Complexity

We are going to talk about the neural networks and the brain in terms of complex

systems theory and self organisation. Self organisation has been thought of as

a key property of matter by which individual material elements in an assembly

spontaneously start to interact with each other and behave in a coherent and

cooperative way to finally result in the formation of larger and more complex,

stable structures which show emergent properties not possessed by the

individual elements.

(Romijn: 2002, 70)

Complex systems theory on the other hand is not easily definable, a useful description

states, “complexity entails that, in a system, there are more possibilities than can be

actualised” (Luhmann: 1985, 25), another vital feature of complex systems is that they

are characterised as open. Meaning that while the system can be thought of as

individual it is actually composed of smaller subsystems, while at the same time it is a

subsystem of a larger system itself and is constantly involved in a dynamic interaction

with the environment. For example, a cell is part of an organ which is part of a body

which is part of a society and so on. Or more poetically

Man follows the way of the earth,

The earth follows the way of Tao,

Tao follows its on way.

(Lao Tzu)

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We shall endeavour to present a theory of the brain that allows thought to transpose

the concepts taken from complexity theory onto other similar self organising systems.

Neural networks consist of a large number of interconnected simple neurons, each

connection bearing a certain intensive weight, dependent on the strength of

communication between neurons. It is the distributed pattern of spontaneously

modulating weights that determine the characteristics of the network, this pattern

actualises what is known as ‘representational information’ (Cilliers: 1998). A basic

structure of neuronal interconnectedness consists of input units, mediating units and

output units. For example the perception of sound requires the auditory nerves

situated in the ear to acquire the vibrational resonance of the melodical modulations

swarming the environment, which is then channelled through the body via the limbic

system, resulting in the activation of particular motor neurons that elicit some kind of

response. Stimulus ‘percolate’ through networks of basically similar neurons and the

response enacted is governed by the patterns of weights formed during the systems

distributed representation of the event.

Neural networks assemble representational formations of external multiplicities in a

non linear, distributed way (Cilliers: 1998, Globus: 1998), hence the emergent

patterns arise spontaneously rather than in terms of linear causality. Due to

phenomenal complexity large networks are able to simultaneously encode an

incommensurable plenum of stimuli. Whilst encoding, it is the patterns of weights, not

individual neurons that constitute a distributed representation. Importantly, there is no

difference in kind between the sensory traces entering the network and the traces that

interact inside the network (Cilliers: 1998, 82). Therefore, the internal composition of

the system is a direct correlation of the external manifestations that are received

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through sensory apprehension. The gap between internal and external disappears.

Similarly, when we implement our own complex system to perform a creative task,

the distributed pattern of weights that constitutes ones frame of mind are incorporated

into the patterns of organisation that constitute the implements one is working with,

resulting in a psychical superpositioning of the neural pattern of emergence onto the

world at large. Of course there are currents of speed and intensity ‘percolating’

throughout extensive space; therefore our psychical superpositions affect the world-

in-creation to a certain extent but other forces are equally at play in the constitution of

external manifestations.

Self-Organisation

This process is based on the electrico-chemical properties of the individual elements

and some environmental conditions, such as temperature and energy supply, while it

is governed by deterministic chaotic, non-linear dynamics (Kauffman: 1995). We may

postulate the system to be subject to a certain indeterminate-determinacy as the

outcome of this proposition. The complex structures that are formed can be thought of

as meta-stable, oscillating, low energy preference patterns (DeLanda: 2002), to which

the dynamic system is attracted. Highly susceptible to environmental influence, the

oscillation patterns can easily adapt to change. If one or more of the environmental

influences pushes the system beyond a critical level, it can jump to a new meta-stable

preference pattern (Romijn: 1998). This is known as a Phase transition. Phase

transitions are events which take place at critical moments of a systems genesis,

switching it from one state to another (DeLanda: 2002), “There is ample evidence in

living cells to support an intimate connection between phase transitions and life.

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Many of the processes and structures found in living cells are being maintained at or

near phase transitions” (Langton: 1992) [delanda 103]. At this moment, chaos and

order are indeterminately-determining the form of the system, the system is poised on

‘the edge of chaos’,

The edge of chaos is where information gets its foot in the door in the physical

world, where it gets the upper hand over energy. Being at the transition point

between order and chaos not only buys you exquisite control - small input/big

change - but it also buys you the possibility that information processing can

become an important part of the dynamics of the system.

(Langton in Lewin: 1993)

Becoming-chaotically allows access to the imperceptible, beyond that which is ‘in-

formation’ a subtle dimension: ‘unthinged’ – provides the resources necessary for

genesis. This is the novelty that a self organising system exhibits. A bridge between

the manifest and the groundless,

Extensity as a whole comes from the depths. Depth as the (ultimate and

original) heterogenous dimension is the matrix of all extensity… The ground

as it appears in a homogenous extensity is notably a projection of something

‘deeper’ only the latter may be called Ungrund or groundless…

(Deleuze: 1994)

Self organised systems exist on an intermediary point between absolute

Groundlessness and thingedness, hence they are ‘becoming’.

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In the perception and composition of music (and generally) self organising systems

evolve towards attractors/ singularities; “a large number of different trajectories,

starting their evolution at very different places in the manifold, may end up in

exactly the same final state (the attractor), as long as all of them begin somewhere

within the “sphere of influence” of the attractor (the basin of attraction)” (Delanda;

2002). The system intuits weights of chaotic becomings from the heterogeneous

dimension of ungroundedness which consequences arrival at a meta-stable state,

which is a recurrent topological feature within the history of the system. Now,

behaviour in complex systems occurs via local interactions amongst constituent

parts, distributed in such a way as to display ‘global properties’, adding an extra

layer of complex interactions to the relationship between system and environment.

Within this material system of interrelated components dwells the formless, in the

visible lives the invisible; “not objects, but fields, subdued being, non-thetic being,

being before being” (Merleau-Ponty: 1987). It is the endeavour of this project to

bring to light the relationships between material processes in extensive multiplicities

such as the human being, consciousness and musical experience.

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The Neural Specialization for Tonal Processing

Subjective experience occurs in relation to objective observable states of affairs, such

as synchronised neural firings accompanying the enjoyment of a harmonious melody.

By examining the brain states associated with musical perception it is hoped that we

may be able to bring to light concretely, elements of our subjective experience that

can be deemed philosophically important. To start with, it is widely agreed that

‘speech and music must engage the most cognitively demanding aspects of auditory

processing’ (Peretz & Zatorre 231), an analysis of neuro-acoustic processing shall

focus on the many trajectories encountered during musical experience in terms of

‘functional specialization’.

Besson and Schön distinguish temporal, melodic and harmonic aspects as the

constitutive elements of the neuro-acoustic system, they argue that we should think of

each element as relative to a particular sub-module of the system and that the specific

components are hierarchically organised, constantly evolving to form new properties

(Besson & Schön: 1999). These are maintained by individual elements of the system

which interact locally, resulting in higher order global functions occurring across the

network. The higher order processing of musical experience is attributed to Heschl’s

gyrus, which allows an intensive focus of musical trajectories to culminate in a

specific region. The right primary auditory cortex is the area where sounds are filtered

according to pitch, the right temporal cortex resonates in tune with the spectral pattern

organisation of the sound and the superior temporal gyrus holds tonal content in

retentional and presentified memory (Besson and Schön: 1999). This provides us with

a minute description of how a distributed pattern emerges within the neuro-acoustic

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network as the result of musical stimulation, unfortunately a complete delineation of

the regions involved for the processing of all the elements of musical experience is

beyond the scope of this project. However, this information provides insight into the

distributed networks that coalesce to form a representational pattern of emerged

phenomena. These modular networks are engaged in the acquisition of a patterned

vibrational field that reverberates throughout the entire system, “the auditory system

maintains direct connections to every organ in the body…. including the thymus

gland, which is the main regulator in the fight against disease” (Berendt: 2001). Let it

be noted that our entire body is permeated with dynamic modulations affected by

sound, resulting in a two way open interaction between the brain/ body-component

and the environment whence it dwells.

In terms of functional specialization we can generally say that the left hemisphere

processes speech whereas the right processes sound/ music. The left hemisphere is

better suited to process rapidly fluctuating acoustic formations with highly transitive

energy peaks that speech is composed of, whereas, the right hemisphere is better

suited to process the fine spectral differences intrinsic to pitch perception (Zatorre:

2003, Tervaniemi & Brattico: 2004). If either hemisphere is operating with a rapid

influx of sense data then limitations imposed by working memory often impair the

functional proficiency of the latent hemisphere. This entails an inter-hemispheric

negotiation of which aspect of the perceptual flux will be accorded interpretational

priority, subjective manipulation of attention influences which hemisphere/ facet of

experience is prioritised (Tervaniemi & Brattico: 2004, Besson & Schön: 1999).

Directed attentiveness allows the subject to ‘hone-in’ on either speech or sound during

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their simultaneous unfolding which inhibits the registration of incongruities occurring

through the unattended medium.

* Experimental evidence shows a functional dissociation between the acts of

monitoring sensational input and merely holding sensorial stimuli in working

memory, the dorsolateral frontal areas increase in cerebral blood flow when test

subjects are engaged in an auditory tonal working memory task (Zatorre: 2003). The

dorsolateral frontal area receives input from virtually all the other modules in the

brain and has been cited as the area responsible for “executive function” (Dietrich:

2004). The processing of tonal information occurs in the right inferior frontal areas

(Zatorre: 2003), this information will be relevant when considering the

neuropsychology of exceptional phases of consciousness.

Different activities result in the formation of distinct higher order functions, the

system for making judgements and retaining information about pitch in music is

separate from the neural architecture choreographed during the semantic

categorization of words (Binder: 1997). The prevailing variation being that musical

perception is mainly dependent on modules in the right hemisphere with linguistic

perception mainly occurring in the left hemisphere; however a certain amount of

bilateral activation during experimental studies implies that these activities are not

completely independent.

There is strong evidence to suggest that the networks activated during musical

experience are present from infancy onwards (Petetz & Hébert: 2002), as well as that,

the cochlea, with its connections running throughout the entire body, is fully formed

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four and a half months into gestation (Berendt: 2001). This implies a fundamental

importance of hearing and music to the human organism as a whole.

The strength of the connections and patterned formations corresponding to an

experience show a degree of plasticity, dedicated training and practice radically

rewires neural architecture. Musicians under test exhibited a 25 percent increase in

left brain activity compared to untrained subjects when listening to a piano piece, they

also, on average, had a 130 percent larger auditory cortex (Weinberger: 2005). This is

probably explained as a result of greater exposure to a wider variety of acoustic

formations, “when the-sound evoked neuronal firing does not match the existing

neural templates activated by the previous content, other neuronal populations fire …

readjusting the neuronal structure for the incoming acoustic signals” (Tervaniemi &

Brattico: 2004). These data thus underline the existence of different modes of music

cognition, partly influence by attentional listening strategies, but a significant part

being independent of the allocation of attentional resources. Musical perception can

be seen as a largely autonomous dynamical function of the nervous system relative to

particular sub-modules but acquired by the entire network.

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Neural Processing of Language and Music

Consider this,

Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child

spontaneously, without effort or formal instruction, is deployed without

awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual,

and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave

intelligently.

(Pinker: 1989)

A Voila - Music. There is no known culture that does not have music or language.

Both music and language have an underlying syntactic structure that regulates

creation and perception, their natural difference infers that – “language can be used to

convey an unlimited set of discrete, propositional meanings, and music cannot”

(Fitch: 2000). Music as an intensive force, untied from any interrelated network of

significant meaning, possesses a latent ability to affect corporeality from the depths of

manifestation; music ‘means itself’ (Meyer: 1969), what is it then? This problem shall

first be framed within neural terms before a wider investigation ensues. By examining

the deep cognitive syntactical structures it is hoped that the meaning of meaning shall

become more distinct.

As outlined above the cognitive study of music divides neuro-acoustic processing

into three modally related areas; these are, temporal (metre, rhythm), melodic

(contour, pitch) and harmonic (chords). Linguistic processing is similarly divided

amongst various modules; these are, phonetic-phenomenological (phonemes,

prosody), morphosyntactic (the transition from prosody to word), the relationships

between words, and lexicosemantic (access to the meaning of linguistic structures)

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(Besson & Schön: 1999). We can see that linguistic processing requires at least one

added dimension of complexity, insofar as lexicosemantic interpretation is required.

Moreover it is proposed that a further level, pragmatic, situating experiential

information within organizational and contextual factors, is necessary. This network

will be an emergent property of the former colonies that carry the flow of modulating

frequencies constitutive of sound experience, be it language or music. Although

neuroscientists yearn for each aspect outlined above to have a specific neural correlate

it is recognised that a certain amount of inter-modular/ inter-hemispheric negotiation

of input stimuli occurs.

Experiments have shown the modular formation of the neuro-acoustic system,

certain regions of the brain showing a stronger response to certain stimuli varied along

the temporal, melodic and harmonic dimension than other regions (quoted from?).

Certain regions such as the superior temporal sulcus, middle temporal gyrus, angular

gyrus and lateral front lobe show a stronger activation for words than tones, but both

stimuli activate Heschl’s gyrus and the superior temporal plane. Situated within the

superior temporal plane, the planum temporale is similarly involved in the auditory

processing of words and tones; the lexicosemantic categorisation of words occurring

through a related broadly distributed network (Tervaniemi & Brattico: 2004, Besson

and Schön: 1999). At the neurological level it is becoming increasingly difficult to

separate language from music, the main difference is that language exists as a

complex network of interrelated signs that signify something, and that the brain must

filter stimuli through a specific network of formed neuronal connections in order to

acquire any meaning from an utterance, whereas music can be appreciated for what it

is.

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We have reached the implication of memory, an essential feature of self organising

systems; when certain clusters of information that flow through the system altering

the pattern of weighted connections between the individual elements (neurons) the

system acquires a stable set of weights to represent those cluster, recurrently

presented clusters will be recognised by the system (Cilliers: 1998). A word can be

presented to the system over a thousand times, each time a slight alteration of the

patterned weights occurs resulting in an ever increasing web of interrelated

complexity pertaining to the many different aromas one word can exhibit. Memory is

the cognitive transversal of this conglomerated pattern of representation, occurring in

“the same early sensory cortices where the firing patterns corresponding to perceptual

representations once occurred” (Damasio: 1994). In a similar fashion music triggers

the recuperation of episodic memories, but, freed from a system of significance and

representation, music in environment composed of unknown intent, burns new

pathways through the neural hyper-colony.

The rhythmachine captures your perception as it switches from hearing

individual beats to grasping the pattern of beats. Your body is a distributed

brain which flips from the sound of each intensity to the overlapping relations

between intensities. Learning pattern recognition, this flipflop between

rhythmelody and texturhythm drastically collapses and reorganises the

sensorial hierarchy.

(Eshun: 1999)

Symmetry breaking synthesis of sound and sensorium relays new formations among

the colony, response patterns that saturate the entire distributed network. Semi-

independent modules choreographed to oscillate in unison, attaining new degrees of

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unity, synchronising the various energies that indeterminately-determine

manifestation. This entrainment of biological oscillators allows them to “mesh, or

form an assemblage, with the daily and seasonal rhythms of their external

environment” (DeLanda 2002). This way the external sounds are contracted by the

system,

Sensation is excitation itself, not insofar as it is gradually prolonged and

passes into the reaction but insofar as it is preserved or preserves its

vibrations. Sensation contracts the vibrations of the stimulant on a nervous

surface or in a cerebral volume: what comes before has not yet disappeared

when what follows appears. This is its way of responding to chaos.

(Deleuze & Guattari: 1994)

The contraction of sensation affecting the oscillation patterns of the organism will

inevitably effect the creation of sense. If we can accept that “the body converts a

certain motor essence into vocal form” (Merleau-Ponty: 1962) then the collection of

sensation will co-occur with an emission of the sense that the organism has made of

the stimuli. The subject has an automatically formed response pattern distributed

throughout the nervous network, in transmission, prior to any meta-cognitive mapping

of pre-acquired data onto the cluster of emitted reaction. If we compare the act of

dancing with communicative gesture a parallel emerges, “Gesture is not a motor

supplement to speech. Nor is it subordinate to speech, but is semantically and

performatively coordinated with it” (Gallagher: 2005), dancing also allows degrees of

speech; many things can be said without the need for words. This entails that certain

movements, implicitly significant, are organized by the neuro-linguistic assembly

before the motor neurons convert the intention into an act. So while music has the

possibility of affecting us, beyond the scope of systematic signifying systems such as

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language, it is also a medium by which we can integrate our subjective perspective

into the environment, minus the use of words.

Emotional complexity of musical experience

There is no doubt that music is evocative of emotion, but what emotions are and how

they are evoked by music is a cloudy area. For Heidegger ones emotion or more

specifically affectedness attunes ‘Dasein’ to the world, constituting an irreducible pre-

theoretical background that colours our disclosure of the world, without which

explicit cognition could not occur (Heidegger: 1962). Affectedness is “a background

that constitutes one’s sense of self, world and one’s place in the world. It is, quite

simply, the rhythm of life” (Ratcliffe: 2002). In a self organising organism the feeling

of what happens occurs globally before the system has the ability to intellectualise

what is happening, emotional resonance procures a ‘kind of cradle’ (Ratcliffe) from

which intellect and reasoning emerge. Therefore the content and process of thought is

antecedent to the affectedness of the thinker. It has been proposed that we should

contemplate our affectedness in terms of valence and intensity (Trainor & Schmidt:

2003). Valence accords with the contours of affectedness, whether or not the

condition suggests a positive or negative feeling. Intensity is how strong the

affectedness is, how much nervous excitation is generated by the situation.

Neurologically emotion can be seen as a cognitively mediated body state, which both

affects and is affected by cognition, relative to specific brain regions: amygdale,

hypothalamus, basal forebrain, limbic system, prefrontal and somatosensory cortices

(Damasio: 1995). This circuit has the ability to release chemical molecules into the

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blood that will act on various parts of the body and spread neural activation to various

brain centres and muscles, musical experience has been shown to induce muscle

contractions, changes in breathing and heart rate, changes in blood flow and sweating

(P+Z 312). Autonomous physiological changes occurring through the reciprocal

relation between the body and the sound. Highly intense excerpts of music have been

seen to increase blood flow in brain regions associated with positive emotions,

euphoria and cocaine administration (Blood & Zatorre: 2001). Interestingly the

neural networks associated with emotion are closely interrelated with the auditory

networks; sound experience and affectedness are delicately woven in close proximity

throughout our neural architecture (Damasio: 1999). This is not to say that we can

attribute functional supremacy in these matters to the brain, it is best to consider it as

the material region with the highest concentration of activity relative to certain

embodied experiences. However this does show that hearing plays a major role in our

existential affectedness, more so than vision; just imagine watching the shower scene

in the film ‘Psycho’, then imagine they had replaced the piercing string sounds with

“All you need is love…” The fear dissipates and is replaced by… whatever emotion

that song makes you feel. If you reverse this idea and watch a harmless scene with the

shrill music in the background it is more than likely that the fear will return.

We can say with William James that an emotion ‘just is’ the feeling of our body

changing (1884). James Russell takes up this line of thought, for him core affect is the

bodily feeling one has in the here, now. Emotions are then derived by attributing a

conceptual identity to the bodily state, “there is nothing fundamental about emotion:

no dedicated neural centre and no elemental emotional qualia. Instead, emotion can be

completely reduced to non-emotional elements” (Russell: 2005). Like the pattern of

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weights that allots the distributed representation in a neural network emotion or

affectedness is the total pattern of interconnections that arises out of local components

interacting on minute scales, “our bodies change, and an emotion ‘just is’ the feeling

of that change” (Prinz: 2005). To understand what role affectedness plays in the self-

move-ment of the flow/ temporal stream of consciousness Varela and Depraz propose

that we search the dynamics of the fold, the transition from pre-reflexive to reflexive

(2005). Their main concern is “to describe the original fluctuating move, the primal

asymmetric rythmicity at the core of our experience of time”. Affect is interrogated

through co-occurent components:

1) A precipitating event, or trigger that can be perceptual or imaginary or both.

2) A ‘feeling of evidence’ of the precipitating events meaning, the emergence of a salience. This appraisal can be fleeting or detailed, deeply realistic and empathic, much of the meaning attribution is pre-reflexive and even unconscious.

3) A lived manifestation of a feeling-tone along an intrinsic polar axis, the crucial and poorly understood valence dimension of affect.

4) A motor embodiment, especially facial and motor changes, and differential readiness activations.

5) Complex autonomic physiological changes, with the most commonly studied being various cardio-pulmonary parameters, skin conductance, and various muscle tone manifestations.

We have seen distributed evidence of these points throughout, properly, in musical

experience the lived manifestation of the feeling-tone is the most effective element of

this interrogative constellation. To uncover the living salience of these points we shall

apply them to a phenomenal description of music experience:

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Today went to concert at 11, a certain heaviness in my eyelids, and a bit of a moody blues as setting. The musicians arrive, tune up, and settle, a short silence and then begin with the sonata of the Musical Offering, which I love. Instantly, within the first five or six notes of the main theme, the break in mood and feeling-tone arises: suddenly my chest heaves a little, my skin becomes goose-bumpy and it is as if the body is bought into position. Almost at the same time there is a wave of beauty, of poignancy which brings sudden tears into my eyes, an intensified breathing. Without premeditation, I feel my eyes close and I lean backwards to relax my body into complete receptivity. My mental-space seems to spread out and my ego-centre to become almost imperceptible. By the time the first variation of the musical theme starts the feeling-tone is fully formed and the first waves of thought-wandering have begun, the first being a memory of another occasion when the very same music also touched me to tears. The whole thing has lasted a mere fraction of a second.(Varela: 2005)

It will be useful to read over the co-occurent dimensions of affect once more. This

description is reminiscent of the Greek conception of truth as φύσις, ‘a self

blossoming emergence’ in which there is an unveiling of the concealed depths that

spring forth the phenomenal apprehension, where “the origin… always contains the

unopened fullness” (Heidegger in Fay: 1977). The music is the presencing of a ‘this’

as opposed to a ‘they’, implying immersion in the ‘now’ as opposed to the ‘when?’,

connecting the emergence of disclosure in a synchronised sway of manifestation, “the

emergence of the living present is rooted in and arises from a germ or source of

motion-disposition, a primordial fluctuation” (Varela & Depraz: 2005). The moot

point to be made is that

…affect precedes temporality: affect implicates as its very nature the

tendency, a ‘pulsion’ and a motion that, as such, can only deploy itself in time

and thus as time… First the very original ‘pulsional’ tendency just evoked.

Secondly, the tendency is followed by a corresponding shift of attention that

manifests as the emergence of salience. Finally, the earliest e-motion follows,

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including a motion that embodies it. Thus, this primordial fluctuation cannot

be separated from its complex or multifarious constitution, since all its

moments are not a linear succession, but rather dimensions of co-arising.

(Varela & Depraz: 2005)

The ‘depth’ from which the Ereignis arises is a multifarious well of ‘timeless

unthingedness’ projecting a symphonic disclosure of ‘ownmost-mineness’ upon the

resulting harmony. For this argument to be sustained will require a deeper delve into

the depths of manifestation to search for the ‘originary source’ from which I exhumes

experience. Words may not be sufficient. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche has said that

‘the purpose of art is to show our non-existence in the world’ (Goguen: 2005),

inspired music offers glimpses of an infinite horizon, a ‘fourth moment’ in which time

is suspended and past, present and future are woven from “a limitless space of great

equanimity that unifies and transcends all three, and in which both self and world

disappear” (Goguen: 2005). Here we find the abode of the sacred.

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Neuropsychology of exceptional phases of consciousness

Following on from this brief discussion of the possibility of a zone of indiscernible

temporality from which actuality spontaneously emanates- (∞) -this exposure of the

interrelated existentiality of music and conscious is going to reveal insights from the

scientific community pertaining to our experience of experiencing space, time and

phenomena through exceptionally conscious lenses.

A common experience is entering into a state of flow, where life just seems to happen

in “an almost automatic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness”

(Csikszentmihalyi: 1975). The state of flow enables instantaneous recognition of

salient environmental phenomena as if their occurrence had been expected whereby

the appropriate response pattern is already formed prior to any deliberation. As if the I

no longer existed and the orchestration of action was performed by existence itself.

Sometimes excruciatingly complex tasks can be performed without the need for

conscious deliberation, such as finishing an essay on the spur of the moment or

conducting Beethoven’s fifth. We are going to examine the functioning of our nervous

system in these instances to see how it differs from our ‘average everyday’

somnambulant neural processes.

The first thing we must see is the locality of certain everyday functions to specific

brain regions, then we can investigate how symmetry breaking events can lead to

phase transitions which unseat the everyday functions enacted in the brain to effect a

new form of awareness altogether.

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For the sake of intelligibility we can divide the brain into two functional operating

systems, emotional and cognitive (LeDoux: 1996). Presently we shall be monitoring

insights pertaining to the cognitive operations occurring throughout the brain. The

cerebral cortex “likely underlies the development of complex thought” (Newberg &

D’Aquili: 2005), there are several associated areas that complement the higher order

functioning of the cerebral cortex, those being investigated are the dorsolateral

prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), the posterior superior parietal lobe (PSPL), the inferior

temporal lobe (ITL), inferior parietal lobe (IPL) and the prefrontal cortex (PFC).

The DLPFC “appears” to be the area where already highly processes emotional and

cognitive information is fully reintegrated (Dietrich: 2004), hence this region is

attributed with “executive function”, that is higher cognitive functions such as a self

construct, self reflective consciousness, abstract thinking, planning and theory of

mind. Here “plans and strategies for appropriate behaviour” are formulated so that the

adjacent motor cortices can execute the computational product (Dietrich: 2004). This

amounts to the most sophisticated response behaviour that the system can deploy,

although all neural receptors are able to produce an effective response, as we see in

reflex actions such as the typical knee jerk response. Because the DLPFC holds

working memory (Fuster: 2000), temporally integrates information (Knight &

Grabowecky: 1999) and implements sustained directed attention (Givens & Bruno:

2001) it provides “the infrastructure to compute complex cognitive functions by

actively attending to information, providing a buffer to hold that information in mind,

and order it in space-time” (Duncan & Owen: 2000). It is also able to inhibit

activation of other regions in a function known as deafferentation (Newberg &

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D’Aquili: 2005). It seems plausible to say that the DLPFC is the region that most

embodies egoic activity.

The PSPL is involved in the analysis and integration of higher order sensory

information, the right PSPL is involved in general localization and the sense of spatial

coordinates, whereas the left exerts influences in regard to objects that may be

grasped and manipulated. Some neurons in the left PSPL respond to items within

grasping distance whereas some respond mostly to objects beyond grasping distance

(Newberg & D’Aquili: 2005). Their hypothesis is that the self-other dichotomy

evolved from the primitive division of space into the graspable and non graspable.

The IPL is located at the confluence of the temporal, parietal and occipital lobes

(TOP), an “association area of association areas” (Newberg & D’Aquili: 2005), the

TOP neurons are primarily devoted to perception, the primary sensory cortices of all

sense modalities are located in TOP (Dietrich: 2005). The IPL is “generally regarded

as responsible for the generation of abstract concepts and relating them to words”

(Newberg & D’Aquili: 2005), so here we can see how conceptualisation is applied to

the entire stream of perceptual data coursing through the labyrinths of cognition,

“concepts are centres of vibrations” (Deleuze & Guattari: 1994).

With this brief summation of salient neural modules aside it remains to be seen how

they relate to the phase transition which occurs to consequence arrival at a new meta-

stable state, known as the flow state, and what this entails phenomenologically.

Furthermore we shall explore the possibilities of going beyond the experience of flow

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to arrive at a state where all boundaries collapse and time stands still, throughout

music shall appear as the attractor which instigates the phase transition.

The most remarkable element of the flow state is that immensely complex tasks can

be performed without deliberation, the proposed reason for this is that the body has

already required a complex pattern of response patterns that are not dependent on the

apprehension of explicit rule based learning for activation (Dierich: 2004).

Throughout our lives we acquire knowledge through the interpretive mode (insert H

quote here), this entails the channelling of experience through the explicit system

which is tied to our conscious awareness, hence to a certain degree the DLPFC and

other prefrontal regions (Ashby & Casale: 2002). We are also able to function without

the need of an interpretive framework, through the implementation of implicit

learning which “takes place largely independently of conscious attempts to learn and

largely in the absence of explicit knowledge about what was acquired” (Reber: 1995).

An example of this is the acquisition of language by children which is the result of an

intuitive understanding. The implicit system is the presence of a sub symbolic

memory of connection strengths or weights that a specific situation will induce the

system to presence (Cilliers: 1998).

The interal structure of a connectionist network develops through a process of

self organisation, whereas rule-based systems have to search through pre-

programmed options that define the structure largely in a priori fashion,

therefore learning is implicit in a neural network.

(Cilliers: 1998)

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Therefore the explicitly created egoic-strategical-interpretative frame of mind which

is commonly applied to situations appears an unnecessary counterpart to what could

otherwise be a fluid spontaneous existence,

Optimal performance involving a real-time sensory-motor integration task is

associated with maximal implicitness of the tasks execution. Given that the

explicit system is subserved by prefrontal regions, it follows from this

proposal that a flow experience must occur during a state of transient

hypofrontality that can bring about the inhibition of the explicit system.

(Dietrich: 2004)

The acquisition of the flow experience certainly involves deafferentation of the neural

modules appropriating reflective consciousness, by a sustained direction of focus

upon extractions from the perceptual flux that are arising from present nowness this is

able to occur,

… the universal form of all experience, and therefore of all life, has always

been and will always be the present. The present alone always is and ever will

be. Being is presence or the modification of presence.

(Derrida: 1973)

The problem one faces is that the mundane reality generally apprehended is not much

to focus upon. Hence, hyper intensive vibrations of pandemonial sonority, which defy

conceptualisation, capture your perception, thus entraining the mechanics of

embodiment to oscillate in unison with the “presencing of what is present”

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(Heidegger: 1975). The DLPFC and explicit system is bypassed and the neural

modules responsible for processing pure sensorial information function automatically

(*See p.7). The music is moving and we are moving with the movement. The now is

too much for reflection to reflect upon, phase transition occurs, system pushed toward

greater vibrational frequency1. So, immersion in a positively charged sonorous

environment can overcome the state our somnambulant selves are often found in.

What is most interesting is that upon arrival at this ‘strangely attractive’ state our

selves disappear, “self-consciousness is a meta-representation of the highest order and

probably one of the first phenomenological subtractions to manifest itself in flow”

(Dietrich: 2004). Receptivity is the key,

Unless existence dances in you there is no possibility of any dance… Remove

yourself so that you don’t come in between you and existence. Put the ego, the

very idea of ‘I’, aside and be utterly empty, receptive. And the moment your

emptiness is total, the whole starts showering millions of joys and millions of

flowers upon you. The splendour is infinite.

(Osho Rajneesh: 1991)

Often, the focus of attention is upon the ‘I’, the whorl of manifestation revolving

around an ideal construct maintained within our thought-forms. We can see that there

is no place for an ‘I’ in self organised systems, only parts and the whole. Now we are

going to see the neuropsychological processes that accompany experiences of oneness

and emptiness and how sonority can act as the attractor for this state.

1 Valerie Hunt has developed an electromyograph that detects the frequency of oscillations in the human energy field which condense at the areas associated with the chakras. The majority of people emit vibrational frequencies no higher than 250 cps, but some mystical people submitted to the test were shown to emit frequencies as high as 200,000 cps. The scale is relative to the person’s attunement. This is a broad spectrum. (Talbot: 1991)

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When the body is affected by vibrations in space the frequency patterns entrain either

the ergotropic or trophotropic system depending on their valence and intensity. The

ergotropic system innervates the body; it is the motivation behind our “fight or flight”

response in the face of environmental stimuli. The trophotropic system quiesces the

nervous system and is responsible for maintaining homeostasis, it functions to

conserve body energy (Gelhorn: 1967). Below is an example of how musical

stimulation can effect a profound phase transition.

Both the ergotropic and trophotropic systems are connected to the brain via the

hypothalamus. The combined activation of the neural modules associated with

perception of music and the ergotropic system, which is entrained by environmental

sonority results in a reverberation loop occurring in the systems most affected by the

frequency patterns of the rhythm (Newberg & D’Aquili: 2005). The reverberation

loop increases in intensity as progressive onslaughts of power course through the

systems distributed representation of the event, it is important that the rhythm

ensnaring the perception of the system be repetitive and intense, elevating as much

force from the depths as is possible2. This will result in what has been called the

hyperergotropic state,

This results in an extraordinary state of unblocked arousal and excitation and

is associated with keen alertness and concentration in the absence of

superfluous thought or fantasy.

(Czikszentmihalyi: 1975)

2 Bohm: one fraction of space contains more energy than occurs in the know universe.

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At a certain point the intensity of the situation can lead to maximum stimulation of the

ergotropic system which results in a ‘spillover effect’ (Hughdahl: 1996) thus

stimulating the trophotropic system. At this point there would be maximal stimulation

through the limbic structure to the left and the right PFC, Newberg and D’Aquili

“postulate that this ultimately results in a progressive deafferentation of certain parts

of the PSPL” (2005). The blocking of input into the left PSPL will result in the loss of

differentiation between self and other, hence boundaries collapse and the autochthon

is “becoming-music”, synchronised with the sonorous unfolding. On the other hand,

as ‘the right PSPL is involved in general localization and the sense of spatial

coordinates’ total deafferentation of the right PSPL is most likely associated with the

loss of usual orientation with regards to space and time. If all input into this structure

is blocked the experience will be of “complete nothingness” (Ah!). Total blockage of

both the left and right PSPL’s “should result in the merging of the self with all that is”

(Newberg & D’Aquili). “I have lost myself in the cosmos. I am no more.” (Osho

Rajneesh: 1988).

This result is generally achieved through meditation as opposed to music, meditation

innervating the higher order cognitive functions to issue a “top-down” reaction,

whereas music issues a “bottom-up” innervation of the nervous system. One

hypothesis for this being the case is that the mental formation is always a “direct

result” of the external forces surrounding the system, therefore it is proposed that as

long as there is some kind of positive content in the acoustic domain manifestation

will occur, whereas ignoring the external world and focusing upon the silent depths

within implies the possibility of no positive mental content to be presenced. The

interesting point is that these experiences seem to imply some kind of “depth”. Like

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Varela’s conception of affect determining the constitution of temporality or Deleuze

and Guattari’s “plane of composition” and “plane of immanence”. It seems that

harmonic frequencies affect humanity at a “deeper level”, “it penetrates to the centre

of our soul”, Plato says “and gains possession of the soul in the most energetic

fashion”, there must be a fundamental fact about our existence that gives reason for

this, indeed for Schopenhauer “the man inhabited and possessed by this intruder, the

man robbed of a self, is no longer himself: he has become nothing more than a

vibrating string” (Jankélévitch: 1961). For the sake of conclusiveness the

investigation must now turn to the empirical domain of quantum physics to reach a

more “primordial” understanding of the composition of extensive forces and the

nature of their effectiveness, particularly in regards to consciousness.

A Quantum Turn

‘self directed neuroplasticity’ ‘music is an image of a soul’ providing a sonorous

avenue for self exploration and exploration of ‘other’ depths. COSMIC

CONSCIOUSNESS MAN!

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