Börje Peratt in interview with Filmmaker Magdalena
This friday was a range of synchronicity that changed my path. But lets start with the first session of the day.
Petra Stoerig, –Your’s, Her’s, Mine? Self-Related Processes– talked about her research on visual perception from monkey study and then about blindsight.
The presentation was a biological and neurological perspective with presentation of slides from brain scan showing activation spots in brain. It was to me two separate talks and I couldn´t figure out how to correlate them. To me such studies would be more catching if they started with the question: Is blindsight possible, if so how? and if so what can be the outcome in real life?” Perhaps that also was a part of the content but in that case I didn´t understand it.
My purpose of knowledge about the brain is of practical use
When I did a documentary (Stress 1986) the purpose was to understand what stress causes in perceptions and how it may effect a driver of a car. Then it was interesting to find out how especially disturbing situations caused the frontal cortex to block. That is the logical mind is gone for the force of fear and fight of the reptile brain.
When i wrote my first book Succébo (2011) in pursuing development of the brain and trying to understand how brain works I had several purposes. Among them it was to find consequenses in the brain and body of certain attitudes and behaviors. Brainscans could show how visual perceptions perhaps could limit the mind. I was also interested in what led to mental expansion and power. For example where to find the process of placebo (Martin Ingvar 2012). I believe I might have initiated that research with my questions in 1986 when Ingvar was into research on phobias.
My first interest was motivated by understanding the effect on difficult daily situations and also the effect on problemsolving, for instance tunnel sight during teamwork, communication and in traffic.
My other interest was to find out where in the brain to find placebo and also if it can be learnt. This neurologist Martin Ingvar began to study after me asking him if placebo was possible to find in the brain.
I now have another interest and that is to find creativity i brain.
A study on music improvisations might be a way to locate this creativity. I also think that such a study might show that training expands creativity spots in brain. I also think that these spots might be kind of an orchestra, that is you will find several locations activated and growing when trained.
Only the medical aspect certainly might be of great interest for medicine doctors and neuro scientists and other interested in the physical aspects of consciousness and brain damage.
The development of transpersonal psychology
A lot of interesting studies have been made of patients from the second world war. This also led to the creating of Transpersonal psychology a new disciplin taking the stand of a holistic view.
Today it seems like most of researcher at TSC are reductionists. My reflection on this is how specialists can be so focused and pursue mechanic responses but not so interested in an holistic understanding and surrounding possibilities. On the contrary I overheard a discussion calling it weird trying to figure out experiences of more spectacular kind. So then I am also weird. Well that isn’t new to me. If You are a boxthinker then every free thinker is weird.
The two following talks was:
– Mary Peterson, Beyond the Classical Feed-Forward View of Figure-Ground Segregation and – Russell Hurlburt, Investigating Pristine Inner Experience: Implications for consciousness science, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and self-understanding.
Neurons neurons neurons …..
On my way to session 8 about Integrated Information Theory whith Christof Koch and Gulio Tononi I stumbled upon Dan Park MD and Ph.D.
He wanted to record an interview with me and that took about an hour so I came late to session eight and ended up in more neurons. Therefore I can´t give justice to tell anything about that. But I agree with Dan Park that TSC 2014 is mostly about brain from a technical point of view. And I also appreciated the conversation with Dan Park that was very giving. So hopefully we stay in touch.
I came half way in to the session with Koch and heard him say:
“you can only experience one thing at the time.”
Is it true? Then I am an anomali.
I then was on my way to session 9 Quantum Approaches with Max Tegmark, Stuart Hameroff and Anirban Bandyopadyay. But now I stumbled upon Magdalena who is doing a documentary and I told her that I also was filmmaker. She asked me about the background and interest in consciousness. I told her about the car crash that started it all. She immediately asked me to do a short interview (supposedly half an hour). This took two and a half hours and it became a profound experience for us both and also for her partner. She wanted to show me her ten minutes filmpilot and I was impressed by its fine story and talented editing.
Filmmaker Magdalena and partner Dean Morgan
I really hope that she gets funding. The illumination around this couple is beautiful.
Concurrent sessions
At 5:00 PM concurrent sessions started and I choose Anomalies of Consciousness.
It handled subjects that at least interested me more than any other session. And I wasn´t disappointed. I summarize it with the last speaker
“Sometimes we got to get into the dark to see light (Gary E. Schwartz)”
At 7:00 PM it was poster session. I tell about them separately.
Sad to say I miss saturday and especially the discussion about the upcoming 20 years. I would have a lot to say but then again perhaps it is best that I then sit on a flight back to Stockholm.
Hopefully I will be able to participate a moment on session 10. Death and consciousness the for me most interesting session of all week. What will Sam Parnia tell about the Aware study? Are there any results?
Anyway thank You TSC and Tucson for another fantastic day.
On the Origin of Consciousness 