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Grip On Reality Is Slim- basis for sentience?

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MariaHobbit
Post subject: Grip On Reality Is Slim- basis for sentience?
Posted: Wed 03 Jun , 2009 2:15 pm
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There are all kinds of interesting claims in this article....
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Our Grip On Reality Is Slim, Says University College London Scientist

ScienceDaily (June 23, 2006) — The neurological basis for poor witness statements and hallucinations has been found by scientists at UCL (University College London). In over a fifth of cases, people wrongly remembered whether they actually witnessed an event or just imagined it, according to a paper published in NeuroImage this week.

Dr Jon Simons and Dr Paul Burgess led the study at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. Dr Burgess said: "In our tests volunteers either thought they had imagined words which they had actually been shown or said they had seen words which in fact they had just imagined - in over 20 per cent of cases. That is quite a lot of mistakes to be making, and shows how fallible our memory is - or perhaps, how slim our grip on reality is!

"Our work has implications for the validity of witness statements and agrees with other studies that show that our mind sometimes fills in memory gaps for us, and we confuse what we imagined occurred in a situation - which is related to what we expect to happen or what usually happens - with what actually happened.

"Most of us, though, have a critical reality monitoring function so that we are able to distinguish well enough between what is real and what is imagined and our imagination does not have too great an impact on our lives - unless the reality check system breaks down such as after stroke or in cases of schizophrenia."

The study found that the areas that were activated while remembering whether an event really happened or was imagined in healthy subjects are the very same areas that are dysfunctional in people who experience hallucinations.

Dr Burgess said: "We believe that hallucinations are caused by a difficulty in discriminating information present in the outside world from information that is imagined. In schizophrenia the difficulty you have in separating reality from imagined events becomes exaggerated so some people have hallucinations and hear voices that simply aren't there." These results indicate a link between the brain areas implicated in schizophrenia and the regions that support the ability to discriminate between perceived and imagined information.

In the tests, healthy subjects were shown 96 well-known word pairs from pop culture such as 'Laurel and Hardy', 'bacon and eggs', and 'rock and roll'. The participants were asked to count the number of letters in the second word of the pair. Often the second word wasn't actually shown and the subject had to imagine the word – such as 'Laurel and ?'.

Participants were then asked which of the second words they had actually seen on screen and which ones they had only imagined. The subjects' brain activity was observed using fMRI scans while they remembered whether words had been imagined or seen on screen.

When people accurately remembered whether they had actually seen a word or just imagined it brain activity in the key areas increased – many of which are found in brain area 10, which is involved in imagination and reality checking, develops last in the brain and is twice as big in humans as in other animals. In the people who did not remember correctly, activation in brain area 10 was reduced.

Adapted from materials provided by University College London, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
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University College London (2006, June 23). Our Grip On Reality Is Slim, Says University College London Scientist. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 3, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com" target="_blank" target="_blank /releases/2006/06/060623215216.htm
Humans have twice the imagination & error check capability of animals? Could this be the real indicator of sentience? Not tool use, not communication ability- but imagination and error checking! My bird has little to no error check capability, but he can say human words/sounds in context and can manipulate a cage latch to get out of the cage. Given his brain is the size of a pea- I've always found it remarkable that he can do what he can do, but still have no concept of right and wrong. No error check, in other words. You can train a dog not do do what you don't want him to do even when you aren't there. But the minute we leave a room, our bird WILL go and get into something he's not supposed to, no matter how often we correct him.

And humans! If our imaginations can run away with us to the point of dysfunction, to where a schizophrenic can't interact with the world as it is anymore- is that the limit of sentience for us? After we get to this level of imagination we start having trouble? Are the schizophrenics the ones with too much imagination and not enough error check? Or will some of us develop both at a good enough pace to keep sane?

How much imagination is too much? At what point will dreams overrun our minds and interfere with *living*?

Or has it already happened? :help:

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Ara-anna
Post subject: Re: Grip On Reality Is Slim- basis for sentience?
Posted: Wed 03 Jun , 2009 2:27 pm
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I always thought schizophrenics had a chemical imbalance, a physical type of neurons not firing correctly?

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MariaHobbit
Post subject: Re: Grip On Reality Is Slim- basis for sentience?
Posted: Wed 03 Jun , 2009 2:29 pm
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Maybe that's why "area 10" of the brain isn't working right for them?

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Dave_LF
Post subject: Re: Grip On Reality Is Slim- basis for sentience?
Posted: Wed 03 Jun , 2009 2:44 pm
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I've often wondered whether the problem with people who hear voices and have have hallucinations isn't just an inability to distinguish stimuli originating without from those originating within. This seems to confirm that that is indeed what's going on at least some of the time.

I also wonder whether dreaming might be a consequence of these faculties shutting down during sleep (or simply getting buggy due to a lack of sensory data).


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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Grip On Reality Is Slim- basis for sentience?
Posted: Wed 03 Jun , 2009 2:55 pm
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Very interesting! The human mind is fascinating.

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MariaHobbit
Post subject: Re: Grip On Reality Is Slim- basis for sentience?
Posted: Wed 03 Jun , 2009 2:56 pm
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I think it's interesting that the ability to imagine and the ability to distinguish imaginings from reality happens in the same part of the brain. They would have to develop hand in hand in order to keep the species able to function in the real world, too.

I wonder where it stops? Do the geniuses of the world have bigger "area 10" s than normal people? They can imagine easier, but also have great error checking ability?

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Lidless
Post subject: Re: Grip On Reality Is Slim- basis for sentience?
Posted: Wed 03 Jun , 2009 6:18 pm
Als u het leven te ernstig neemt, mist u de betekenis.
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Anything anyone experiences, witnesses, assumes, respondes to, is through their own version of rose-tinted spectacles, filtered through their own specific gene-pool pros and cons.

This is *the* fundamental when dealing with people. I *cannot* stress this enough.

Remember that, and you'll go far. As far as you want.

Especially in the Symposium.

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Riverthalos
Post subject: Re: Grip On Reality Is Slim- basis for sentience?
Posted: Wed 03 Jun , 2009 9:29 pm
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Dave_LF wrote:
I also wonder whether dreaming might be a consequence of these faculties shutting down during sleep (or simply getting buggy due to a lack of sensory data).
I've always thought of dreaming as the equivalent of taking a dump, but with the excesses and remains of processed information. Think about all the data that hits us. We have to filter it, sort it, compile it, and interpret it. And then there's the internal/external cross-talk that compounds on the mess. Dreaming is the clean-up that happens at the end of the day. What's really odd, and I don't understand, is why we remember dreams, and, even odder, why we only remember some of them (everyone who's not sleep-deprived or suffering certain sleep disorders dreams, even those that claim they don't - you think you're not dreaming just because you're not remembering).

Animals dream too, BTW. And that dreaming sleep is incredibly important. Rats deprived of REM-sleep die in weeks. Sleep deprivation can cause all sorts of pathologies in humans, including seizures.

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Axordil
Post subject: Re: Grip On Reality Is Slim- basis for sentience?
Posted: Thu 04 Jun , 2009 1:09 am
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It doesn't surprise me that a single brain area is primarily responsible for creating both factual and contrafactual mental maps, if you will. It helps explain why fiction works, for one thing.

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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Grip On Reality Is Slim- basis for sentience?
Posted: Thu 04 Jun , 2009 3:11 am
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My view on dreaming is the same as River's. I'm not sure it's the right explanation, but it seems to make some sense. I even feel like my neurons are firing a bunch of extra, random energy.

However, Dave's idea is an intriguing one.

And it would be an intriguing study to compare people's Area 10s with their intelligence or even their personality types.

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