Volume of Thoughts

[Golden Applesauce]

I don't remember if this claim is in Musicophilia, This Is Your Brain On Music, or both, but...

Imagining or remembering a song (or other auditory stimuli) activates the same parts of the brain as hearing it.

That also works for imagining just about anything.  Imagine moving, and almost all of the same neurons that fire when you actually move that muscle activate.

The triangle is the simplest stable (physical _and_ mental) structure. Basic arithmetic involves triangulation (2 + 3 = 5, two terms on one side of the equation, one on the other).

Interesting - I just noticed that when I do that kind of mental arithmetic, I never have the 5 'in memory' at the same time as the 2 and the 3.  They just kind of ... transform? collapse? together into one number.  I do know that I'm much faster than average at mental arithmetic - maybe not needing the reactants and the product to exist in memory at the same time lets me use working memory more efficiently?

[Brotep]

I don't remember if this claim is in Musicophilia, This Is Your Brain On Music, or both, but...

Imagining or remembering a song (or other auditory stimuli) activates the same parts of the brain as hearing it.

That also works for imagining just about anything.  Imagine moving, and almost all of the same neurons that fire when you actually move that muscle activate.

Yes, indeedy--the corresponding neurons in the brain, but not the muscle's motor neurons.

So I don't see any reason why we couldn't think 'louder' or 'quieter' thoughts

The triangle is the simplest stable (physical _and_ mental) structure. Basic arithmetic involves triangulation (2 + 3 = 5, two terms on one side of the equation, one on the other).

Interesting - I just noticed that when I do that kind of mental arithmetic, I never have the 5 'in memory' at the same time as the 2 and the 3.  They just kind of ... transform? collapse? together into one number.  I do know that I'm much faster than average at mental arithmetic - maybe not needing the reactants and the product to exist in memory at the same time lets me use working memory more efficiently?

That just sounds like chunking.

[Telarus]

I don't remember if this claim is in Musicophilia, This Is Your Brain On Music, or both, but...

Imagining or remembering a song (or other auditory stimuli) activates the same parts of the brain as hearing it.

That also works for imagining just about anything.  Imagine moving, and almost all of the same neurons that fire when you actually move that muscle activate.

The triangle is the simplest stable (physical _and_ mental) structure. Basic arithmetic involves triangulation (2 + 3 = 5, two terms on one side of the equation, one on the other).

Interesting - I just noticed that when I do that kind of mental arithmetic, I never have the 5 'in memory' at the same time as the 2 and the 3.  They just kind of ... transform? collapse? together into one number.  I do know that I'm much faster than average at mental arithmetic - maybe not needing the reactants and the product to exist in memory at the same time lets me use working memory more efficiently?

Yes, that's why it's a structure and not just a relationship. Two means relationship. (A.:A.: note - that's why 2 = 0).

If we formally cut the equation up we see that numbers are grouped with operators, and if I add a bunch of brackets, thusly

Code Select Expand


{[2] [+3] } {[=5]}            <- the equals sign is what implies the curly brackets

the reason we say it is stable is because if we replace one of the square-bracketed terms with an unknown (say we only perceive part of the structure), we can still resolve the whole structure.

Code Select Expand

[x] [+3] [=5] :edit: LOL used the formatting for a bullet by accident

It's a structure because 'Structural systems are local, closed, and finite. ... Structural systems can have only one inside and only one outside.'[B. Fuller] So a Point (a 1, or a singularity), or a Line (a 2, or a relationship, or a 0 an event) aren't Structures.


Paranoid Mental Structures usually occur on the form of:

My life sucks because [I'm dead broke and have a few hundred problems] + I explain others prospering because [they're all rich and related/conspiring against the common man] = The [Shape Shifting Alien Reptoid/Illuminati] are stalking me and actively causing my [poverty/misery/impotence]. Once that's an established stable pattern in some-one's head, that's hard to break yo.

[Telarus]

And let's re-jack this thread back on-topic:

[Kai]

In this instance, we seem to be diverging in two directions with the word "uncomfortable".

For ease of use, we will call sounds the ear hears as "real" sounds, and the sounds of thoughts as "imagined".


For real sounds, volume becomes uncomfortable because the sound vibrations actually damage the physical structure of the ear, which triggers a pain response.

For imagined sounds, the uncomfortable feeling may come from the distracting nature of the thought's volume.  The discomfort may also be from the memory in evokes, or from the disturbing nature of the thought.  But I cannot see how the thought would produce the physical damage that a real sound would produce.


Also, I can imaginge a thought so loud it removes all other thought.  I assume (and would like feedback from) people who have suffered/endured bouts of mania also have experienced this.  There was a guy in front of the liquor store the other day who muttered, "The church is closed," repeatedly for the entire time I was near enough to hear.  Perhaps this qualifies?

This is pretty much it, LMNO.

I definitely "hear" thoughts in volumes, and actually can be unrecognizable if they are quiet enough, like whisperings and mumblings. But then, I've got a weird setup in my head.

[Cramulus]

bump because I found this during some archive archeology and thought it was an interesting thread