From & To Sathish #7 - Page 89

https://asteriskmag.com/issues/12-books/is-the-internet-making-culture-worse

The decline of criticism might explain the sense that our culture is stagnating. How can we bring it back?

https://psyche.co/ideas/what-your-minds-blank-moments-reveal-about-consciousness?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=722f060efc-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_01_09&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-8e23a7006c-838120577

What your mind’s blank moments reveal about consciousness

by Thomas Andrillon, neuroscientist

Scientists are uncovering the nature of an elusive mental experience that challenges what it means to be conscious

What were you thinking about just now? Maybe you were caught in the midst of a continuous stream of thoughts. That is how we often talk about our waking lives – and it’s the way our conscious minds are often depicted in novels and discussed in philosophy. Yet, for some people, and maybe this includes you, that stream is interspersed with lulls, moments where the flow suddenly stops and the mind is left empty. If so, the chances are your honest answer to what you were thinking about just now could be: nothing.

If you have these experiences of mental emptiness, you will know what I am referring to. If you haven’t experienced them, maybe you are surprised to hear that they exist. Yet they do and, for anyone intrigued by the nature of consciousness, they are a fascinating, mysterious phenomenon that challenges conventional approaches to the subject.

Until recently, scientists approached the study of consciousness in two main ways: ‘being conscious’ and ‘being conscious of’. The first approach deals with that fact that, while we are conscious beings, we are not always conscious. For instance, when we fall into dreamless sleep, or when we are anaesthetised, our consciousness fades and then returns. The second approach is about the content of consciousness – the fact that, while we can be conscious of many things, we are certainly not conscious of everything.

Implied in this established dichotomy is the assumption that being conscious means being conscious of something. Our consciousness roams, it can be focused on the here and now, or maybe the there and then, but it is always focused on something. Yet the experience of lulls in consciousness content challenges this assumption. When you are asked the sempiternal question ‘What are you thinking about?’ and the only response that comes to your mind is ‘Nothing,’ it suggests that, while you were conscious, you weren’t conscious of anything. In a recent review, my colleagues – two neuroscientists (Athena Demertzi and Antoine Lutz) and a philosopher (Jennifer Windt) – and I defined these moments as ‘mind blanking’.

These gaps in the stream of thoughts are quite puzzling, as they suggest that consciousness is punctuated by ellipses that often go unnoticed. If this is true, then the idea that conscious life reflects a continuous flow of experiences might actually be an illusion.

To find out more about mind blanking, I’ve been taking a simple approach – interrupting research volunteers at random moments during a sustained concentration task (they have to press a button each time a digit appears on screen, but watch out for specific digits that don’t require a response). At these moments, I ask them to indicate the content of their thoughts, or absence thereof, at that moment – a method called ‘experience sampling’. When they’re offered the option to report ‘thinking about nothing’ alongside alternative options such as thinking about the task or mind wandering, participants typically choose the mind blanking option about 15 per cent of the time, which I found surprisingly high.

If you’re sceptical, you might naturally ask: how can we be sure that the participants’ minds really were blank? This is a fair question, and of course the objective study of consciousness is always somewhat limited by the fact its target phenomenon is subjective experience. However, there are ways we can scrutinise people’s subjective reports of their mind blanking – by examining their behaviour and their brain activity during these moments.

Mind blanking reflects a disruption of the stream of consciousness, similar to what occurs at sleep onset

In both these respects, mind blanking stands out. From a behavioural perspective, we find that, when someone’s mind is blank, they are also slower to respond (to the prompt to describe the content of their thoughts). This response profile contrasts with when they are task-focused, but also with mind wandering, during which they tend to respond more quickly than usual, presumably because they are less distracted by the task itself.

Brain activity is also distinct during mind blanking. Using fMRI to record the degree of activation and dialogue between brain regions, in a 2022 study, Demertzi and colleagues showed that mind blanking is associated with a specific pattern of hyperconnectivity. Instead of specific brain areas being in communication with certain other areas, there is a widespread, uniform increase in communication across the brain.

You might think that a more highly connected brain is a good thing. Up to a certain point, this is true, but hyperconnectivity can be detrimental for consciousness because it reflects a lack of functional organisation. Hyperconnectivity is a key feature of epileptic seizures, and it is also observed at sleep onset, when consciousness fades away.

In fact, mind blanking mirrors sleepiness in other ways. It is associated with signs of decreased physiological arousal, such as smaller pupils of the eye and a slower heartbeat. And in my own work that involved measuring the brain’s electrical activity, my team showed that, during mind blanking, your brain will tend to produce the slow waves of electrical activity that are reminiscent of sleep. This suggests that mind blanking reflects a disruption of the stream of consciousness, similar to the one that takes place at sleep onset. If confirmed, this could have significant implications. For example, it would mean that mind blanking should be particularly prevalent in individuals who are sleep deprived (and that’s exactly what Demertzi is finding in her research).

The idea that mind blanking might reflect a kind of sleep-like interruption of waking consciousness also helps make sense of the observation, by another research team, that adults and children with ADHD report mind blanking more frequently. At first, this may seem at odds with the idea that someone with ADHD has a mind that is too full rather than empty. However, both adults and children with ADHD frequently experience sleep difficulties, which could cause sleep-like intrusions into their waking lives. Indeed, I recently published a preprint that found the instances of mind blanking among participants with ADHD tended to co-occur with slow-wave activity in the brain, indicative of sleep intrusions within their wakefulness.

Despite these promising recent developments, the research on mind blanking is still in its early stages of trials and errors. A central question is how to grasp such an evanescent phenomenon. Mind blanking is so brief, it is usually over by the time we notice it, if ever. Catching mind blanks at random, using the experience-sampling approach, is like shooting in the dark. Maybe there is another way?

So far, I’ve been describing what Windt calls the ‘wild type’ of mind blanking: the mind blanks that occur spontaneously, perhaps because of tiredness. She contrasts these with the ‘cultivated type’: the way some meditative practices such as nirodha-samāpatti teach followers how to empty their mind intentionally, to reach a state of awareness unencumbered with an uncontrolled stream of thoughts.

Maybe mind blanking allows reparative functions to be carried out during wakefulness

Studying these states could help shed further light on the precise nature of wild mind blanking. For example, if research confirms that, during certain meditative states, people maintain self-awareness or a sense of time passing even with an empty mind, this would show that an absence of mental content doesn’t necessarily mean an absence of consciousness. In other words, when your mind goes blank of its own accord, ‘you’ are still consciously aware, even if you are not conscious of anything.

A key unresolved question is whether spontaneous mind blanking serves a function. When your mind goes blank momentarily, does this simply reflect a failure of your brain to maintain a level of arousal sufficient to keep your stream of consciousness flowing? Or, on the contrary, are your mind blanks a useful feature of your mental life that enable or prevent some other specific, beneficial process? Or maybe it is neither of those, but just an epiphenomenon without purpose or consequences.

The relationship between mind blanking and sleep intrusions might offer some clues. Sleep intrusions take the form of slow-wave brain activity, which is a key hallmark of sleep, directly implementing the restorative function of sleep. During sleep, slow waves rebalance synaptic weights, restore metabolic resources, help evacuate metabolic waste, and so on. When we are not doing anything particularly interesting, maybe mind blanking allows these reparative functions to be carried out during wakefulness. To find out if this is the case will require a combination of complex techniques to monitor not only neural activity but also brain metabolism and will likely keep me busy for the coming years.

If you occasionally find yourself blanking out, I hope you will be reassured to know that you are not alone, and that it often simply reflects a touch of fatigue. The next time it happens, you might also stop to marvel at the implications of your experience. Mind blanking challenges the long-held scientific assumption that being conscious means being conscious of something. It also invites us to reconsider what it means to be conscious, and highlights the diversity and dynamism of our mental life. Mind blanking may appear as a mere crack on the surface of consciousness, something subtle and easy to dismiss, yet this modest fissure conceals unexpected wonders.

Thomas Andrillon is a researcher at INSERM and the Paris Brain Institute studying how brain activity shapes cognition and consciousness. His work focuses on the moments in which our brains are neither completely awake nor completely asleep, combining electrophysiology and experimental psychology to explore the functional significance of these spontaneous modulations of brain activity.

Terrible English by PT sir: 😁😁

1) There is no wind in the football.. 😆

2) I talk, he talk, why you middle talk?. 😝

3) You rotate the ground 4 times.. 😳

4) You go and under-stand the tree. 😳😳

5) I'll give you clap on your cheeks.. 😓

6) Bring your parents, & your mother & especially your father. 😓😓

7) Close the window airforce is coming. 😂

8) I have two daughters and both are girls.. 😂😭

9) Stand in a straight circle.. 😆

10) Don't stand in front of my back 😱😭😭

11) Why Haircut not cut..? 😵😵

12) Don't make noise.. principal is rotating in the corridor 😂😂😂

13) Why are you looking at the monkey outside the window when I’m here? 😅

14) You talking bad habit 😁

15) Give me a red pen of any colour. 😖😓

16) Can i have some snow in my cold drink? 😭😭

17) Pick the paper and fall into the dustbin. 😜

18) Both of you stand together separately. 😝😝

19) Keep quiet the principal just passed away!! 😂😂😂😂😂....

Dont laugh alone throw it to all ....👍👍👍👌👌😜😜

https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/dieting-rules

The 3 rules your diet needs to actually work

Fed up with navigating all the tips telling you how to lose weight? Us too. So we asked an obesity expert to reveal whether anything actually works for weight loss.

https://aeon.co/essays/should-we-intensively-alter-coral-reefs-so-they-can-survive-the-heat

All our laws and rules to protect coral reefs now stand in the way of radical action to save them from heat death

https://atmos.earth/ecological-wisdom/a-new-fairy-lantern-is-found/

A New Fairy Lantern Is Found

words by willow defebaugh

“I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.” —Emily Dickinson

Nestled on the edge of a forest in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, an ethereal new plant species has been found. A variety of the fairy lantern, the elusive Thismia selangorensis flowers with a pale pink, translucent umbrella and tendrils that stretch skyward. Most of its unusual existence is spent hidden underground and in tree hollows. As a mycoheterotroph, it parasitically feeds on unseen mycorrhizal fungi—exploiting and drawing sustenance from their networks.

Mycoheterotrophs are few in the plant realm. Of some 400,000 known plant species in the world, only around 500 are mycoheterotrophs. Most plants form mutually symbiotic relationships with mycorrhizal fungi: Plants transform sunlight into sugar to feed the fungi, and the fungi give plants water and nutrients from the soil in return. But those like the fairy lantern “trick” fungi that are connected to other symbiotic plants, taking what is offered while giving nothing back.

The fairy lantern is shrouded in mystery, especially its otherworldly blooms. It blossoms irregularly, showcasing delicate flowers cloaked by dome-like tops called mitres that may protect it from rainfall (which is common in Kuala Lumpur and can be quite heavy during monsoon season). Accompanying this ornament are equally mysterious and delicate tentacles that may release chemicals to herald the flower’s emergence—a rare unveiling on the forest floor.

Aside from their whimsical appearance, fairy lanterns are aptly named. In Northern European folklore, fairies are known for their trickery and secrecy. In medieval times, they were feared for swapping out human children for shapeshifting changelings, spiriting babies from their cribs to unseen realms. Sprites, pixies, and fay could be benevolent guides or mischievous pranksters, appearing to forlorn travelers trying to find their way through the woods.

We are living in a time of fairy lanterns. All around us there are veiled entities that siphon our energy, attention, and well-being. The news, social media, and our devices drain us of our joy and our ability to focus—transporting us to domains behind the shimmer of metal and glass. We have traded our wandering for scrolling, but find ourselves lost nonetheless. The ripple of these forces on our mental health is subsurface, yet widely established.

Studies show that social media and digital technology, especially short-form content and frequent notifications, are linked to lower attention spans and higher anxiety and depression. Emerging research suggests this mirrors addiction: Dopamine surges reward us for scrolling, algorithms tailored to our behavior capitalize on our engagement, and separation anxiety keeps us reaching back. I’m not saying these platforms lack benefit, but I worry that they skew more parasitic.

So what are we reaching for? Ourselves, each other. Connection, belonging. Escape, novelty. There is still a world waiting to be explored outside our glowing screens, filled with marvels yet to be named. As a new year dawns, I want to focus my attention there as much as possible. And not every discovery is found with a lantern, looking for rarity aboveground. The bizarre is unpredictable. It can be tentacle-like in its flowering, subterranean and hidden within.

https://edition.cnn.com/science/autofocus-glasses-ixi-change-lenses-spc

Finnish eyewear company IXI is gearing up to launch smart glasses that look just like ordinary spectacles, but are able to “autofocus” based on the perceived needs of the wearer.

The glasses contain eye-tracking sensors as well as liquid crystals in the lenses, which are used to change the prescription instantaneously. The result, according to the company, is an improvement on current bifocal or varifocal lenses, both of which are meant for people who need assistance seeing both far and close distances, but come with drawbacks.

Bifocal lenses, whose invention is widely credited to Benjamin Franklin in the late 18th century, are split into two areas of different magnification, with the main area usually addressing long distance vision and a smaller cutout usually addressing reading or near vision.

A more recent upgrade to that classic design is the varifocal lens from the 1960s, which offers a similar solution but has a smooth, rather than abrupt, transition between the areas of magnification, aiming for a more seamless vision.

Both require the user to look through the correct part of the lens to focus on objects near or far, and while varifocals are credited with a smoother user experience, they also cause distortions in peripheral vision and require an adaptation period, on top of being several times more expensive than regular or bifocal lenses.

By using a dynamic lens, IXI does away with fixed magnification areas: “Modern varifocals have this narrow viewing channel because they’re mixing basically three different lenses,” said Niko Eiden, CEO of IXI. “There is far sight, intermediate and short distance, and you can’t seamlessly blend these lenses. So, there are areas of distortion, the sides of the lenses are quite useless for the user, and then you really have to manage which part of this viewing channel you’re looking at.”

The IXI glasses, Eiden said, will have a much larger “reading” area for close-up vision — although still not as large as the entire lens — and it will also be positioned “in a more optimal place,” based on the user’s standard eye exam. But the biggest plus, Eiden added, is that most of the time, the reading area simply disappears, leaving the main prescription for long distance on the entire lens.

“For seeing far, the difference is really striking, because with varifocals you have to look at the top part of the lens in order to see far. With ours, you have the full lens area to see far — as you were used to when you were slightly younger,” Eden explained, referring to people who had glasses for distance vision from their teens or early adulthood, before starting to also need reading glasses, like most people as they get older.

IXI has 75 employees and has raised just over $40 million funding. Its autofocus glasses will launch within the next year and will cost more than regular ones, Eiden said, without giving specifics: “We will be in the really high end of existing eyewear.”

The new glasses won’t come without drawbacks, Eiden admits: “This will be yet another product that you need to charge,” he said. Although the charging port is magnetic and cleverly hidden in the temple area, overnight charging will be required. However, the electronics and battery don’t have much of an impact on the appearance of the glasses, which could easily be mistaken for regular ones. They also weigh roughly the same, with one of the latest prototypes weighing just 22 grams (0.78 ounces).

Some visual distortions are also expected: “In our lens, of course, there is this blend area,” Eiden explained. “The center part is the sharp area, and then there is the edge where the liquid crystal stops and which is not that great to look into, but the center area is large enough that you can use that for reading. So, we do have our own distortions that we’re introducing, but the majority of the time, they will not be visible.”

Another limitation is that more testing is required to make the glasses safe for driving, Eiden said, adding that in case of a malfunction of the electronics or the liquid crystal area, the glasses are equipped with a failsafe mode that shuts them down to the base state of the main lens, which would usually be distance vision, without creating any visual disturbances.

The user’s eyes are tracked by an array of photodiodes — which convert light into electrical signals — and LEDs; together, they bounce invisible infrared light off the eyes and then measure the reflection, to infer what the user is looking at.

While IXI said it is designing the glasses for everyday use, which includes dealing with temperature changes, moisture and user movement, the company has yet to disclose under which specific conditions the glasses will be able to function optimally.

Ian Murray, a professor of visual neuroscience at the University of Manchester, in England, who’s not involved with IXI, said that in principle the autofocus glasses are an excellent idea, although initially they will have limited application and will be regarded as a novelty: “It is all perfectly feasible from a physics viewpoint,” he wrote in an email to CNN. He added that there are still questions left to answer, such as how wide the field of vision will really be and how the glasses will behave in low lighting conditions.

Other companies are also developing autofocus glasses that use liquid crystals to create an adaptive lens, including Japan’s Elcyo. Another Japanese company, ViXion, already sells autofocusing glasses, although they don’t look like normal glasses and the user must look through two small apertures to get the autofocus effect.

IXI’s glasses, which will be manufactured in Finland, will launch in Europe first, after the company has European regulatory approval, and it will later pursue FDA approval for US release, with the rest of the world to follow. Only “two or three” different shapes will be available at the beginning, but in different widths.

Eiden equates the arrival of autofocus glasses to the introduction of autofocus in cameras: “The eyewear industry hasn’t really been innovating for vision correction,” he said. “After varifocals, there has been basically nothing. That’s really what we want to change. Maybe 10, 15 years from now people will be wondering, how did we wear those fixed focus glasses in the old days?”