Sensory Activities Quotes

When meditation becomes very deep, breathing becomes slow, steady, and even, and the windows of the senses close to all outward sensations. Next the faculties of the mind quiet down, resting from their usually frantic activity; even the primal emotions of desire, fear, and anger subside. When all these sensory and emotional tides have ceased to flow, then the spirit is free, mukta – at least for the time being. It has entered the state called samadhi. Samadhi

Emotions are not reactions to the world. You are not a passive receiver of sensory input but an active constructor of your emotions. From sensory input and past experience, your brain constructs meaning and prescribes action. If you didn’t have concepts that represent your past experience, all your sensory inputs would just be noise. You wouldn’t know what the sensations are, what caused them, nor how to behave to deal with them. With concepts, your

Every authoritarian structure can be visualized as a pyramid with an eye on the top. This is the typical flow-chart of any government, any corporation, any Army, any bureaucracy, any mammalian pack. On each rung, participants bear a burden of nescience in relation to those above them. That is, they must be very, very careful that the natural sensory activities of being conscious organisms — the acts of seeing, hearing, smelling, drawing inferences from perception, etc. — are in accord with the reality-tunnel of those above them. This is absolutely vital; pack status (and “job security”) depends on it. It is much less important — a luxury that can easily be discarded — that these perceptions be in accord with objective fact.

The neural basis for the self, as I see it, resides with the continuous reactivation of at least two sets of representations. One set concerns representations of key events in an individual's autobiography, on the basis of which a notion of identity can be reconstructed repeatedly, by partial activation in topologically organized sensory maps. ... In brief, the endless reactivation of updated images about our identity (a combination of memories of the past and of the planned future) constitutes a sizable part of the state of self as I understand it. The second set of representations underlying the neural self consists of the primordial representations of an individual's body ... Of necessity, this encompasses background body states and emotional states. The collective representation of the body constitute the basis for a "concept" of self, much as a collection of representations of shape, size, color, texture, and taste can constitute the basis for the concept of orange.

The deep secret of the brain is that not only the spinal cord but the entire central nervous system works this way: internally generated activity is modulated by sensory input. In this view, the difference between being awake and being asleep is merely that the data coming in from the eyes anchors the perception. Asleep vision (dreaming) is perception that is not tied down to anything in the real world; waking perception is something like dreaming with a little more commitment to what´s in front of you. Other examples of unanchored perception are found in prisoners in pitch-park solitary confinement, or in people in sensory deprivation chambers. Both of these situations quickly lead to hallucinations.

Awakening is about introducing a child to sensory experiences, including tastes. It doesn't always require the parent's active involvement. It can come from staring at the sky, smelling dinner as it's being prepared, or playing alone on a blanket. It's a way of sharpening the child's senses and preparing him to distinguish between different experiences. It's the first step toward teaching him to be a cultivated adult who knows how to enjoy himself. Awakening is a kind of training for children in how to profiter - to soak up the pleasure and richness of the moment.

The entire aim and endeavor of yoga is to open up the cocoon of the physical body to the larger sensory body where you experience everything as a part of you. Fasting is an extension of this logic: it is a way of nourishing yourself without any active ingestion. It may be done as a detoxification process nowadays, but this is the internal rationale.

Haekel's reasoning is simple: humans are nature, they are part of, and a result of, evolution. Our actions and our thoughts are products of this evolution. Accordingly, when humans come to know something, ultimately it reveals their own nature. Our knowledge -- which has developed in and is subject to the laws of nature -- is in itself nature (and according to Haeckel, nothing more.) The draftsman, his sensory organs, his motor activity, are results of a development with which, in the end, nature merely represents itself.

evocative cues”—basically any sensory input, like a sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch—can activate a traumatic memory.

The worst thing one can do for a hyperactive child is to put him or her in front of a television set. Television activates the child at the same time that it cuts the child (or adult) off from real sensory stimulation and the opportunity for resolution.

As he analyzed the areas that fire in chronic pain, he observed that many of those areas also process thoughts, sensations, images, memories, movements, emotions, and beliefs—when they are not processing pain. That observation explained why, when we are in pain, we can’t concentrate or think well; why we have sensory problems and often can’t tolerate certain sounds or light; why we can’t move more gracefully; and why we can’t control our emotions very well and become irritable and have emotional outbursts. The areas that regulate these activities have been hijacked to process the pain signal.

Attentional amplification of sensory awareness in any sensory medium is achieved by top-down signals from prefrontal cortex that modulate activity of single neurons in sensory brain areas in the absence of any sensory stimulation and significantly increase baseline activity in the corresponding target region.

Our flesh is like silly putty that distorts when it is ignored. We are constantly obliged to actively participate in its formation, or else it will droop of its own weight and plasticity. This incessant formation we cannot stop. We can only make the choice to let it go its own way - directed by genetics, gravity, appetites, habits, the accidentals of our surroundings, and so on - or the choice to let our sensory awareness penetrate its processes, to be personally present in the midst of those processes with the full measure of our subjective, internal observations and responses, and to some degree direct the course of that formation. We do not have the option of remaining passively unchanged, and to believe for a moment in this illusion is to invite distortions and dysfunctions. Like putty, we are either shaping ourselves or we are drooping; like clay, we either keep ourselves moist and malleable or we are drying and hardening. We must do one or the other; we may not passively avoid the issue.

How can two mutually exclusive behaviors—mating and fighting—be mediated by the same population of neurons? Anderson found that the difference hinges on the intensity of the stimulus applied. Weak sensory stimulation, such as foreplay, activates mating, whereas stronger stimulation, such as danger, activates aggression. In 1952 Meyer Schapiro paid

Over time, unique invisibles, perceivable only because of the sensitivity and openness of the sensory gating in that neural network, are able to be heard and, as well, expressed through the activity of that part of the self. This is what Goethe was talking about when he said that Every new object, clearly seen, opens up a new organ of perception in us.

Gain is a parameter in neural network modeling, which influences the probability that a neuron fires at a given activation level. Single cell recordings in non-human primates have shown that the likelihood of a neuron firing, given a constant sensory input, is enhanced when the stimulus dimension that is preferentially processed by the neuron is attended to.11

Empathy is a sensory experience; that is, it activates the sensory part of your nervous system, including the mirror neurons we’ve talked about. Anger, on the other hand, is a motor action—usually a reaction to some perceived hurt or injury by another person. So by taking people out of anger and shifting them into an empathic behavior, the Empathy Jolt moves them from the motor brain to the sensory brain.

The good painter has to paint two principal things, man and the intention of his mind,” he wrote. “The first is easy and the second is difficult, because the latter has to be represented through gestures and movements of the limbs.”44 He expanded on this concept in a long passage in his notes for his planned treatise on painting: “The movement which is depicted must be appropriate to the mental state of the figure. The motions and postures of figures should display the true mental state of the originator of these motions, in such a way they can mean nothing else. Movements should announce the motions of the mind.”45 Leonardo’s dedication to portraying the outward manifestations of inner emotions would end up driving not only his art but some of his anatomical studies. He needed to know which nerves emanated from the brain and which from the spinal cord, which muscles they activated, and which facial movements were connected to others. He would even try, when dissecting the brain, to figure out the precise location where the connections were made between sensory perceptions, emotions, and motions. By the end of his career, his pursuit of how the brain and nerves turned emotions into motions became almost obsessive. It was enough to make the Mona Lisa smile.

Even so, as an aid to responding quickly, we have reflexes, which means that the central nervous system can intercept a signal and act on it before passing it on to the brain. That’s why if you touch something very undesirable, your hand recoils before your brain knows what’s going on. The spinal cord, in short, is not just a length of impassive cabling carrying messages between the body and the brain but an active and literally decisive part of your sensory apparatus.

He needed to know which nerves emanated from the brain and which from the spinal cord, which muscles they activated, and which facial movements were connected to others. He would even try, when dissecting the brain, to figure out the precise location where the connections were made between sensory perceptions, emotions, and motions. By the end of his career, his pursuit of how the brain and nerves turned emotions into motions became almost obsessive. It was enough to make the Mona Lisa smile.

In other words people who have this gating channel more open can in fact hear things that most of the rest of us cannot. And the more open the channel is, the more they hear. People with very open P50 channels commonly report being “flooded with sound” or hearing “everything at once.” In other words, the unconscious mechanism that filters sound lets more through, so much so that, in some cases, the people exist in a sea of sounds that tend to overwhelm consciousness. This is often complicated by the fact that, commonly, they also have more open N100 channels. N100 (a.k.a. N1) gating channels are those that trigger increased attention and activation of memory. When this channel is also open not only are there more sounds being consciously perceived but conscious attention is directed to each and every one of those sounds. Further, a rapid cross-correlation of new sensory inputs with previous experiences is generated in order to determine subtle meanings and differentiation within them.

And in the seconds to minutes before, those neurons were activated by a thought, a memory, an emotion, or sensory stimuli. And in the hours to days before that behavior occurred, the hormones in your circulation shaped those thoughts, memories, and emotions and altered how sensitive your brain was to particular environmental stimuli. And in the preceding months to years, experience and environment changed how those neurons function, causing some to sprout new connections and become more excitable, and causing the opposite in others.

Unfortunately, most researchers studying gating dynamics in children are, as with “schizophrenia,” focused on “normal” versus “abnormal” gating. And all children are expected to fit into the defined “normal” range of behavior. Sensory gating dynamics outside that culturally determined “norm” are defined as abnormal and researchers note that Individuals with these characteristics have been classified as having sensory processing deficits (SPD). Such behaviors disrupt an individual’s ability to achieve and maintain an optimal range of performance necessary to adapt to challenges in life. The manifestations of SPD may include distraction, impulsiveness, abnormal activity level, disorganization, anxiety, and emotional lability that produce deficient social participation, insufficient self-regulation and inadequate perceived competence.1 Those terms, if you look at them more closely, are exterior, “authority” generated terms; they relate directly to the paradigm in place in those authorities. They really don’t have much to say about the interior experience of the children so labeled.

Scientists think rationalists are mad because the rationalists are dancing to the Music of the Spheres, to which scientists are stone deaf. Scientists are like the blind describing the visible world to the sighted. The vast majority of reality is hidden from the human senses, yet scientists have chosen to consider the observable as the only reality, and everything else as unreal. In fact, the unobservable is true reality, and the observable is a sensory phenomenal, empirical delusion that actively masks non-sensory, noumenal, rational reality.

Different mechanisms underlie short- and long-term memory storage. A single sensory neuron from the siphon skin connects to a motor neuron that innervates the gill. Short-term memory is produced by a single shock to the tail. This activates modulatory neurons (in blue) that cause a functional strengthening of the connections between the sensory and motor neurons. Long-term memory is produced by five repeated shocks to the tail. This activates the modulatory neurons more strongly and leads to the activation of CREB-1 genes and the growth of new synapses.

When repeated shocks and repeated release of serotonin are paired with the firing of the sensory neuron in associative learning, a signal is sent to the nucleus of the sensory neuron. This signal activates a gene, CREB-1, which leads to the growth of new connections between the sensory and motor neuron (fig. 4.5, right) (Bailey and Chen 1983; Kandel 2001). These connections are what enable a memory to persist. So if you remember anything of what you have read here, it will be because your brain is slightly different than it was before you started to read.

in adults the anterior cingulate cortex activates when they see someone hurt. Ditto for the amygdala and insula, especially in instances of intentional harm—there is anger and disgust. PFC regions including the (emotional) vmPFC are on board. Observing physical pain (e.g., a finger being poked with a needle) produces a concrete, vicarious pattern: there is activation of the periaqueductal gray (PAG), a region central to your own pain perception, in parts of the sensory cortex receiving sensation from your own fingers, and in motor neurons that command your own fingers to move.fn3 You clench your fingers.

It is possible, just as it is with the auditory training of musicians, to begin using the feeling sense actively. This will increase neuronal development in the hippocampal and the cardiovascular (heart) system and with practice, over time, increase sensitivity to tiny modulations in that sensory flow. Sensitivity to the tiniest shifts in feeling will develop, just as they do in musicians with sound complexes. And, with experience, the ability to determine the meanings inside those feelings will become a reliable skill. In other words, it becomes possible to immediately know the intent of the dog as soon as it is seen/nonkinesthetically felt.

Nerve signals are not particularly swift. Light travels at 300 million meters per second, while nerve signals move at a decidedly more stately 120 meters a second—about 2.5 million times slower. Still, 120 meters a second is nearly 270 miles an hour, quite fast enough over the space of a human frame to be effectively instantaneous in most circumstances. Even so, as an aid to responding quickly, we have reflexes, which means that the central nervous system can intercept a signal and act on it before passing it on to the brain. That’s why if you touch something very undesirable, your hand recoils before your brain knows what’s going on. The spinal cord, in short, is not just a length of impassive cabling carrying messages between the body and the brain but an active and literally decisive part of your sensory apparatus.

A clearer picture of what is happening in the brain during non-REM sleep,14 during sleepwalking,15 and during confused arousals16 has been achieved through neuroimaging and EEG. It appears that the brain is half awake and half asleep: the cerebellum and brainstem are active, while the cerebrum and cerebral cortex have minimal activity. The pathways involved with control of complex motor behavior and emotion generation are buzzing, while those pathways projecting to the frontal lobe, involved in planning, attention, judgment, emotional face recognition, and emotional regulation are zoned out. Sleepwalkers don’t remember their escapades, nor can they be awakened by noise or shouts, because the parts of the cortex that contribute to sensory processing and the formation of new memories are snoozing, temporarily turned off, disconnected, and not contributing any input to the flow of consciousness.

So, let’s reorient from exterior to interior. “Distraction” then becomes boredom; “impulsiveness” becomes self-generated explorative behavior based on what captures interest; “abnormal activity level” is thus high-energy levels generating multiple task interests; “disorganization” is failure to follow rigid organizational regimens set by others; “anxiety”—well, we all know that one: what the hell kind of world did I get born into?; “emotional lability” is, in fact, a wide range of emotions that are accessed when adults or the exterior culture don’t want them to be. In other words, should you have ever read Mark Twain, what is being described is “Tom Sawyer syndrome,” a once common state of being in many if not most children. The more widely open the sensory gating channels are, the more the child’s behavior alters from what is currently held to be the cultural norm in the West. On average, some

The auditory cortex seems to perform a simple calculation: it uses the recent past to predict the future. As soon as a note or a group of notes repeats, this region concludes that it will continue to do so in the future. This is useful because it keeps us from paying too much attention to boring, predictable signals. Any sound that repeats is squashed at the input side, because its incoming activity is canceled by an accurate prediction. As long as the input sensory signal matches the prediction that the brain generates, the difference is zero, and no error signal gets propagated to higher-level brain regions. Subtracting the prediction shuts down the incoming inputs—but only as long as they are predictable. Any sound that violates our brain’s expectations, on the contrary, is amplified. Thus, the simple circuit of the auditory cortex acts as a filter: it transmits to the higher levels of the cortex only the surprising and unpredictable information which it cannot explain by itself.

in adults the anterior cingulate cortex activates when they see someone hurt. Ditto for the amygdala and insula, especially in instances of intentional harm—there is anger and disgust. PFC regions including the (emotional) vmPFC are on board. Observing physical pain (e.g., a finger being poked with a needle) produces a concrete, vicarious pattern: there is activation of the periaqueductal gray (PAG), a region central to your own pain perception, in parts of the sensory cortex receiving sensation from your own fingers, and in motor neurons that command your own fingers to move.fn3 You clench your fingers. Work by Jean Decety of the University of Chicago shows that when seven-year-olds watch someone in pain, activation is greatest in the more concrete regions—the PAG and the sensory and motor cortices—with PAG activity coupled to the minimal vmPFC activation there is. In older kids the vmPFC is coupled to increasingly activated limbic structures.13 And by adolescence the stronger vmPFC activation is coupled to ToM regions. What’s happening? Empathy is shifting from the concrete world of “Her finger must hurt, I’m suddenly conscious of my own finger” to ToM-ish focusing on the pokee’s emotions and experience.

More Activities to Develop Sensory-Motor Skills Sensory processing is the foundation for fine-motor skills, motor planning, and bilateral coordination. All these skills improve as the child tries the following activities that integrate the sensations. FINE-MOTOR SKILLS Flour Sifting—Spread newspaper on the kitchen floor and provide flour, scoop, and sifter. (A turn handle is easier to manipulate than a squeeze handle, but both develop fine-motor muscles in the hands.) Let the child scoop and sift. Stringing and Lacing—Provide shoelaces, lengths of yarn on plastic needles, or pipe cleaners, and buttons, macaroni, cereal “Os,” beads, spools, paper clips, and jingle bells. Making bracelets and necklaces develops eye-hand coordination, tactile discrimination, and bilateral coordination. Egg Carton Collections—The child may enjoy sorting shells, pinecones, pebbles, nuts, beans, beads, buttons, bottle caps, and other found objects and organizing them in the individual egg compartments. Household Tools—Picking up cereal pieces with tweezers; stretching rubber bands over a box to make a “guitar”; hanging napkins, doll clothes, and paper towels with clothespins; and smashing egg cartons with a mallet are activities that strengthen many skills.

My general philosophy regarding endurance contains four key points: 1. Build a great aerobic base. This essential physical and metabolic foundation helps accomplish several important tasks: it prevents injury and maintains a balanced physical body; it increases fat burning for improved stamina, weight loss, and sustained energy; and it improves overall health in the immune and hormonal systems, the intestines and liver, and throughout the body. 2. Eat well. Specific foods influence the developing aerobic system, especially the foods consumed in the course of a typical day. Overall, diet can significantly influence your body’s physical, chemical, and mental state of fitness and health. 3. Reduce stress. Training and competition, combined with other lifestyle factors, can be stressful and adversely affect performance, cause injuries, and even lead to poor nutrition because they can disrupt the normal digestion and absorption of nutrients. 4. Improve brain function. The brain and entire nervous system control virtually all athletic activity, and a healthier brain produces a better athlete. Improved brain function occurs from eating well, controlling stress, and through sensory stimulation, which includes proper training and optimal breathing.

When General Genius built the first mentar [Artificial Intelligence] mind in the last half of the twenty-first century, it based its design on the only proven conscious material then known, namely, our brains. Specifically, the complex structure of our synaptic network. Scientists substituted an electrochemical substrate for our slower, messier biological one. Our brains are an evolutionary hodgepodge of newer structures built on top of more ancient ones, a jury-rigged system that has gotten us this far, despite its inefficiency, but was crying out for a top-to-bottom overhaul. Or so the General genius engineers presumed. One of their chief goals was to make minds as portable as possible, to be easily transferred, stored, and active in multiple media: electronic, chemical, photonic, you name it. Thus there didn't seem to be a need for a mentar body, only for interchangeable containers. They designed the mentar mind to be as fungible as a bank transfer. And so they eliminated our most ancient brain structures for regulating metabolic functions, and they adapted our sensory/motor networks to the control of peripherals. As it turns out, intelligence is not limited to neural networks, Merrill. Indeed, half of human intelligence resides in our bodies outside our skulls. This was intelligence the mentars never inherited from us. ... The genius of the irrational... ... We gave them only rational functions -- the ability to think and feel, but no irrational functions... Have you ever been in a tight situation where you relied on your 'gut instinct'? This is the body's intelligence, not the mind's. Every living cell possesses it. The mentar substrate has no indomitable will to survive, but ours does. Likewise, mentars have no 'fire in the belly,' but we do. They don't experience pure avarice or greed or pride. They're not very curious, or playful, or proud. They lack a sense of wonder and spirit of adventure. They have little initiative. Granted, their cognition is miraculous, but their personalities are rather pedantic. But probably their chief shortcoming is the lack of intuition. Of all the irrational faculties, intuition in the most powerful. Some say intuition transcends space-time. Have you ever heard of a mentar having a lucky hunch? They can bring incredible amounts of cognitive and computational power to bear on a seemingly intractable problem, only to see a dumb human with a lucky hunch walk away with the prize every time. Then there's luck itself. Some people have it, most don't, and no mentar does. So this makes them want our bodies... Our bodies, ape bodies, dog bodies, jellyfish bodies. They've tried them all. Every cell knows some neat tricks or survival, but the problem with cellular knowledge is that it's not at all fungible; nor are our memories. We're pretty much trapped in our containers.

We will not find the enemy.8 Because the enemy does not exist in space, but in time: four thousand years ago. We are about to destroy each other, and the world, because of profound mistakes made in Bronze Age patriarchal ontology—mistakes about the nature of being, about the nature of human being in the world. Evolution itself is a time-process, seemingly a relentlessly linear unfolding. But biology also dreams, and in its dreams and waking visions it outleaps time, as well as space. It experiences prevision, clairvoyance, telepathy, synchronicity. Thus we have what has been called a magical capacity built into our genes. It is built into the physical universe. Synchronicity is a quantum phenomenon. The tachyon is consciousness, which can move faster than light. So, built into our biological-physical selves evolving linearly through time and space, is an authentically magical capacity to move spirally, synchronously, multi-sensorially, simultaneously back and forth, up and down, in and out through all time and space. In our DNA is a genetic memory going back through time to the first cell, and beyond; back through space to the big bang (the cosmic egg), and before that. To evolve then—to save ourselves from species extinction—we can activate our genetic capacity for magic. We can go back in time to our prepatriarchal consciousness of human oneness with the earth. This memory is in our genes, we have lived it, it is ours. This

The motor activities we take for granted—getting out of a chair and walking across a room, picking up a cup and drinking coffee,and so on—require integration of all the muscles and sensory organs working smoothly together to produce coordinated movements that we don't even have to think about. No one has ever explained how the simple code of impulses can do all that. Even more troublesome are the higher processes, such as sight—in which somehow we interpret a constantly changing scene made of innumerable bits of visual data—or the speech patterns, symbol recognition, and grammar of our languages.Heading the list of riddles is the "mind-brain problem" of consciousness, with its recognition, "I am real; I think; I am something special." Then there are abstract thought, memory, personality,creativity, and dreams. The story goes that Otto Loewi had wrestled with the problem of the synapse for a long time without result, when one night he had a dream in which the entire frog-heart experiment was revealed to him. When he awoke, he knew he'd had the dream, but he'd forgotten the details. The next night he had the same dream. This time he remembered the procedure, went to his lab in the morning, did the experiment, and solved the problem. The inspiration that seemed to banish neural electricity forever can't be explained by the theory it supported! How do you convert simple digital messages into these complex phenomena? Latter-day mechanists have simply postulated brain circuitry so intricate that we will probably never figure it out, but some scientists have said there must be other factors.

Making the most of an experience: Living fully is extolled everywhere in popular culture. I have only to turn on the television at random to be assailed with the following messages: “It’s the best a man can get.” “It’s like having an angel by your side.” “Every move is smooth, every word is cool. I never want to lose that feeling.” “You look, they smile. You win, they go home.” What is being sold here? A fantasy of total sensory pleasure, social status, sexual attraction, and the self-image of a winner. As it happens, all these phrases come from the same commercial for razor blades, but living life fully is part of almost any ad campaign. What is left out, however, is the reality of what it actually means to fully experience something. Instead of looking for sensory overload that lasts forever, you’ll find that the experiences need to be engaged at the level of meaning and emotion. Meaning is essential. If this moment truly matters to you, you will experience it fully. Emotion brings in the dimension of bonding or tuning in: An experience that touches your heart makes the meaning that much more personal. Pure physical sensation, social status, sexual attraction, and feeling like a winner are generally superficial, which is why people hunger for them repeatedly. If you spend time with athletes who have won hundreds of games or with sexually active singles who have slept with hundreds of partners, you’ll find out two things very quickly: (1) Numbers don’t count very much. The athlete usually doesn’t feel like a winner deep down; the sexual conqueror doesn’t usually feel deeply attractive or worthy. (2) Each experience brings diminishing returns; the thrill of winning or going to bed becomes less and less exciting and lasts a shorter time. To experience this moment, or any moment, fully means to engage fully. Meeting a stranger can be totally fleeting and meaningless, for example, unless you enter the individual’s world by finding out at least one thing that is meaningful to his or her life and exchange at least one genuine feeling. Tuning in to others is a circular flow: You send yourself out toward people; you receive them as they respond to you. Notice how often you don’t do that. You stand back and insulate yourself, sending out only the most superficial signals and receive little or nothing back. The same circle must be present even when someone else isn’t involved. Consider the way three people might observe the same sunset. The first person is obsessing over a business deal and doesn’t even see the sunset, even though his eyes are registering the photons that fall on their retinas. The second person thinks, “Nice sunset. We haven’t had one in a while.” The third person is an artist who immediately begins a sketch of the scene. The differences among the three are that the first person sent nothing out and received nothing back; the second allowed his awareness to receive the sunset but had no awareness to give back to it—his response was rote; the third person was the only one to complete the circle: He took in the sunset and turned it into a creative response that sent his awareness back out into the world with something to give. If you want to fully experience life, you must close the circle.

Interactions with the world program our physiological and psychological development. Emotional contact is as important as physical contact. The two are quite analogous, as we recognize when we speak of the emotional experience of feeling touched. Our sensory organs and brains provide the interface through which relationships shape our evolution from infancy to adulthood. Social-emotional interactions decisively influence the development of the human brain. From the moment of birth, they regulate the tone, activity and development of the psychoneuroimmunoendocrine (PNI) super-system. Our characteristic modes of handling psychic and physical stress are set in our earliest years. Neuroscientists at Harvard University studied the cortisol levels of orphans who were raised in the dreadfully neglected child-care institutions established in Romania during the Ceausescu regime. In these facilities the caregiver/child ratio was one to twenty. Except for the rudiments of care, the children were seldom physically picked up or touched. They displayed the self-hugging motions and depressed demeanour typical of abandoned young, human or primate. On saliva tests, their cortisol levels were abnormal, indicating that their hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axes were already impaired. As we have seen, disruptions of the HPA axis have been noted in autoimmune disease, cancer and other conditions. It is intuitively easy to understand why abuse, trauma or extreme neglect in childhood would have negative consequences. But why do many people develop stress-related illness without having been abused or traumatized? These persons suffer not because something negative was inflicted on them but because something positive was withheld.

In order to avoid the deafening of conspecifics, some bats employ a jamming avoidance response, rapidly shifting frequencies or flying silent when foraging near conspecifics. Because jamming is a problem facing any active emission sensory system, it is perhaps not surprising (though no less amazing) that similar jamming avoidance responses are deployed by weakly electric fish. The speed of sound is so fast in water that it makes it difficult for echolocating whales to exploit similar Doppler effects. However, the fact that acoustic emissions propagate much farther and faster in the water medium means that there is less attenuation of ultrasound in water, and thus that echolocation can be used for broader-scale 'visual' sweeping of the undersea environment. These constraints and trade-offs must be resolved by all acoustic ISMs, on Earth and beyond. There are equally universal anatomical and metabolic constraints on the evolvability of echolocation that explain why it is 'harder' to evolve than vision. First, as noted earlier, a powerful sound-production capacity, such as the lungs of tetrapods, is required to produce high-frequency emissions capable of supporting high-resolution acoustic imaging. Second, the costs of echolocation are high, which may limit acoustic imaging to organisms with high-metabolisms, such as mammals and birds. The metabolic rates of bats during echolocation, for instance, are up to five times greater than they are at rest. These costs have been offset in bats through the evolutionarily ingenious coupling of sound emission to wing-beat cycle, which functions as a single unit of biomechanical and metabolic efficiency. Sound emission is coupled with the upstroke phase of the wing-beat cycle, coinciding with contraction of abdominal muscles and pressure on the diaphragm. This significantly reduces the price of high-intensity pulse emission, making it nearly costless. It is also why, as any careful crepuscular observer may have noticed, bats spend hardly any time gliding (which is otherwise a more efficient means of flight).

While the visual areas of the brain are active, other areas involved with smell, taste, and touch are largely shut down. Almost all the images and sensations processed by the body are self-generated, originating from the electromagnetic vibrations from our brain stem, not from external stimuli. The body is largely isolated from the outside world. Also, when we dream, we are more or less paralyzed. (Perhaps this paralysis is to prevent us from physically acting out our dreams, which could be disastrous. About 6 percent of people suffer from “sleep paralysis” disorder, in which they wake up from a dream still paralyzed. Often these individuals wake up frightened and believing that there are creatures pinning down their chest, arms, and legs. There are paintings from the Victorian era of women waking up with a terrifying goblin sitting on their chest glaring down at them. Some psychologists believe that sleep paralysis could explain the origin of the alien abduction syndrome.) The hippocampus is active when we dream, suggesting that dreams draw upon our storehouse of memories. The amygdala and anterior cingulate are also active, meaning that dreams can be highly emotional, often involving fear. But more revealing are the areas of the brain that are shut down, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (which is the command center of the brain), the orbitofrontal cortex (which can act like a censor or fact-checker), and the temporoparietal region (which processes sensory motor signals and spatial awareness). When the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is shut down, we can’t count on the rational, planning center of the brain. Instead, we drift aimlessly in our dreams, with the visual center giving us images without rational control. The orbitofrontal cortex, or the fact-checker, is also inactive. Hence dreams are allowed to blissfully evolve without any constraints from the laws of physics or common sense. And the temporoparietal lobe, which helps coordinate our sense of where we are located using signals from our eyes and inner ear, is also shut down, which may explain our out-of-body experiences while we dream. As we have emphasized, human consciousness mainly represents the brain constantly creating models of the outside world and simulating them into the future. If so, then dreams represent an alternate way in which the future is simulated, one in which the laws of nature and social interactions are temporarily suspended

For millennia, sages have proclaimed how outer beauty reflects inner goodness. While we may no longer openly claim that, beauty-is-good still holds sway unconsciously; attractive people are judged to be more honest, intelligent, and competent; are more likely to be elected or hired, and with higher salaries; are less likely to be convicted of crimes, then getting shorter sentences. Jeez, can’t the brain distinguish beauty from goodness? Not especially. In three different studies, subjects in brain scanners alternated between rating the beauty of something (e.g., faces) or the goodness of some behavior. Both types of assessments activated the same region (the orbitofrontal cortex, or OFC); the more beautiful or good, the more OFC activation (and the less insula activation). It’s as if irrelevant emotions about beauty gum up cerebral contemplation of the scales of justice. Which was shown in another study—moral judgments were no longer colored by aesthetics after temporary inhibition of a part of the PFC that funnels information about emotions into the frontal cortex.[*] “Interesting,” the subject is told. “Last week, you sent that other person to prison for life. But just now, when looking at this other person who had done the same thing, you voted for them for Congress—how come?” And the answer isn’t “Murder is definitely bad, but OMG, those eyes are like deep, limpid pools.” Where did the intent behind the decision come from? The fact that the brain hasn’t had enough time yet to evolve separate circuits for evaluating morality and aesthetics.[6] Next, want to make someone more likely to choose to clean their hands? Have them describe something crummy and unethical they’ve done. Afterward, they’re more likely to wash their hands or reach for hand sanitizer than if they’d been recounting something ethically neutral they’d done. Subjects instructed to lie about something rate cleansing (but not noncleansing) products as more desirable than do those instructed to be honest. Another study showed remarkable somatic specificity, where lying orally (via voice mail) increased the desire for mouthwash, while lying by hand (via email) made hand sanitizers more desirable. One neuroimaging study showed that when lying by voice mail boosts preference for mouthwash, a different part of the sensory cortex activates than when lying by email boosts the appeal of hand sanitizers. Neurons believing, literally, that your mouth or hand, respectively, is dirty.

Cannabinoids relax the rules of cortical crowd control, but 300 micrograms of d-lysergic acid diethylamide break them completely. This is a clean sweep. This is the Renaissance after the Dark Ages. Dopamine—the fuel of desire—is only one of four major neuro modulators. Each of the neuromodulators fuels brain operations in its own particular way. But all four of them share two properties. First, they get released and used up all over the brain, not at specific locales. Second, each is produced by one specialized organ, a brain part designed to manufacture that one potent chemical (see Figure 3). Instead of watering the flowers one by one, neuromodulator release is like a sprinkler system. That’s why neuromodulators initiate changes that are global, not local. Dopamine fuels attraction, focus, approach, and especially wanting and doing. Norepinephrine fuels perceptual alertness, arousal, excitement, and attention to sensory detail. Acetylcholine energizes all mental operations, consciousness, and thought itself. But the final neuromodulator, serotonin, is more complicated in its action. Serotonin does a lot of different things in a lot of different places, because there are many kinds of serotonin receptors, and they inhabit a great variety of neural nooks, staking out an intricate network. One of serotonin’s most important jobs is to regulate information flow throughout the brain by inhibiting the firing of neurons in many places. And it’s the serotonin system that gets dynamited by LSD. Serotonin dampens, it paces, it soothes. It raises the threshold of neurons to the voltage changes induced by glutamate. Remember glutamate? That’s the main excitatory neurotransmitter that carries information from synapse to synapse throughout the brain. Serotonin cools this excitation, putting off the next axonal burst, making the receptive neuron less sensitive to the messages it receives from other neurons. Slow down! Take it easy! Don’t get carried away by every little molecule of glutamate. Serotonin soothes neurons that might otherwise fire too often, too quickly. If you want to know how it feels to get a serotonin boost, ask a depressive several days into antidepressant therapy. Paxil, Zoloft, Prozac, and all their cousins leave more serotonin in the synapses, hanging around, waiting to help out when the brain becomes too active. Which is most of the time if you feel the world is dark and threatening. Extra serotonin makes the thinking process more relaxed—a nice change for depressives, who get a chance to wallow in relative normality.

Hill specifically focuses on my A5: “For Nietzsche, as for Kant, our minds are independent sources of activity, striving to subjugate and reduce to order the sensory states that arise in us” (194).

Change the material environment by altering the availability of amino acids or fats or carbohydrates in the diet of young animal, and the gene-environment interactions that occur will change as well, potentially affecting the structural development of the brain or the activity of hormone-releasing organs, with assorted behavioral consequences for the affected individual. Alter the experiential environment by changing the sensory inputs from the physical environment or from social interactions with other animals, and behavioral development will shift as well.

Our senses give us the information we need to function in the world. Their first job is to help us survive. Their second job, after they assure us that we are safe, is to help us learn how to be active, social creatures. The senses receive information from stimuli both outside and inside our bodies. Every move we make, every bite we eat, every object we touch produces sensations. When we engage in any activity, we use several senses at the same time. The convergence of sensations—especially touch, body position, movement, sight, sound, and smell—is called intersensory integration. This process is key and tells us on the spot what is going on, where, why, and when it matters, and how we must use or respond to it. The more important the activity, the more senses we use. That is why we use all our senses simultaneously for two very important human activities: eating and procreating. Sometimes our senses inform us that something in our environment doesn’t feel right; we sense that we are in danger and so we respond defensively. For instance, should we feel a tarantula creeping down our neck, we would protect ourselves with a fight-or-flight response. Withdrawing from too much stimulation or from stimulation of the wrong kind is natural. Sometimes our senses inform us that all is well; we feel safe and satisfied and seek more of the same stimuli. For example, we are so pleased with the taste of one chocolate-covered raisin that we eat a handful. Sometimes, when we get bored, we go looking for more stimulation. For example, when we have mastered a skill, like ice skating in a straight line, we attempt a more complicated move, like a figure eight. To do their job well, so that we respond appropriately, the senses must work together. A well-balanced brain that is nourished with many sensations operates well, and when our brain operates smoothly, so do we. We have more senses than many people realize. Some sensations occur outside our bodies, and some inside.

Perceptual motor therapy provides integrated movement experiences that remediate gross-motor, fine-motor, and visual discrimination problems. Activities, including sensory-input techniques, stimulate left/right brain communication to help the child interpret incoming information to the nervous system. Goals are to develop more mature patterns of response to specific stimuli, improve motor skills and balance, and stimulate alternate routes to memory and sequencing for those children who do not respond to the methods taught in the conventional classroom.

The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun (Perigee, 2006), The Goodenoughs Get in Sync (Sensory World, 2010), Growing an In-Sync Child (Perigee, 2010), and In-Sync Activity Cards (Sensory World, 2012).

Activities to Develop the Tactile Sense Rub-a-Dub-Dub—Encourage the child to rub a variety of textures against her skin. Offer different kinds of soap (oatmeal soap, shaving cream, lotion soap) and scrubbers (loofah sponges, thick washcloths, foam pot-scrubbers, plastic brushes). Water Play—Fill the kitchen sink with sudsy water and unbreakable pitchers and bottles, turkey basters, sponges, eggbeaters, and toy water pumps. Or, fill a washtub with water and toys and set it on the grass. Pouring and measuring are educational and therapeutic, as well as high forms of entertainment. Water Painting—Give the child a bucket of water and paintbrush to paint the porch steps, the sidewalk, the fence, or her own body. Or, provide a squirt bottle filled with clean water (because the squirts often go in the child’s mouth). Finger Painting—Let the sensory craver wallow in this literally “sensational” activity. Encourage (but don’t force) the sensory avoider to stick a finger into the goop. For different tactile experiences, mix sand into the paint, or place a blob of shaving cream, peanut butter, or pudding on a plastic tray. Encourage him to draw shapes, letters, and numbers. If he “messes up,” he can erase the error with his hand and begin again. Finger Drawing—With your finger, “draw” a shape, letter, number, or design on the child’s back or hand. Ask the child to guess what it is and then to pass the design on to another person. Sand Play—In a sandbox, add small toys (cars, trucks, people, and dinosaurs), which the child can rearrange, bury, and rediscover. Instead of sand, use dried beans, rice, pasta, cornmeal, popcorn, and mud. Making mud pies and getting messy are therapeutic, too.

Feelie Box—Cut a hole in a shoebox lid. Place spools, buttons, blocks, coins, marbles, animals, and cars in the box. The child inserts a hand through the hole and tells you what toy she is touching. Or, ask her to reach in and feel for a button or car. Or, show her a toy and ask her to find one in the box that matches. These activities improve the child’s ability to discriminate objects without the use of vision. “Can You Describe It?”—Provide objects with different textures, temperatures, and weights. Ask her to tell you about an object she is touching. (If you can persuade her not to look at it, the game is more challenging.) Is the object round? Cool? Smooth? Soft? Heavy? Oral-Motor Activities—Licking stickers and pasting them down, blowing whistles and kazoos, blowing bubbles, drinking through straws or sports bottles, and chewing gum or rubber tubing may provide oral satisfaction. Hands-on Cooking—Have the child mix cookie dough, bread dough, or meat loaf in a shallow roasting pan (not a high-sided bowl). Science Activities—Touching worms and egg yolks, catching fireflies, collecting acorns and chestnuts, planting seeds, and digging in the garden provide interesting tactile experiences. Handling Pets—What could be more satisfying than stroking a cat, dog or rabbit? People Sandwich—Have the “salami” or “cheese” (your child) lie facedown on the “bread” (gym mat or couch cushion) with her head extended beyond the edge. With a “spreader” (sponge, pot scrubber, basting or vegetable brush, paintbrush, or washcloth) smear her arms, legs, and torso with pretend mustard, mayonnaise, relish, ketchup, etc. Use firm, downward strokes. Cover the child, from neck to toe, with another piece of “bread” (folded mat or second cushion). Now press firmly on the mat to squish out the excess mustard, so the child feels the deep, soothing pressure. You can even roll or crawl across your child; the mat will distribute your weight. Your child will be in heaven.

Activities to Develop the Vestibular System Rolling—Encourage your child to roll across the floor and down a grassy hill. Swinging—Encourage (but never force) the child to swing. Gentle, linear movement is calming. Fast, high swinging in an arc is more stimulating. If the child has gravitational insecurity, start him on a low swing so his feet can touch the ground, or hold him on your lap. Two adults can swing him in a blanket, too. Spinning—At the playground, let the child spin on the tire swing or merry-go-round. Indoors, offer a swivel chair or Sit ’n Spin. Monitor the spinning, as the child may become easily overstimulated. Don’t spin her without her permission! Sliding—How many ways can a child swoosh down a slide? Sitting up, lying down, frontwards, backwards, holding on to the sides, not holding on, with legs straddling the sides, etc. Riding Vehicles—Trikes, bikes, and scooters help children improve their balance, motor planning, and motor coordination. Walking on Unstable Surfaces—A sandy beach, a playground “clatter bridge,” a grassy meadow, and a waterbed are examples of shaky ground that require children to adjust their bodies as they move. Rocking—Provide a rocking chair for your child to get energized, organized, or tranquilized.

Activities to Develop the Proprioceptive System Lifting and Carrying Heavy Loads—Have the child pick up and carry soft-drink bottles to the picnic; laundry baskets upstairs; or grocery bags, filled with nonbreakables, into the house. He can also lug a box of books, a bucket of blocks, or a pail of water from one spot to another. Pushing and Pulling—Have the child push or drag grocery bags from door to kitchen. Let him push the stroller, vacuum, rake, shove heavy boxes, tow a friend on a sled, or pull a loaded wagon. Hard muscular work jazzes up the muscles. Hanging by the Arms—Mount a chinning bar in a doorway, or take your child to the park to hang from the monkey bars. When she suspends her weight from her hands, her stretching muscles send sensory messages to her brain. When she shifts from hand to hand as she travels underneath the monkey bars, she is developing upper-body strength. Hermit Crab—Place a large bag of rice or beans on the child’s back and let her move around with a heavy “shell” on her back. Joint Squeeze—Put one hand on the child’s forearm and the other on his upper arm; slowly press toward and away from his elbow. Repeat at his knee and shoulder. Press down on his head. Straighten and bend his fingers, wrists, elbows, knees, ankles, and toes. These extension and flexion techniques provide traction and compression to his joints and are effective when he’s stuck in tight spaces, such as church pews, movie theaters, cars, trains, and especially airplanes where the air pressure changes. Body Squeeze—Sit on the floor behind your child, straddling him with your legs. Put your arms around his knees, draw them toward his chest, and squeeze hard. Holding tight, rock him forward and back.

Activities to Develop the Auditory System Simplify your language. Speak slowly, shorten your comments, abbreviate instructions, and repeat what you have said. Reinforce verbal messages with gestural communication: facial expressions, hand movements, and body language. Talk to your child while she dresses, eats, or bathes, to teach her words and concepts, such as nouns (sunglasses, casserole), body parts (thumb, buttocks), prepositions (around, through), adjectives (juicy, soapy), time (yesterday, later), categories (vegetables/fruits), actions (zip, scrub), and emotions (pleased, sorry). Share your own thoughts. Model good speech and communication skills. Even if the child has trouble responding verbally, she may understand what you say. Take the time to let your child respond to your words and express his thoughts. Don’t interrupt, rush, or pressure him to talk. Be an active listener. Pay attention. Look your child in the eye when she speaks. Show her that her thoughts interest you. Help your child communicate more clearly. If you catch one word, say, “Tell me more about the truck.” If you can’t catch his meaning, have him show you by gesturing. Reward her comments with smiles, hugs, and verbal praise, such as, “That’s a great idea!” Your positive feedback will encourage her to strive to communicate. (Don’t say, “Good talking,” which means little to the child and implies that all you care about is words, rather than the message the child is trying to get across.) Use rhythm and beat to improve the child’s memory. Give directions or teach facts with a “piggyback song,” substituting your words to a familiar tune. Example: To the tune of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” sing, “Now it’s time to wash your face, Brush your teeth, comb your hair, Now it’s time to put on clothes, So start with underwear!” Encourage your child to pantomime while listening to stories and poems, or to music without words. Read to your child every day!

Activities to Develop the Visual System Making Shapes—Let your child draw or form shapes, letters, and numbers in different materials, such as playdough, finger paint, shaving cream, soap foam, sand, clay, string, pudding, or pizza dough. Mazes and Dot-to-Dot Activities—Draw mazes on paper, the sidewalk, or the beach. Have the child follow the mazes with his finger, a toy car, a crayon, a marker, or chalk. On graph paper, make dot-to-dot patterns for the child to follow. Peg Board—Have the child reproduce your design or make his own. Cutting Activities—Provide paper and scissors and have your child cut fringe and strips. Draw curved lines on the paper for her to cut. Cutting playdough is fun, too. Tracking Activities—Lie on your backs outside and watch birds or airplanes, just moving your eyes while keeping your heads still. Jigsaw Puzzles! Block Building!!

Eggbeater Fun—Give your child an eggbeater to whip up soapsuds or mix up a bowl of birdseed, or of uncooked beans and rice. Marble Painting—Line a tray or cookie sheet with paper. Put a few dabs of finger paint in the center of the paper. Provide a marble to roll through the paint to make a design. Great wrapping paper! Ribbon Dancing—Attach ribbons, streamers, or scarves to the ends of a dowel. Holding the dowel with both hands, the child swirls the ribbons overhead, from side to side, and up and down. (No dowel? Give him a ribbon for each hand.) This activity also improves visual-motor coordination. Two-Sided Activities—Encourage the child to jump rope, swim, bike, hike, row, paddle, and do morning calisthenics.

The immediate causes of feelings include (a) the background flow of life processes in our organisms, which are experienced as spontaneous or homeostatic feelings; (b) the emotive responses triggered by processing myriad sensory stimuli such as tastes, smells, tactile, auditory, and visual stimuli, the experience of which is one of the sources of qualia; and (c) the emotive responses resulting from engaging drives (such as hunger or thirst) or motivations (such as lust and play) or emotions, in the more conventional sense of the term, which are action programs activated by confrontation with numerous and sometimes complex situations; examples of emotions include joy, sadness, fear, anger, envy, jealousy, contempt, compassion, and admiration.

When Ruth looked at the scans of her normal subjects, she found activation of DSN regions that previous researchers had described. I like to call this the Mohawk of self-awareness, the midline structures of the brain, starting out right above our eyes, running through the center of the brain all the way to the back. All these midline structures are involved in our sense of self. The largest bright region at the back of the brain is the posterior cingulate, which gives us a physical sense of where we are—our internal GPS. It is strongly connected to the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), the watchtower I discussed in chapter 4. (This connection doesn’t show up on the scan because the fMRI can’t measure it.) It is also connected with brain areas that register sensations coming from the rest of the body: the insula, which relays messages from the viscera to the emotional centers; the parietal lobes, which integrate sensory information; and the anterior cingulate, which coordinates emotions and thinking.

It is within this network of intermediary neurons, arranged end-to-end and side-by-side between our sensory nerve endings and our motor units, that all of our tone levels, reflexes, gestures, habits, tendencies, feelings, attitudes, postures, styles have their genesis. It is called the internuncial net, and it has come into its fullest flower in the human being. [Internuncios were official messengers for the Pope, taking information and bringing back responses from the various courts of Europe.) This net composes roughly ninety percent of our nervous systems, including the entire spinal cord and the brain. It is nothing less than the total activity of this internuncial net which influences the responses of the motor units. Let us recall our stiff old man who was anaesthetized for surgery. The anaesthesia had no direct effect on either sensory endings or motor units; rather, it interrupted the normal flow of signals in the internuncial network in the brain. The result was flaccid, unresponsive muscles, and a blanking out of all sensation produced by the scalpel and the probe. It is only by influencing the flow of impulses through the vast internuncial net that we can have any effect upon tone, habit, and behavior. The conditions which direct that flow into specific patterns have been evolved through the handling of particular qualities and amounts of sensory experience and the repetitions of specific appropriate motor responses. One of the readiest means we have of actually influencing—rather than just temporarily interrupting—the conditions within the net is the introduction of more and more positive sensory experience, which elicits new kinds of motor responses, and can thus form the basis for the development of new habits, new conditions, new patterns of neural flow. The complexities of the internuncial net are forbidding. The suggestion that bodywork might in some way make significant and lasting changes in its function may sound like the ravings of a necromancer turned amateur neurosurgeon. We know so very little, and would presume to do so much. And yet we do know that very simple means can produce remarkable and demonstrably repeatable results in this fantastically complicated network. Infants who do not receive adequate physical stimulation die or are dwarfed and deformed. Laboratory rats who are handled on a daily basis develop markedly stronger resistance to fatal diseases, even to the loss of vital organs. Between these two extremes is a wide spectrum of quantity and quality of touching, all of which must certainly affect the health of the organism if touch in the orphanage and in the laboratory can be proven to be so crucial.

As a sensory device, the tendon organ is a close partner to the muscle spindle in the assessment of the specific activity of every one of my alpha motor units. The anulospiral element of the spindle measures the length of a muscle’s fibers, and the speed with which that length is changing. Adding to this information, the Golgi tendon organs measure the tensions that are developed as a result of these changing lengths. The degree of distortion in the parallel zig-zag collagen bundles is a precise gauge of the force with which a muscle is actually pulling on the bone to which it is attached. Such a gauge is really necessary in order to fully and accurately assess the net amount of work force actually being delivered by a muscle, as opposed to merely knowing now much and how fast it is lengthening or shortening. I can shorten my bicep exactly the same distance at exactly the same speed, whether there is a book in my hand or not, and my spindles will register identical information in either case. It is only the differing stress placed upon the tendon organ during the gesture which announces and evaluates the added weight of the book.

And yet what a potentially dangerous device, what a terrible opportunity to bury valuable, even vital sensory information beneath the fears and prejudices and suppressions of the higher brain! We absolutely must exercise constant discrimination upon the steady barrage of sensations if they are to take on any meaningful form and direct sequential activities; but what bizarre, even ghastly shapes this discrimination is free to invent. Attitudes, moods, neuroses, fixations, and avoidances of all kinds contribute to the sensitivity of the ascending sensory pathways themselves, so that minor irritations can be magnified to overwhelming proportions, pleasures can be erased or actually turned into torments, serious internal difficulties can be blotted completely out of consciousness. The principle of selectivity is crucial to organized behavior, but the possibilities for its abuse are enormous. The mind is capable of distorting incoming information to almost any degree, and it can actually construct a body image that has very little to do with the bulk of sensory data which the body is providing. These two directions of sensory transmission are both occurring all the time, and we cannot say that our idea of reality is more clearly established by one than by the other. Or, if we have to make a choice, we must admit that it is the descending, centrifugal sensory current that is the more important one: We all receive stimulation from the same external world through identical sensory devices, but it is the process of selection and interpretation which makes us respond differently, makes each of us the unique individuals that we are. In this process, discriminating mind descends into and is active in every synapse of the sensory system. The two processes of transmitting data through the nervous system and of interpreting it cannot be separated. Information is processed at each synaptic level of the afferent pathways. There is no one point along the afferent pathways or one particular level beneath the central nervous system below which activity cannot be a conscious sensation and above which it is a recognizable, defineable sensory experience. Perception has many levels, and it seems that the many separate stages are arranged in a hierarchy, with the more complex stages receiving input only after they are processed by the more elementary systems.13 And the more elementary systems are in turn facilitated or inhibited by the higher, more complex ones. The conclusions towards which these observations push us seems unequivocal. The cognitive, associational processes of the higher brain have just as much to do with our construction of physical reality—both within us and outside of us—as do our sensory devices and their specific stimulations. And remember, it is the perception of this sensory reality which initiates and directs our motor responses, our postures, and our behavior.

Because the efferent pathways lead directly to muscle cells, it is tempting to regard their activities as the cause of our motor behavior. But they are nothing of the kind until they are themselves stimulated by their numerous connections with the spinal cord and the brain (remember that an estimated fifteen thousand axons can converge upon a single terminal motor neuron). And these deeper, more central activities are in turn initiated and directed to a large degree by afferent, sensory stimulation. In bodywork, it is often problematical aberrations of motor response that we want to change, but sensory affects are our only means of doing so. We know we are doing our job when our hands feel jumpy reflexes smoothing out, high levels of tone decreasing, pliability returning to stiffened areas, range of motion increasing. These are all quantitative and qualitative shifts in motor activity. But we also must know that it is only our skilled manipulation of sensory stimulation which can accomplish these things, because it is primarily sensory associations which have conditioned the muscular patterns in the first place. Until the body feels something different, it cannot act differently. Only when contact with the world is perceived as something other than jabs and buffets can the organism respond with something other than aggression and defense.

In the 1970s, UCLA psychologist Eric Holman discovered that certain sweetened substances could make rodents prefer certain foods by virtue of their presence. For instance, by adding a saccharin to either a banana- or an almond-flavored solution, he was able to make rats prefer the taste of bananas or almonds, respectively, a process known as “flavor nutrient conditioning.” In recent years that work has been picked up with humans. Maltodextrin, a glucose polymer, is imperceptible to most of us. It doesn’t taste sweet. In fact, it doesn’t taste like anything. For it to activate the sweet receptors in the brain, the body must first break it down into glucose. If we mix it into another food, we don’t realize there’s a sugar present, but we still develop a preference for that flavor. In one study, people who tasted foods with maltodextrin mixed in would reliably choose the flavor that had been associated with the polymer in subsequent tests. They had been trained to prefer one food over another by a sort of sensory trickery. Imagine dusting a child’s broccoli florets with maltodextrin and transforming a disliked vegetable into a favorite.

Part of the interest and importance of this finding is that it shows that cognitive influences, originating here purely at the word-level, can reach down and modulate activations in the first stage of cortical processing that represents the value of sensory stimuli.

Arousal, activity level, and attention are self-regulation problems that frequently coexist with SPD. • Unusually high arousal and activity level: The child may be always on the go, restless, and fidgety. He may move with short and nervous gestures, play or work aimlessly, be quick-tempered and excitable, and find it impossible to stay seated.

Regulatory Disorders SELF-REGULATION The child may have difficulty modulating (adjusting) his mood. He may be unable to “rev up,” or to calm down once aroused. He may become fussy easily. He may have difficulty with self-comforting after being hurt or upset. Delaying gratification and tolerating transitions from one activity to another may be hard. The child may perform unevenly: “with it” one day, “out of it” the next. Therapy, a “sensory diet” and nutritional supplements are some of the treatments that may help (see Chapter Nine

• Inattention: Perhaps because of sensory over- or underresponsiveness, the child may have a short attention span, even for activities he enjoys. He may be highly distractible, paying attention to everything except the task at hand. He may be disorganized and forgetful. • Impulsivity: To get or avoid sensory stimulation, the child may be heedlessly energetic and impetuous. She may lack self-control and be unable to stop after starting an activity. She may pour juice until it spills, run pell-mell into people, overturn toy bins, and talk out of turn.

SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL FUNCTIONING Another coexisting regulatory problem may be how the child feels about himself and relates to other people. • Poor adaptability: The child may resist meeting new people, trying new games or toys or tasting different foods. He may have difficulty making transitions from one situation to another. The child may seem stubborn and uncooperative when it is time to leave the house, come for dinner, get into or out of the bathtub, or change from a reading to a math activity. Minor changes in routine will readily upset this child who does not “go with the flow.” • Attachment problem: The child may have separation anxiety and be clingy and fearful when apart from one or two “significant olders.” Or, she may physically avoid her parents, teachers, and others in her circle. • Frustration: Struggling to accomplish tasks that peers do easily, the child may give up quickly. He may be a perfectionist and become upset when art projects, dramatic play, or homework assignments are not going as well as he expects. • Difficulty with friendships: The child may be hard to get along with and have problems making and keeping friends. Insisting on dictating all the rules and being the winner, the best, or the first, he may be a poor game-player. He may need to control his surrounding territory, be in the “driver’s seat,” and have trouble sharing toys. • Poor communication: The child may have difficulty verbally in the way she articulates her speech, “gets the words out,” and writes. She may have difficulty expressing her thoughts, feelings, and needs, not only through words but also nonverbally through gestures, body language, and facial expressions. • Other emotional problems: He may be inflexible, irrational, and overly sensitive to change, stress, and hurt feelings. Demanding and needy, he may seek attention in negative ways. He may be angry or panicky for no obvious reason. He may be unhappy, believing and saying that he is dumb, crazy, no good, a loser, and a failure. Low self-esteem is one of the most telling symptoms of Sensory Processing Disorder. • Academic problems: The child may have difficulty learning new skills and concepts. Although bright, the child may be perceived as an underachiever.

Outside the research laboratory, parents and teachers may notice other differences between SPD and ADHD. For instance, many children with SPD prefer the “same-old, same-old” in a familiar and predictable environment, while children with ADHD prefer novelty and diversion. Many children with SPD have poor motor coordination, while children with ADHD often shine in sports. Many children with SPD have adequate impulse control, unless bothered by sensations, while children with ADHD often have poor impulse control. Another difference is that medicine may help the child with ADHD, but medicine will not solve the problem of SPD. Therapy focusing on sensory integration and a sensory diet of purposeful activities help the child with SPD.

The child who feels uncomfortable in his own skin may have poor motor planning, or dyspraxia. He may move awkwardly and have difficulty planning and organizing his movements. Thus, he may shun the very activities that would improve his praxis.

These descending sensory pathways originate in the cortex, and their influence can either inhibit or facilitate the sensory input from any area of the body, greatly amplify or suppress altogether any given sensation. Sensory activity within the central nervous system is a Janus head, a two-way stream; signals originating in the brain have just as much to do with conscious sensation as do actual stimulations of the peripheral nerve endings. In fact, it is the descending paths which determine the sensitivity of any particular ascending pathway. The wide varieties of sexual response—among different individuals and within the same individual at different times—provide us with a clear example of this centrifugal influence upon incoming sensations: Depending upon past experiences and the present situation, the same stimulation of the genitals can produce intense ecstasy, bland and neutral sensations, or extreme discomfort. Orgasm can be immediate, or deferred indefinitely. And the imagination alone can produce constant engorgement, utter impotence, and all the degrees of arousal in between. The descending paths can color all kinds of sensory input to this degree. These pathways allow the mind to determine the active threshold for different sensory signals, and make it possible to focus attention upon a single source of input in the midst of many. It is difficult to imagine what practical use our sensory apparatus would be to us without such a mechanism. We would have no way of selecting a voice from all the other sounds around us, of locating specific objects within the swirl of visual impressions, or of retiring from our senses for contemplation and sleep. This centrifugal principle of selectivity is as vital to our appropriate responses to the world as is stimulation itself.

The Golgi organs themselves are multi-branched type endings of sensory axons, which are woven among the collagen fibers near the muscle cells, and which are stimulated by the straightening and recoiling of the tendon. As is the case with the muscle spindles, the stimulation of a single tendon organ is highly specific: Each particular organ is most directly affected by the lengthening and contracting of the few alpha muscle fibers which attach to the collagen bundles containing that tendon organ, so that each Golgi is responsive to the activities of only ten to fifteen alpha motor units.

The level of activity in this reticular formation reflects an individual’s general state of arousal. Artificial over-stimulation of the entire area does not result in limb-flailing or the exaggeration of particular gestures; instead, it causes a stiffened tetany in all the muscles of the body simultaneously. Everything locks rigidly into place and cannot be moved until stimulation recedes. Conversely, blocking stimulation from reaching the whole area results in a general loss of muscle tone throughout the body, as in our anaesthetized patient. That is, activity in this area as a whole does not command our muscles to produce any particular gesture or assume any particular posture. Rather, general activity here provides the conditions of general muscle tone, sensory awareness, and mental alertness which will support and color whatever postures and gestures are made. The reticular formation cannot issue the command “raise right arm,” but it does help to establish the trembling tension, the calm readiness, or the sluggishness which will characterize how I raise my arm in response to a situation. To direct these general levels of arousal into particular movements requires the next level of the “old” brain, the basal ganglia—the highest level of sensory and motor organization of the gamma motor system.

First of all, the tone of my muscle cells must hold my skeleton together so that it neither collapses in upon my organs nor dislocates at its joints. It is tone, just as much as it is connective tissues or bone, that is responsible for my basic structural shape and integrity. Secondly, my muscle tone must superimpose upon its own stability the steady, rhythmical expansion and contraction of respiration. Third, it must support my overall structure in one position or another—lying, sitting standing, and so on. Finally, it must be able to brace and release any part of the body in relation to the whole, and to do this with spontaneity and split-second timing, so that graceful, purposeful action may be added to my stability, my posture, and my rhythmic respiration. It is no wonder we find that such large portions of our nervous systems are so continually engaged in controlling the maintenance and adjustments of this tone. The entire system of spindle cells, with both their contractile parts and their anulospiral receptors, the Golgi tendon organs, the reflex arcs, much of the internuncial circuitry of the spinal column, and most of the oldest portion of our brains—including the reticular formation and the basal ganglia—all work together to orchestrate this complex phenomenon. We have, as it were, a brain within our brain and a muscle system within our muscle system to monitor the constantly shifting values of background tonus, to provide a stable yet flexible framework which we are free to use how we will. Nor is it a wonder that these elements and processes are normally controlled below my level of consciousness—if this were not the case, walking across the room to get a glass of water would require more diversified and minute attention than my conscious awareness could possibly muster. It is the old brain, along with the even more ancient spinal cord, that are given the bulk of this task, because they have had so many more generations in which to grapple with the problems and refine the solutions. Millions upon millions of trials and errors have resulted in genetically constant motor circuits and sensory feedback loops which handle the fundamental life-supporting jobs of muscle tone for me automatically. Firm structure, posture, respiratory rhythms, swallowing, elimination, grasping, withdrawing, tracking with the eyes—all these intact and fully functional activities and more are given to each of us as new-born infants, the legacy of the development of our ancestors.

The sensory roles of the anulospiral receptor and the tendon organ are absolutely central in this process of exerting and adjusting muscle tone. These devices establish the “feel” for length and tension, and it is this feeling which is maintained by the gamma motor system, the reflex arcs, and the alpha skeletal muscles. All of my muscle cells—both alpha and gamma—are continually felt by the mind as they work, whether most of these “feelings” ever reach my conscious awareness or not. And it is primarily these muscular feelings which supply my central nervous system with the constant information necessary to successfully combine the demands of free motion with those of basic structural stability. The sophistication required for this maintenance of structure and flexibility can be appreciated if we remember that almost any simple motion—such as raising the arm out to the side—changes either the length or the tension values in most of the body’s muscle cells. If one is to avoid tipping towards the extended arm, then the feet, the legs, the hips, the back, the neck, and the opposite arm all must participate in a new distribution of balance created by the “isolated” movement of raising the arm. The difficulties experienced by every child learning to sit, to stand erect, and to walk with an even gait attest to the complexity of the demands which these shifts in balance and tone make upon us. The entire musculature must learn to participate in the motion of any of its parts. And to do this, the entire musculature must feel its own activity, fully and in rich detail. Competent posture and movement are among the chief points of sensory self-awareness. The purpose of bodywork is to heighten and focus this awareness. It is the child’s task during this early motor training to experiment by trial and error, and to set the precise lengths and tensions—and changes in length and tension—in all his muscle fibers for these basic skills of standing and walking. This is the education of the basal ganglia and the gamma motor system, as learned reflex responses are added to our inherited ones. The lengths and rates of change of the spindle fibers are set at values which experience has confirmed to be appropriate for the movement desired, and then the sensorimotor reflex arcs of the spindles and the Golgis command the alpha motor nerves, and hence the skeletal muscles, to respond exactly to those specifications that have been established in the gamma system by previous trial and error. And this chain of events holds true not only for the actual limb being moved, but for all other parts of the musculature that must brace, or shift, or compensate in any way. In this complicated process, the child is guided primarily by sensory cues which become more consistent and more predictable with every repetition of his efforts.

These direct internuncial circuits in the spinal cord and this brainstem-directed gamma motor system create an astonishing condition in the numerous and elaborate sensory feedback loops of the spindles and the Golgis: We are consciously aware of almost none of their constant activities. Signals transmitted to the central nervous system from these two receptors operate entirely at a subconsious level, causing no sensory perception at all. Instead, they transmit tremendous amounts of information from the muscles and the tendons to 1) the motor control systems in the spinal cord [and the brain stem], and 2) the motor control systems of the cerebellum.

So it is necessary that we have a means of monitoring the tension developed by muscular activity, and equally necessary that the threshold of response for the inhibitory function of that monitor be a variable threshold that can be readily adjusted to suit many purposes, from preventing tissue damage due to overload, to providing a smooth and delicate twist of the tuning knob of a sensitive shortwave receiver. And such a marvelously adaptable tension-feedback system we do have in our Golgi tendon organs, reflex arcs which connect the sensory events in a stretching tendon directly to the motor events which control that degree of stretch, neural feed-back loops whose degree of sensory and motor stimulation may be widely altered according to our intent, our conscious training, and our unconscious habits. This ingenious device does, however, contain a singular danger, a danger unfortunately inherent in the very features of the Golgi reflex which are the cleverest, and the most indispensable to its proper function. The degree of facilitation of the feed-back loop, which sets the threshold value for the “required tension,” is controlled by descending impulses from higher brain centers down into the loop’s internuncial network in the brain stem and the spinal cord. In this way, conscious judgements and the fruits of practice are translated into precise neuromuscular values. But judgement and practice are not the only factors that can be involved in this facilitating higher brain activity. Relative levels of overall arousal, our attitudes towards our past experience, the quality of our present mood, neurotic avoidances and compulsions of all kinds, emotional associations from all quarters—any of these things can color descending messages, and do in fact cause considerable alterations in the Golgi’s threshold values. It is possible, for instance, to be so emotionally involved in an effort—either through panic or through exhilaration—that we do not even notice that our exertions have torn us internally until the excitement has receded, leaving the painful injury behind to surprise us. Or acute anxiety may drive the value of the “required tension” so high that our knuckles whiten as we grip the steering wheel, the pencil suddenly snaps in our fingers, or the glass shatters as we set it with too much force onto the table. On the other hand, timidity or the fear of being rejected can so sap us of “required tension” that it is difficult for us to produce a loud, clear knock upon a door that we tremble to enter.

These two primary reflex arcs—the spindle and the Golgi—are the principal sensory devices which the nervous system uses for the enormously complicated task of maintaining and adjusting the appropriate levels of muscle tone throughout the body. The normal tone of a muscle is dependent upon the simple stretch reflex, through which the the sensory endings in a muscle, stimulated by even the slightest stretching of the muscle, initiate a segmental reflex increasing muscle tone.11 The muscle spindle, whose associated reflex arc tends to excite alpha motor neurons and their motor units, is complimented by the Golgi tendon organ, whose reflex arc tends to inhibit the same alpha neurons and motor units. Between the two of them, they produce a summation of excitation and inhibition on the alpha neurons which keeps the active muscle fibers within a narrow range of tensional forces—just the right amount to stand, to lift a book, to hold a glass. Now the problem of maintaining this precision is such a complex one not only because there are so many muscle cells in the body to monitor, but also because proper muscle tone must accomplish so many different things. It must be able to shift its various tensional values in the various parts of the musculature back and forth so rapidly in order to do all of my muscular tasks competently.

The lower brain—including the pons and the brain stem—is primarily responsible for our “subconscious” processes, those many activities which are more complex and integrated than cord reflexes, but of which we are seldom aware. To begin with, many more sequences of simple reflexes are possible if the pons and the stem are left intact with the cord. The lower brain clearly assists the cord in fine-tuning responses, and in arranging them in the appropriate order so that they produce more integrated behavior. The complicated sequences of muscular contraction necessary for sucking and swallowing, for example, are monitored at this level. These are skills with which a human infant is born; their underlying circuits—and even more importantly, the correct sequence of operation of these circuits—is a product of early genetic development, not individual experience and learning. In general, the lower brain seems to share many of the “hard-wired” features of the spinal cord. Axons and synapses form organizational units that appear to be consistent for all individuals of the same species, and their activation produces identical, stereotyped contractions and motions. But the additional complexities of the lower brain appear to enable it to pick and choose more freely among various possible circuits, and to arrange the stereotyped responses with a lot more flexibility than is possible with the cord alone. For instance, it is in the lower brain that information from the semi-circular canals in the inner ear—the sensory organ for gravitational perceptions and balance—is coordinated with the cord’s postural reflexes. A stiff stance can be elicited from these postural reflexes by merely putting pressure on the bottoms of the feet; by adding information concerning gravity and balance to this stance, the same reflex cord circuits may be continually adjusted to compensate for shifts in equilibrium as we tilt the floor upon which the animal is standing, or as we push him this way or that. A rigid fixed posture is made more flexible and at the same time more stable, because compensating adjustments among the simple postural reflexes is now possible. The lower brain coordinates the movements of the eyes, so that they track together. It directs digestive and metabolic processes and glandular secretions, and determines the patterns of circulation by controlling arterial blood pressure. And not only does it give new coordination to separate parts, it influences the system as a whole in ways that cannot be done by the segmental arrangement of the cord.

As a team, then, the Golgis and the spindles produce a sensory impression that is very different in kind than the impressions of color, texture, odor, or sound produced by our more conscious sense. Instead of measuring any of these surface qualities, the muscle and tendon organs assess the pure mass of an object. Now mass is an invisible thing. We have only to contemplate the surprises offered by a tennis ball filled with lead, or a large “rock” made of styrofoam in a movie studio, to remind ourselves how easily deceived our other sense organs can be with regard to mass. Mass has nothing to do with surface qualities; it is the measure of an object’s resistance to movement, and I can have no idea of its value until I am actively engaged in moving the object. Nor are the sensory cues relating to mass at all constant with regard to the object. They vary continually, as a function of inertia, according to the speed with which I move the object, or the relative suddenness with which I attempt to change the direction of movement or stop the object. A five pound bucket “feels” much heavier if I swing it rapidly in a circle over my head—that is, I have to brace myself much more forcefully in order to resist its pull. It is the precise value of this resistance which is measured by the Golgi tendon organs, and when their information is correlated with the spindles’ measurement of the exact speed and distance of movement, I can arrive at an accurate estimate of mass, that invisible yet crucial property of all matter.

The sensory axon that ends in the anulospiral receptor reaches out from its cell body located in the spinal cord. This cell body synapses with its own spinal sensory tracts which carry the spindles’ sensory information up each segment of the spinal column and finally to the brain, much like the orderly, parallel spinal tracts for the skin receptors, the joint receptors, and so on. But in addition to joining together in its own sensory stream like all other sensory nerves headed for the brain, the cell bodies of the anulospiral receptors make another interesting connection within the spinal column. They synapse directly to the body of a motor nerve as well, and to precisely the motor nerve which stimulates the skeletal muscle cells that surround the corresponding spindle. This means that the terminal motor nerve, the one which directly excites the muscle cells of the skeletal motor unit, can be excited not only by motor commands from the brain, but can also be excited by a sensory signal from the muscle spindle surrounded by the muscle cells of the same skeletal motor unit. 7-7: A simple spindle reflex arc. A single afferent nerve forms the anulospiral receptor at one end and synapses directly to a motor nerve at the other end, in the spinal column. This motor nerve in turn synapses to muscle cells in the immediate vicinity of the spindle, creating a very sensitive local feedback loop. This sensory-to-motor synapse in the spinal cord forms a reflex arc, the most direct linkage we have between local sensory events and local motor response. Activity in specific muscle cells creates a local sensory impulse which directly effects the subsequent activity of the same muscle cells. Thus the reflex arc constitutes a feedback loop which both keeps my muscles themselves constantly informed as to what they are up to, and constantly modifies their efforts. And most of this feedback takes place in the spinal cord, far below my levels of conscious awareness, and far more rapidly than I could consciously command it.

Intuitively we all know that it is better to feel than to not feel. Our emotions are not a luxury but an essential aspect of our makeup. We have them not just for the pleasure of feeling but because they have crucial survival value. They orient us, interpret the world for us, give us vital information without which we cannot thrive. They tell us what is dangerous and what is benign, what threatens our existence and what will nurture our growth. Imagine how disabled we would be if we could not see or hear or taste or sense heat or cold or physical pain. To shut down emotions is to lose an indispensable part of our sensory apparatus and, beyond that, an indispensable part of who we are. Emotions are what make life worthwhile, exciting, challenging, and meaningful. They drive our explorations of the world, motivate our discoveries, and fuel our growth. Down to the very cellular level, human beings are either in defensive mode or in growth mode, but they cannot be in both at the same time. When children become invulnerable, they cease to relate to life as infinite possibility, to themselves as boundless potential, and to the world as a welcoming and nurturing arena for their self-expression. The invulnerability imposed by peer orientation imprisons children in their limitations and fears. No wonder so many of them these days are being treated for depression, anxiety, and other disorders. The love, attention, and security only adults can offer liberates children from the need to make themselves invulnerable and restores to them that potential for life and adventure that can never come from risky activities, extreme sports, or drugs. Without that safety our children are forced to sacrifice their capacity to grow and mature psychologically, to enter into meaningful relationships, and to pursue their deepest and most powerful urges for self-expression. In the final analysis, the flight from vulnerability is a flight from the self. If we do not hold our children close to us, the ultimate cost is the loss of their ability to hold on to their own truest selves.

The will, it was becoming clear, has the power to change the brain—in OCD, in stroke, in Tourette’s, and now in depression—by activating adaptive circuitry. That a mental process alters circuits involved in these disorders offers dramatic examples of how the ways someone thinks about thoughts can effect plastic changes in the brain. Jordan Grafman, chief of cognitive neuroscience at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, calls this top-down plasticity, because it originates in the brain’s higher-order functions. “Bottom-up” plasticity, in contrast, is induced by changes in sensory stimuli such as the loss of input after amputation. Merzenich’s and Tallal’s work shows the power of this bottom-up plasticity to resculpt the brain. The OCD work hints at the power of top-down plasticity, the power of the mind to alter brain circuitry.

It is pretty clear, then, that attention can control the brain’s sensory processing. But it can do something else, too, something that we only hinted at in our discussion of neuroplasticity. It is a commonplace observation that our perceptions and actions do not take place in a vacuum. Rather, they occur on a stage set that has been concocted from the furniture of our minds. If your mind has been primed with the theory of pointillism (the use of tiny dots of primary colors to generate secondary colors), then you will see a Seurat painting in a very different way than if you are ignorant of his technique. Yet the photons of light reflecting off the Seurat and impinging on your retina, there to be conveyed as electrical impulses into your visual cortex, are identical to the photons striking the retina of a less knowledgeable viewer, as well as of one whose mind is distracted. The three viewers “see” very different paintings. Information reaches the brain from the outside world, yes—but in “an ever-changing context of internal representations,” as Mike Merzenich put it. Mental states matter. Every stimulus from the world outside impinges on a consciousness that is predisposed to accept it, or to ignore it. We can therefore go further: not only do mental states matter to the physical activity of the brain, but they can contribute to the final perception even more powerfully than the stimulus itself. Neuroscientists are (sometimes reluctantly) admitting mental states into their models for a simple reason: the induction of cortical plasticity discussed in the previous chapters is no more the simple and direct product of particular cortical stimuli than the perception of the Seurat painting is unequivocally determined by the objective pattern of photons emitted from its oil colors: quite the contrary.

In Silver’s model this injured filter system, which is regulated by the catecholamines, doesn’t screen out irrelevant information and sensory stimuli as efficiently as it should, thereby letting everything that registers at the desk of the reticular activating system arrive in the rooms of the frontal regions of the brain. The individual is bombarded, taking care of ten thousand guests in a hotel built for one thousand, on overload all the time, receiving messages about every minute aspect of his or her experience. It is no wonder, then, that the individual would be distractible or, as Silver would argue, inclined to withdraw from it all and shut the damned hotel down.

A rhyming Nativity narrative. "The donkey who carried Mary to the Nativity calmly focuses on feelings of wonderment surrounding the child’s birth. With huge eyes...the little donkey is utterly adorable. Lines like “a bit of tingle-my-toes. / That’s how the evergreen / smelled to me, / a bit of fresh pine to my nose” offer opportunities for caregivers to extend the reading to sensory activities, though the scent of pine doesn’t seem historically accurate. An uncluttered stable features friendly, curious barn animals that greet baby Jesus along with the three Wise Men. Told in verse, the tale evokes a tender, pleasant mood. ...“I lifted my head / above His hay bed // …and sang of this morning of grace.” Jesus, referred to as “the Baby” and “the Babe,” is tan-skinned, as are his parents. Two of the Wise Men are light-skinned, while one is darker-skinned. A gentle, spare tale, part bedtime story, part Christmas fare. (Picture book. 2-5)" Kirkus Reviews

What all this tells us is that perception reflects the active comparison of sensory inputs with internal predictions. And this gives us a way to understand a bigger concept: awareness of your surroundings occurs only when sensory inputs violate expectations. When the world is successfully predicted away, awareness is not needed because the brain is doing its job well.

A great way to open the dopamine floodgate is to watch and listen to inspirational stuff about the activity you are prone to quitting at. Unlike meme-turds, videos are a more immersive sensory experience, and virtually all capitalize on the dopaminergic power of music. Music has the ability to not just arouse pleasurable feelings but also increase craving or wanting—two critical elements of sports motivation.

In this regard, you can think of each individual slow wave of NREM sleep as a courier, able to carry packets of information between different anatomical brain centers. One benefit of these traveling deep-sleep brainwaves is a file-transfer process. Each night, the long-range brainwaves of deep sleep will move memory packets (recent experiences) from a short-term storage site, which is fragile, to a more permanent, and thus safer, long-term storage location. We therefore consider waking brainwave activity as that principally concerned with the reception of the outside sensory world, while the state of deep NREM slow-wave sleep donates a state of inward reflection—one that fosters information transfer and the distillation of memories. If wakefulness is dominated by reception, and NREM sleep by reflection,

It’s not surprising that so many trauma survivors are compulsive eaters and drinkers, fear making love, and avoid many social activities: Their sensory world is largely off limits.

Neurotypical brains engage in sensory adaptation and habituation: the longer they are in the presence of a sound, smell, texture, or visual cue, the more their brain learns to ignore it, and allow it to fade into the background. Their neurons become less likely to be activated by a cue the longer they are around it. The exact opposite is true for Autistic people: the longer we are around a stimulus, the more it bothers us.

chapter 37 exercise sucks i blame PE class as the first offender. I really do. At such an early age kids who love to play active games are made to run laps instead. Okay, maybe that isn’t every school, but it was certainly the first time I remember someone divorcing physical activity from fun and creating the demon that is exercise. Then diet culture came along and told us the reason we should be engaging this exercise is primarily to keep our bodies thin and attractive. These things have really wrecked our relationship to joyful body movement. If you are motivated to an activity by body shame, experience the activity as a chorus of unpleasant sensory experiences (pain, boredom, and sweat are my three least favorite things in the world), and then end with no immediate results, why on earth would you like that activity or want to do it ever again?

When something interesting activates the dopamine system, we snap to attention. If we are able to activate our H&N system by shifting our focus outward, the increased level of attention makes the sensory experience more intense. Imagine walking down a street in a foreign country. Everything is more exciting, even looking at ordinary buildings, trees, and shops. Because we are in a novel situation, sensory inputs are more vivid. That’s a large part of the joy of travel. It works in the opposite direction, too. Experiencing H&N sensory stimulation, especially within a complex environment (sometimes called an enriched environment), makes the dopaminergic cognitive facilities in our brains work better. The most complex environments, those that are most enriched, are usually natural ones.

The rattlesnake represents the very acme of serpentine sophistication. It has superlative sensing organs that exploit infra-red and chemo-sensory stimuli to enable it to locate its prey. It is armed with one of the most powerful of all venoms with which it can inject its victims with surgical precision. It is long-lived and produces its young fully formed and immediately capable of fending for themselves. But it has one vulnerability, one way in which human beings who see rattlesnakes as a threat to their own dominance are able to attack it. In North America, in the northern part of the rattlesnake’s range, winters can be so severe that a cold-blooded snake cannot remain active. So many species that are common elsewhere in North America do not spread far north. Rattlers are among the few that do. They survive the winter by another special adaptation. They have developed the ability to hibernate. On the prairies of the mid-West and north into Canada, they choose to do so in the burrows of prairie dogs, rodents related to marmots. Elsewhere in the woodlands, they find outcrops of rocks that are riven by deep clefts. But such places are not abundant. As autumn approaches and temperatures fall, great numbers of rattlesnakes set out on long cross-country journeys of many miles following traditional routes to the places where they and their parents before them hibernate each year. Some of these wintering dens may contain a thousand individuals. So those human beings who hate snakes and who, in spite of the rattler’s sophisticated early warning system, believe that they are a constant and lethal threat, are also able, at this season of the year, to massacre rattlesnakes in thousands. As a consequence one of the most advanced and wonderfully sophisticated of all snakes — perhaps of all reptiles — is now, in many parts of the territories it once ruled, in real danger of extinction.

There is no such tiny “Cartesian Theater” in the brain; conscious experience is generated by a vastly complex, distributed network that synchronizes and adjusts its activity by the millisecond. As far as we can tell, certain patterns of activity in this distributed network give rise to conscious experience. But fundamentally, this network’s activity is self-contained and the feeling of a unified flow of consciousness you have is not just from the processing of sensory information. The experience you have right now is a unique creation of your brain that has transformed data from your body into something closer to a hallucination. To break down this seemingly obvious point that we will deal with very often in this book and that I myself struggle to understand: the existence of our experience is real, but the contents of this experience exist only in your brain. Some philosophers call this “irreducible subjectivity,” which means that no totally objective theory of human experience may be possible. The contents of your experience are not representations of the world, but your experience is part of the world. By altering this process with molecules like psilocybin or LSD we can become aware of different aspects of our perceptions. By perturbing consciousness and observing the consequences, we can gain insight into its normal functioning. This is again not to say that consciousness is not real; there can be no doubt that I am conscious as I write this sentence. However, it is the relationship between consciousness and the external world that is more mysterious than one might assume. It is often supposed that cognition and consciousness result from processing the information from our sensory systems (like vision), and that we use neural computations to process this information. However, following Riccardo Manzotti and others such as the cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene, I will argue that computations are not natural things that can cause a physical phenomenon like consciousness. When I read academic papers on artificial or machine intelligence, or popular books on the subject, I have not found anyone grappling with these strange “facts” about human consciousness. Either consciousness is not mentioned, or if it is, it is assumed to be a computational problem.

Having a ready-to-go list of “droppable” demands can be a lifesaver on high-sensory days or when burnout signs start to surface. Consider employing a traffic light system for your responsibilities, categorizing demands into green, yellow, and red activities. Green tasks can be put aside without notable ramifications. Yellow tasks can occasionally be set aside, depending on prevailing circumstances. Red tasks pose more of a challenge to dismiss, given the potentially significant repercussions.

Our brain processes incoming sensory input from the bottom up (see Figures 2 and 10), and if someone has a life with chaotic, uncontrollable, or extreme and prolonged stress, particularly early in life, they’re more likely to act before thinking. Their cortex is not as active, and reactivity in the lower areas of the brain becomes more dominant. It’s very difficult to meaningfully connect with or get through to someone who is not regulated. And it’s nearly impossible to reason with them. This is why telling someone who is dysregulated to “calm down” never works. Oprah: It just makes them angrier. Dr. Perry: Of course. When someone is very upset, words themselves are not very effective. The tone and rhythm of the voice probably has more impact than the actual words. Oprah: So you want to be present with them? Dr. Perry: Yes, it’s best if you can simply be present. If you do use words, it’s best to restate what they’re saying; this is called reflective listening.

Human imagination, however, involves some quasi-rational activity, for humans are not just moved by imagination’s products, but judge and form opinions about them. Human imagination is what Aristotle calls “deliberative” (bouleutik or logistik): “Imagination in the form of sense exists, as we have said [in De anima III, ii], in other animals, but deliberative imagination only in those which can reason” (De anima, III, xi, 434a 5ff.). Pure sensation is always true, enjoying something of the status which contemporary philosophers accord to what some of them call “raw feels”; but imagination can be false.31 It is therefore a more rationalizing activity than the elementary sensory receptiveness of the common sense.

brain-friendly training uses the following five general elements to enhance learning: 1. Positive emotional experiences 2. Multi-sensory stimulation and novelty 3. Instructional variety and choices 4. Active participation and collaboration 5. Informal learning environments

He refers to the Imagination as an organ of perception. Without it, all the phenomena of religious experience are impossible. It is the means by which we perceive symbols. The Active Imagination guides, anticipates, molds sensory perception; that is why it transmutes sensory data into symbols. The Burning Bush is only a brushwood fire if it is merely perceived by the sensory organs. In order that Moses may perceive the Burning Bush and hear the Voice calling him “from the right side of the valley”—in short, in order that there may be a theophany—an organ of trans-sensory perception is needed.22