Una pena, sí
Fue uno de mis referentes

"I've sometimes been accused of degrading mankind, or insulting human dignity, of making man beastly"

"This surprised me because I like animals and I feel proud to call myself one. I've never looked down upon them, so to call human beings animals is not, to me, degrading."

Zoologist and author Desmond Morris dies aged 98 Morris, who was also a surrealist painter and broadcaster, was best known for his 1967 book The Naked Ape.

Zoologist and author Desmond Morris dies aged 98
www.bbc.com/news/article...

Some of these folks could take a page of Veronika and touch grass...

haha indeed

"The biggest tell is that the video shows something unnatural which defies previous science"

On a second thought, I'm glad we live in the future with AI; otherwise they would call us witches!

haha I accept that me being a real person can be debated, but Veronika is real! ✊

😎🐮 yeah

:D

There's a really long discussion on Wikipedia about whether our study of Veronika is fake and the videos were generated by AI

My favorite part is where they even bring up Russian military intelligence haha
Human beings are extraordinary ٩๏̯͡๏)۶

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ve...

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a65415433/echolocation-breakthrough-humans/

Human echolocation

Experts in echolocation (3 early blind, 1 late blind; vs 21 sighted controls) were studied with EEG. For early blinds only 2 clicks can be enough, but their performance improved with additional clicks. Strategies differed across individuals

(paper) www.eneuro.org/content/earl...

The first post in this thread should have quotation marks around the word “psychedelic” ; )

12/12 It all began with a “visual episode” at the age of 24, when she saw a yellow shape on a wall. From there, through introspection alone, she developed this ability.

All in all, a very interesting study of a case that is probably unique in the scientific literature.

11/12 If I had to describe it simply, I would say that whereas the effects of psychedelics are characterized by high entropy and connectivity, this NOC stands out for the opposite: a high degree of control over a stable and well-organized state.

10/12 But there are also major differences. Of course, she is able to enter this NOC voluntarily, but it also differs in that there was no strong change in the default mode network and there was a reduction in connectivity between networks (the opposite of what is often reported with psychedelics)

9/12 Overall, it resembles the psychedelic state induced by psilocybin in its vivid imagery, altered bodily experience, changes in time perception, sense of unity, and attenuation of the ego.

8/12 They found an alteration in neural networks that seemed to favor internal processing and attentional absorption (internal experience comes to dominate conscious experience as a whole). This gave rise to a state in which endogenous imagery became extremely intense.

7/12 The NOC was also characterized by strong inward attention, directed toward the body’s internal states, and these descriptions fit well with the fMRI findings.

6/12 She described this hexagon as something that was really there, surrounding her and suspended in the air. Then the NOC arrived, which she described as an “eternal present”; it was characterized by a sense of unity, intense geometric imagery, and vivid scenes like those of a lucid dream.

5/12 She also reported that the sound of the MRI served as a kind of mantra. From that point on, everything changed dramatically. The transition phase required effort; then the visual field (the dark field inside the MRI) turned violet, and a yellow-violet hexagonal grid appeared.

4/12 At the beginning of each session, she lay in the fMRI scanner letting her mind dwell on ordinary daily thoughts; then she focused on relaxing her muscles and feeling lighter and lighter.

3/12 Across the sessions, this person moved from a “baseline” state into a “transition” phase, and from there into what they called “NOC” (a consolidated non-ordinary state of consciousness), before returning while maintaining a “residual” state for 30–60 minutes.

2/12 She was studied across 20 fMRI sessions, and in such detail that she ultimately became a co-author of the paper. It is perhaps worth noting that she appears to have a conceptual form of synesthesia, apparently not a visual one (the conceptual kind is common; I myself score high on it).

1/12 The case of a person who can enter a psychedelic state at will

She is a 37-year-old woman who, without any formal training, can alter her consciousness whenever she wants in order to reach what the authors call a “transcendental visionary state”

(paper) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

2/2 That said, in experts, these changes are more pronounced, more stable, and particularly more noticeable in the theta range (waves associated with deep relaxation and light sleep).

1/2 Meditation has significant effects on the brain within 2–3 minutes, peaking at 7–10 minutes, regardless of the individual’s level of experience.

The study used breath-watching (Isha Yoga) and EEG in 103 participants

(paper) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

6/6 In short, this is an observational study, but a very solid one.

As in Asimov’s science-fiction concept of psychohistory, perhaps we cannot predict individual behavior, but we can predict population-level behavior. What we do with that knowledge is up to us.

5/6 As I mentioned, along with the scale of the dataset, wind is what makes this study so interesting: only when they take wind direction into account does the effect become strongly significant.

4/6 After such an event, during the following two days, suicides decrease by 9% relative to normal. This would explain some displacement of deaths toward the previous, more polluted day, but 24% would still remain unexplained.

3/6 One interesting finding is that suicides increase immediately.

A day with an AQI (Air Quality Index) above 100 is associated with a 36.8% increase in suicides (in relative terms) on that same day.
For context, values between 50 and 100 are considered moderate.

2/6 They studied ALL suicide deaths in the USA from 2003 to 2010 (2,835 counties), and combined them with air pollution records (especially PM2.5), meteorological data, and socioeconomic data.

Most interestingly, they took wind direction into account.