Bion Again

This is all off the top of my head so I'm not sure I'm going to be able to reference stuff that well...

Hey it took me about twenty minutes to remember the name of Wilfred Bion – one of the most original and influential thinkers of the Twentieth Century in the field of psychology. What with the election and Fox and storms and floods and global warming and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, I stopped thinking about one of the men who began all this 'lead the minds of people to prevent war through the media...'

Bion needs little introduction to most of the people who look in on this blog. But we should remind ourselves that Bion's work was very largely conducted in absolute secrecy because he worked for the Ministry of Defence in the UK, as well as eventually, the US military. Even today, the detail that comes out of his work is, I believe, the tip of the iceberg. Well, okay, the droplets of the water from the melted iceberg that melted because of GLOBAL WARMING.

Armin van Buuren - trance dancers love him

I am grateful to JP who posted an earlier comment directing readers to a Salon article about the effects of rhythmic music. This is a Wilfred Bion idea. He conducted extensive research into the neurological effects of sound and music. A lot of the modern strands of research flow on from the research of Bion and his collaborators. Today, the most advanced researchers have moved on a long long way from the fundamental concepts about 'endorphins' and their capacity to alter sensations of pain and anxiety. 'Endorphins' covers too wide a body of chemical reactions and electro-chemical events in neurophysiology to apocalypse (yes, that's what it really means) the mechanisms of human psychological effects and affective neural pathways.

The actual way the brain functions in concert with its sensory systems, is that there is a virtual constant and continuous flood of signals going on – there are descriminating filters that pick up variance patterns and apply signification to those patterns. Sleep itself, only occurs when another system comes into play that blocks incoming and outgoing sense and nerve signals. Those signals are still going on, they just get 'whited-out' by orthogonal or 'keytonic' additional signals which have the effect of blanking out those patterns that have affective muscular reaction significance to the 'awake state' brain functions. The point really, of what I'm saying, is that there is a lot going on constantly. Nothing is actually dormant as such. And more particularly, the system of pattern recognition/signification is outlandlishly complex, I mean really. Really, it is complex.

For example, if you are familiar with the musical group 'Drum Tao' or 'Drums of Zen' (same people) then you might assume that this is certainly the type of rhythmic sound stimulation that will pump those endorphins of which the article in Salon speaks. And it might, but not because of the rhythm, but because of the pattern variances... And, researchers have found, the more subtle the variances, THE MORE SIGNIFICANCE THE BRAIN ATTRIBUTES.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0MRzFW7o1w

I recommend Jonas Steur Featuring Julie Thompson – 'Cold Wind' – ( the link above) for an example of extremely subtle pattern variance. And if you want to compare something similar from a classical repertoire one might suggest Vladimir Horowitz playing a Chopin Polonaise. These quick, almost imperceptibly tiny pattern variances are the kinds of things the human brain responds to most of all. Waves forms, shapes, contours, calculative multiplied notes – all these electrify the brain and underscore that 'something important' is going on to the human mind. It is an evolutionary imperative. And I would listen to what these things 'say.' By accident, or perhaps not by so much accident, music shows us the meaning to our lives.

Calvin J. Bear