Every now and then, you get some phrase that turns up in a body of science, and it is repeated over and over in many sources, basically because it is an excellent description of something.
Here is one of those: 'the temporal lobe is a part of the brain that is used in processing sensory input into derived meaning.'
Trust me - I'm about to do some 'mind control' on you... So watch your step. |
One of the most important and valuable areas of neural science these days is 'neural encoding.' All neural encoding comes from so-called 'temporal rate signaling.' The fact is - or, has very recently been ascertained - that the rates and packets of waves and spikes that networks of neurons perform when in various stages of action, are able to encode both digital as well as analog information. And the information is highly discrete, and we don't fully know how it is done. I mean, some people do know, but this is not knowledge available in published studies as yet. And it is a contested area because the leading-edge research demonstrates there are iterative templates pre-existing inside memory cell structures that provide feed-back for types of 'spike count rates.' Richard Dawkins has tried to say that such advanced complex (for one instance - 'moral' meaning...) 'templates' which are there before birth are due to 'memes' being part of evolution. I mean this is probably the most hotly contested subject there is in modern science debate.
Anyway, here is the point you might look at in terms of what this Blog is usually about: designers, and I mean fashion designers, architects, design engineers and design planners - they all realize (the best of them, that is) that the human brain already contains very highly advanced and complex, sophisticated frames of reference; be it aesthetically, as well as why we 'think' a thing is utilitarian or not. That is to say, even human concepts about utility relate to weight we GIVE to meaningfulness of objects and desired activities - that is not really there in an objective sense at all. The train tracks go past the stadium BECAUSE we play football matches THERE. And football is important. In fact it is a matter of life-and-death. ?? And dominates our economic thinking due to that reason.
Could be, I suppose. And we are thus a bizarrely ornate evolved species, if so.
Watch it now, it's happening under your nose... |
Real 'mind control' engages in temporal encoding strategies which play on our pre-existing templates of emotional significance. Theoretically. Because as I say, not a lot of the leading-edge material is published in standard academia.
'Temporal' does mean the signals themselves have timed rates of firing, and they also go in waves that have spikes and troughs. It can mean assigning meaning to sensory inputs, and it also deals with itself like a 'clock rate' inside any modern computer, in that there are ways to 'fudge' our own individual personal sensations of time passing.
Tchaikovsky is probably one of the most clear-cut manipulators (using beats and sound) of how we sense time - he has music that will give you the feeling of time slowing, or you moving more slowly, whereas Camille Saint Saens is the opposite and appears to always be rushing about; I mean even his famous danse macabre is an example of that when everybody else's danse macabre is a slow thing.
Smell sense is signaled, neurally-speaking, also through temporal encoding once the stimuli is picked up in the olfactory organs. Everything is signaled in the brain via temporal encoding. And so - at least in theory - there might be some connection in the spike count rates, perhaps some harmonics or harmonic ingredients, in common in Tchaikovsky music, and say, olfactory signals from vanilla (which has the property of making people feel that 'time is slowing down').
Now the key to what is picked up by the hypothesized memory structure templates, is in spike drop-offs, those distinct differentiation features in any run of rate average - and these are the things which eventually lead to distinct patterns forming which theoretically link up to the discrete emotional 'memex' or template (categorized, logged archives of discrete appropriate emotional responses). 'Edge detection' is a crucial area of modern computing and signal processing.
Now this all does NOT mean that merely because something is being repeated via your daily media - such as in a normal advert rotation, for example - people are seriously in a deeply and modern scientific way trying to 'mind control you!
In fact it's not about repetition at all. It's about playing on templates already existing within human beings - but which are beneath the surface. Human beings have been playing at the game of 'mind control' forever. The technique of how we do it, is known as 'art.'