Most brain activity is "background noise" -- and that's upending our understanding of consciousness

[marmar]

Most brain activity is "background noise" — and that's upending our understanding of consciousness
Consciousness may be an emergent property from a bunch of background chatter. The implications are huge

By THOMAS NAIL
FEBRUARY 20, 2021 7:00PM


(Salon) What are you thinking about right now?

Have you ever wondered why it's so hard to answer this simple question when someone asks? There is a reason. 95 percent of your brain's activity is entirely unconscious. Of the remaining 5 percent of brain activity, only around half is intentionally directed. The vast majority of what goes on in our heads is unknown and unintentional. Neuroscientists call these activities "spontaneous fluctuations," because they are unpredictable and seemingly unconnected to any specific behavior. No wonder it's so hard to say what we are thinking or feeling and why. We like to think of ourselves as CEOs of our own minds, but we are much more like ships tossed at sea.

What does this reveal about the nature of consciousness? Why is our brain, a mere 2 percent of our body mass, using 20 percent of our energy to produce what many scientists still call "background noise?" Neuroscientists have known about these "random" fluctuations in electrical brain activity since the 1930s, but have not known what to make of them until relatively recently. Many brain studies of consciousness still look only at brain activity that responds to external stimuli and triggers a mental state. The rest of the "noise" is "averaged out" of the data.

This is still the prevailing approach in most contemporary neuroscience, and yields a "computational" input-output model of consciousness. In this neuroscientific model, so-called "information" transfers from our senses to our brains.

Yet the pioneering French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene considers this view "deeply wrong." "Spontaneous activity is one of the most frequently overlooked features" of consciousness, he writes. Unlike engineers who design digital transistors with discrete voltages for 0s and 1s to resist background noise, neurons in the brain work differently. Neurons amplify the noise and even use it to help generate novel solutions to complex problems. In part, this is why the neuronal architecture of our brains has a branching fractal geometry and not a linear one. The vast majority of our brain activity proceeds divergently, creating many possible associations and not convergently into just one. ..............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/02/20/most-brain-activity-is-background-noise-cognitive-flux-consciousness-brain-activity-research/

[c-rational]

1. Good article, and by good I mean interesting. Several thoughts come to mind;

One is monkey mind - most thoughts should not be listened to nor acted upon - 'reach' for a Zen mind.

Also, in meditation we strive to limit thought. Why? Maybe it is to 'hear' the universal consciousness.

And last, I started to watch the Star Trek Discovery series. In season 1 they are working on a spore drive that allows them to instantaneously travel to anywhere in the universe. Their new navigator is a creature that loves mushrooms and spores and is vicious if attacked. 'It' has a supercomputer for a brain. I bet it uses a lot of energy.

[HariSeldon]

2. Consciousness as an emergent standing wave

I'm not opposed to trying out a model like this. Yay, science! And if it doesn't fit the data, toss it on the idea trash heap like phlogiston.

I write a lot of code, and I can say from deep experience that a computer-like model of the human mind makes as much sense as waterskiing on tissue paper.

[dlk]

3. Interesting article about a new way of looking at creativity

Thanks for sharing!

[flying rabbit]

4. Good article. K&R nt

[Bayard]

5. I don't know about that 2 1/2% in most people

[lagomorph777]

6. Not noise. We just don't understand 95% of it yet.

To be charitable.