Corante: technology, business, media, law, and culture news from the blogosphere
OUR PUBLICATIONS:
Corante is a trusted, unbiased source on technology, business, law, science, and culture that’s authored by leading commentators and thinkers in their respective fields. Corante also produces premium conferences and publications that help decision-makers better understand their industries and the world around them.
Corante Blogs
Corante Blogs examine, through the eyes of leading observers, analysts, thinkers, and doers, critical themes and memes in technology, business, law, science, and culture.
Vin Crosbie, on the challenges, financial and otherwise, that newspaper publishers are facing: "The real problem, Mr. Newspaperman, isn't that your content isn't online or isn't online with multimedia. It's your content. Specifically, it's what you report, which stories you publish, and how you publish them to people, who, by the way, have very different individual interests. The problem is the content you're giving them, stupid; not the platform its on."
by Vin Crosbie in Rebuilding Media
There's a problem in the drug industry that people have recognized for some years, but we're not that much closer to dealing with it than we were then. We keep coming up with these technologies and techniques which seem as if they might be able to help us with some of our nastiest problems - I'm talking about genomics in all its guises, and metabolic profiling, and naturally the various high-throughput screening platforms, and others. But whether these are helping or not (and opinions sure do vary), one thing that they all have in common is that they generate enormous heaps of data.
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Now that the Web labor market is saturated and Web design a static profession, it's not surprising that 'user experience' designers and researchers who've spent their careers online are looking for new worlds to conquer. Some are returning to the “old media” as directors and producers. More are now doing offline consulting (service experience design, social policy design, exhibition design, and so on) under the 'user experience' aegis. They argue that the lessons they've learned on the Web can be applied to phenomena in the physical and social worlds. But there are enormous differences...
by Bob Jacobson in Total Experience
Clay Shirky, in deconstructing Second Life hype: "Second Life is heading towards two million users. Except it isn’t, really... I suspect Second Life is largely a 'Try Me' virus, where reports of a strange and wonderful new thing draw the masses to log in and try it, but whose ability to retain anything but a fraction of those users is limited. The pattern of a Try Me virus is a rapid spread of first time users, most of whom drop out quickly, with most of the dropouts becoming immune to later use."
by Clay Shirky in Many-to-Many
Over the last few years we've seen old barriers to creativity coming down, one after the other. New technologies and services makes it trivial to publish text, whether by blog or by print-on-demand. Digital photography has democratised a previously expensive hobby. And we're seeing the barriers to movie-making crumble, with affordable high-quality cameras and video hosting provided by YouTube or Google Video and their ilk... Music making has long been easy for anyone to engage in, but technology has made high-quality recording possible without specialised equipment, and the internet has revolutionised distribution, drastically disintermediating the music industry... What's left? Software maybe? Or maybe not."
by Suw Charman in Strange Attractor
Derek Lowe on the news that the Nobel Prize for medicine has gone to Craig Mello and Andrew Fire for their breakthrough work: "RNA interference is probably going to have a long climb before it starts curing many diseases, because many of those problems are even tougher than usual in its case. That doesn't take away from the discovery, though, any more than the complications of off-target effects take away from it when you talk about RNAi's research uses in cell culture. The fact that RNA interference is trickier than it first looked, in vivo or in vitro, is only to be expected. What breakthrough isn't?"
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Andrew Phelps: "Recently my WoW guild has been having a bit of a debate on the merits of Player-vs.-Player (PvP) within Azeroth. My personal opinion on this is that PvP has its merits, and can be incredible fun, but the system within WoW is horridly, horribly broken. It takes into account the concept of the battle, but battle without consequence, without emotive context, and most importantly, without honor..."
From later in the piece: "When I talk about this with people (thus far anyway) I typically get one of two responses, either 'yeah, right on!' or 'hey, it’s war, and war isn’t honorable – grow the hell up'. There is a lot to be said for that argument – but the problem is that war in the real historical world has very different constraints that are utterly absent from fantasized worlds..."
by Andrew Phelps in Got Game
Derek Lowe: "So, you're developing a drug candidate. You've settled on what looks like a good compound - it has the activity you want in your mouse model of the disease, it's not too hard to make, and it's not toxic. Everything looks fine. Except. . .one slight problem. Although the compound has good blood levels in the mouse and in the dog, in rats it's terrible. For some reason, it just doesn't get up there. Probably some foul metabolic pathway peculiar to rats (whose innards are adapted, after all, for dealing with every kind of garbage that comes along). So, is this a problem?.."
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Bob Jacobson, on shopping at his local Albertsons supermarket where he had "one of the worst customer experiences" of his life: "Say what you will about the Safeway chain or the Birkenstock billionaires who charge through the roof for Whole Foods' organic fare, they know how to create shopping environments that create a more pleasurable experience, at its best (as at Whole Foods) quite enjoyable. Even the warehouses like Costco and its smaller counterpart, Smart & Final, do just fine: they have no pretentions, but neither do they dump virtual garbage on the consumer merely to create another trivial revenue stream, all for the sake of promotions in the marketing department..."
by Strange Attractor in Total Experience
Kevin Anderson: "First off, I want to say that I really admire the ambition of the Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free. It is one of the boldest statements made by any media company that participation needs to be central to a radical revamp of traditional content strategies... It is, therfore, not hugely surprising to find that Comment is Free is having a few teething troubles..."
by Kevin Anderson in strange
Corante Developments
Here you will find the latest news from Corante including updates on upcoming events, new initiatives, product and publication launches, and more.
It was with shock that I returned home from a night out last night to hear the news of Russell's passing. How terribly, terribly sad. Most of all for him, as he'd seemed buoyant, healthier, and content when I'd last seen him several months ago when he was in town - he was happy that work was busy and rewarding and was having fun with it but most of all was thrilled about how things were going with his girlfriend, Ellen.
I've known Russ for what seems like ages now (in a good way) though in fact it's only been about six or seven years since the early days of "commercial" blogging when he started working on various projects at and around Corante. He was a diligent, committed, and prolific journalist who had impressively and more ably than others been able to make the transition from the old-school way of doing things to the new. He had his quirks, as we all do, but I greatly valued that he was good-natured, collegial, reliable, quick to adopt, trustworthy, eager to learn, and earnest in his interest in helping others better understand what he wrote about.
He was also, it should be said, a kind and thoughtful soul and it was the rare conversation in which he didn't ask, with sincerity, about what he knew of my life, e.g. our new babe, and we didn't talk as seemingly old friends about our lives and respective paths. I can't say I knew him very well, of course, but in our half-dozen get-togethers over the years and dozens of conversations I got a good sense of the man: he cared about learning and sharing and his bearing was earnest and ego-less and we'll miss him for that and more.
We wanted to let you know about a discount to New Comm Forum, the annual event event put on by our friends at the Society for New Communications Research. The conference, which runs from April 22-25, will feature many of the field's leading observers and is an important event for those looking, in the words of SNCR, to "better understand new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, and their effect on traditional media, professional communications, business, culture and society."
Check out the event's website and, if you're interested in attending, be sure to use the code supplied below for a special discount.
EARLY BIRD PRICING - NOW UNTIL FEB. 15th
NewComm Forum Conference - $995.
Pre-conference or post-conference session - $195.
SNCR Jam only - $75.
REGULAR PRICING - AFTER FEB. 15th
NewComm Forum Conference - $1095.
Pre-conference or post-conference session - $249.
SNCR Jam only - $75.
CORANTE READER DISCOUNTS
NewComm Forum Conference - save an additional $100
Use discount code: NCF08100
Pre-conference or post-conference session - save an additional $45.
Use discount code: NCF0845
We've been remiss in letting you know about two new independent blogs we've helped launch in the past month or so.
The first - the ConversationHub - is a companion blog to Supernova 2007, the latest edition of Kevin Werbach's excellent conference on all things connected. As the conference site says: "Supernova examines the effects of an increasingly connected world on business, life, and public policy. As disparate physical and social networks link with one another, a new societal network is rapidly evolving... The New Network is greater than the sum of its parts. It challenges us to re-create everything from the software and hardware we use...to the business models we employ...to the information and entertainment we encounter...to the ways we work and play."
Visit the ConversationHub and you'll find several dozen leading thinkers and doers, led by a few notable ringleaders, weighing in on the themes and trends of the day in technology and business. We encourage you to tune in - feel free to comment and even suggest topics and ideas for posts.
The second blog - Mobile Messaging 2.0 - convenes about a dozen top observers of the mobile messaging space for an intense discussion of the industry and where it's headed. Among its contributors are leading commentators, journalists and players in the field - tune in and you'll find them touching on topics such as mobile device design, messaging platforms, market pressures, user-generated content, interface design, and much, much more.
Also, if you visit the site, which is sponsored by Airwide Solutions, this week, you'll find live coverage and commentary from Global Messaging 2007, to which several of our contributors have traveled to hear about the latest developments from a broad spectrum of the industry's players and providers.
Be sure to catch the Office 2.0 Conference and hear from and engage with leading thinkers and doers in this exciting new market. Find out more here and be sure to use the code "GLDRK" for a special discount for Corante readers.
Don't Miss The DrugSafetyHub, a new blog on counterfeit drugs and the evolution of the pharma industry
I've got an article in today's New York Times about one of my perennial fascinations—musical hallucinations. One of the reasons that I find this condition so interesting is that it gives us a look under the neurological hood. Our brains do not simply take in objective impressions of the world. They are continually coming up with theories, and they test them against perceptions every moment of our waking lives. It would be impossible to test them against a complete picture of reality, because the world is simply too complex and ever-changing. Instead, the brain makes quick judgments on scraps of information, revising bad theories that don't make good predictions or using good theories as the basis for actions. Some scientists argue that musical hallucinations are evidence that our brains even make theories about music. When we hear stray sounds, we match them to tunes in our memory, in a sort of internal game of Name That Tune. Unfortunately, some people can't test their theories well enough, it seems, and so they wind up thinking a church choir is singing in the next room, when in fact there is only silence.
There's one line of evidence that supports this explanation of musical hallucinations that I didn't have room in the article to explore. It turns out that some people have an analogous problem with their vision. They suffer from a condition known as Charles Bonnet syndrome, in which they have visual hallucinations. In some cases, the hallucinations are nothing but textures or wallpaper-like patterns. In other cases, people may see a row of people floating in front of them. Reginald King, the elderly gentleman who described his musical hallucinations to me, also suffers from Charles Bonnet syndrome. He told me about how he would see patterns on the ceiling, or sometimes a cat or a dog running across his bed.
Victor Aziz, one of the scientists I interviewed for this story, has noticed that some other people also experience both visual and musical hallucinations, and doesn't think it's a coincidence. It's possible that regions of the brain that handle processing complex structures of both sound and sight can short-circuit in a similar way, producing similar hallucinations. And interestingly, brain scans of people with visual hallucinations are strikingly similar to those of people with musical hallucinations. In each case, the higher information-processing centers become active even when the regions that normally relay information from the senses are quiet. If we accept a theory of what we see, it's as real as the theories of what we hear.
I had a passing fancy with visual hallucinations, given a review paper I presented at the American Academy of Neurology about a decade ago on peduncular hallucinosis (available at http://www.geocities.com/ahris2/lhermitte.html ). Those, like the ones you wrote about today, are fascinating aspects of what happens when things go awry!
Our brains do not simply take in objective impressions of the world. They are continually coming up with theories, and they test them against perceptions every moment of our waking lives.
I'd call them hypotheses (as opposed to theories) to remain consistent with the scientific terminology. We test hypotheses, and a collection of such tests supports a particular theorem.
3. Torbjorn Larsson on July 13, 2005 02:23 PM writes...
We can probably all observe that phenomena briefly before the revised hypothese conforms with reality. For example when a spot on the floor for a fleeting moment looks like a bug or the car alarm that just started sounds like your own.
Now I wonder if déjà vu can be explained similarly as bad hypotheses?
Very interesting! . . . I used to have musical hallucinations infrequently as a child; also, even less frequently, random individual words - hasn't happened since adolescence, if I'm remembering right. Wasn't deaf (unlike 1/3 of the folks discussed in the article), but I was also diagnosed with auditory processing disorder - maybe a connection?
It was definitely different from imagining music or getting a tune stuck in your head - I could clearly "hear" it, although it was somehow not the same kind of hearing as real music . . .
6. serial catowner on July 14, 2005 12:43 PM writes...
Reminds me of moving into a house that had a lot of spiders in the yard. No visiter ever failed to comment on their size and numbers.
The first night there, after midnight, I looked out into the yard and saw huge spiders coming across the field. Intellectually, I knew these were really random blackberry vines draped with long grass, but visually I saw spiders. Sitting up to 'enjoy' this free hallucination was interesting but a little scary.
I could have gone out with a flashlight to check, but- what if they really were spiders? Better to put my faith in the fact that such a thing had never happened before, so it probably wouldn't happen that night either.
Interesting. Anthony's article instilled a bit of fear. What could be wrong inside the brain if one experiences these hallucinations?
Between the ages of about 7 and 12 years, I had what is now called out of body experiences. They occurred infrequently, and usually in a room when other people were present. I could watch others and myself from a high corner in the room. Most fascinating aspect was that I could not smell anything, even if cooking was occurring nearby. Never told anybody, I feared the worst from my parents for being strange -- they wanted only a normal high achieving child.
These hallucinations suddenly stopped. After reading Anthony's article, I hope that whatever was wrong somehow corrected itself. I doubt the likelihood of this kind of healing, but then I am not going to worry about it either.
Hah! You folk don't know true genius when you see it. Musical "hallucinations" may be the sort of unwanted nutty stuff described in the article referring to people who can't stop the music in their heads and who actually think it's coming from outside their heads - But! musical "hallucinations" (what a term!) can also be the sign of a true genius, such as myself of course. (And I'm quite offended by all you doctors poking around my grey matter, get the fuck out and get some genius of your won.)
Being a musical genius (who alas has yet to profit from the experience, even in terms of fame), every so often when I'm really super-duper tired, I lie down in bed and allow the music to flow.
The kind of brilliant music that I hear is literally undescribable. It's beautiful enough to break your heart. There must be at least a hundred pieces to the orchestra and the sound that they produce through the blending of their individual crystalline talents is absolutely extraordinary.
Have I ever thought that it came from without my head? Come on -
Does it just "show up"? Nope. Only "shows up" a few times a year if I'm lucky and I have to have not slept for a good 48 hours or so.
Do I consider it an "imbalance" that needs to be "diagnosed" and "treated"? What the fuck's wrong with you guys? You have some blasé view of how human beings should be and anything beyond that is abnormal?
Holding the gift is music is something I'm grateful to god for (it's an expression, purists) and I'll defend it against the view that holds that we all oughtta move to some boring cardboard-cutout caricature of what real human beings are like.
That said, I love your blog and have read your Evolution book with profit. ;-)
Between the ages of about 7 and 12 years, I had what is now called out of body experiences. They occurred infrequently, and usually in a room when other people were present. I could watch others and myself from a high corner in the room. Most fascinating aspect was that I could not smell anything, even if cooking was occurring nearby. Never told anybody, I feared the worst from my parents for being strange -- they wanted only a normal high achieving child.
Does this also apply in some form to people who are suffering from temporary brain damage, i.e. a cerebral hemorrhage, tumor removal, or would that be different phenomena? I have seen this with two people now. Each of them had phases of hallucinations, both sound and vision, and it was sheer impossible to convince both people that they were experiencing something irreal [None of them could remember these phases after recovery].
What is the reltionship between CBS and those individuals that experience multiple senses, such as tasing words or seeing letters in different colors? anyone?
Well I disagree with the Ipod theory for one reason. I do not own one and I have had so called "musical hallucinations" for 4 years now. It sometimes go's away for a day or so but mostly it is in my head. I had to learn to accept it cause their is no cure for it, that is if it is a disorder in my opinion. At times I really like the music there and then there is times I get frustrated so I just learn to accept it.
Corante: technology, business, media, law, and culture news from the blogosphere
OUR PUBLICATIONS:
Corante is a trusted, unbiased source on technology, business, law, science, and culture that’s authored by leading commentators and thinkers in their respective fields. Corante also produces premium conferences and publications that help decision-makers better understand their industries and the world around them.
Corante Blogs
Corante Blogs examine, through the eyes of leading observers, analysts, thinkers, and doers, critical themes and memes in technology, business, law, science, and culture.
Vin Crosbie, on the challenges, financial and otherwise, that newspaper publishers are facing: "The real problem, Mr. Newspaperman, isn't that your content isn't online or isn't online with multimedia. It's your content. Specifically, it's what you report, which stories you publish, and how you publish them to people, who, by the way, have very different individual interests. The problem is the content you're giving them, stupid; not the platform its on."
by Vin Crosbie in Rebuilding Media
There's a problem in the drug industry that people have recognized for some years, but we're not that much closer to dealing with it than we were then. We keep coming up with these technologies and techniques which seem as if they might be able to help us with some of our nastiest problems - I'm talking about genomics in all its guises, and metabolic profiling, and naturally the various high-throughput screening platforms, and others. But whether these are helping or not (and opinions sure do vary), one thing that they all have in common is that they generate enormous heaps of data.
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Now that the Web labor market is saturated and Web design a static profession, it's not surprising that 'user experience' designers and researchers who've spent their careers online are looking for new worlds to conquer. Some are returning to the “old media” as directors and producers. More are now doing offline consulting (service experience design, social policy design, exhibition design, and so on) under the 'user experience' aegis. They argue that the lessons they've learned on the Web can be applied to phenomena in the physical and social worlds. But there are enormous differences...
by Bob Jacobson in Total Experience
Clay Shirky, in deconstructing Second Life hype: "Second Life is heading towards two million users. Except it isn’t, really... I suspect Second Life is largely a 'Try Me' virus, where reports of a strange and wonderful new thing draw the masses to log in and try it, but whose ability to retain anything but a fraction of those users is limited. The pattern of a Try Me virus is a rapid spread of first time users, most of whom drop out quickly, with most of the dropouts becoming immune to later use."
by Clay Shirky in Many-to-Many
Over the last few years we've seen old barriers to creativity coming down, one after the other. New technologies and services makes it trivial to publish text, whether by blog or by print-on-demand. Digital photography has democratised a previously expensive hobby. And we're seeing the barriers to movie-making crumble, with affordable high-quality cameras and video hosting provided by YouTube or Google Video and their ilk... Music making has long been easy for anyone to engage in, but technology has made high-quality recording possible without specialised equipment, and the internet has revolutionised distribution, drastically disintermediating the music industry... What's left? Software maybe? Or maybe not."
by Suw Charman in Strange Attractor
Derek Lowe on the news that the Nobel Prize for medicine has gone to Craig Mello and Andrew Fire for their breakthrough work: "RNA interference is probably going to have a long climb before it starts curing many diseases, because many of those problems are even tougher than usual in its case. That doesn't take away from the discovery, though, any more than the complications of off-target effects take away from it when you talk about RNAi's research uses in cell culture. The fact that RNA interference is trickier than it first looked, in vivo or in vitro, is only to be expected. What breakthrough isn't?"
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Andrew Phelps: "Recently my WoW guild has been having a bit of a debate on the merits of Player-vs.-Player (PvP) within Azeroth. My personal opinion on this is that PvP has its merits, and can be incredible fun, but the system within WoW is horridly, horribly broken. It takes into account the concept of the battle, but battle without consequence, without emotive context, and most importantly, without honor..."
From later in the piece: "When I talk about this with people (thus far anyway) I typically get one of two responses, either 'yeah, right on!' or 'hey, it’s war, and war isn’t honorable – grow the hell up'. There is a lot to be said for that argument – but the problem is that war in the real historical world has very different constraints that are utterly absent from fantasized worlds..."
by Andrew Phelps in Got Game
Derek Lowe: "So, you're developing a drug candidate. You've settled on what looks like a good compound - it has the activity you want in your mouse model of the disease, it's not too hard to make, and it's not toxic. Everything looks fine. Except. . .one slight problem. Although the compound has good blood levels in the mouse and in the dog, in rats it's terrible. For some reason, it just doesn't get up there. Probably some foul metabolic pathway peculiar to rats (whose innards are adapted, after all, for dealing with every kind of garbage that comes along). So, is this a problem?.."
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Bob Jacobson, on shopping at his local Albertsons supermarket where he had "one of the worst customer experiences" of his life: "Say what you will about the Safeway chain or the Birkenstock billionaires who charge through the roof for Whole Foods' organic fare, they know how to create shopping environments that create a more pleasurable experience, at its best (as at Whole Foods) quite enjoyable. Even the warehouses like Costco and its smaller counterpart, Smart & Final, do just fine: they have no pretentions, but neither do they dump virtual garbage on the consumer merely to create another trivial revenue stream, all for the sake of promotions in the marketing department..."
by Strange Attractor in Total Experience
Kevin Anderson: "First off, I want to say that I really admire the ambition of the Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free. It is one of the boldest statements made by any media company that participation needs to be central to a radical revamp of traditional content strategies... It is, therfore, not hugely surprising to find that Comment is Free is having a few teething troubles..."
by Kevin Anderson in strange
Corante Developments
Here you will find the latest news from Corante including updates on upcoming events, new initiatives, product and publication launches, and more.
It was with shock that I returned home from a night out last night to hear the news of Russell's passing. How terribly, terribly sad. Most of all for him, as he'd seemed buoyant, healthier, and content when I'd last seen him several months ago when he was in town - he was happy that work was busy and rewarding and was having fun with it but most of all was thrilled about how things were going with his girlfriend, Ellen.
I've known Russ for what seems like ages now (in a good way) though in fact it's only been about six or seven years since the early days of "commercial" blogging when he started working on various projects at and around Corante. He was a diligent, committed, and prolific journalist who had impressively and more ably than others been able to make the transition from the old-school way of doing things to the new. He had his quirks, as we all do, but I greatly valued that he was good-natured, collegial, reliable, quick to adopt, trustworthy, eager to learn, and earnest in his interest in helping others better understand what he wrote about.
He was also, it should be said, a kind and thoughtful soul and it was the rare conversation in which he didn't ask, with sincerity, about what he knew of my life, e.g. our new babe, and we didn't talk as seemingly old friends about our lives and respective paths. I can't say I knew him very well, of course, but in our half-dozen get-togethers over the years and dozens of conversations I got a good sense of the man: he cared about learning and sharing and his bearing was earnest and ego-less and we'll miss him for that and more.
We wanted to let you know about a discount to New Comm Forum, the annual event event put on by our friends at the Society for New Communications Research. The conference, which runs from April 22-25, will feature many of the field's leading observers and is an important event for those looking, in the words of SNCR, to "better understand new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, and their effect on traditional media, professional communications, business, culture and society."
Check out the event's website and, if you're interested in attending, be sure to use the code supplied below for a special discount.
EARLY BIRD PRICING - NOW UNTIL FEB. 15th
NewComm Forum Conference - $995.
Pre-conference or post-conference session - $195.
SNCR Jam only - $75.
REGULAR PRICING - AFTER FEB. 15th
NewComm Forum Conference - $1095.
Pre-conference or post-conference session - $249.
SNCR Jam only - $75.
CORANTE READER DISCOUNTS
NewComm Forum Conference - save an additional $100
Use discount code: NCF08100
Pre-conference or post-conference session - save an additional $45.
Use discount code: NCF0845
We've been remiss in letting you know about two new independent blogs we've helped launch in the past month or so.
The first - the ConversationHub - is a companion blog to Supernova 2007, the latest edition of Kevin Werbach's excellent conference on all things connected. As the conference site says: "Supernova examines the effects of an increasingly connected world on business, life, and public policy. As disparate physical and social networks link with one another, a new societal network is rapidly evolving... The New Network is greater than the sum of its parts. It challenges us to re-create everything from the software and hardware we use...to the business models we employ...to the information and entertainment we encounter...to the ways we work and play."
Visit the ConversationHub and you'll find several dozen leading thinkers and doers, led by a few notable ringleaders, weighing in on the themes and trends of the day in technology and business. We encourage you to tune in - feel free to comment and even suggest topics and ideas for posts.
The second blog - Mobile Messaging 2.0 - convenes about a dozen top observers of the mobile messaging space for an intense discussion of the industry and where it's headed. Among its contributors are leading commentators, journalists and players in the field - tune in and you'll find them touching on topics such as mobile device design, messaging platforms, market pressures, user-generated content, interface design, and much, much more.
Also, if you visit the site, which is sponsored by Airwide Solutions, this week, you'll find live coverage and commentary from Global Messaging 2007, to which several of our contributors have traveled to hear about the latest developments from a broad spectrum of the industry's players and providers.
Be sure to catch the Office 2.0 Conference and hear from and engage with leading thinkers and doers in this exciting new market. Find out more here and be sure to use the code "GLDRK" for a special discount for Corante readers.
1. Anthony Risser on July 12, 2005 05:00 PM writes...
Enjoyed the article in today's Times.
I had a passing fancy with visual hallucinations, given a review paper I presented at the American Academy of Neurology about a decade ago on peduncular hallucinosis (available at http://www.geocities.com/ahris2/lhermitte.html ). Those, like the ones you wrote about today, are fascinating aspects of what happens when things go awry!
-Anthony
Permalink to Commentneuropsychological.blogspot.com
2. RPM on July 13, 2005 10:00 AM writes...
Our brains do not simply take in objective impressions of the world. They are continually coming up with theories, and they test them against perceptions every moment of our waking lives.
I'd call them hypotheses (as opposed to theories) to remain consistent with the scientific terminology. We test hypotheses, and a collection of such tests supports a particular theorem.
Permalink to Comment3. Torbjorn Larsson on July 13, 2005 02:23 PM writes...
We can probably all observe that phenomena briefly before the revised hypothese conforms with reality. For example when a spot on the floor for a fleeting moment looks like a bug or the car alarm that just started sounds like your own.
Now I wonder if déjà vu can be explained similarly as bad hypotheses?
Permalink to Comment4. Shawn on July 13, 2005 08:11 PM writes...
I'd chime in with Torbjorn regarding deja vu. Its more of what we feed to our brains subconcious that really is taking precedence.
Permalink to Comment5. Dan S. on July 13, 2005 11:57 PM writes...
Very interesting! . . . I used to have musical hallucinations infrequently as a child; also, even less frequently, random individual words - hasn't happened since adolescence, if I'm remembering right. Wasn't deaf (unlike 1/3 of the folks discussed in the article), but I was also diagnosed with auditory processing disorder - maybe a connection?
It was definitely different from imagining music or getting a tune stuck in your head - I could clearly "hear" it, although it was somehow not the same kind of hearing as real music . . .
Permalink to Comment6. serial catowner on July 14, 2005 12:43 PM writes...
Reminds me of moving into a house that had a lot of spiders in the yard. No visiter ever failed to comment on their size and numbers.
The first night there, after midnight, I looked out into the yard and saw huge spiders coming across the field. Intellectually, I knew these were really random blackberry vines draped with long grass, but visually I saw spiders. Sitting up to 'enjoy' this free hallucination was interesting but a little scary.
I could have gone out with a flashlight to check, but- what if they really were spiders? Better to put my faith in the fact that such a thing had never happened before, so it probably wouldn't happen that night either.
Permalink to Comment7. John R. on July 14, 2005 04:13 PM writes...
Interesting. Anthony's article instilled a bit of fear. What could be wrong inside the brain if one experiences these hallucinations?
Between the ages of about 7 and 12 years, I had what is now called out of body experiences. They occurred infrequently, and usually in a room when other people were present. I could watch others and myself from a high corner in the room. Most fascinating aspect was that I could not smell anything, even if cooking was occurring nearby. Never told anybody, I feared the worst from my parents for being strange -- they wanted only a normal high achieving child.
These hallucinations suddenly stopped. After reading Anthony's article, I hope that whatever was wrong somehow corrected itself. I doubt the likelihood of this kind of healing, but then I am not going to worry about it either.
Permalink to Comment8. mnuez on July 17, 2005 02:45 PM writes...
Hah! You folk don't know true genius when you see it. Musical "hallucinations" may be the sort of unwanted nutty stuff described in the article referring to people who can't stop the music in their heads and who actually think it's coming from outside their heads - But! musical "hallucinations" (what a term!) can also be the sign of a true genius, such as myself of course. (And I'm quite offended by all you doctors poking around my grey matter, get the fuck out and get some genius of your won.)
Being a musical genius (who alas has yet to profit from the experience, even in terms of fame), every so often when I'm really super-duper tired, I lie down in bed and allow the music to flow.
The kind of brilliant music that I hear is literally undescribable. It's beautiful enough to break your heart. There must be at least a hundred pieces to the orchestra and the sound that they produce through the blending of their individual crystalline talents is absolutely extraordinary.
Have I ever thought that it came from without my head? Come on -
Does it just "show up"? Nope. Only "shows up" a few times a year if I'm lucky and I have to have not slept for a good 48 hours or so.
Do I consider it an "imbalance" that needs to be "diagnosed" and "treated"? What the fuck's wrong with you guys? You have some blasé view of how human beings should be and anything beyond that is abnormal?
Holding the gift is music is something I'm grateful to god for (it's an expression, purists) and I'll defend it against the view that holds that we all oughtta move to some boring cardboard-cutout caricature of what real human beings are like.
That said, I love your blog and have read your Evolution book with profit. ;-)
Permalink to Comment9. Torbjorn Larsson on July 18, 2005 11:33 AM writes...
mnuez:
I think you misunderstand. In his article and post Carl is trying to describe what is, not what should be. You got to listen to the music...
Permalink to Comment10. Dano on July 19, 2005 06:00 PM writes...
BTW, Carl, heard you on Fresh Air the other day. Well done, sir.
D
Permalink to Comment11. triticale on July 19, 2005 06:51 PM writes...
Oh, wow, man. Time was I went to some expense and effort in order to experience stuff like this...
Permalink to Comment12. Dand on July 21, 2005 11:33 PM writes...
Between the ages of about 7 and 12 years, I had what is now called out of body experiences. They occurred infrequently, and usually in a room when other people were present. I could watch others and myself from a high corner in the room. Most fascinating aspect was that I could not smell anything, even if cooking was occurring nearby. Never told anybody, I feared the worst from my parents for being strange -- they wanted only a normal high achieving child.
Permalink to Comment13. avital on August 1, 2005 06:21 AM writes...
That's interesting!
Does this also apply in some form to people who are suffering from temporary brain damage, i.e. a cerebral hemorrhage, tumor removal, or would that be different phenomena? I have seen this with two people now. Each of them had phases of hallucinations, both sound and vision, and it was sheer impossible to convince both people that they were experiencing something irreal [None of them could remember these phases after recovery].
Permalink to Comment14. Dior on August 1, 2005 02:48 PM writes...
What is the reltionship between CBS and those individuals that experience multiple senses, such as tasing words or seeing letters in different colors? anyone?
Permalink to Comment15. Melissa on August 2, 2005 07:02 PM writes...
Well I disagree with the Ipod theory for one reason. I do not own one and I have had so called "musical hallucinations" for 4 years now. It sometimes go's away for a day or so but mostly it is in my head. I had to learn to accept it cause their is no cure for it, that is if it is a disorder in my opinion. At times I really like the music there and then there is times I get frustrated so I just learn to accept it.
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