Einstein’s equivalence principle has a number of problems, and it is often applied incorrectly. Clocks on the earth do not seem to be affected by the sun’s gravitational potential. The most commonly accepted reason given is a faulty application of the equivalence principle. While no valid reason is available within either the special or general theories of relativity, ether theories can provide a valid explanation. A clock bias of the correct magnitude and position dependence can convert the Selleri transformation of (...) ether theories into an apparent Lorentz transformation, which gives rise to an apparent equivalence of inertial frames. The results indicate that the special theory is invalid and that only an apparent relativity exists. (shrink)

The first part of this paper examines conditions in accord with Einstein's criterion of regularity on the field solutions everywhere that would correspond to the existence of a black hole star, following from solutions of his (nonvacuum) field equations. ‘Black hole’ is defined here as a star whose matter is so condensed as to correspond to a complete family of spatially closed geodesics. The condition imposed is that the angular momentum of a test body in each of the closed geodesics (...) is a constant of the motion. The second part of the paper examines the implications in the problem of the condensed star of a generalized (factorized) version of the metrical field equations, discovered earlier by the author. It is found that in general relativity stars should naturally pulsate, and in its succeeding cycles the gravitational radius of the star is attenuated by a factor exp(−0.349T), where T is the pulsation period. Conditions are discussed for the possibility that the (relatively) regular emissions of radiation from a pulsar may be dynamically rooted in a (smaller) part of the pulsation cycle when the star is out of the black hole state (less dense → open geodesics)—when radiation would be emitted to the outside world—and the (greater) part of the cycle when it is in the black hole state (more dense → closed geodesics)—when radiation would not be emitted. (shrink)

In this article I argue that there are metaphoric pictures and that pictures have propositional content; but, I also argue, it does not follow that metaphoric pictures are to be explained in terms of metaphoric content. I develop a "comparison" or "predication" approach that stresses that metaphoric pictures depend on their use in contexts that invoke relevant background knowledge. Our competence with metaphoric pictures is a nonsystematic, nonspecifiable competence because it consists in our ability to harness any variety of relevant (...) background knowledge on the basis of contextual factors. It follows that insofar as our competence is not systematic, it is not possible to have a theory of metaphoric pictures, in the sense of a systematic specification of the types of factors or principles that allow one to grasp that a picture is metaphoric and what the metaphor is. (shrink)

The emotion of anger, when chronic, is especially problematic. Frequent and intense experiences of anger predict quite a few adverse health outcomes and are especially implicated in cardiovascular...

The main purpose of this article is to show some processes of the growth of knowledge. An astrophysical case: a problem of planets around pulsars formation is studied. In the first part reasons for taking this problem are presented. Then some historical facts about discoveries of planets around pulsars are mentioned. The paper focuses on three cases: PSR1257+12, PSR1620-26 and PSR J 1719-1438. In second part of the article the changes in the theoretical point of view, which occured (...) during the last twenty years, are presented. At the end the attempt is made to describe the process of the growth of the planets around pulsars within the framework of formation. (shrink)

Each of the following claims has been defended in the scientific literature on free will and consciousness: your brain routinely decides what you will do before you become conscious of its decision; there is only a 100 millisecond window of opportunity for free will, and all it can do is veto conscious decisions, intentions, or urges; intentions never play a role in producing corresponding actions; and free will is an illusion. In Effective Intentions Alfred Mele shows that the evidence (...) offered to support these claims is sorely deficient. He also shows that there is strong empirical support for the thesis that some conscious decisions and intentions have a genuine place in causal explanations of corresponding actions. In short, there is weighty evidence of the existence of effective conscious intentions or the power of conscious will. Mele examines the accuracy of subjects' reports about when they first became aware of decisions or intentions in laboratory settings and develops some implications of warranted skepticism about the accuracy of these reports. In addition, he explores such questions as whether we must be conscious of all of our intentions and why scientists disagree about this. Mele's final chapter closes with a discussion of imaginary scientific findings that would warrant bold claims about free will and consciousness of the sort he examines in this book. (shrink)

Humans perceive time with millisecond precision. However, when experiencing negative or fearful events, time appears to slow down and aversive events are judged to last longer than neutral or positive events of equal duration. Feelings of control have been shown to attenuate increases in arousal triggered by anxiety-provoking events. Here, we tested whether feelings of control can go as far as influencing people’s perception of the world, by modulating the perceived duration of aversive events. Observers judged the duration of (...) images depicting positive or negative content, and we manipulated the amount of control experienced by participants. Crucially, participants never had any real control over events. All control was illusory. Results showed that when participants experienced low levels of control, negative images were judged as lasting longer than positive images. However, when participants illusorily experienced high levels of control, they no longer experienced aversive negative images as lasting longer than positive images. (shrink)

In everyday life, situations in which we act adequately yet entirely without deliberation are ubiquitous. We use the term “situated normativity” for the normative aspect of embodied cognition in skillful action. Wittgenstein’s notion of “directed discontent” refers to a context-sensitive reaction of appreciation in skillful action. Extending this notion from the domain of expertise to that of adequate everyday action, we examine phenomenologically the question of what happens when skilled individuals act correctly with instinctive ease. This question invites exploratory contributions (...) from a variety of perspectives complementary to the philosophical/ phenomenological one, including cognitive neuroscience, neurodynamics and psychology. Along such lines we try to make the normative aspect of adequate immediate action better accessible to empirical research. After introducing the idea that “valence” is a forerunner of directed discontent, we propose to make progress on this by first pursuing a more restricted exploratory question, namely, ‘what happens in the first few hundred milliseconds of the development of directed discontent?’. (shrink)

Research on brain or cognitive/affective processes, culture, social interaction, and structural analysis are overlapping but often independent ways humans have attempted to understand the origins of their evolution, historical, and contemporary development. Each level seeks to employ its own theoretical concepts and methods for depicting human nature and categorizing objects and events in the world, and often relies on different sources of evidence to support theoretical claims. Each level makes reference to different temporal bandwidths (milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, (...) years, decades, and centuries) and focuses on different spatio-temporal activities and controlled and non-controlled stimulus conditions. Biological mechanisms and environmental pressures for survival simultaneously created a gradual intersection and enhancement of cognitive/affective skills, cultural practices, and changes in collaborative social interaction and communicative skills. The evolution of a given level of analysis is assumed to have been incremental and overlapping. These innovative and independent ways humans have learned to characterize their brain or cognitive/affective and social/economic/political life often depend on unexamined, representational re-descriptions or cognitive/affective and socio-cultural devices and forms of communication that facilitate the depiction of practices and beliefs we attribute to respondents or subjects and research colleagues. (shrink)

Human agents draw a variety of inferences effortlessly, spontaneously, and with remarkable efficiency – as though these inferences were a reflexive response of their cognitive apparatus. Furthermore, these inferences are drawn with reference to a large body of background knowledge. This remarkable human ability seems paradoxical given the complexity of reasoning reported by researchers in artificial intelligence. It also poses a challenge for cognitive science and computational neuroscience: How can a system of simple and slow neuronlike elements represent a large (...) body of systemic knowledge and perform a range of inferences with such speed? We describe a computational model that takes a step toward addressing the cognitive science challenge and resolving the artificial intelligence paradox. We show how a connectionist network can encode millions of facts and rules involving n-ary predicates and variables and perform a class of inferences in a few hundred milliseconds. Efficient reasoning requires the rapid representation and propagation of dynamic bindings. Our model (which we refer to as SHRUTI) achieves this by representing (1) dynamic bindings as the synchronous firing of appropriate nodes, (2) rules as interconnection patterns that direct the propagation of rhythmic activity, and (3) long-term facts as temporal pattern-matching subnetworks. The model is consistent with recent neurophysiological evidence that synchronous activity occurs in the brain and may play a representational role in neural information processing. The model also makes specific psychologically significant predictions about the nature of reflexive reasoning. It identifies constraints on the form of rules that may participate in such reasoning and relates the capacity of the working memory underlying reflexive reasoning to biological parameters such as the lowest frequency at which nodes can sustain synchronous oscillations and the coarseness of synchronization. (shrink)

Our visual system can process information at both conscious and unconscious levels. Understanding the factors that control whether a stimulus reaches our awareness, and the fate of those stimuli that remain at an unconscious level, are the major challenges of brain science in the new millennium. Since its publication in 1984, Visual Masking has established itself as a classic text in the field of cognitive psychology. In the years since, there have been considerable advances in the cognitive neurosciences, and a (...) growth of interest in the topic of consciousness, and the time is ripe for a new edition of this text. Where most current approaches to the study of visual consciousness adopt a 'steady-state' view, the approach presented in this book explores its dynamic properties. This new edition uses the technique of visual masking to explore temporal aspects of conscious and unconscious processes down to a resolution in the millisecond range. The 'time slices' through conscious and unconscious vision revealed by the visual masking technique can shed light on both normal and abnormal operations in the brain. The main focus of this book is on the microgenesis of visual form and pattern perception - microgenesis referring to the processes occurring in the visual system from the time of stimulus presentation on the retinae to the time, a few hundred milliseconds later, of its registration at conscious or unconscious perceptual and behavioural levels. The book takes a highly integrative approach by presenting microgenesis within a broad context encompassing visuo-temporal phenomena, attention, and consciousness. (shrink)

A brief self-report scale was developed to assess everyday performance failures arising directly or primarily from brief failures of sustained attention . The ARCES was found to be associated with a more direct measure of propensity to attention lapses and to errors on an existing behavioral measure of sustained attention . Although the ARCES and MAAS were highly correlated, structural modelling revealed the ARCES was more directly related to SART errors and the MAAS to SART RTs, which have been hypothesized (...) to directly reflect the lapses of attention that lead to SART errors. Thus, the MAAS and SART RTs appear to directly reflect attention lapses, whereas the ARCES and SART errors reflect the mistakes these lapses are thought to cause. Boredom proneness was also assessed by the BPS, as a separate consequence of a propensity to attention lapses. Although the ARCES was significantly associated with the BPS, this association was entirely accounted for by the MAAS, suggesting that performance errors and boredom are separate consequences of lapses in attention. A tendency to even extraordinarily brief attention lapses on the order of milliseconds may have far-reaching consequences not only for safe and efficient task performance but also for sustaining the motivation to persist in and enjoy these tasks. (shrink)

Local theories of consciousness state that one is conscious of a feature if it is adequately represented and processed in sensory brain areas, given some background conditions. We challenge the core prediction of local theories based on long-lasting postdictive effects demonstrating that features can be represented for hundreds of milliseconds in perceptual areas without being consciously perceived. Unlike previous empirical data aimed against local theories, localists cannot explain these effects away by conjecturing that subjects are phenomenally conscious of features that (...) they cannot report. We also discuss alternative explanations that localists could offer. (shrink)

Theories of binding have recently come into the focus of the consciousness debate. In this review, we discuss the potential relevance of temporal binding mechanisms for sensory awareness. Specifically, we suggest that neural synchrony with a precision in the millisecond range may be crucial for conscious processing, and may be involved in arousal, perceptual integration, attentional selection and working memory. Recent evidence from both animal and human studies demonstrates that specific changes in neuronal synchrony occur during all of these (...) processes and that they are distinguished by the emergence of fast oscillations with frequencies in the gamma-range. (shrink)

The thesis advanced in this book is that feeling and cognition actualize through a process that originates in older brain formations and develops outward through limbic and cortical fields through the self-concept and private space into (as) the world. An iteration of this transition deposits acts, objects, feelings and utterances. Value is a mode of conceptual feeling that depends on the dominant phase in this transition: from desire through interest to object worth. Among the topics covered are subjective time and (...) change, the epochal nature of objects and their temporal extensibility and the evolution of value from inorganic matter into organic form. The theory of microgenesis informs this work. According to this theory, acts and objects evolve in milliseconds through phases that replicate patterns in forebrain evolution. The progression in the actualization of the mind/brain state is from archaic to recent in brain formation, from unity to diversity, from past to present and from mind to world. An account is given of the diversity of felt experience avoiding the reductionist moves characteristic of biological materialism and the inherent dualism of psychoanalytic and related theories. This book is intended for any reader interested in the psychology of the inner life and philosophy of mind, including philosophers, psychologists, psychiatrists and others with an interest in problems of value and moral feeling. (shrink)

In Knowing the Score, philosopher David Papineau explores what philosophy can teach us about sports, and what sports can teach us about philosophy. Beginning with various sporting questions and challenges, Papineau digs into modern philosophy's most perplexing questions. For instance, he discusses drafting techniques in cycling to shed new light on questions of altruism, and examines cricket family "dynasties" to help broaden the debate over nature v. nurture. When Papineau began writing this book, he thought he could illuminate sports by (...) viewing it through a philosophical lens. But the more he wrote, the more he realized that it was the other way around - the study of sports clarifies, challenges, and sometimes confuses crucial issues in philosophy. Why do sports competitors choke? How can Roger Federer select which shot to play in 400 milliseconds? Why do fans think God will favor their team over their rivals? Why does motor racing, but not football, run in families? How can it be moral to deceive the umpire by framing a pitch? From all of these questions, and many more, philosophy has a great deal to learn. An entertaining and and erudite book that ranges far and wide through the sporting world, Knowing the Score is perfect reading for armchair philosophers and Monday morning quarterbacks alike. (shrink)

Our sense of time is altered by our emotions to such an extent that time seems to fly when we are having fun and drags when we are bored. Recent studies using standardized emotional material provide a unique opportunity for understanding the neurocognitive mechanisms that underlie the effects of emotion on timing and time perception in the milliseconds-to-hours range. We outline how these new findings can be explained within the framework of internal-clock models and describe how emotional arousal and valence (...) interact to produce both increases and decreases in attentional time sharing and clock speed. The study of time and emotion is at a crossroads, and we outline possible examples for future directions. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of recent developments in solving the timing problem (discreteness vs. continuity) in cognitive neuroscience. Both theoretical and empirical studies have been considered, with an emphasis on the framework of Operational Architectonics (OA) of brain functioning (Fingelkurts and Fingelkurts, 2001, 2005). This framework explores the temporal structure of information flow and interarea interactions within the network of functional neuronal populations by examining topographic sharp transition processes in the scalp EEG, on the millisecond scale. We conclude, (...) based on the OA framework, that brain functioning is best conceptualized in terms of continuity-discreteness unity which is also the characteristic property of cognition. At the end we emphasize where one might productively proceed for the future research. (shrink)

Features of consciousness difficult to understand in terms of conventional neuroscience have evoked application of quantum theory, which describes the fundamental behavior of matter and energy. In this paper we propose that aspects of quantum theory (e.g. quantum coherence) and of a newly proposed physical phenomenon of quantum wave function "self-collapse"(objective reduction: OR -Penrose, 1994) are essential for consciousness, and occur in cytoskeletal microtubules and other structures within each of the brain's neurons. The particular characteristics of microtubules suitable for quantum (...) effects include their crystal-like lattice structure, hollow inner core, organization of cell function and capacity for information processing. We envisage that conformational states of microtubule subunits (tubulins) are coupled to internal quantum events, and cooperatively interact (compute) with other tubulins. We further assume that macroscopic coherent superposition of quantum-coupled tubulin conformational states occurs throughout significant brain volumes and provides the global binding essential to consciousness. We equate the emergence of the microtubule quantum coherence with pre-conscious processing which grows (for up to 500 milliseconds) until the mass-energy difference among the separated states of tubulins reaches a threshold related to quantum gravity. According to the arguments for OR put forth in Penrose (1994), superpositioned states each have their own space-time geometries. When the degree of coherent mass-energy difference leads to sufficient separation of space-time geometry, the system must choose and decay (reduce, collapse) to a single universe state. In this way, a transient superposition of slightly differing space-time geometries persists until an abrupt quantum classical reduction occurs. Unlike the random, "subjective reduction"( SR, or R) of standard quantum theory caused by observation or environmental entanglement, the OR we propose in microtubules is a self-collapse and it results in particular patterns of microtubule-tubulin conformational states that regulate neuronal activities including synaptic functions. (shrink)

The present study examined the endogenous release of luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH) from superfused hypothalamic slices derived from Korean native cattie (KNC). In addition, the in vitro secretory pattern of LHRH release in '(NC was compared with that in imported cattle such as Holstein cow. The median eminences (ME) of hypothalamic tissues were dissected out, sliced, and quickly placed in an ice-cold superfusion chamber. Superfusion chambers containing ME slices were maintained in a constant temperature water-bath at 37∘C. Effluents were collected (...) on the ice at 10 min intervals for a 4 hr superfusion period and kept -20∘C prior to LHRH radioimmunoassay. LHRH release was analyzed by the PULSAR algorithm. The spontaneous release of LHRH from both cows was episodic during a 4 hr superfusion period. The mean LHRH release, pulse amplitude and pulse interval m KNC were 11.08± 1.50 pg/min/mg x 10-2, 21.43 1 7.28 pg/mg x 10-2, and 39.42 ± 3.08 min, which was quite similar to those observed in Holstein cows. The basic characteristics of the LHRH pulse generator of KNC appear important for a better understanding about the endocrine function of KNC. (shrink)

Perception solves computationally demanding problems at lightning fast speed. It recovers sophisticated representations of the world from degraded inputs, often in a matter of milliseconds. Any theory of perception must be able to explain how this is possible; in other words, it must be able to explain perception's computational tractability. One of the few attempts to move toward such an explanation has been the information encapsulation hypothesis, which posits that perception can be fast because it keeps computational costs low by (...) forgoing access to information stored in cognition. I argue that we have no compelling reason to believe that encapsulation explains (or even contributes to an explanation of) perceptual tractability, and much reason to doubt it. This is because there exist much deeper computational challenges for perception than information access, and these threaten to make the costs of access irrelevant. If this is right, it undermines a core computational motivation for encapsulation and sends us back to the drawing board for explanations of perceptual tractability. (shrink)

In physics, the temporal dimension has units of infinitesimally brief duration. Given this, how is it possible to perceive things, such as motion, music, and vibrotactile stimulation, that involve extension across many units of time? To address this problem, it is proposed that there is what is termed an “information construct of happening” (ICOH), a simultaneous representation of recent, temporally differentiated perceptual information on the millisecond time scale. The main features of the ICOH are (i) time marking, semantic labeling (...) of all information in the ICOH with ordinal temporal information and distance from what is informationally identified as the present moment, (ii) vector informational features that specify kind, direction, and rate of change for every feature in a percept, and (iii) connectives, information relating vector informational features at adjacent temporal locations in the ICOH. The ICOH integrates products of perceptual processing with recent historical information in sensory memory on the subsecond time scale. Perceptual information about happening in informational sensory memory is encoded in semantic form that preserves connected semantic trails of vector and timing information. The basic properties of the ICOH must be supported by a general and widespread timing mechanism that generates ordinal and interval timing information and it is suggested that state‐dependent networks may suffice for that purpose. Happening, therefore, is perceived at a moment and is constituted by an information structure of connected recent historical information. (shrink)

A theoretical approach relying on quantum computation in microtubules within neurons can potentially resolve the enigmatic features of visual consciousness, but raises other questions. For example, how can delicate quantum states, which in the technological realm demand extreme cold and isolation to avoid environmental ‘decoherence’, manage to survive in the warm, wet brain? And if such states could survive within neuronal cell interiors, how could quantum states grow to encompass the whole brain? We present a physiological model for visual consciousness (...) that can accommodate brain-wide quantum computation according to the Penrose–Hameroff ‘Orch OR’ model. In this view, visual consciousness occurs as a series of several-hundred-millisecond epochs, each comprising ‘crescendo sequences’ of quantum computations occurring at ∼40 Hz. (shrink)

Long‐term modification of synaptic strength is thought to be the basic mechanism underlying the activity‐dependent refinement of neural circuits and the formation of memories engrammed on them. Studies ranging from cell culture preparations to humans subjects indicate that the decision of whether a synapse will undergo strengthening or weakening critically depends on the temporal order of presynaptic and postsynaptic activity. At many synapses, potentiation will be induced only when the presynaptic neuron fires an action potential within milliseconds before the postsynaptic (...) neuron fires, whereas weakening will occur when it is the postsynaptic neuron that fires first. Such processes might be important for the remodeling of neural circuits by activity during development and for network functions such as sequence learning and prediction. Ultimately, this synaptic property might also be fundamental for the cognitive process by which we structure our experience through cause and effect relations. BioEssays 24:212–222, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.; DOI 10.1002/bies.10060. (shrink)

Aphasia is an acquired impairment of language functions resulting from a brain lesion. It is usually accompanied by deficits in non-linguistic cognitive processes. This study aimed to investigate in patients with aphasia the complex interrelationships between selected cognitive functions: auditory speech comprehension, working memory, and temporal information processing in the millisecond time range. Thirty right-handed subjects aged from 27 to 82 years suffering from post-stroke aphasia participated in the study. Verbal working memory and spatial working memory were assessed with: (...) a receptive verbal test and the Corsi Block-Tapping Test, respectively. Both these WM tests used the forward tasks and backward tasks. Auditory comprehension was assessed by receptive language tests, and TIP efficiency was assessed by auditory perception of temporal order in the millisecond time range. We observed better performance of forward WM tasks than backward ones, independently of the type of material used. Furthermore, the severity of auditory comprehension impairment correlated with the efficiency on both forward and backward VWM tasks and the backward SWM task. Further analysis revealed that TIP plays a crucial role only in the latter task. These results indicate the divergent pattern of interactions between WM and TIP depending on the type of WM tasks. Level of verbal competency appeared to play an important role in both VWM tasks, whereas TIP appeared to be important for SWM, but only on the backward task. (shrink)

Using an original approach, Mauro Dardo recounts the major achievements of twentieth-century physics--including relativity, quantum mechanics, atomic and nuclear physics, the invention of the transistor and the laser, superconductivity, binary pulsars, and the Bose-Einstein condensate--as each emerged. His year-by-year chronicle, biographies and revealing personal anecdotes help bring to life the main events since the first Nobel Prize was awarded in 1901. The work of the most famous physicists of the twentieth century--including the Curies, Bohr, Heisenberg, Einstein, Fermi, Feynman, Gell-Mann, (...) Rutherford, and Schrödinger--is presented, often in the words and imagery of the prize-winners themselves. Mauro Dardo is Professor of Experimental Physics at Amedeo Avogadro University. He has served as Dean of the new Faculty of Sciences at the University of Turin in Alessandria, Piedmont, and has also served as Director of the university's new department of Sciences and Advanced Technologies. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of the Nobel Lectures delivered by the prizewinners, together with their biographies, portraits and the presentation speeches for the period 1991 – 1995. Each Nobel Lecture is based on the work that won the prize. These volumes of inspiring lectures by outstanding physicists should be on the bookshelf of every keen student, teacher and professor of physics as well as of those in related fields.Below is a list of the prizewinners during the period 1991 – (...) 1995 with a description of the works which won them their prizes.(1991) P-G de GENNES–for discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid crystals and polymers; (1992) G CHARPAK – for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber; (1993) R A HULSE & J-H TAYLOR JR. – for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation; (1994) B N BROCKHOUSE — for the development of neutron spectroscopy; C G SHULL — for the development of the neutron diffraction technique; (1995) M L PERL — for the discovery of the tau lepton; F REINES — for the detection of the neutrino. (shrink)

The target article focuses on the predictive coding of and something happened and the and response to make. We extend that scope by addressing the aspect of perception and action. Successful interaction with the environment requires predictions of everything from millisecond-accurate motor timing to far future events. The hierarchical framework seems appropriate for timing.

How motor proteins induce mechanical movement at the molecular level has been a focus of biophysicists for a long time. While the whole picture is yet to be completely revealed, recent developments in looking at nanometer‐scale movement with millisecond‐time resolution driven by single motors have revealed important new details about the moving step size and amount of force generated per molecule.

Synaptic ribbons, the organelles identified in electron micrographs of the sensory synapses involved in vision, hearing, and balance, have long been hypothesized to play an important role in regulating presynaptic function because they associate with synaptic vesicles at the active zone. Their physiology and molecular composition have, however, remained largely unknown. Recently, a series of elegant studies spurred by technical innovation have finally begun to shed light on the ultrastructure and function of ribbon synapses. Electrical capacitance measurements have provided sub‐ (...) class='Hi'>millisecond resolution of exocytosis, evanescent‐wave microscopy has filmed the fusion of single 30 nm synaptic vesicles, electron tomography has revealed the 3D architecture of the synapse, and molecular cloning has begun to identify the proteins that make up ribbons. These results are consistent with the ribbon serving as a vesicle “conveyor belt” to resupply the active zone, and with the suggestion that ribbon and conventional chemical synapses have much in common. BioEssays 23:831–840, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Human brains exhibit complex dynamic behaviour measured by external recordings of electric (EEG) and magnetic fields (MEG). These data reveal synaptic field oscillations in neocortex at millisecond temporal and centimetre spatial scales. We suggest that the neural networks underlying behaviour and cognition may be viewed as embedded in these synaptic action fields, analogous to social networks embedded in a culture. These synaptic fields may facilitate the binding of disparate networks to produce a behaviour and consciousness that appears unified to (...) external observers. EEG, MEG, anatomy, physiology, and complex physical systems are considered here to suggest fundamental physical and biological properties of human brains that may be required for human consciousness to occur. We do not claim that these tissue properties are necessarily causal; however, they appear to be strongly correlated with human consciousness. Emphasis is placed on the hierarchical structure of brains, non-local connections between distant cortical regions, and resonant interactions between networks. While several of these ideas are supported by both experimental data and mathematical theory, the mathematics is replaced by metaphor for this paper. One conjecture is that the schizophrenias and other diseases occur when neural networks fail to conform to global synaptic fields. Perhaps consciousness is a resonance phenomenon and only properly tuned brains can orchestrate the beautiful music of sentience. (shrink)

Quality standards fulfilment is an essential task in manufacturing processes that involves high costs. One target is to avoid the presence of burrs in the edge of machine workpieces, which reduce the quality of the products. Furthermore, they are not easily removed since the part can even be damaged. In this paper, we propose an optimized Convolutional Neural Network, to detect the presence of burrs in images of milling parts. Its design is focused on the optimization of classification (accuracy) and (...) performance metrics (training time and number of trainable parameters). The proposed architecture identifies burrs with a 91.16% accuracy in the test set, outperforming existing models as EfficientNetB0. It also reduces the number of trainable parameters from other models as AlexNet by 1.5 million. The prediction process just takes 48.39 milliseconds per image. Finally, in order to check if the model gets a high activation in the region of interest, a visual explanation of the model is also carried out by using Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been growing interest in bridging bodies of knowledge from introspective and contemplative traditions with modern neuroscience. By making the primary object of study an individual’s subjective experience, scientists are then confronted with the challenging problem of how to record a given mental state at a given point in time. For simple experiences, such as in facial recognition tasks, an external recording device such as a button box or computer keyboard is adequate. However, these devices pose (...) fundamental problems when attempting to record more subtle states of mind, or to do so in situations where the presence of an external input device would disturb the subject, such as in the case of studying the evolution of internal states of highly advanced meditators. Here, I suggest that variants of the mnemonic techniques used in memory competitions can be used to make measurements in experiments where an external device would be impractical to use, or would unnecessarily disturb the subject. Demographic and performance data from memory competitions suggest that these techniques can be learned by ordinary subjects participating in multi-session experiments, and that, for highly trained individuals, events can be recorded at roughly 400 millisecond intervals for timescales on the order of tens of seconds, and at roughly one-second intervals for sustained periods of one hour or longer. Finally, I discuss the relationship of the current proposal to descriptive experience sampling (DES) and the visualization techniques of the Tibetan meditative tradition. (shrink)

Temporal binding via 40-Hz synchronization of neuronal discharges in sensory cortices has been hypothesized to be a necessary condition for the rapid selection of perceptually relevant information for further processing in working memory. Binocular rivalry experiments have shown that late stage visual processing associated with the recognition of a stimulus object is highly correlated with discharge rates in inferotemporal cortex. The hippocampus is the primary recipient of inferotemporal outputs and is known to be the substrate for the consolidation of working (...) memories to long-term, episodic memories. The prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, is widely thought to mediate working memory processes, per se. This article reviews accumulated evidence for the role of a subcortical matrix in linking frontal and hippocampal systems to select and ''stream'' conscious episodes across time (hundreds of milliseconds to several seconds). ''Streaming'' is hypothesized to be mediated by the selective gating of reentrant flows of information between these cortical systems and the subcortical matrix. The physiological mechanism proposed for this temporally extended form of binding is synchronous oscillations in the slower EEG spectrum (< 8 Hz). (shrink)

Libet discovered that a substantial duration (> 0.5-1.0 s) of direct electrical stimulation of the surface of the somatosensory cortex at threshold currents is required before human subjects can report that a conscious somatosensory experience had occurred. Using a reaction time method we confirm that a similarly long stimulation duration at threshold currents is required for activation of elementary visual experiences (phosphenes) in human subjects following stimulation of the surface of the striate cortex. However, the reaction times for the subject (...) to respond to the cessation of the visual experience after the end of electrical stimulation could be as brief as 225-242 ms. We also carried out extensive studies in cats under a variety of anesthetic conditions using the same electrodes and parameters of stimulation employed in the human studies to study the patterns of neuronal activity beneath the stimulating surface electrode. Whereas sufficiently strong currents can activate neurons within milliseconds, stimulating currents close to threshold activate sustained neural activity only after at least 350-500 ms. When currents are close to threshold, some neurons are inhibited for several hundreds of millisecond before the balance between inhibition and excitation shifts towards excitation. These results suggest that the prolonged latencies, i.e., latencies beyond 200-250 ms, for the emergence of conscious experience following direct cortical stimulation result from a delay in the sustained activation of underlying cortical neurons at threshold currents rather than being due to any unusually long duration in central processing time. Intracellular records from cortical neurological cells during repetitive electrical stimulation of the surface of the feline striate cortex demonstrate that such stimulation induces a profound depolarizing shift in membrane potential that may persist after each stimulus train. Such a depolarization is evidence that extracellular K+ concentrations have increased during electrical stimulation. Such an increase in extracellular K+ progressively increases cortical excitability until the threshold for sustained activation of cortical neurons is reached and then exceeded. Consequently, the long latency for threshold activation of cortical neurons depends upon a dynamically increasing cortical facilatory process that begins hundreds of milliseconds before there is sustained activation of such neurons. In some cases, this facilatory process must overcome an initial stimulus-induced inhibition before neuronal firing commences. (shrink)

Much of cognitive psychology focuses on effects measured in tens of milliseconds while significant educational outcomes take tens of hours to achieve. The task of bridging this gap is analyzed in terms of Newell's (1990) bands of cognition—the Biological, Cognitive, Rational, and Social Bands. The 10 millisecond effects reside in his Biological Band while the significant learning outcomes reside in his Social Band. The paper assesses three theses: The Decomposition Thesis claims that learning occurring at the Social Band can (...) be reduced to learning occurring at lower bands. The Relevance Thesis claims that instructional outcomes at the Social Band can be improved by paying attention to cognition at the lower bands. The Modeling Thesis claims that cognitive modeling provides a basis for bridging between events on the small scale and desired outcomes on the large scale. The unit-task level, at the boundary of the Cognitive and Rational Bands, is useful for assessing these theses. There is good evidence for all three theses in efforts that bridge from the unit-task level to educational applications. While there is evidence for the Decomposition Thesis all the way down to the 10 millisecond level, more work needs to be done to establish the Relevance Thesis and particularly the Modeling Thesis at the lower levels. (shrink)

Speech unfolds over time, and the cues for even a single phoneme are rarely available simultaneously. Consequently, to recognize a single phoneme, listeners must integrate material over several hundred milliseconds. Prior work contrasts two accounts: (a) a memory buffer account in which listeners accumulate auditory information in memory and only access higher level representations (i.e., lexical representations) when sufficient information has arrived; and (b) an immediate integration scheme in which lexical representations can be partially activated on the basis of early (...) cues and then updated when more information arises. These studies have uniformly shown evidence for immediate integration for a variety of phonetic distinctions. We attempted to extend this to fricatives, a class of speech sounds which requires not only temporal integration of asynchronous cues (the frication, followed by the formant transitions 150–350 ms later), but also integration across different frequency bands and compensation for contextual factors like coarticulation. Eye movements in the visual world paradigm showed clear evidence for a memory buffer. Results were replicated in five experiments, ruling out methodological factors and tying the release of the buffer to the onset of the vowel. These findings support a general auditory account for speech by suggesting that the acoustic nature of particular speech sounds may have large effects on how they are processed. It also has major implications for theories of auditory and speech perception by raising the possibility of an encapsulated memory buffer in early auditory processing. (shrink)

Speech unfolds over time, and the cues for even a single phoneme are rarely available simultaneously. Consequently, to recognize a single phoneme, listeners must integrate material over several hundred milliseconds. Prior work contrasts two accounts: (a) a memory buffer account in which listeners accumulate auditory information in memory and only access higher level representations (i.e., lexical representations) when sufficient information has arrived; and (b) an immediate integration scheme in which lexical representations can be partially activated on the basis of early (...) cues and then updated when more information arises. These studies have uniformly shown evidence for immediate integration for a variety of phonetic distinctions. We attempted to extend this to fricatives, a class of speech sounds which requires not only temporal integration of asynchronous cues (the frication, followed by the formant transitions 150–350 ms later), but also integration across different frequency bands and compensation for contextual factors like coarticulation. Eye movements in the visual world paradigm showed clear evidence for a memory buffer. Results were replicated in five experiments, ruling out methodological factors and tying the release of the buffer to the onset of the vowel. These findings support a general auditory account for speech by suggesting that the acoustic nature of particular speech sounds may have large effects on how they are processed. It also has major implications for theories of auditory and speech perception by raising the possibility of an encapsulated memory buffer in early auditory processing. (shrink)

Constraints and dependencies among the elements of embodied cognition form patterns or microstrategies of interactive behavior. Hard constraints determine which microstrategies are possible. Soft constraints determine which of the possible microstrategies are most likely to be selected. When selection is non‐deliberate or automatic the least effort microstrategy is chosen. In calculating the effort required to execute a microstrategy each of the three types of operations, memory retrieval, perception, and action, are given equal weight; that is, perceptual‐motor activity does not have (...) a privileged status with respect to memory. Soft constraints can work contrary to the designer's intentions by making the access of perfect knowledge in‐the‐world more effortful than the access of imperfect knowledge in‐the‐head. These implications of soft constraints are tested in two experiments. In experiment 1 we varied the perceptual‐motor effort of accessing knowledge in‐the‐world as well as the effort of retrieving items from memory. In experiment 2 we replicated one of the experiment 1 conditions to collect eye movement data. The results suggest that milliseconds matter. Soft constraints lead to a reliance on knowledge in‐the‐head even when the absolute difference in perceptual‐motor versus memory retrieval effort is small, and even when relying on memory leads to a higher error rate and lower performance. We discuss the implications of soft constraints for routine interactive behavior, accounts of embodied cognition, and tool and interface design. (shrink)

In a matter of mere milliseconds, conversational partners can transform their expectations about the world in a way that accords with another person's perspective. At the same time, in similar situations, the exact opposite also appears to be true. Rather than being at odds, these findings suggest that there are multiple contextual and processing constraints that may guide when and how people consider perspective. These constraints are shaped by a host of factors, including the availability of social and environmental cues, (...) and intrinsic biases and cognitive abilities. To explain how these might be integrated in a new way forward, we turn to an adaptive account of interpersonal interaction. This account draws from basic principles of dynamical systems, principles that we argue are already expressed, both implicitly and explicitly, within a broad landscape of existing research. We then showcase an initial attempt to develop a computational framework to instantiate some of these principles. This framework, consisting of what we argue to be important mechanistic insights rendered by neural network models, is based on a promising and long-standing approach that has yet to take hold in the current domain. We argue that by bridging this gap, new insights into other theoretical accounts, such as the connections between memory and common ground information, might be revealed. (shrink)

The sizes of individual data files have steadily increased along with rising demand for customized services, leading to issues such as low efficiency of web-based geographical information system -based data compression, transmission, and rendering for rich Internet applications in complicated visualization systems. In this article, a WebGIS-based technical solution for the efficient transmission and visualization of meteorological big data is proposed. Based on open-source technology such as HTML5 and Mapbox GL, the proposed scheme considers distributed data compression and transmission on (...) the server side as well as distributed requests and page rendering on the browser side. A high-low 8-bit compression method is developed for compressing a 100 megabyte file into a megabyte-scale file, with a compression ratio of approximately 90%, and the recovered data are accurate to two decimal places. Another part of the scheme combines pyramid tile cutting, concurrent domain name request processing, and texture rendering. Experimental results indicate that with this scheme, grid files of up to 100 MB can be transferred and displayed in milliseconds, and multiterminal service applications can be supported by building a grid data visualization mode for big data and technology centers, which may serve as a reference for other industries. (shrink)

Disorders of consciousness and the self are at the forefront of schizophrenia symptomatology. Patients are impaired in feeling themselves as the authors of their thoughts and actions. In addition, their flow of consciousness is disrupted, and thought fragmentation has been suggested to be involved in the patients’ difficulties in feeling as being one unique, unchanging self across time. Both impairments are related to self disorders, and both have been investigated at the experimental level. Here we review evidence that both mechanisms (...) of motor control and the temporal structure of signal processing are impaired in schizophrenia patients. Based on this review, we propose that the sequencing of action and perception plays a key role in the patients’ impairments. Furthermore, the millisecond time scale of the disorders, as well as the impaired sequencing, highlights the cooperation between brain networks including the cerebellum, as proposed by Andreasen (1999). We examine this possibility in the light of recent knowledge on the anatomical and physiological properties of the cerebellum, its role in timing, and its involvement in known physiological impairments in patients with schizophrenia, e.g., resting states and brain dynamics. A disruption in communication between networks involving the cerebellum, related to known impairments in dopamine, glutamate and GABA transmission, may help to better explain why patients experience reduced attunement with the external world and possibly with themselves. (shrink)

Perception solves computationally demanding problems at lightning fast speed. It recovers sophisticated representations of the world from degraded inputs, often in a matter of milliseconds. Any theory of perception must be able to explain how this is possible; in other words, it must be able to explain perception’s computational tractability. One of the few attempts to move toward such an explanation is the information encapsulation hypothesis, which posits that perception can be fast because it keeps computational costs low by forgoing (...) access to information stored in cognition. I argue that we have no compelling reason to believe that encapsulation explains (or even contributes to an explanation of) perceptual tractability, and much reason to doubt it. This is because there exist much deeper computational challenges for perception than information access, and these threaten to make the costs of access irrelevant. If this is right, it undermines a core computational motivation for encapsulation and sends us back to the drawing board for explanations of perceptual tractability. (shrink)

Several recent papers which purport to substantiate or negate arguments in favor of certain theories of absolute space have been based on fallacious principles. In this paper we discuss three related instances, indicating where misconceptions have arisen. We establish, contrary to popular belief, that the classical Lorentz ether theory accounts for all the experimental evidence which supports the special theory of relativity. We demonstrate that the ether theory predicts the null results obtained from pulsar timing and Mössbauer experiments. We conclude (...) that a measurement of the one-way velocity of light has physical meaning within the context of the Lorentz theory, and argue that an adequately designed experiment to measure the one-way velocity of light should be attempted. (shrink)