A Dartmouth study finds that the conscious perception of visual location occurs in the frontal lobes of the brain, rather than in the visual system in the back of the brain. The findings are published in Current Biology. The results are significant given the ongoing debate among neuroscientists on what consciousness is and where it happens in the brain.

"Our study provides clear evidence that the visual system is not representing what we see but is representing the physical world,” said lead author, Sirui Liu, a graduate student of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth.

To examine how the perception of position occurs in the brain, participants were presented with visual stimuli and asked to complete a series of behavioral tasks while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. For one of the tasks, participants were asked to stare at a fixed black dot on the left side of the computer screen inside the scanner while a dot that flickered between black and white, known as a Gabor patch, moved in the periphery. Participants were asked to identify the direction the patch was moving. The patch appears to move across the screen at a 45 degree angle, when in fact it is moving up and down in a vertical motion. Here, the perceived path is strikingly different from the actual physical path that lands on the retina. This creates a "double-drift” illusion. The direction of the drift was randomized across the trials, where it drifted either towards the left, right or remained static.

Using fMRI data and multivariate pattern analysis, a method for studying neural activation patterns, the team investigated where the perceived path, tilted left or right from vertical, appears in the brain. On average, participants reported that the perceived motion path was different from the actual path by 45 degrees or more. The researchers found that while the visual system collects the data, the switch between coding the physical path and coding the perceived path (illusory path) takes place outside of the visual cortex all the way in the frontal areas, which are higher-order brain regions.

"Our data firmly support that frontal areas are critical to the emergence of conscious perception," explained study co-author and co-principal investigator, Patrick Cavanagh. "While previous research has long established the frontal lobes are responsible for functions such as decision-making and thinking, our findings suggest that this area of the brain is also the end step for perceiving where objects are. So, that's kind of radical," he added.

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Complaining Changes Your Brain

When we get caught up in the habit of continually complaining, in the form of thoughts in our heads or out loud to anyone and everyone we come into contact with, it will directly alter our thought processes. Altered thoughts lead to altered beliefs, which will inevitably lead to a change in behavior.

In fact, our brain possesses something that is called the negativity bias, meaning that the brain has a tendency to focus more on what's wrong via our perception, not what's going right or the positive events in our life. These negative thoughts can actually drown out the lighter experiences over time so that you aren't able to even see the good events that are taking place in your life.

Neuroscientist, Dr. Rick Hanson sums up the negativity bias quite nicely, "Negative Stimuli produce more neural activity than do equally intensive positive ones. They are also perceived more easily and quickly." So, by continually allowing ourselves to complain we are strengthening this behavior, as mentioned above, the first step towards changing this is to become aware of the problem. That alone, will make see the issue and likely ponder on your negative thoughts.

This isn't to say that we always need to "think positive" a common new-age misconception, but we should take the necessary action steps to move beyond the effects of thinking negatively all the time.

A simple and effective technique is to wear a "complaining bracelet". You simply wear a bracelet, any kind that can easily come off, and every time you catch yourself complaining about something, in your head or out loud to someone else, you switch wrists so you can be aware of what is happening. To hold yourself accountable, let your family, friends, and co-workers know of your challenge so in case you don't realize that you're complaining, they can call you out too. The goal is to see how long you can go without having to switch the bracelet, but this technique is also powerful for showing you how much you are actually complaining in the first place.

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Silence is Healthy

Studies have shown that excessive environmental noise not only decreases one's quality of life and cognitive function, but also reduces lifespan. The good news is that spending time in silence can reverse these effects.

A study from 2011 in Psychological Science examined the effects Munich's airport had on children's health and cognition. Professor Gary W. Evans of Cornell University noted that the children who were exposed to noise developed a stress response that caused them to ignore the noise. These children not only ignored harmful noises, but also regular stimuli that are important to pay attention to like speech. Wonder why people have trouble paying attention these days? Perhaps we are exposed to too much noise and too many sounds.

Noise has been linked to high blood pressure, heart disease, tinnitus, and loss of sleep. Living in consistently noisy environments will cause you to experience much higher levels of these harmful hormones.

An interesting study observed the effects of noise, music, and silence on the brain. The study was published in the journal Heart and found that the two minute pauses randomly placed between the "relaxing music" in the study were far more relaxing for the brain than the relaxing music. The longer the silence, the more benefits experienced by the participants. Study author L. Bernardi found that his "irrelevant" blank pauses were the most important aspects of the study. Silence is heightened by contrast.

So, what can you do if you experience a lot of noise and are looking to avoid loud noises or simply take a break? Firstly, the good news is that the brain recovers from too much noise over time. According to the attention restoration theory, the brain's finite cognitive resources can begin restoring when you are in an environment with lower levels of sensory input. In silence, the brain essentially lets down its sensory guard and restores some of what has been ‘lost' through excess noise.

The practical end of this would look like making an extra effort to be or spend time in silence. This means no music, movies, friends, conversations, phone chimes, etc, even if it's only for 30 minutes or an hour each day.

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Feeling Prayer

This is an ancient technique of using the imagination to manifest or actualize a desired state or circumstance. The bridge, if you will, from the imagination to the temporal world is our ability to FEEL. What we feel is what manifests as our experience--not the other way around. We are not feeling as a result of our experience. We are experiencing as a result of what we feel. It's this confusion that blocks and confuses all of us incarnees down here on Planet Rock. By understanding this basic concept, it's then a simple matter of consciously FEELING what you want to experience. And in short order, it WILL come to pass. This is because we've already started the motion of sub-atomic particle-waves and force fields necessary to bring whatever it is to physical manifestation by our feeling. There is time in there, the amount depending on the depth and consistency of feeling. And that is where the skill comes in. Feeling prayer is a skill, requiring mindfulness, imagination and desire. All of those things most of us have been mis-informed as to how to use, even though they are our most powerful standard equipment. (Gregg Braden on Feeling Prayer 8:53 mp3). From 25 No Cost Health & Healing Hacks by Boyd Martin)

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Spiritual Seeing

In many shamanistic traditions and many ancient tribal cultures there's the concept of "seeing" where what is seen is from the viewpoint that everything is energy. A person who "sees" perceives not only the mundane form before them, but also where it came from, where it is going, how it is connected to the world in colors, energy flows, gravitational waves and even how what is seen relates to the personal experience of the seer, including their dreamtime and waking thoughts.

In "modern" society there is the unfortunate tradition of separating the physical world from the participant. You've got the world inside you, and another world "out there". As a result, life seems to happen to us, instead of as a result of us. We are tricked into believing that to get what we desire in life we must "work hard", be "committed to success", and structure our entire approach to life around commercial activities--either creating a consumable product, or working for others to make theirs.

We get so convinced about this control contrivance that we seldom step back and really look at what is happening to us. And when we do, it's so shocking that we either quickly look away, or head directly into a spiritual crisis.

For those of us who have stared into the abyss of this crisis of "seeing", it inevitably leads to a falling away of the illusory constructs of daily living, and if we stick with it, we'll go through the five stages of loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. It is at the final acceptance stage that we begin to truly "SEE". We see the motivations of our loved ones, we see the control mechanisms of society, we see how we sabotaged our personal power, and how we enabled the master-slave game of modern economics.

There's a sixth step, another stage in "seeing", and that is allowance. By seeing how we came to see, everything that happened becomes a hero's story. We woke up from our slave dream, looked around and saw context--how through the choices we made, we reached an equanimity about living.

By embracing this allowance, the divine intention of creation starts to reveal itself: the intricate patterns of human interactions, and the creative matrix of intention leading us all to a greater awareness of ourselves and others. We start to see that if it weren't for the pain, suffering, doubt and denial, we wouldn't have ended up at a higher place. Everything that has happened, happened for a reason, and that reason is to experience who we are deep, deep down, far, far in. It is the hero's journey of being you for the Creator.

There is an unfoldment happening where everything we perceive can be attributed to divine intent where all things are perfect in their way, and all of our choices only lead to greater love and joy.

Lately, there has been a good deal of attention put on what is called "spiritual bypassing", where only gumdrops and roses, unicorns and rainbows are allowed, and where perceived "negatives" are avoided at all costs. Others are judged and convicted by what appears to be their negative circumstances. This type of "fascism of the light" is a control drama, and a denial of the darkness; and it is a procrastination to total acceptance. What is missing here is the seeing of even darkness as light.

Without looking at the unconscious darkness within ourselves; allowing, embracing and illuminating it, there can be no enlightenment, no transformation of the inherent pain and suffering into the native state of love and joy.

By seeing into the darkness with loving allowance, we expand our light and automatically bring more love into the world.

To your quantum health,

Boyd Martin
Pureenergyrx.com

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