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Why Lucid Dreams Matter

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Lucid dreams are often defined as the ones you know you are having in real time. These are the dreams where you seem to be conscious. You are aware of the story line, and you are often a central character in the story. Sometimes, you may even consciously manipulate the dream content toward a more acceptable outcome. Scientists have recorded physiological changes during sleep, and there are multiple episodes during sleep, especially early in the morning, that display brain waves similar to those when you are awake accompanied by rapid, jerky eye moves (REM). When people were awakened every time these signs appeared, they invariably said a dream was interrupted. Source, with permission: Carroll Jones III, Nathaniel Graphics, 2013 Incidentally, I have studied this in animals. It appears that REM sleep is an innate property of the brains of mammals. I discovered REM sleep in ruminants, which at the time were assumed to rest without true sleep. I also discovered a rudimentary form of REM sl...
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Consciousness as Afterthought

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I get a lot of questions in Quora about neuroscience, because neuroscience is what I do. A recent question prompts this post. The question was: " Does all thinking originate in subconscious thinking?" This is a provocative question. It gets to the heart of the matter: What is the default mode of brain operation, conscious or subconscious? Semantic Confusion Much of the confusion about consciousness arises because words fail us. We have poor definitions for the usual words: conscious, unconscious, subconscious, non-conscious. Before I attempt an answer to my Quora question, let me establish some background about terminology. First, the currency of thought is patterns of nerve impulse activity constrained by flowing in and through defined circuits of linked neurons. The impulse thought patterns that occur in primitive circuitry, like spinal   segments and neuroendocrine circuits are considered nonconscious thoughts because we can never be consciously aware of what those circuit...
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Six Principles of Learning in School Jazz Programs

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Jazz is complex music that even some professional musicians have difficulty playing. Yet somehow, jazz-band teachers create new jazz musicians out of youngsters who just a few years earlier knew nothing about music. What magic must they be using? In the spring of every year in Texas, Katy High School near Houston hosts a jazz festival that showcases junior- and high-school stage bands from around the state. I have attended several times and never failed to be astonished at the musicianship of these youngsters. Each year, there is one or more middle-school band. Even the professional musicians who critique each band’s performance are amazed that these 7 th  and 8 th  graders “play like adults!” I never cease to be astonished at how accomplished these students are. I ask myself, “How did those kids learn such complex music?" The music played by the school stage bands is mostly the big-band music of Goodman, Basie, Kenton, Ellington, and ot...
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How Learning and Memory Relate to Free Will

One common definition of "free will" is that a person can decide or choose among multiple alternatives without being forced by physical laws, luck, fate, or divine will. Most of us feel we are in charge of our choices when no outside force requires us to make a particular choice. But it is fashionable these days for scholars to insist that free will is an illusion, a trick the brain plays on us. I will spare you the philosophical knots of specious assumptions and convoluted logic that that scholars tie themselves into. Why do I bring this up? What has the "free will" issue have to do with learning and memory? Everything. Rather than memory dictating our choices, either we have chosen what to learn and remember or we can veto or amend the influence in our decision-making. Human brains make choices consciously and unconsciously by real-time evaluation of alternatives in terms of previous learning from other situations and their anticipated usefulness. This learning oc...
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Two New Discoveries to Explain Why Exercise Is Good for You

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Have you noticed that so many elderly people seem frail, walk slowly, and seem to lack energy? If this applies to you, noticing it is unavoidable. These problems are preventable. For 25 years, I jogged at least a mile and a half three times a week. This was crucial for helping me stop smoking. I don’t know why, except that I could not smoke and jog at the same time. Also, the 15-30 minute recovery time reminded me just how bad the smoking had been for my health. Why did I quit jogging? The jogging messed up my joints. So, I took up swimming, but since I sink like a lead mannequin, that is just too much work. So now, I joined a gym, where I use the elliptical, treadmill, and muscle-building machines. This environment helps because I have companions in my discomfort, and occasionally I get the satisfaction of comparing myself to the few “90-pound weaklings” that show up. We have known for many years that exercise is good for you, especially as you get older. Known benefits of exercise in...
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The Better Things Get, the Worse They May Seem

“Too much of a good thing” and “it’s all relative” now take on new meaning. A new research report of seven studies suggests an explanation for the paradox that humans misjudge the extent of a changing situation. This report, published in the June 29 th issue of the premier journal, Science , demonstrated that people often respond to diminished prevalence of a stimulus by expanding their perception of its prevalence. For example, when looking at a matrix panel of blue and purple dots, if the experimenter reduces the percentage of blue dots, the subjects began to see purple dots as blue. Or when shown panels of threatening faces mixed with neutral faces in which the percentage of angry faces became rarer, they began to see neutral faces as threatening. Or when unethical requests of the subjects were made rarer, subjects began to regard innocuous requests as unethical. In other words, reduced prevalence of a certain stimulus created a bias for finding more of that stimulus than actually ...
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Consciousness Explanation. Part II

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In an earlier post, “Where Neuroscience Stands in Understanding Consciousness,” I presented a summary of the progress occurring in neuroscientific understanding of consciousness ( https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/memory-medic/201804/where-neuroscience-stands-in-understanding-consciousness ). Now a recent report in the May issue of Science adds to a growing understanding of how the brain generates conscious recognition. The study examined neural impulse discharge responses of monkey brain to visual stimuli. Electrodes were implanted in the four visual cortex areas that are sequentially activated by visual stimuli. The stimulus was a circular spot of varying contrast in the lower left area of the visual field. Monkeys were cued when a stimulus was delivered, though whether they saw it or not varied with the spot’s contrast against the visual background. Monkeys were trained to report when they knew they saw the spot by shifting   their gaze from a central fixation point to th...
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