A research indicates that trees might be ‘aware’ of their size: Scientists found out that birch trees adjust their stem thickness to support their weight. (1)
We hold our consciousness so high.
Never have we thought to look down to the dirt.
Never have we thought that this might be the lowest of the possible forms of Being.
And that we need to get low in order to rise…
Look around.
So many things to see.
Do you see anything?
What does this mean for the EEG’s ability to reflect consciousness? “The study does support the possibility that certain EEG features might not always accurately capture the level of consciousness in surgical patients,” says senior author George A. Mashour, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the U-M Department of Anesthesiology.
However, “EEG likely does have value in helping us understand if patients are unconscious. For example, a suppressed EEG would suggest a very high probability of unconsciousness during general anesthesia. However, using high anesthetic doses to suppress the EEG might have other consequences, like low blood pressure, that we want to avoid. So, we will have to continue to be judicious in assessing the many indices available, including pharmacologic dosing guidelines, brain activity, and cardiovascular activity.”
Pal notes that there is physiological precedent for an EEG mismatching behavior; for example, the brain of someone in REM sleep is almost identical to an awake brain. “No monitor is perfect, but the current monitors we use for the brain are good and do their job most of the time. However, our data suggest there are exceptions.”
Their study raises intriguing questions about how consciousness is reflected in the brain, says Pal. “These measures do have value and we have to do more studies. Maybe they are associated with awareness and what we call the content of consciousness. With rats, we don’t know-we can’t ask them.” (1)
Close your eyes.
Sleep.
And you will dream.
Do you see?
It is not the activity of the brain that tells us that the brain is active.
But its ability to stay inactive.
You cannot be awake when you are awake.
But only when you are sleeping…
Shhhh…
The kid is still in bed…
Drawing an object and naming it engages the brain in similar ways, according to research recently published in JNeurosci. The finding demonstrates the importance of the visual processing system for producing drawings of an object.
In a study by Fan et al., healthy adults performed two tasks while the researchers recorded brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging: they identified pieces of furniture in pictures and produced drawings of those pieces of furniture. The researchers used machine learning to discover similar patterns of brain activity across both tasks within the occipital cortex, an area of the brain important for visual processing. This means people recruit the same neural representation of an object whether they are drawing it or seeing it. (1)
We think what we see.
We speak what we think.
Draw a line.
Contain the cosmos on a paper.
And you will remain speechless.
Do you see?
We think what we speak.
We see what we think…
But who drew the first line? Who thought of that first thought? Who spoke the first words?
In the midst of silence, can you listen to yourself?
Stop looking.
In the void of everything, can you see anything?
A study published in Science Advances found that certain types of materials have a “memory” of how they were processed, stored, and manipulated. Researchers were then able to use this memory to control how a material ages and to encode specific properties that allow it to perform new functions. This creative approach for designing materials was the result of a collaboration between Penn’s Andrea Liu and Sidney R. Nagel, Nidhi Pashine, and Daniel Hexner from the University of Chicago. (1)
A material which remembers its past.
But can it be another way?
A human who recollects his beginning.
But could he forget it?
A universe which is constantly guided by its first moment.
Could it follow any other path?
The sword is drawn now.
Death is here.
But the sword remembers that it was in the earth once.
And it will go back there.
Seeding life.
Spreading death…
Children may learn new words better when they learn them in the context of other words they are just learning – according to research from the University of East Anglia.
Eighty two children took part in the study. In two experiments the team taught them some new words for things they couldn’t name – such as honey-dippers and strainers. Dr Samuelson said: “We practiced these new words until they knew the honey-dipper was called a ‘zeb’ and the strainer was a ‘yok’. We then showed them a new thing – a bird toy – in the context of either the objects they knew well (a ball and a car) or things they had only just learned to name (the ‘zeb’ honey-dipper and ‘yok’ strainer).
“When we asked them to get the ‘blick’, they were good at linking this new word to the bird-toy when it was presented with the familiar things, and with the just learned things.”
But, after a five minute colouring break, the children were not so good at remembering what a ‘blick’ was when they had learned it in the context of objects they already knew. (and did better when they had initially leaned the word in the context of the less well-known things — the ‘zeb’ honey dipper and the ‘yok’ strainer). “We had expected that a stronger knowledge of familiar words would be better for learning new words, but we found the opposite was true” claim the researchers.
“It seems counterintuitive, but it is perhaps because the less well-known items don’t compete with the new words as much. If they learn new words in the context of playing with well-known items such as a ball, book or car, they don’t process the new word as much.” (1)
Remembering things. Learning new things. Forgetting others.
The best way to learn is to unlearn.
The best way to remember new things is to forget the old ones.
New things will then become old.
And soon, they will too be forgotten in the quest for knowledge.
Babies we will be once more.
To view the cosmos as it is.
At the moment we are old and die…
And for the first time we will see.
That this is not the first time we see…
