Blind man shocks researchers with what he sees.

I later discovered the writings of Eckhart Tolle. According to him, we are diseased in the sense that we identify with our mind/ego, instead of realizing what it actually is: a tool. Part of the problem is we often don't know what exists underneath. We are 100% convinced we are our mind. But obviously we're not - if we were, we wouldn't be able to observe it. Once we realize we're not our mind, we're free of its control. Until we do, we're in a way, severely ill. We're actually not disfunctional in our true nature - but we're unenlightened.

At least that's what Eckhart Tolle says. I personally find it disarmingly logical - and reasonably easily provable within my perception, not to mention deeply liberating/changing. Finding out you can stop your thoughts and not only still be aware, but become the most aware you can be, that's quite a doozy of a realization.

The interesting question is: "am I the jewel?"

Then you probably don't want to read Thomas Ligotti's "The conspiracy against the human race". It's a philosophical and neuroscientific treatise on existentialism written by a lovecraftian horror writer...

http://www.amazon.com/The-Conspiracy-Against-Human-Race/dp/0...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphenomenalism

I'm not sure which regions subserve facial expression recognition (probably amygdala, FFA and others), but it could be a deficit in those regions. Alternatively, if you think you have Asperger's/ASD, they tend to have general deficits in emotion-reading and theory-of-mind-type tasks.

One problem with the hierarchy model, though, is that the brain does not use layers as cleanly separated as in software. So, it's quite possible that after exiting the thalamaus and entering area MT or the amygdala, the signal goes on to "higher" regions such as the prefrontal cortex. So even though it's reaching the region, it's still insufficient. It could be because it's not stimulating enough neurons, but it's also possible that there's some qualitative difference as well.

For example, sheer numbers of neurons don't guarantee awareness. The cerebellum has half the total number of neurons in the brain, but they're arranged in a very repetitive manner and seem to have nothing to do with awareness. If you had your cerebellum removed (say, for cancer), you would have difficulty with fine motor control, but not much else. It wouldn't alter your awareness, even though you've just lost half your brain's neurons. If you believe the information integration theorists, what matters is heterogeneity and interconnectivity, rather than mere numbers.

A few times in extreme states of sleep-deprivation, I've been lying down or slouched on the couch and realized, after being startled into getting up suddenly, that my memory of what I had been thinking about was fading away just like a dream. My eyes were open the whole time, and unlike when I was driving, I was conscious of seeing and having a consciously driven train of thought. Yet in some way I was asleep, so my mind let my memories slip away as if they were dreams.

My experience with all nighters is decent productivity through most of the night, extreme tiredness and the low productivity phase around 20-24 hours in (5-9 am, typically), then what I thought of as the circadian rhythm would kick in and "wake me up" again and I would be fine and almost normal productivity through the day, typically until a second tiredness crash after 30-32 hours (3 to 5 pm).

The nap-sleep around 5 to 9 am would restore some productivity during next day and ease off the second crash, but it never got me back to 100%.

When I was 19 or 20 I once stayed up 66 hours straight to see if I could (not the greatest of ideas, I know) and while I won't claim I was perfectly fine I did not hallucinate. I actually drove for an hour and a half about 60 hours in and managed alright (spectacularly bad idea I'm ashamed of nowadays, please don't do this).

I was exhausted and most-definitely not thinking straight. I pretty much collapsed into bed and probably slept ten hours. I woke up feeling just fine and just in time to present my paper.

I was younger and definitely stupider. No, I didn't go to the doctor. Dumb. Lived to tell about.

Edit: for such people, it would be useful if schools taught what sorts of issues are doctor worthy, and which should be ignored or dealt with by over-the-counter remedies.

Or, at least, that's now I remember it now (or remember thinking about it then). It's been a long time.

I had the flu at the time, and one morning I immediately got out of bed and went to the bathroom. On the way back to my room, I started to feel dizzy and noticed my eyesight fading. First it seemed to go black and white, then to tunnel-vision, as if I could only see what was directly in front of me. My hearing faded as well - I was on the verge of collapsing (unbeknownst to me) and I could hear my family shouting out as if I was listening to them through a poor AM radio signal and speaker. My father grabbed me before I collapsed and hit my head on the corner of a desk.

After going to the doctor, we determined the causes:

* Standing up too quickly (jumping straight out of bed)

* Low blood pressure

* Possible dehydration

* Going to the bathroom

The trick to prevent passing out when you start feeling dizzy is to get blood flowing back into your head. The easiest way to do that is lie on your back and lift your feet high in the air. And of course, keep hydrated and avoid standing too quickly.

See also: Restless Leg Syndrome.

[beagle3's link is a very accurate description of what happens; it makes it really hard to use a computer, otherwise it's not a big deal, since it doesn't hurt]

I get them from time to time; the only down side is the inability to read until the flashing zig-zag hallucination moves out of my field of view. Generally much preferred to a migraine headache.

An area of my visual field stops reporting data. It doesn't look like anything, I just get no data. This is a relatively rare form of "aura"; most people who get aura report some kind of positive phenomenon. It starts as a few-degrees-wide field near my focal region; later in the cycle it gets bigger as it moved farther from the focus. I can only locate the region by moving my focal point and watching for bright objects to disappear. I discovered it when trying to figure out why reading was suddenly very difficult.

My blind-spot episodes last about 30 minutes. When I first started having them, there was no pain at all. Since then, they've started to be followed by mild headaches, and sometimes by a cognitive stupor. If you read up on migraines, that's consistent enough that I almost wonder if I've tricked myself into adding these symptoms psychosomatically.

More generally, I've met lots of people who have migraines who think they don't, because their headaches don't debilitate them. When they also report aura, I tell them to go look up "migraine".

At its simplest it is quieting the mind. A long time ago I took a transcendental meditation course (TM) (I know, I know, it dates me, there was a girl involved) they are (were?) the folks who claimed you could defy gravity if you were good enough. There was a lot of eastern mysticism but as the scientific type I was more interested in what, if any, physiological effects were to be had. Being an undergrad in a pre-med school has some perks and one of them was being able to practice meditation wearing an EEG cap.

As far as I can tell, the primary benefit of meditation is shutting down all the noise in your head. Your brain thinks a lot, about a lot of things, often all at the same time. You might be like me where you get solutions to problems that 'bubble up' from somewhere in your brain that you didn't know was working on the problem.

Anyway, if you meditate (and there aren't any big secrets here you are simply training yourself to stop thinking without going to sleep) you clear out your brain. Like doing a power cycle reboot on a computer. Flush everything all resources available for thinking. Then when new things come up you can respond more quickly because you've got cycles to spare.

My totally non-scientific theory is that normally, when you start thinking about something new, your brain has to pick something to stop thinking about so that it can free up the cycles. If you are trying to keep a lot things in your head, that is hard because you are already trying not to stop thinking about the things you need to remember. Whereas when you just come out of meditation you aren't thinking about anything so you can quickly pick up a new train of thought.

Note that this is different than sleep because when you sleep you dream, and dreaming is a way of thinking. If you're successfully meditating, you are awake, aware of your surroundings, but keeping your finger on the 'halt' button so that you don't start up new thoughts. Then you lift your finger and off you go.

The best explanation I have is ignoring your thoughts. You aren't sleeping, your mind is blank. Meditation feels like (to me at least) the feeling right before you fall asleep.

Imagine you're playing with bubbles, these bubbles are your thoughts. Generally, your mind tries to capture the bubbles, exploding them and seeing what was inside. When you meditate, the bubbles just kind of whizz by without looking inside.

It's a good way to explore what we are as humans, and it's sobering in it's power to tap into things we otherwise wouldn't experience.

I did Astanga yoga (also refered to as power yoga) for many years. Such a class would consist of some 10 - 20 students and 1 - 2 instructors. In this form of yoga at no time do you close you eyes (expect for the final relaxation time).

Contrary to what you might think this particular form of yoga is very very psychically hard. Although you move slowly you are never still in a relaxed position. You move a lot of small muscles and carry your own weight for 1.5 - 2 hours.

The concentration needed takes all your focus until you know the series of movement of the back of your hand. For me this took about a year. After this I would occasionally slip into a kind of mindlessness. I would "come back" and be conscience about this mindlessness at some point near the end of the session. It very much felt like 1.5 hours had passed in an instance. I would not be able to recall any detail or anything the instructors have said and I would feel immensely relaxed and full of energy. It was a great sensation.

I suspect this has something to do with how you breath during yoga. It kind of resembles the way you breath when you are deep at sleep. It takes a long time to learn and I have a feeling that the breathing is actually the most important part of yoga.

Besides swimming this is by far the best workout I have ever done. Being a programmer it does wonders for a body which spends most of the time sitting down in an office chair. If you get the chance I recommend that you try it out. You will be very surprised how hard it is - and how rewarding it is.

I tried the same thing, and had some interesting experiences. Around bed-time, lie down in a relatively quiet, not too bright place. For me, a hardwood floor with thin carpet works well. Close your eyes, and try to breathe slowly. Whenever you have a startling thought or start to feel impatient (why isn't this working?) just remember that all you need to do is to breathe slowly.

Over time my mind gets quieter and quieter. I may focus on the greenish patterns inside my eyelids (similar to photo-luminescent plankton). These patterns may swirl and move like a fluid-simulation.

If I'm lucky, at some point I'll realize that I'm asleep. I've never experienced the transition -- just the realization that, yup, I'm asleep. In winter this is accompanied by an overall feeling of warmth. There's also a feeling of disconnection from hearing and motor. It's not that I can't hear, but if there were crickets or bird noises outside, I realize it's gone suspiciously quiet. It's not that I can't move, but it feels like I'd have to surface first before moving.

Often the reaction to the realization "I'm asleep" is to startle and to wake up, but you can train yourself not to.

Meditation works very similarly except the goal is to train the mind. Much like our bodies our minds are not under our complete conscious control. We can't, normally, just turn off or on feeling sad, or being angry, or relaxed, etc. That lack of control has consequences. For example, when a person is in a heated argument the fight or flight reflex will dump adrenaline into their system and create a variety of other reactions that results in diminished rationality, aggressiveness, etc. That phenomenon is the root cause of a ton of negative behaviors in people and a reason why verbal arguments turn into verbal, and then perhaps even physical, fights instead of conversations.

Generally the most important transition is to a state of relaxation, since it's easier to consciously go from that state to most other mental states intentionally and it's typically harder to go to a state of relaxation from many other mental states (anger, sadness, anxiety, frustration, etc.) However, meditation isn't limited to just relaxation.

There are many types of meditation which frankly don't have all that much in common. In buddhist meditation, which is probably the most common type in the US, there are two main types:

- Concentration meditation (shamatha): This involves training the mind to concentrate, often by focusing on a mantra, an object (like a candle), or some imaginary object (like a mandala). There are different mental states that you can reach as you get better, called jhanas.

- The second type of meditation is insight meditation, also called vipassana. In this type of meditation you focus on the sensations of the body. It basically involves starting at your head and noting every physical sensation (warm, cold, clothing touching your skin, etc.) and working all the way down to your toes, and then going up. As you progess you begin to notice more sensations that the buddhist mental map describes as being part of the 'subtle body'. These involve things like vibrations, electric shocks, etc. You also begin to feel waves of energy traveling up and down your body. To get to this point takes 3 or 4 days, assuming you are at a retreat where you are doing it 10 hours a day. The next step is where you can feel 'inside' of yourself, like all of your organs, and then being able to feel inside your organs until they dissolve into what feels like rising bubbles. This takes a bit longer, but you can often begin to feel these 'bubbles' after a week or so. Note that you don't have to believe in any of this, it just happens whether you want it to or not. There are many more mental states and experiences you will have if you continue. There is a description here of the rest of the states:

http://kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/page/Collection+of+tip...

They culminate in something called stream entry, which is the first of four stages of enlightenment according to the buddhist model.

There is also a book called Mastering The Core Teachings Of The Buddha which also has a description of all the things you go through between being a beginner and reaching enlightenment. The best way to learn though is probably to do a meditation retreat, there are free vipassana retreats offered by dhamma.org that are pretty good. (There is a suggested donation of about $300 to pay for your food and housing for the 10 days, but it's optional.) There are many reviews of this online. There are also many other retreats, but most of them cost money. One example of a popular one is the insight meditation society, http://www.dharma.org/.

There are many books also. The best one for learning vipassana is probably Mindfulness In Plain English, which you can download for free as a PDF: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html

While this is good to read, you really don't want to try it without a teacher, as you are likely to hurt yourself or do it wrong (and not make progress) unless you have an actual teacher.

The third type of meditation you hear a lot about is transcendent meditation. This is basically a form of concentration meditation, although its adherents claim it is different based on brain scans. It costs a lot of money to learn, and many consider it to be a cult. I don't know a lot about it personally.

Many other religions have some form of meditation, such as catholicism. Tibetan buddhism also has its own form of meditation, as does hinduism. (Some types of yoga are basically an active form of meditation.)

If you're looking to learn one type then vipassana is probably the place to start. Advantages are:

- Free instruction, and a large community that can help you.

- A large encyclopedia of the different mental states you will encounter, so you know what you're experiencing and whether or not they are 'part of the path' or just a distraction.

- A well defined path to follow to get from a complete beginner to very advanced.

- What r/meditation is most familiar with, which is a great place to ask questions and such.

Tibetan buddism also has a very well defined path, but it's really only taught to people within the tradition, so I can't comment much on it. It's also generally hard to learn unless you happen to live in Ithaca, NY or Boulder, CO, as there aren't many tibetan llamaseries around.

Lastly, I should mention there is also zen meditation, which is fairly popular in the US. Zen is a lot of judaism, in that it combines certain practices with what are basically brain teasers as a way of trying to coax you toward enlightenment faster. There are all sorts of parables, commentaries, commentaries on the commentaries, etc. I don't know a ton about this, but there are all sorts of blogs and places you can learn. Anyway I'm not an expert by any means, but hopefully that helps a bit.

There are many different types of and approaches to meditation, but the essence of all of them is mindfulness. The concept is of being "present"-- not living in the past, or the future, but experiencing what is happening right here, right now.

This is a subtly but importantly different idea from that of ignoring or quieting your thinking. You are your thoughts; you can't ignore them. (Don't think of an elephant.) However, your thoughts are not all that is happening to you, and most of the time your thoughts serve only to distract you from what is actually going on.

So, for example, one of the most basic forms of meditation is simply to be aware of your breathing. You are breathing one hundred percent of the time, but you are almost never aware of the fact that you are. So take one moment, right now, close your eyes, and breathe. Feel how your chest expands and contracts. Feel how the air flows through your nostrils.

Thoughts will occur, and it's important that you don't push them away, or try to ignore them, because you can't-- even very experienced meditators cannot. Instead, recognize that thought is occurring, be aware of it, but don't dwell on it. Let the thought exist, notice that it is happening, and let it drift away as you return your attention to your breathing.

You will find your mind drifting to more and more intrusive thoughts: The things you're stressed about, worried about, upset about. This is not wrong; it is what is happening to you right now. Be aware of it, let it pass into you just like the air through your nostrils, and let it pass out as you return to breathing.

If you really attempt this, you will notice at least a brief moment where you feel suddenly, absolutely aware of who you are, where you are, what it is that you are experiencing right now in a way that you may never have felt before. If you've never meditated before, it is very likely that you'll be terribly upset by this awareness of all of the unpleasant thoughts and feelings that you've been ignoring, trying to push under the surface and bury inside yourself. Remember that it is okay to cry. Let the emotions happen, just the way they are. You can't make them go away. But they don't control you; once you've felt them, it's okay to return your attention to your breathing.

I hope I don't make this sound easy-- it's incredibly difficult. But over time, with practice, you'll find this state of presence and awareness easier and easier to achieve, and that it's no longer necessary to close your eyes or be still to feel this. You'll be able to experience exactly what it feels like to walk down the street, or to eat a meal, in a way you never have before. You'll find yourself no longer being ruled by the emotions you've tried to suppress for so long. You will be angered, or saddened, or terrified, and you will be able to let those feelings happen inside of you, really experience them, and continue with what you are doing.

That is meditation.

(My references: My mother is a clinical psychiatrist who is trained in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, which is, believe it or not, a clinically validated treatment for many serious mental illnesses, but especially depression and anxiety. I've used these techniques myself to overcome major recurring depression.)

In there, meditation is a structured way to develop awareness (mindfulness) of your subconscious thought processes and beliefs (which determine your day-to-day activities and your overall path in life, but which few people consciously monitor).

If you are a particularly introspective person, or have worked with CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), the concepts will seem quite familiar albeit presented from a different angle.

Causes an almost meditative state where you don't worry about body function (which is why its effective at treating anxiety).

I'm not lying there the whole time thinking about my breathing. I start by thinking about my breathing, so I can use that focus to exclude/ignore the usual rush of other thoughts. After some time, I'm not consciously thinking at all.