[ExI] Possible seat of consciousness found

[William Flynn Wallace]

Our eyes vibrate at 60 Hz.  If you overcome this with a special camera, you
can focus light on the same cells continuously.  What the person reports is
that the light fades and comes back, fades again and comes back.  The
explanation is that with continuous stimulation the neurons cannot make
enough transmitter substance fast enough to send a continuous signal to the
brain.  So it rests for a brief time to make more transmitter substance.

Similarly, continuously stimulating nose and tongue receptors makes the
underlying neurons run out of transmitters, and so the signals to the brain
get weaker and weaker, and thus so do the sensations.  These neurons do not
recover as fast as the eye neurons do (I don't remember the down time data
- absolute refractory period followed by relative refractory period (during
which a stronger than usual stimulus can elicit a response), followed by
normal sensation)..

So we have real, measurable changes in neurons causing lessening reported
sensations until the transmitters can be made in sufficient quantity again.

Of course you can keep on eating even though the sensations diminish, or
other reasons.

These changes are temporary, so of course they do not qualify as learning.


This is from quite a while back.  I have not kept up with research on
neurons.

bill w

On Fri, Feb 21, 2020 at 5:42 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Hi William,
>
> On Fri, Feb 21, 2020 at 3:51 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> OK - just wanted to correct something I knew was false.  I don't know
>> what kind of reality you are dealing with where those statements are true,
>> but I'll stay out of it.  bill w
>>
>
> OK, so let me see if I clearly understand your reality.
> So, you say we continue to eat something that is not change, but our
> perception of it 'fades'.
>
> In your reality, is the fact that something is 'fading" a change that is
> not real, or this change doesn't exist?
>
> Brent
>
>
>
>
>
>
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