The Brain Has a ‘Low-Power Mode’ That Blunts Our Senses | Quanta Magazine

When fed a chunk of information, a computer processes it in the same way on each occasion, whether it’s been at work for five minutes or five hours, whether it is located in a fluorescent lit office or positioned next to a sunny window, whether it’s near other computers or is the only computer in the room. This is how computers operate.

But the same

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Melanie Boly, a neurologist and neuroscientist at the Medical School of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is painstakingly collecting EEG data from long-term Buddhist meditators during a state known as pure presence, an experience with no self, no discursive thoughts, and no perceptual content except for a luminous expanse, an empty mirror. Att

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Our default waking mode (and also during dreaming phases of sleep) is not a brain at rest, but what is known as mind wandering.

Like New York, the internet never arrests its massive sprawl. Instead, it exists as complex adaptive system that renders senses overworked and synapses under-rested.To open any app is to wade into frenzied maelstrom whipped by gale-force winds. Whether requests, reminders, or retweets, waves and winds alike pummel your attention as you try your bes... See more

Recent research discovered a startling facet of life—brief periods during which consciousness is absent while the body carries on its well-rehearsed duties: driving, doing the dishes, or reading a long and uninspiring office memo. To an observer, everything looks normal while the subject is, in fact, zoned out. During these episodes of mind blankin

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