Jan 23, 2025 09:50 PM
(This post was last modified: Jan 24, 2025 07:45 PM by C C.)
Some people say they don't have sexual fantasies
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...-fantasies
KEY POINTS: The vast majority of adults report having sexual fantasies, but a small minority claims that they don't. Some of these individuals may have aphantasia, or an inability to conjure mental imagery. Others may be holding back due to feelings of shame. Yet others may have a different understanding of what a fantasy is... (MORE - details)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The big picture stemming from this is that the way private thoughts or events occur isn't universal for everybody. Might explain why some individuals seem incapable of grasping what the hard problem of consciousness concerns, or they sport what reflexively seem crazy forms of eliminativism or denials of experience like illusionism. I mean, if one's thoughts are occurring in the dark, then thereby they would actually have no access to what others are talking about -- it becomes easy to dismiss personal manifestations as fiction. (Relatedly, if some religious people have experiences of God -- then that's something I specifically lack, and could similarly dismiss as fiction. But at least I know what experiences and hallucinations in general are -- that they're unavoidable presentations which I can't deny in broad context, sans being diagnosed as a mad type of contrarian.)
Concept cells help your brain abstract information and build memories
https://www.quantamagazine.org/concept-c...-20250121/
EXCERPTS: Imagine you’re on a first date, sipping a martini at a bar. You eat an olive and patiently listen to your date tell you about his job at a bank. Your brain is processing this scene, in part, by breaking it down into concepts. Bar. Date. Martini. Olive. Bank. Deep in your brain, neurons known as concept cells are firing.
You might have concept cells that fire for martinis but not for olives. Or ones that fire for bars — perhaps even that specific bar, if you’ve been there before. The idea of a “bank” also has its own set of concept cells, maybe millions of them. And there, in that dimly lit bar, you’re starting to form concept cells for your date, whether you like him or not. Those cells will fire when something reminds you of him.
Concept neurons fire for their concept no matter how it is presented: in real life or a photo, in text or speech, on television or in a podcast. “It’s more abstract, really different from what you’re seeing,” said Elizabeth Buffalo), a neuroscientist at the University of Washington.
For decades, neuroscientists mocked the idea that the brain could have such intense selectivity, down to the level of an individual neuron: How could there be one or more neurons for each of the seemingly countless concepts we engage with over a lifetime? “It’s inefficient. It’s not economic,” people broadly agreed, according to the neurobiologist Florian Mormann at the University of Bonn.
But when researchers identified concept cells in the early 2000s, the laughter started to fade. Over the past 20 years, they have established that concept cells not only exist but are critical to the way the brain abstracts and stores information. New studies, including one recently published in Nature Communications, have suggested that they may be central to how we form and retrieve memory... (MORE - details)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Centuries ago, Immanuel Kant anticipated concepts as necessary for understanding, laying the first groundwork for how cognition is possible.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...-fantasies
KEY POINTS: The vast majority of adults report having sexual fantasies, but a small minority claims that they don't. Some of these individuals may have aphantasia, or an inability to conjure mental imagery. Others may be holding back due to feelings of shame. Yet others may have a different understanding of what a fantasy is... (MORE - details)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The big picture stemming from this is that the way private thoughts or events occur isn't universal for everybody. Might explain why some individuals seem incapable of grasping what the hard problem of consciousness concerns, or they sport what reflexively seem crazy forms of eliminativism or denials of experience like illusionism. I mean, if one's thoughts are occurring in the dark, then thereby they would actually have no access to what others are talking about -- it becomes easy to dismiss personal manifestations as fiction. (Relatedly, if some religious people have experiences of God -- then that's something I specifically lack, and could similarly dismiss as fiction. But at least I know what experiences and hallucinations in general are -- that they're unavoidable presentations which I can't deny in broad context, sans being diagnosed as a mad type of contrarian.)
Concept cells help your brain abstract information and build memories
https://www.quantamagazine.org/concept-c...-20250121/
EXCERPTS: Imagine you’re on a first date, sipping a martini at a bar. You eat an olive and patiently listen to your date tell you about his job at a bank. Your brain is processing this scene, in part, by breaking it down into concepts. Bar. Date. Martini. Olive. Bank. Deep in your brain, neurons known as concept cells are firing.
You might have concept cells that fire for martinis but not for olives. Or ones that fire for bars — perhaps even that specific bar, if you’ve been there before. The idea of a “bank” also has its own set of concept cells, maybe millions of them. And there, in that dimly lit bar, you’re starting to form concept cells for your date, whether you like him or not. Those cells will fire when something reminds you of him.
Concept neurons fire for their concept no matter how it is presented: in real life or a photo, in text or speech, on television or in a podcast. “It’s more abstract, really different from what you’re seeing,” said Elizabeth Buffalo), a neuroscientist at the University of Washington.
For decades, neuroscientists mocked the idea that the brain could have such intense selectivity, down to the level of an individual neuron: How could there be one or more neurons for each of the seemingly countless concepts we engage with over a lifetime? “It’s inefficient. It’s not economic,” people broadly agreed, according to the neurobiologist Florian Mormann at the University of Bonn.
But when researchers identified concept cells in the early 2000s, the laughter started to fade. Over the past 20 years, they have established that concept cells not only exist but are critical to the way the brain abstracts and stores information. New studies, including one recently published in Nature Communications, have suggested that they may be central to how we form and retrieve memory... (MORE - details)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Centuries ago, Immanuel Kant anticipated concepts as necessary for understanding, laying the first groundwork for how cognition is possible.