Learning High-Performance Tasks with No Conscious Effort
December 9th, 2011Via: Medical Express:
New research published today in the journal Science suggests it may be possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort. It’s the kind of thing seen in Hollywood’s “Matrix” franchise.
Experiments conducted at Boston University (BU) and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, recently demonstrated that through a person’s visual cortex, researchers could use decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to induce brain activity patterns to match a previously known target state and thereby improve performance on visual tasks.
Think of a person watching a computer screen and having his or her brain patterns modified to match those of a high-performing athlete or modified to recuperate from an accident or disease. Though preliminary, researchers say such possibilities may exist in the future.
…
“The most surprising thing in this study is that mere inductions of neural activation patterns corresponding to a specific visual feature led to visual performance improvement on the visual feature, without presenting the feature or subjects’ awareness of what was to be learned,” said Watanabe, who developed the idea for the research project along with Mitsuo Kawato, director of ATR lab and Yuka Sasaki, an assistant in neuroscience at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“We found that subjects were not aware of what was to be learned while behavioral data obtained before and after the neurofeedback training showed that subjects’ visual performance improved specifically for the target orientation, which was used in the neurofeedback training,” he said.
The finding brings up an inevitable question. Is hypnosis or a type of automated learning a potential outcome of the research?
“In theory, hypnosis or a type of automated learning is a potential outcome,” said Kawato. “However, in this study we confirmed the validity of our method only in visual perceptual learning. So we have to test if the method works in other types of learning in the future. At the same time, we have to be careful so that this method is not used in an unethical way.”
At present, the decoded neurofeedback method might be used for various types of learning, including memory, motor and rehabilitation.
“So we have to test if the method works in other types of learning in the future.”
Is it me or Tv and radio have been “hypnotising” us for a long time through our hearing sense? Aren’t we unconsiously learning things this way? Take Iran for exemple, most people will tell you they are evil. But if you ask them why you will get two kind of answers. Some will tell you they want to wipe out Isreal wich means that they have learned something about the subject (even though I really don’t agree with that, but thats not what matter here). But the rest will simply be unable to find any reasons as to why Iran is so evil. They simply know it because they heard it 10 000 times in the media.
The last group of people seems to have been “hypnotise” to me. I might be completly wrong on this because this particular paper state that:
“led to visual performance improvement on the visual feature, without presenting the feature or subjects’ awareness of what was to be learned”
Although it could be argue that the last group of people are not really aware of what they are trying to tell them.
i suppose its only natural seeing the role that visualization plays in learning, that backwards engineering the process would happen eventually. once again back to science fiction for context.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorm_%281983_film%29
“Following her funeral, Michael decides to experience Lillian’s final recording, but nearly dies when the playback causes his body to experience the sensations of a heart attack.”
I think you are completely right, rotger. We have Bernays to thank for some of this but it predates Bernays. Consider the 3 Rudolf Steiner quotes below which date from 1917 & 1916, respectively. And don’t forget Goebbels.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Joseph Goebbels
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over” J. Goebbels
“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.” J. Goebbels
But truth is not the concern of this note, for its aim is to say what it wants to say while counting on it that the magical power of modern journalism has persuaded people to believe everything. And you can certainly often count on this. The power of journalism is indeed one of the means on which certain societies count.
R. Steiner _(he is speaking, here, about secret societies, specifically British secret societies)
Of course certain situations cannot be judged if certain things are not known, and judgements born of ignorance, made about whole nations, work in the most terrible way. Today so very much is born out of ignorance. This is, as a matter of fact, caused by that black magic — I have described it like this on other occasions too — known today as journalism. It is a kind of black magic, and there was a certain truth in the way folk legend felt the inventors of the art of printing — with all the perspectives this opens up — to be black magicians. R.Steiner
We might say that the present time is doing very well compared with that which will come in the future when the Western development blossoms more and more. Very shortly, when one will have written the year 2000, there will come from America not a direct prohibition, but a kind of prohibition against all thinking, a sort of law which will have the name of suppressing all individual thinking. On the other hand there is the beginning achieved in this direction of suppressing all individual thinking into pure materialistic thinking where one does not need to work upon the soul on the basis of external experiments, in a the human being is handled as if he were a machine.
You can see that so much has been sinned against from this other side, because today people have lost the ability to think. For example we have machines today which add and subtract; everything is convenient. Now, in the Future you will not get a law passed which says you must not think. No. What will happen is that things will be done the effect of which will be to exclude all individual thinking. This is the other pole to which we are proceeding. This is connected with the development of the West. R.Steiner