Snackrabbit submitted this comment to my recent post on optical illusions. I have a tangentally related comment to it so let me give a quick synopsis:

Stroke victims who have the right side of their brain can develop a condition called ANOSOGNOSIA in which they will completely deny certain aspects of reality in regard to their condtion. They will not accept that they are paralyzed but further, upon being presented with the paralyzed limb, will actually make the claim that the limb is no their own. They might suggest that it is their daughter’s arm or some other strangeness. There are a couple of theories out there for why this happens but the good doctor Ramachandran has his own idea. He speculates that there may be a part of the brain that is on the lookout for anomolies to our ’self story’. Our general self story may be, “I have 2 working legs and 2 working arms” and only if we see an anomoly, such as paralysis, do we change our self story. However, it may be that we have a function that detects these anomonolies and that if that function is damaged, no matter what evedince you were to show us (us being paralyzed from this stroke), we would deny the evidince and even come up with absurd rationalizations for our denial like, “the arm belongs to my daughter who is trying to seduce me”.

So to test his theory that there is an ‘anomoly detector’ function in our brain he had to somehow reawaken it and then, during that time, the patient should be able to acknowledge his condition. Well, somehow, and I don’t totally understand this, pouring cold water into the ear of the stroke victim will temporarily revive this function and for maybe 15 minutes to an hour, the patient will acknowledge the problem and even have memory of how long the problem has been there. This realization is harkened by the eyes moving rapidly from the left to the right because the cold water makes the brain think that the head is turning rapidly to the left. After the effect wears off, however, the patient returns to their previous denial and doesn’t remember the time when they were under the infulence of the cold water effect.

Okay, so the idea of this doctor is that the memory has something to do with the rapid eye movment. That it is inducing some sort of sleep-related state of mind and that some repressed information is allowed to surface, freud style. There is some sort of therapy out there in which a doctor will rapidly move his finger back and forth in front of the patient’s eyes which track the movement. Its supposed to help the patient deal with repressed memories.

That’s the end of the synopsis and I don’t know about that. I do know a really good way to get your eyes to rapidly move back and forth. Spin around like a top, like when you were a kid. Spin till its all fast and dizzy. Now stand in front of a mirror and look at your eyes - they will be flickering left to right trying to compensate for the spinning. That’s why the world keeps spinning after you stop! Your eyes are moving! So if moving the eyes back and forth will induce some sort of deep consious access, then here’s the technique: spin like a top.

Now interestingly, there is a Tibetan Yoga form that was recommended to me by Rinpoche that involves spinning clockwise 21 times or more. Think ultimately of those whirling dervishes. Rinpoche says this is very good for the mind and Tantric Buddhism is involved in working through the subconscious mind - so maybe there is something here.

Looky dan’s new blog

I became lucid in my dream automatically last night - i.e. no dream signs. Just, suddenly, I knew - I had a knowledge that I was dreaming. I tried to play along with the dream but it quickly faded. There was a woman there that I was having a conversation with. What I noticed is that when I became conscious of the dream, I suddenly lost the clarity in which I could see her. When I turned back to focus on her and asked her a question (i don’t remember the question). She just stared at me and faded into my room. In other words, I woke up. But I’m pleased that the awareness of the dreaming was spontaneous. I look forward to being able to interact with the dream world like a canvas — painting entire worlds. Think about it, if you have ever wanted to direct or write a movie, this is it - but you don’t have to rely on stage hands and wait around while david ducouvney gets his hair just right. David’s hair is always perfect in the dream world.

And ACTION!

I hope you are all having a good day.

I’m a big fan of these optical illusions because they show a clear example of how things can exist differently than we perceive them.