Experience Archives - Page 3 of 4

Sudoku, Provisional Assessments,
and the Space of Possibilities

February 6, 2024 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

I enjoy working Sudoku puzzles, especially the hard or challenger level, and I always look forward to the super challenger puzzles on the back pages of Dell’s Crazy for Sudoku books that take days to complete. (They look like the puzzle pictured above.)

A friend once said that she’d completed a Sudoku puzzle and, having solved it, did not see a point in doing it again. Certainly completing a puzzle successfully is one point of Sudoku, but for me it’s the incomplete puzzle that’s juicy, especially if I’m struggling with it and not sure I’ll be able to solve it.

Sudoku puzzles are a great example of one of the aspects of existential troublesome knowledge I talked about in the last blog post: what we don’t know exceeds and is more important than what we know. The numbers that are not filled in are more important than the numbers that are filled in. And there’s no way to know at the outset which numbers go in which blank spaces. You can only find out by taking action. As you fill in more numbers, you get more information, and eventually you solve the puzzle. This is a life lesson some of us struggle to learn.

There’s always a point where I feel stuck, at least with some hard or challenger level puzzles. I can’t find a next number to fill in. I used to get frustrated when I was stuck, but after going through this process so many times, I’m quite familiar with it and am no longer frustrated by it. I think Sudoku has trained my brain to recognize that being stuck is a temporary condition and so I actually appreciate the experience now.

I don’t know if or how I will solve the puzzle, but I now appreciate the space of not knowing, of uncertainty, because it’s also the space of possibilities. This is the same space I get into when I’m grappling with a conceptual problem or puzzle. And in both Sudoku and conceptual problem-solving, one is more likely to arrive at a “solution,” by trying different approaches.

If the only puzzles I have available are easy or medium level, I create “rules” to make them at least a little bit more challenging. I would never, for example, start by filling in all the 1s, 5s, or 9s I can fill in because that’s too easy. But in a challenger level puzzle, I would definitely start that way in order to get at least a few spaces filled in.

In Sudoku, there is only one correct solution to the puzzle. The same isn’t necessarily so for conceptual puzzles where my aim is usually to arrive at a provisional assessment rather than a definitive conclusion because in the conceptual world we never have all the information. But I don’t think this difference is particularly significant, and I heartily recommend activities like Sudoku to train the brain to appreciate uncertainty and to sort of force ourselves to recognize how much we don’t know—and how neither condition is either fatal or even undesirable.

Moving around Inside the Space of Possibilities

The fact that what we don’t know is more important than what we know has been a subject of discussion in classes, workshops, and individual meetings. I asked a couple of different groups to consider, write about, and summarize their responses to statements that described different aspects of our lack of knowledge. Here’s what they had to say. (The statements they are responding to are in italics.)

Our predictions about the future are constrained by the present.

When we try to imagine our future, we can only see a small slice of possibility—based on our current mental model. The same is true about understanding our past—we do so based on who we are in the present. When we move to a different rock, we see new things and, to some extent, lose sight of what we saw before. —Susie

We are driven to make sense of the world, whether or not the world makes sense.

It never occurred to me that one would not be able to make sense of the world. Why, all one has to do is work hard enough, read, listen, observe, and have the intelligence to integrate all the available information, and understanding will come. Right? I’ve long assumed that the world not making much sense (in many ways) was a failure on my part (I’m obviously not getting it all, nor fast enough) because of course all things must be understandable, given the right type and amount of information/instruction etc. —Lisa

Our brain habitually constructs coherent and compelling stories—tailor-made for each of us—based on the information available and our mental model of the world.

We seem to live in some illusion of reality or a unique reality to each of us that is constantly shifting towards a pre-existing story that the brain has developed. We aren’t aware of the information that the brain is picking, discarding, ignoring or overlooking until after the fact. How to consciously participate in this story of our own reality? If it’s based on the information available to us and on our mental model of the world then it’s necessary to expand both, to become aware of what the brain is choosing to add to the stories. —Imelda

We prioritize cause-and-effect explanations and discount randomness (because we can’t account for it).”

How can we imagine a future without our history? Can I only imagine a future rooted in my past or can I possibly imagine a future untold? To understand that we are not divining our future but to accept that randomness plays a role in a possible eventuality serves up the possibility for change. —Sammie

Each of us is weaving stories, not uncovering absolute truth.

There are facts. 2+2=4. Truths are when we try to assign meanings to our perceptions of something that happened. Each of us has our own way of assigning meanings so no truths can be absolute, or shared by everyone. So we might as well weave beautiful stories, or at least useful ones. —Ann

We mistake perception for reality.

My perceptions seem to be more on the trees and not the forest. Actions and thoughts seem to be driven by a false narrative of what I perceive to be true. I can base life itself on little discussion and shoot from the hip decisions made in the small dark damp room on my shoulders, without much input from “me.” —Kelly

Our predictions about the future are constrained by coherence.

The future is way more exciting with those blinders noted. I am not even confined by my imagined trajectory! Why not create? —Adam

Onward

I invite you to consider these statements for yourself, along with the comments prompted by them. Where do they take you?

Asking ourselves what we don’t know in a given situation is useful even if we can’t answer that question just because it’s a reminder that we are always—100% of the time—operating based on limited information. Could there be something we don’t know, the knowing of which would change everything?

Existential Troublesome Knowledge

January 18, 2024 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

There’s troublesome knowledge—and then there’s existential troublesome knowledge.

The concept of troublesome knowledge was developed in academia and has since been applied and utilized in many academic and non-academic areas including scientific exploration, mathematics, politics, finance, history, and even writing.

To refresh, knowledge is troublesome when it:

conflicts with preexisting beliefs, especially if those beliefs are deeply held
is counterintuitive or seems illogical
is complex or difficult to understand
is disconcerting
requires a (transformational) change in self-perception

Troublesome knowledge within a field of inquiry or endeavor is one thing. But troublesome knowledge about the very nature of how we as humans function and our experience in and of the world—i.e., existential troublesome knowledge—is something else altogether. It’s troublesomeness squared, at the very least.

Many of our most basic assumptions about ourselves…are false. —Leonard Mlodinow, Subliminal

Phenomenal Individualism and Its Implications

The pursuit of existential troublesome knowledge leads us to a number of inescapable conclusions that point in the direction of what has been called phenomenal individualism.

Our experience is not an accurate reflection of reality, which means things are not as they seem.
We cannot fully know or access the experience of any other person or creature.
What we don’t know far exceeds what we know, and no matter how much we learn, this will always be the case; yet we operate as if what we see is all there is (WYSIATI).
Not only is everything everywhere in motion all the time, but everything (including each of us) is a process, and everything is an interpretation.
Rather than being, or resembling, a mechanical system, each of us is a complex adaptive system, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
These factors all constrain our experience of being in the world—and there is no way out of these constraints—but they also create a space of possibilities, including the possibility of creating transformational change.

I believe the fact that our experience is not an accurate reflection of reality is the foundational threshold concept that we must get (incorporate into our mental model) in order to grasp the nature of our existence and experience: our space of possibilities.

You may recall that threshold concepts are likely to be, among other things:

Transformative: they lead to a significant shift in perspective that alters our sense of who we are as well as what we see, the way we see it, and how we feel and think about it.
Irreversible: they involve crossing a “threshold,” after which our previous understanding is no longer readily accessible.
Integrated: they reveal relationships and connections of aspects and ideas that were previously seen as unrelated.
Troublesome: they are difficult concepts to grasp and are therefore troublesome (see troublesome knowledge above).

The Space of Possibilities

What you or I make of the characteristics that circumscribe our existence—how we interpret them and work with them—depends on our mental model of the world, which includes our personality and our beliefs.

Do you find the idea that things are not only not as they seem, but never as they seem disturbing, confusing, trivial, or intriguing?

Is the idea that the extent of what we don’t know will always be far greater than the extent of what we know frustrating, obvious, or expansive?

Does knowing that everything you experience is the result of your brain’s interpretation of data that other brains are very likely interpreting differently make you curious or does it feel unnerving or even threatening?

The Thin Slice

It has become clear that our brains sample just a small bit of the surrounding physical world. —David Eagleman, Incognito

Although what Eagleman says is true, and it’s possible to grasp the concept intellectually, it is simply impossible for us to experience. That’s because our brain is continuously assessing and interpreting the data it has access to as if it is all the data there is. How else could it operate?

If we really understand and acknowledge this aspect of reality—that we are always working with limited information we treat as if it is all the information—we must realize that a likely majority of the conclusions and explanations we take for granted are inaccurate, sometimes extremely so. Our brain can’t take into account factors of which it is unaware. Yet there are always factors that affect us of which we and our brain are unaware.

The conclusions and explanations we arrive at daily are often good enough for us to get by—not so erroneous they threaten our survival. But that isn’t always the case. And even if they don’t threaten our survival, they can modify our mental model in ways that lead to maladaptive perceptions of our internal and external world. Taking all of our perceptions for granted can have detrimental effects on our experience and therefore on our actions in and reactions to the world, as well as our wellbeing, and our relationships with others.

We are not significantly different from humans of the past who didn’t believe in the existence of germs or bacteria because they couldn’t see them with the naked eye. Or humans who believed the earth was the center of the solar system. Or that the brain was a useless organ—or that we only use 10% of it. Or that our memories are accurate, and eye-witness accounts are reliable.

When more information was obtained, we modified our understanding of germs and the solar system and the brain and memory and eye-witness accounts. We have enough information now to modify our understanding of how we operate and how our experience is based on our interpretations.

If we don’t, or don’t want to, understand this thing called phenomenal individualism, we will constantly be at the effect of our mistaken beliefs, locked into a perceptual and experiential system within which we have very little room to maneuver and no room at all to create transformational change.

On the other hand, we can step into and take an active role within this space of possibilities.

More to come!

The Scent of Water;
The Smell of Rain

January 11, 2024 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Humans are not the only creatures processing numerous streams of sensory data in order to determine what’s out there in the world and what to do about it. Many of the animals and insects we share the planet with are doing the same thing, of course, some with very different capacities from ours: more taste receptors, wider ranges of hearing, and even sensory systems we don’t have. They inhabit the same physical world we do, but their experiences are vastly different from ours because they have different or different-capacity receptors.

What you are able to experience is completely limited by your biology. This differs from the commonsense view that our eyes, ears, and fingers passively receive an objective physical world outside of ourselves. —David Eagleman, Incognito

What You See Is…What You See

When it comes to visual perception, jumping spiders can see a broader spectrum of light, and geckos have vastly superior night vision. The vision of eagles is eight times sharper than human vision, making it possible for them to track prey from a mile away. Cats and dogs see only two colors, but butterflies and rats see ultraviolet and reptiles see infrared light, both of which humans can’t see.

Then there are bats, who in spite of their reputation, are not really blind. They just have very small and very sensitive eyes that operate effectively in extreme darkness. Their vision isn’t as sharp or colorful as human vision because they don’t need that. On the other hand, they have a sense we don’t: echolocation. According to the National Park Service:

[Bats] produce sound waves at frequencies above human hearing, called ultrasound. The sound waves emitted by bats bounce off objects in their environment. Then, the sounds return to the bats’ ears, which are finely tuned to recognize their own unique calls.

Bats use echolocation for hunting, but also for searching and “social calls.” Each species has its own call, and they can change their calls depending on the purpose. You can hear some bat sounds here. Bat calls sound sort of like birds.

The Scent of Water; the Smell of Rain

Most people know that dogs have a stronger sense of smell than humans, but there are claims that the sense of smell of African elephants, who need to drink 70-100 liters of water a day, is even stronger. They have about 2,000 olfactory sensors and five times as many genes for smell and supposedly can detect water sources over 10 miles away. But water is odorless, so what do they actually smell? There hasn’t been much research to date, but results so far suggest elephants might smell the VOCs (volatile organic chemicals) in the water.

As an aside, the smell of rain most of us are familiar with is called petrichor, a term coined by Australian scientists in the 1960s. Petrichor is a combination of water from the rain and ozone, plant oils, and a chemical called geosmin, which results when the first drops of rain interact with airborne bacterial spores. We can detect geosmin at less than 5 parts per trillion, which needless to say is an extremely small amount.

Other creatures that have a superior sense of smell include silvertip grizzly bears, great white sharks, kiwi birds, turkey vultures, and bloodhounds.

Hear, Hear

Moths, bats, elephants, owls, dogs, cats, horses, dolphins, rats, and pigeons all have hearing that exceeds the human capacity of 20 Hz–20 kHz. The greater wax moth can hear frequencies up to 300 kHz, 15 times higher than the highest pitched sounds we can hear.

While a human ear consists of three muscles and the three smallest bones in the body, a cat’s ears are controlled by around three dozen muscles per ear which allows them to rotate their ears 180 degrees. Cats are able to stalk small, fast prey in low light, so they have to be able to hear sounds that are quiet and that have a higher pitch. They can hear sounds almost two octaves higher than humans can detect and an octave higher than dogs. (So should dog whistles really be called cat whistles?)

Our African elephant friends, on the other hand, can hear and communicate via infrasonic sound which is in a lower range (14 Hz to 16 Hz) than humans can detect. The wide-set ears on their large heads funnel in sound waves from the environment

Cookie Monster Kitty

When it comes to taste, pigs and cows have more tastebuds than humans, 15,000 and 25-35,000, respectively, compared to our 10,000. Both pigs and cows are herbivores and the additional tastebuds help them distinguish poisonous from nonpoisonous plants. So all those additional tastebuds definitely aid in their survival. Birds, on the other hand have far fewer tastebuds than humans. Chickens have only around 30.

It’s not just the number of tastebuds that determines how things taste to animals or humans. Cats don’t have tastebuds for sugar because sugar isn’t important for their survival. I did have a cat many years ago who was really into Stella D’oro cookies—the variety pack that you can’t get anymore. The cookies weren’t safe even when they were in a covered container. She once leapt into the air and grabbed one out of my partner’s hand as he was in the process of trying to take a bite of it.

Carnivores, including dogs and cats, have tastebuds at the tips of their tongues that are especially attuned to water. And catfish have their whopping 175,000 tastebuds spread all over their bodies, skin, and fins. They can detect a taste in the water from miles away. They need this ability to help them find food because the murky water where they hunt has such low visibility.

Reach Out and…

While catfish can taste at a distance, manatees can touch at a distance. Instead of tastebuds, a manatee’s body is covered with tactile hairs that allow it to feel objects without coming into contact with them, even if those objects are not nearby.

Seals have such finely tuned whiskers they can track fish that are more than 600 feet away in murky water. The nearly-blind star-nosed mole has a nasal appendage covered in 25,000 sensory receptors (compared to 17,000 in a human hand), as a result of which it is the fastest-foraging mammal in the world.

Sci-Fi Senses

As mentioned previously, some animals have senses humans don’t have, such as echolocation (used by dolphins as well as bats), electroreception (the ability to sense electrical currents or fields, used by aquatic and amphibious animals), or magnetoreception (the ability to perceive the Earth’s magnetic field, used by homing pigeons and pregnant sea turtles).

Our Experience is Not an Accurate Reflection of Reality

Whether an individual has a sensory processing disorder, a sensory enhancement, or better or worse sensing abilities than their fellow humans or other creatures, we all exist in the same physical world that contains the same material processes and properties. We do not, however, experience the world in the same way, which means our experience is not an accurate reflection of reality. We have receptors that provide us with the type and quantity of sensory data that is good enough, that is sufficient to allow us to be us, to experience specific aspects of the world (our umwelt, as biologist Jakob von Uexküll named it) but not others, to maneuver within that world, to mate and continue the species, to survive.

If our sensory capacities were different, our experiences would be different, and we would be different. As a thought experiment, try to imagine what your experience might be and who you might be if, for example:

You had the eyesight of an eagle that can identify objects a mile away
You had only 30 tastebuds
You could detect water a mile away
You had the hearing of a cat
You could feel objects without coming into contact with them

What would be the benefit or drawback of any of these—or other—altered sensory perceptual capacities? Is there a sensory capacity you, as a human, have that you’d be willing to trade or have modified for the sensory capacity of another creature?

I would definitely not want to have only 30 tastebuds or the hearing of a cat. I’m not too keen on being able to feel objects at a distance, either. That seems invasive and disruptive. I could take or leave detecting water a mile away; I wouldn’t be willing to trade anything to have it. The eyesight of an eagle is appealing, though. I imagine it would create expansiveness, the sense of inhabiting a larger world. I’m not sure I’d be willing to trade anything I already have to get it. I’ll have to do some writing and thinking about it.

Coming up soon: more on the umwelt and a shift from physiological processing to psychological processing.

Supersensory Perception

January 4, 2024 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Our brain is constantly weighing and calculating (interpreting) multiple internal and external factors and inputs to arrive at its predictions—all within the context of what is normal for us—to determine what is going on and to prepare our response.

The neural wiring that generates perception is not identical, person-to-person. One outcome of this is what we could consider a diminishment of perception (color blindness, face blindness, aphantasia, for example). An outcome on the other end of the spectrum of so-called sensory processing disorders is a supersense—not the superhero variety, but an enhanced ordinary sense.

Those of us who don’t have any super senses probably don’t think much about them. But surprisingly, 25% of the population has heightened taste sensitivity. These people, known as supertasters, tend to have more tastebuds on their tongues, and some have a genetic mutation of a receptor for bitter taste.

Other super senses are tactile hypersensitivity, which makes ordinary tactile sensations painful or bothersome, hyperosmia, enhanced sense of smell, which can be a result of genetics, a medical condition, or training, and hyperacusis, super sound, which is generally a result of disease or some other medical condition.

The Color Purple

Tetrachromacy is a genetic mutation that allows some people to distinguish 100 times more colors than the rest of us, which is mindboggling, given we can normally distinguish around a million different hues. But colors are not objective properties of objects in the world. Allen Tager, a Russian American artist and cognitive scientist, noticed that the color violet was virtually absent from paintings completed before the Impressionist era, beginning in 1863. He attempted to determine why this was the case. In reporting on his research in Aeon, he noted:

International surveys showed that people tend to be unsure about exactly what constitutes the colour violet. The same person who describes an object’s colour as violet today might describe it as purple, blue, magenta, fuchsia or burgundy tomorrow. Language plays a role, too—there’s a difference even between British English and American English. The colour beyond blue on the spectrum is called purple in the US, but violet in the UK. Reddish-purple is sometimes called violet in the US, but hardly so in Britain. The complete range of colours between red and blue is often called purple in British texts, but sometimes the word violet is used, too.

Neuroscientist Anil Seth points out that colors only exist in the interaction between our brain and the physical world. They exist neither out there in the world nor in here inside the brain. They are essentially constructed.

Several years ago, I used ink color to differentiate categories in a print document I shared with a number of other people. The shade of green I selected for one of the categories looked green to me both in print and on the computer, and the computer program identified it as green. But so many people saw it as a shade of brown or gray that I changed the color to something more obviously green. Consensus reality as determined by myself, the other people who saw green, and the computer program said that seeing green was the correct perception. But does it make sense to deem a different perception wrong?

People with hypersensitivities don’t tend to experience them as enhancements, meaning they don’t automatically enjoy them. Of course, if the cause is genetic, they have nothing to compare their experience with, just as those of us who don’t have a hypersensitivity have nothing to compare our experience with. But for the most part, moment-to-moment we have nothing to compare any of our experiences with.

Again, we can’t tell by looking at someone, whether or not they have any hypersensitivity, unless perhaps they’re in a situation where they’re confronted with a stimulus.

Additional Senses

The brain also receives additional sensory information beyond the five basic senses. Other sensory systems include vestibular (balance), proprioception (body position), kinesthesia (movement), nociception (pain), and thermoception (temperature).

Scientists are still trying to determine why people with red hair have differences in regard to pain threshold (lower), pain sensitivity (higher), and response to pain medication (higher or lower depending on the type of drug), but they do.

A friend I used to spend a lot of time outdoors with—walking, hiking, or lazing—would start seeking shade when the temperature approached 70 degrees, the point at which I was just starting to enjoy the warmth. She spent New Mexico summers inside with the air conditioner on and the blinds closed. I haven’t used indoor cooling for the past 10 years.

Including these additional five senses doubles the types of sensory data our brain is tracking in order to keep us alive and provide us with a sense of what’s happening to and around us in order to determine what we ought to do about it. Like the original five senses, we tend to take these senses for granted unless we begin having trouble maintaining our balance or we develop chronic pain, at which point the brain will bring the change in the status quo to our attention.

When you’re tempted to fall back on the belief that you experience the world as it is, try to imagine some of the millions of colors you can’t see…and name them.

Sensing and Perceiving
the Physical World

December 27, 2023 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Sensation is the information the brain receives; perception is the result of the brain selecting, organizing, and interpreting this information. We don’t experience the sensory data directly; we experience the result of the brain’s processing of it.

As an aside, some people consider sensation to be a physical process, while perception is a psychological process. We may talk about and think about the physical and the psychological as being two distinct domains, but the brain that receives sensory data also does the interpreting that gives rise to perception. It doesn’t make a distinction between the physiological and the psychological in this or in any other regard.

An example of the difference between sensation and perception is prosopagnocia, a neurological disorder experienced by about one in 50 people, including neuroscientist Oliver Sacks. More commonly known as face blindness, it’s the inability to recognize faces, including one’s own in a mirror. Prosopagnocia is not a result of memory dysfunction or loss, impaired vision, or learning disabilities. The sensory data is input, so to speak, but the brain can’t interpret it so there is no perception.

While an interpretation—anyone’s, of anything—can be more or less accurate, it is always approximate. As Daniel Gilbert said, there isn’t a view from nowhere. All interpretations are based in a point of view from a particular brain at a particular point in time, so interpretations are inherently limited and slanted—and they vary both from individual to individual and within individuals at different times and under different circumstances.

“Normal” vs “Abnormal”

We tend to think that there is always a correct interpretation (perception) of an object or an event—that objects and events and their properties exist in an immutable state independent of us. And if we apply the appropriate lens, we believe we can achieve complete, or nearly complete, accuracy in our perception. At the same time, we tend to assume (operate as if) we are perceiving correctly.

So it’s tempting, not to mention less troublesome, to view others’ experiences or perceptions—especially when they don’t match ours—as missing the mark somehow. There’s an error in their, or their brain’s, calculations. One example is color blindness (also called color deficiency—see what I mean?), which has a genetic basis. Another example is tone deafness. There are many more, including:

Aphantasia: the inability to create a visual mental image of something that isn’t present.
Synesthesia: a sort of mixing up of sensory pathways in the brain (experiencing letters of the alphabet as having colors or associating a smell with a word).
Misophonia (aka soft sound sensitivity): a disorder in which certain repetitive sounds like gum chewing or paper crinkling automatically trigger powerful negative emotional responses.

And don’t forget prosopagnocia.

Clearly color blindness, aphantasia, synesthesia, misophonia, and other such conditions provide individuals with different experiences of reality than we might consider the norm. But does it make sense to say it’s wrong to experience the letter “M” as orange or the color green as smelling like cilantro? Richard Feynman had synesthesia and saw his equations in colors. Far from being wrong, this sounds pretty great to me, although that’s coming from a point of view of not having the experience.

Is there something wrong with that fellow over there who can’t mentally visualize a field of poppies or fluorescent purple mushrooms or a galloping horse? Aphantasia, unlike synesthesia, seems tragic to me; I can’t imagine I would be the same person if I didn’t have the vivid visual imagination I have. But how could one miss it if they never had it to begin with?

Is it wrong that the crinkling of paper or chewing of gum elicits a fight or flight response in that woman seated the next row over on the plane? She just seems to be overreacting and behaving rudely. Misophonia doesn’t seem desirable to me in any way. Of the few conditions I’ve included here, it’s the one that people who have it are perhaps most likely to view as being abnormal. That’s because it can cause problems beyond the purely sensory. It can create a lot of stress in personal relationships or interactions and in social settings. Many sufferers and the people they interact with tend to think it’s a psychological problem, meaning they could control their response if they tried harder. Or they need therapy. Nevertheless, it is an example of the brain sensing and perceiving (interpreting) sensory data and providing a resulting experience. It’s no different from any other instance of sensory processing.

External vs. Internal

The conditions described above all relate to the processing, interpretation, and experiencing of external sensory data. Enough research has been done on how the brain processes external sensory data to allow scientists to map the parts of the brain associated with them.

But there’s still much to learn about how the brain processes internal sensory information. How does it sense and organize feedback from internal organs to regulate hunger, satiation, thirst, nausea, pain, breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, etc.?

Scientists think that internal sensing may be more complicated than external sensing because, according to cell biologist Chen Ran:

[I]nternal organs convey information through mechanical forces, hormones, nutrients, toxins, temperature, and more—each of which can act on multiple organs and translate into multiple physiological responses. Mechanical stretch, for example, signals the need to urinate when it occurs in the bladder, but translates into satiation when it happens in the stomach and triggers a reflex to stop inhalation in the lungs.

How does the brain determine (interpret) sensory data so that we have an accurate enough experience to allow us to respond appropriately? Researchers do have some leads they’re following as they attempt to get a handle on the coding of internal senses throughout the brain. One motivation for this area of study concerns treatment for diseases that arise from internal sensory system malfunctions—i.e. abnormal feedback.

Of course this is a bit oversimplified since this so-called feedback involves sensation, perception, and interpretation. Feedback might relate to external or internal sensory data or what we think of physiological or psychological sensory data. No matter what it relates to, however, there’s feedback that occurs at the unconscious level and feedback that we are aware of at the conscious level. Most feedback occurs at the unconscious level and doesn’t make it into conscious awareness.

What We’re Aware of

When feedback does make it into conscious awareness, we have thoughts about it (our interpretation, usually in the form of an explanation).

We also experience an emotion, which neuroscientist Antonio Damasio would refer to as a homeostatic indicator. Emotions constitute a sort of personalized, constantly updated, running report to consciousness, indicating the status quo of the organism—as the brain sees it—both internally and externally. This is pretty damn amazing, when you think about it.

If the interpreter (see last post) is like a play-by-play announcer calling a game (your life) over the radio, emotion is your response to what you perceive to be happening both on the field (externally) and internally. There’s lots of information available to you. Are you tuned in?