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Physiology & Medicine / How the brain figures out reality?
« on: 23/07/2015 22:08:03 »
Hi,
In conversations about things in life one is encountering all sorts of people with different views and when it comes to phenomena like dreams, drug effects, hallucinations etc, everyone has some kind of an explanation. Religion, spirituality, aliens, you name it. As someone who relies on science to construct my views I'm often using terms like "most likely ", "we don't know " and "either/or", which is up against someone's 100% bulletproof biases. Lately I have developed a narrative about how brain works that is bringing me some success in this discussions. Here it is:
The brain is a virtual reality machine. Sensors are not providing the brain with uninterrupted stream of information about the surrounding environment but only bits. For example the eye is transiting 3 impulses in 1 seconds. What happens is that the brain is filing the gaps so we perceive the world as constant flow. If every moment of time there was a real sensory input, the brain wouldn't be able to process it. It is more economical for the brain to create virtual reality. Still this virtual reality is being constructed around the scaffold (or skeleton) of real sensory information about the real world. Sensors are the anchors that keep us constantly linked with the reality. But what happens when sensors are shut down but brain is still working. Then it produces a virtual reality without the sensory input to keep it in check and all sorts of things become possible. The dreams when we sleep, the hallucinations when high, the experiences during religious trance, near death experience, all that seems to be explained. I made it sound simplistic and I am aware that consciousness is incredibly complex. The bottom line is that if you influence the relationship between sensory input and virtual reality construction weird things can happen.
Please comment on this. Thanks.
In conversations about things in life one is encountering all sorts of people with different views and when it comes to phenomena like dreams, drug effects, hallucinations etc, everyone has some kind of an explanation. Religion, spirituality, aliens, you name it. As someone who relies on science to construct my views I'm often using terms like "most likely ", "we don't know " and "either/or", which is up against someone's 100% bulletproof biases. Lately I have developed a narrative about how brain works that is bringing me some success in this discussions. Here it is:
The brain is a virtual reality machine. Sensors are not providing the brain with uninterrupted stream of information about the surrounding environment but only bits. For example the eye is transiting 3 impulses in 1 seconds. What happens is that the brain is filing the gaps so we perceive the world as constant flow. If every moment of time there was a real sensory input, the brain wouldn't be able to process it. It is more economical for the brain to create virtual reality. Still this virtual reality is being constructed around the scaffold (or skeleton) of real sensory information about the real world. Sensors are the anchors that keep us constantly linked with the reality. But what happens when sensors are shut down but brain is still working. Then it produces a virtual reality without the sensory input to keep it in check and all sorts of things become possible. The dreams when we sleep, the hallucinations when high, the experiences during religious trance, near death experience, all that seems to be explained. I made it sound simplistic and I am aware that consciousness is incredibly complex. The bottom line is that if you influence the relationship between sensory input and virtual reality construction weird things can happen.
Please comment on this. Thanks.