge intellectually that the 'me' I experience is just a conglomeration of concepts and metaphors but I still want that 'me' concept and it's drive to survive functioning when real, not metaphorical, danger looms.

Babies don't seem to have a problem seeing things they've never seen before

With respect, Steven, you have no evidence at all for what babies actually see or don't see.

Until and if that baby aquires the language programme, (with that programme's inevitable built in limitations, predjudice and biases) that baby is unable to communicate with itself or others what it thinks it might see.
When that baby starts applying the programme, he begins dividing his known world according to the launguage available to him.

I'm not a great fan of the bible but "in the beginning was the Word" says it succinctly.

With equal respect back atcha, Ellen (and with 2.5 years of cognitive psych research investigating the relationship between language and perception), let me toss this into the mix:

While I have no way to know what, if any, internal representation a baby has for visual information, if you place a baby in a novel situation full of objects it has never previously encountered, it doesn't act consistently with "not seeing them." In fact, having quite a few friends with babies, they're usually more amazed at how the baby has found some object (and put it in its mouth) that the parent hadn't noticed, than seeing the child act oblivious to something near it.

Part of my research was about how language can affect perception. Here's an interesting example:

Show a group of people who know nothing about, say, gymnastics 20 videos of gymnastics moves. Wait a bit, and then show them 20 more videos, some of which they've see and some which are new, and ask them to identify the ones they've seen.

Then, take the same group or a brand new group and do this variation of the same experiment: When you show the first 20 videos, give names to each move. The names can be meaningless, like, "This is a baloney; This move is a nut crusher; This one is a flying Elvis," etc. And, again, show them another series of videos and ask them to identify the ones they've already seen.

Interesting result #1 — when you give names to the moves, people do WAY better at identifying moves they've already seen. It's as if the mind automatically finds some salient feature to link to the name, making it easier to work with that information in the future.

Interesting result #2 — the group without the names does WAY better than they think they did. That is, they may think they only got 0-2 correct, when they actually got 4-7 correct. This shows how our self-assessment of our perceptual process is VERY different than reality.

In other words, while language affects what we do with the information we perceive, and biases our attention towards/away from certain information, it doesn't interfere with our ability to perceive photons and react as necessary. I assure you that if some object for which you have no word or concept came hurtling toward your face, 100,000,000+ years of evolutionary phenomenon would kick into gear and you would duck.

BTW, regarding the bible quote (for which there have been many other translations, some of which that don't support your contentions), that line implies another concept: In the beginning was the gal/guy who uttered the word. (if you believe in that sort of thing )

'I assure you that if some object for which you have no word or concept came hurtling toward your face, 100,000,000+ years of evolutionary phenomenon would kick into gear and you would duck.'

It would be interesting, though probably immoral, to find out at what stage of development after birth that the baby would duck. Of course, psychical sensation must precede even perception of photons.

Re the bible quote–I deliberately stopped before the rider–'and the Word is god' because from my POV that is consumate nonsense, a word is a label.

A freudian slip? make that physical, not psychical sensation.

It would be more immoral to find out at what happens if we find out at what stage we CATCH when babies are thrown at us!

Re: "Freudian slip." Oy! I wish that concept would disappear. Read about where Freud misappropriated good research about slips of the tongue (and brain) at http://sashen.com/blog/43/the-freudian-trance-part-1/ (if you haven't already).

Of course unless I were a feral child, with no pre-existing concept of humans or human movement, I would have some kind of mental picture with which to relate to videos of gymnasts. I may not be able to label the activity correctly but I could probably state that it was humans making moves. It strikes me that your example says more about existing memory capabilities than about the formation of concepts and the ability to relate one pre-existing concept to a new but similar variation.

And yes, I agree that I would duck and that probably we all perceive far more than we consciously acknowledge but new-born humans are not known for their ducking skills.

Re your link to the freudian trance, I suppose now that I should own up to moonlighting as a fortune teller on Margate pier as 'Mystic Maggie.'

AHA! I knew that was you!

BTW, in a somewhat related not, here's a great blog post: http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=515

Trying out my new supernumery phantom limbs, takes some getting used to.

"…but our experience of ourselves and the world is a neurologically generated illusion."

Wow! Now that I know that experience is false I can let go of my irrational prejudice that experience is the only possible source of knowledge.

Now I can settle for vapid speculation. Seems to work for this guy. Thank God for science.

(Hey Ric, what do you think of your "meaninglessness now?)

As far as i understand it, the illusion of experience is real, as a neurological report, as is reality, the base of experience, as a thing in itself, but reality, the thing itself, is interpreted and encoded by neurology and is at best only partially represented by neurology so it is not the whole truth and that truth is biased relative to the structure and function of the neurology.

That is, illusion, here, is not exactly falsehood. It is just a map, a representation like any other map possessing the qualities of generalization, deletion and distortion. These representations, thoughts, sensations, pictures, words, etc. are simplified, generalized, twisted and stretched accumulations of experience which are then bundled together into meaningful (functional) continuities for potential motor output.

The phantom limb phenomena, is the product of mapping based on the correlation that what one sees, an arm, is equivalent to what one feels, an arm, the thought of which itself is a meta-map, the arm.

The limitation in these maps is that the real arm is more than the product of seeing and feeling, not just a piece of flesh and bone extending from the shoulder either, but an integrated system whose neurology reaches into the brain, which is functionally part arm.

So, the neurologically generated illusion of a phantom limb is a simple representation of reality, that of neurology, say the proprioceptive sense of arm, which takes on the meaning of illusion when compared to visual data of no arm, illusion being the results of conflicting data rather than falsity. The nature of the illusion can be seen as a problem of language and cognition and how we structure our categories.

As to this being meaningless, i think of it more as disorienting, since as a biomechanical device i've been practicing meaninglessness all my "life".

'The nature of the illusion can be seen as a problem of language and cognition and how we structure our categories.'

Yes, that puts it well. There is a human tendency to think in opposites, in this case experience is knowledge/experience is illusion, and assuming that you have to settle for one or the other or vacillate between these– but that is a language/thinking trap.

We begin to 'know' our world through physical sensation, we experience it through the body. Babies who don't crawl and grab everything to put in their mouths lack the brain development that later allows them to try to stand etc.

So the only 'knowledge' we can have is experience-based. That experience is real in the sense that it is built into the neurology but is contingent on the extent of neurological development at the time that I decide to interpret my experience.
When I look at my experience it is always a filtered interpretation.

Illusions can prove very useful. I had a teacher once who told me that my brain was in every cell of my body.

I was a smart-arse, 'lived in my head' and 'knew' this was rubbish. However I wanted to learn what the man had to teach so religiously did his exercises of putting the brain in the foot, hand, stomach, projecting out from the body etc–and began living in a completely new, to me, world of physical sensation and increased (in the sense of an added, different perspective)intelligence about my environment.
It was/is an illusion but has experientally real consequences for me that I am glad to have aquired. There is nothing woo or mystic about the results.

With regard to 'meaninglessness', something I've wrestled with constantly, I can only recommend Viktor Frankl, whose book "Man's Search for Meaning" I credit with saving me from suicide at a very young age.
Frankl's take on the subject seems to have validity for both the religiously and secularly inclined and is well worth a read.
As I age, I find myself thinking less and less in terms of meaning and even taking a deep pleasure in the meaninglessness of just about everything. This is very different from the despair I have sometimes felt in the past when acknowledging a lack of concrete meaning.

The study of illusion has been for me a matter meaning: understanding other people's actions, what is said, and another's experience, me being very much out of touch.

Culture breeds the illusion that there is massive consensus among people, we speak the same words, do generally the same things, yet the experience of another's worldview is radically disorienting to me. Why is that so?

The avenues i took included personal studies of media, communication, creativity, psychology, perception, linguistics and lastly meditation, the slow, boring repetitive kind. For intellectual understanding my touchstone has become Lakoff's work on the embodiment of language in metaphor and grammar in cognitive linguistics.

We experience the world with our bodies and interpret it in reference to our bodies. Language appears to be an extension of what the body does which is move relative to its sensory array and a reflection of the nervous system with its perception, integration and action functions.

These commonalities of physiology make communication and thought possible and with common experiences make the categories and metaphors we use to think with. All of these commonalities dictate and shape the nature of experience into an approximation of actuality which blurs, filters and modifies to the body's purposes. Illusion is indeed useful.

To observe this process of illusion through meditation, i understand, puts us a bit closer to actuality by adding back some detail and sharpening up some of the conceptual blur and distortion in everyday experience. No wild eyed claims of finding the final and complete Truth here, what remains is still illusion, just not so much.

While all this helps to understand the nature of meaning, it hasn't resolved the experience of meaninglessness. (I haven't read Frankl, but i understand he is good.) The issue is only recently coming to a head for me, as i've managed to distract myself from fully taking it on. I can't seem to find Steven's apparently sunny devil-may-care attitude or the deep pleasure in the meaninglessness you mention. I had a really nasty experience in the hospital recently which seemed to put meaninglessness on a giant neon sign. Luckily it didn't last too long so despair was short.

What was that song from Hee Haw?

"Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me"

'the experience of another's worldview is radically disorienting to me. Why is that so?'

Perhaps because it belongs to another?

Meditation for me has been about looking at my own world view, (the only one I can be even remotely sure of) however loathe I am to do that, and learning to have a contingent faith in my perceptions.

Interestingly, I found helpful a neurology professor's statement that depressed people probably see the world more clearly though more starkly than their cheerier fellows. It's more about coming to terms with my worldview than trying to change it. The view remains but the depressed feelings fade when I stop resisting.

'I can't seem to find Steven's apparently sunny devil-may-care attitude or the deep pleasure in the meaninglessness you mention.'

Nor should you.
You only have your interpretation of my word and your impression of Steven's sunny attitude gleaned from his writing to go on. Not enough, in my book, to judge anyone elses interior landscape as better or worse than mine.

Your own interior landscape is what shapes your world so ultimately it is the only one that matters. It is also the only one where you have 'skin in the game' so possibly the necessary motivation to look at what only you can look at in meditation or elsewhere.

I should add, if it's not obvious, I'm not of the bliss-bunny school of thought. I've found this business to be painful and disorientating at times. It's worth taking very slowly and learning to be very kind to yourself.

Steven, a question.
The phantom limb phenomena has commonly been observed in amputees, people with experience of a limb physically and neurologically and who then lose that limb physically–the neurological experience of the limb remains.

Take a child who is born without limbs, who has neither physical nor neurological experience of a limb—would it be possible for that child to experience the phantom limb phenomena?

In an interesting twist, there are documented cases of individuals who take a virulent dislike to a particular limb, say, their left leg, and invest that limb with every negative thought, essentially using the limb as a scapegoat for all that is 'wrong' in their lives.
Several have performed DIY amputations in an attempt to relieve themselves of the negativity by cutting off the offending limb.

Do you think that a relentlessly positive one-legged man results or would that one-legged man eventually start looking at his other leg with a similar hatred?

First of all, pardon me for not having jumped in on this VERY fun conversation sooner. I've been busy preparing the launch today of a website for, perhaps, the most relevant guru of the day, Bob Tzu, the long-lost American cousin of Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu (more about him in a few hours when his site goes live).

So, Ellen, the simple answer about phantom limbs for people who have never had the limb is, no.

One big component of phantom limb phenomenon is the re-mapping of the nerves in the cortex. Arm nerves, which "land" near cheek/nose nerves, remap… and give some amputees the sense of having their arm touched when their cheek/nose is touched.

Ramachandran's (sp?) research with mirror boxes also shows the extent to which phantom limb issues are often when the brain gets caught in a "loop" of sorts and can't sort out the feedback it is/isn't getting.

As far as the self-amputees, I don't know. I can imagine both that the underlying issue that leads them to think the limb is the problem isn't affected and, so, they keep projecting onto something else… or, like many cases of placebo-based medicine, it works for them. Find the documentation on those cases, and you'll possibly find an answer.

"Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me"

Came across a very interesting and humane treatment of some of the issues round meaninglessness from the modern context of psychology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Disintegration

Dabrowski makes a very good case for the usefulness of anxiety and depression if you can sit through and work with the miserable feelings. The above wiki description is as close to a description of longterm zen aims in practice/experience that I have ever come across.
Anyway, I like the idea that my disintegration is a positive manner.

Question:

I have some friends who paid a lot of money to learn how to meditate. The method was supposed to be scientifcally validated, with 'the best' results on whatever….

So, now i am reading a meta-study on meditation and it's benefits, which concludes mainly that studies are poor and no real conclusions can be drawn…

Does someone know were i can find te latest results on meditation and it's benefits? (easy to read)

Thanks in advance

I haven't seen one good clinical study yet (for all the reasons I mention, above).

And, anecdotally, I know WAY too many meditators who do not exhibit any sort of consistent tendencies or traits that, in theory, meditation is supposed to engender.

Now, again, I'm not saying "don't meditate". I TEACH meditation, after all. But it's certainly a worthwhile experiment to see if meditation is better for relaxation than, say, a 20 minute massage. Or, if meditation is supposed to make you "enlightened," well… we just have to look at the # of meditators and the # of "enlightened people" (if we can agree on how we would determine who they are) to see if there's any meaningful correlation between the two (I'll bet all the money I have that there won't be).