The effortless 'other'

​The self is high maintenance. It spends all the resource, makes constant demands for attention, gets in the way of jobs being done…! But now we have seen that the brain divides its attention across different streams of processing, with specific functional roles.  And with an understanding of this underlying infrastructure we can start to figure out how to undermine this selfish dominance and seek to enter into more beneficial effortless states of being. I will pick up on the dual attentional state of affairs now with reference to the ‘self’ versus ‘other’ functional specificity that entails.

A further distinction (as discussed by Austin, 2010) concerns egocentricity vs allocentricity with respect to these two attentional networks.  The former implies a frame of reference relative to self (‘ego’), whilst the latter refers to ‘other’ (‘allo’).  So the dorsal system is effectively concerned with responding to stimuli that have bearing on proximal significance to the observer (‘me’), and interestingly have strong proclivity towards somatosensory systems involved in touch and proprioception (‘soma’ literally to do with the body). The dorsal system ‘passes through’ the parietal lobe, which is generally concerned with proprioception and spatial information pertinent to navigation of the body through space.  It subserves the capacity to interact with the surrounding environment motorically.

Attention is paid towards how the environment can provide me with means to navigate through it, how items within it can be touched, handled, afford uses, or have direct and immediate bearing upon my survival state needs. As such, beyond psychoanalytical notions of ‘self’, in this case the self in it’s purest form refers to a referent frame wherein the environment has direct potential for interaction with the body and it’s distal elements (peripersonal space or ‘arms’ reach’ as it were – or perhaps through extension via tools).  A framework within cognitive psychology for understanding how the ‘self’ extends into space beyond the immediate extents of the body is known as embodied cognition.  Self-referential awareness in this sense implies being knowledgeable about the capacity to act upon and be in turn acted-upon by the immediate environment.

Meanwhile, the allocentric perspective is embodied within the ventral attention network. This is because that system deals with incoming information about stimuli in the environment from the point of view of what these things are in and of themselves. It is about an object-centric ‘viewpoint’. These things exist ‘out there’, they have intrinsic informational meaning which can be appropriated concerning what purpose they serve. This is initially irrespective of their bearing to ‘me’ or my own dorsally motivated sense of bearing upon my self and my capacity to interact with them.  

(Take note when discussing these systems in isolation it is easy to fall into a trap of viewing them as distinct and not overlapping. In fact as with the brain being an holistic operating system, getting further into the complexity of cognitive-perceptual operations will undoubtedly reveal cross-talk and integration of information from different streams and networks converging towards a common goal.)

 The ventral system is perhaps more predisposed towards the senses of vision and audition: these senses serve in the capacity of alerting the organism to stimuli that are more ‘distant’.  As opposed to those proximally detected and responded to by the somatosensory/motoric capabilities.  (For an utterly fascinating speculative take on why the brain is wired as is and how the different quadrants of the visual field are segmented and represented topographically by the brain see Austin’s illustrations in the same chapter.)

Nevertheless from this exercise in delving beneath the underlying neural infrastructure of attentional networks, it can be surmised how the notion of ‘self’ is underpinned by the functional connectivity of separate streams of processing. These have differential purposing with respect to processing information from the different sensory channels and facilitate different consequent behavioural response capacities with respect to the environment.  ‘Effort’ is perhaps a consequential perception of which attentional network may be operating more ‘prominently’ and which other brain networks are activated with respect to tasks being performed within the environment. 

Self’ seems to be a construct of the brain dependent on specific network activation. This is associated with an attentional system that processes cues in the environment immediately pertinent to ‘me’ in terms of bodily proximity and capacity to act upon them via my motoric and somatosensory ‘tools’.  This self-referent or egocentric perspective also contributes to the further processing in executive higher level networks of associative elements that ladder up into autobiographical memories and abstract thinking about ‘me’, my own sense of awareness and ‘being’ and also simulations of what it might be like to ‘be someone else’ as it were (so called Theory of Mind).  This Default Mode Network activates and sets the mind a-wandering, becomes self-absorbed, and impacts on performance on more goal directed tasks.

To be engaged in a particular task that can be accomplished to a high degree of success, is to coral the components of an attentional network that focus resource on a brain network specialised in task-positive goal orientation.  The Central Executive Network, once ‘strongly functionally connected, will bring its full capacity to bear on doing what is necessary to achieve that success.  Consequent to this, and via anticorrelational reciprocation with the DMN, distracting mental contents due to mind-wandering will be muted, the ‘self’ (or rather awareness of self-referent frame of reference) will be absent.  This state of being also referred to as ‘flow’ engenders a deep satisfaction at this fluidity of experience (when one comes out of it perhaps and is allowed access to ‘self’ to realise how ‘I’ subsequently feel). It also encompasses a disrupted sense of time passing (for the self has not been apparently involved, so there is no relative awareness of time passing in relation to the self).  In all a state of effortless attention has been attained. The self has become the 'other'.
 
Epilogue
 
I have skimmed the surface introducing a complex framework that considers different systems, networks and neuro-cognitive-emotional factors impinging on optimal task performance.  Individual elements can be unpacked in due course in greater detail, and with hypotheses as to the nature of their collective contributions in the wider scheme of performance, and neurogenesis (essential growth at a neural and personal level – with respect to ‘self’ and enhanced ‘being’ as it were).  By understanding the components of optimal performance and ‘flow’ we can start to test hypotheses and develop principles that facilitate this state in individuals. We can also bring focus back to how the environment itself can contribute to this.  It also includes how certain activities we can undertake within the environment (afforded by it) enhance the likelihood of achieving this state. 

No one size fits all, but if we can form a general impression of the optimal environment, circumstances, emotional and cognitive components interacting with each other, the ambition is that engineering ‘flow’ may be more practically achievable.  Having introduced a variety of concepts in order to attain a consensus on terminology and definitions of the cognitive elements we can explore further how environments impact on these more specifically.  I will talk in due course about a burgeoning line of research that indicates how some of the brain networks I have been talking about are impacted on by exposure to natural or wilderness contexts.  This exciting area alludes to how literally one’s self and environment are unified as part of an interconnected system. A highly accessible overview can be found in the National Geographic article linked to here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/01/call-to-wild/
 
References:
​
Austin, J.H. (2010). The Thalamic Gateway: How the Meditative Training of Attention Evolves toward Selfless Transformations of Consciousness. Pages 373-407 in Bruya, B. (Ed.). (2010). Effortless attention: A new perspective in the cognitive science of attention and action. Cambridge, MA, US: MIT Press

Rules of engagement- managing attention, motivating behaviour: Part one - Fuelling the cognitive engine

Rules of engagement - managing attention, motivating behaviour: Part two - 'Who' or 'where' am 'I' in the brain?

​Virtual Reality  is a useful concept for thinking about actual reality.  Alongside perennial questions such as the hard problem of consciousness (connecting mind to body), or what came before or is outside of the universe, it is difficult to pin down without finding some analogy that ‘will do’ for the time being.  But we can use the technology, and idea of ‘virtual’ reality to create reality, explore it’s uses, it’s boundaries, and it’s credibility. And by inference make some assumptions about what constitutes reality, what it may in itself be useful for. In short, how we can engineer reality for our own purposes. Particularly with respect to stimulating and directing behaviours to purposeful and profitable ends!
 
We live in a particularly innovative period of history where the digital age is upon us, the revolution has started, and we really are tuning in across the board, turning on to the benefits of connectivity and dropping out of physical reality at an alarming rate. So it is even more pertinent that we re-establish connection with nature, with the planet. For our own health and mental wellbeing sakes, as well of course for the sake of the ecosystem that threatens to be demolished by our own insatiable appetite for consumption and exploitation of natural resources.  I sit firmly somewhere in the hinterland between early adopter and luddite.  Which I appreciate sounds nearly meaningless. I suppose what I mean is I have an interest in how technology mediates our immersion in the world, and how our senses, and cognitive capacities also mediate our perception of that world. Yet I pine for an earlier golden age where technology did not milk the human race’s supply of attentional resources dry.  And yes, no golden age ever really existed in a sociological sense. It is perchance myth. And all progress, technological and otherwise is good, yes?? So I like to take the stance that technological evolution, as somewhat inevitable thus is a positive thing to be embraced, and directed, lest it insidiously coral the masses into a herd like state of being. 
 
There are limitations of course to the technology of virtual reality, but as with Moore’s law of exponential return, it is improving and will improve yet further as it becomes more ubiquitous. But this is helpful with respect to the potential to understand how this mediating experience affects the perceptions and behaviours of the user.  And with that a window into how the brain constructs the rules of it’s reality in order to generate meaningful actions resulting.  The proof of the pudding is in the acting. As Jeremy Bailenson (2011) introduces in his (co-authored) book Infinite Reality’, the term virtual reality means so much more than just the donning of a set of weird goggles a la in an ‘80s David Cronenberg movie.  In fact with respect to the earlier comment about mediation between the observer and the world via the senses and cognitive processes, it is helpful to think of ‘virtual’ as referring an interpretation or ‘representation’ of something else (‘the world’). 

In fact much current scientific debate revolves around whether ‘consensus reality’ in fact means anything objective at all – the world as a simulation in some advance computer programme (Donald Hoffman talks a lot on this subject with great authority - http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/). In this sense of ‘virtual’ it helps to also acknowledge that the simplest form of ‘virtual reality’ resides in one’s own mind when thinking about stuff, imagining things that aren’t directly there in front of us, dreaming at night. Telling a story around a campfire elicits an empathic response with the audience,: a compelling narrative evokes emotional engagement, leading to various behaviours stimulated from a lack of any ‘real’ stimulus.  (Making someone involuntarily shiver or gasp in response to a sinister tale, or having them wracked with mirth at a funny anecdote.) The point is, we are wired for suspension of belief.
 
It is this very capacity to engage with, empathise with and react to, an idea, a concept, an evoked experience lodged in the mind of the beholder, that is the essence of how we embrace the ‘unreal’. Reality becomes something of a meaningless ideal in this sense, for it is the behavioural response evoked in a situation by an idea that is impressed upon the mind which drives action and motivation going forward.  And this helps then understand how it is that actually it is the brain that ‘creates’ it’s reality in this sense.  Everything is mediated effectively. The brain sits inside its cranial casing, a lightless, Platonic cave.  The eyes are not windows to the outside world.  Rather they feed optical fibrous lines of communication conveying electrochemical signals to the inner-computer. This in turn organises those signals to be transmitted via network ‘cables’ to autonomous ‘committees’ that ascribe some significance to what becomes ‘information’ that can be utilised in a grander context of meaning.
 
The capacity to empathise with a concept or narrative espoused through a mediating technology such as VR lends itself to some potentially useful, even ground-breaking, applications.  This is particularly so with respect to engendering greater empathy with the natural order of things and the wider environment.  Whilst people will pay sincere lip-service to pro-environmental ideals and believe they are acting accordingly, there is a notable dissonance between word and deed.  But this speaks to an issue with human motivation, and again rests with the brain’s proclivity to make it’s own life easy.  For acting takes energy, and a great deal of that energy is required to overcome inertia. And anyway, ‘promising’ to do some pro-environmental action is as good as having done it, right? but without actually having to expend further energy to carry through…?

​The brain lays down it’s neural grooves as an efficient operating system that makes habitual patterns of behaviour the default.  Like the stream that finds its own way downhill, it will seek the path of least resistance.  To create a new groove means deviating the flow of the old.  But emotional engagement can provide it’s own impetus. For emotional responses can shake up the homeostasis of the organism, releasing hormones and neurochemicals such as cortisol or dopmamine, stressing the system and rewarding it in a cocktail of re-balancing nourishment.
 
Virtual reality can provide an experience that plays on the brain’s capacity to engage with an imagined world, to smooth out it’s edges and to become a complicit actor in it’s narrative.  And in this respect, the brain is happy to incorporate the elements of this narrative into it’s own script of experience.  The system that processes the sensory signals, organises this into meaningful information, finds purpose in laying down the grooves that make it such an efficient organ.  The neurochemicals consolidate the resulting network (dopaminergic reward), and the system will look to use this revised network to prompt its decisions and actions. 

The point here is that using mediating technological experiences as can be devised with VR, can have utility in changing people’s behaviours and attitudes without the need for effort on their part.  Because the user is presented with this ‘reality’ they only have to let go and allow their brains to do the work that is naturally enjoys.  So an experience may involve transporting virtually into a far off place where they become part of that environment, perhaps engaging in an activity that has direct repurcussions on the natural surroundings.  This experience will be imprinted in the cortices as being something that they themselves had agency over. Their actions in the virtual world will be motorically imprinted as ‘real’. Their memories will be encoded as having take place ‘for real’, and this will in future be drawn on for reference when making decisions in the ‘actual’ world.  If that action experienced brought home a sense of consequence, of immediate cause and effect, of responsibility for this, then future action-decisions will draw on the weight of that responsibility to motivate perhaps more positive behaviours.  Studies are emerging that draw on this facet of the usefulness of VR and ‘persuasive technologies’ to help change behaviours, particularly with respect to sustainability issues. 
​
VR can of course be used as a marketing tool, particularly to engage consumer interests in tourism and natural recreation possibilities.  But more of interest to me is how analogously this concept of meditated experience can engender positive changes in attitude, motivation and ultimately behaviour. And how the learnings from ‘virtual reality’ transfer to how we approach thinking about (with the aid of the imagination) how we engage with the natural world directly (albeit enhanced by certain ways of thinking about it).  I’ll talk elsewhere about how certain places can become elevated in their emotional and perceptual impact via the medium of photography and cinematography, with reference to virtual reality as well. 
 
In summary, reality is in itself a mediated experience (via our senses into our brain, informed by the processes therein).  What is important in consolidating this ‘consensus’ of reality is the empathic response engendered by this mediated process.  Consequently, the experience that results and is immersed within can stimulate further behaviour, motivation and perspective change.  And this can in principle be achieved with little ‘mental effort’ using technology such as virtual reality, for the brain does not like having to invest energy in disrupting the ‘grooves’ it has laid down based on past experience. The challenge is to promote direct experience with the natural world such that behaviours are ecologically-sustaining, and the connection with the environment is empathically-inspiring!  A paper which talks more about how virtual reality and persuasive communications more generally can inspire greater connection of self with nature is referenced below (Ahn et al., 2016).
 
Footnote from Jäncke et al. (2009):
"A “negative connectivity” between right-sided DLPFC activation and brain areas was found in the dorsal visual stream, extra-striate areas, the SPL and the IPL, and in the PMC (Figure 3). Based on this finding, we indicate that the right-sided DLPFC down-regulates the activation in the dorsal visual processing stream. Considering the specific role of the dorsal stream in egocentric processing of the visual environment, it can be proposed that the right DLPFC is recruited as part of a strategy for regulating the experience of presence by constraining the egocentric processing of the roller coaster stimulus display. It can also be proposed that by increasing the activation in the dorsal visual stream during strong presence experience (with diminished activation in the right-sided DLPFC), the brain attentively prepares actions in the virtual environment as if the brain actually responds to real-life situations. It is known that the dorsal visual stream and the connected parieto-frontal areas are strongly involved in action and movement control. Hence, the stronger the participants are involved in the virtual scene, the stronger they plan to act attentively in the virtual environment."


References:

​Ahn, S.J.,Bostick, J, Ogle, E.,  Nowak, K.L., . McGillicuddy, K.T., and  Bailenson, J.N. (2016). Experiencing Nature: Embodying Animals in Immersive Virtual Environments Increases Inclusion of Nature in Self and Involvement with Nature. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Volume 21, Issue 6, 1 November 2016, Pages 399–419, https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12173

Blascovich, Jim, and Jeremy Bailenson (2011), Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution , Hammersmith: HarperCollins ebooks.

Jäncke, L., Cheetham, M. and Baumgartner, T. (2009). Virtual reality and the role of the prefrontal cortex in adults and children. Frontiers in Neuroscience, Volume 3 | Issue 1 |

JJ Gibson’s theory of affordances has been a mainstay influence in my thinking for many many years (Gibson, 1979).  This theory refers to a dynamic, coupled systems approach to behaviour in context with the environment in which the organism is embedded. This is also referred to as an ‘ecological psychology’ approach. Gibson developed ideas based on understanding properties of optic flow in relation to an animal’s movement and the visual information informing motion and perspective from the surrounding scene.  This flow of visual information, as he propounded, lends itself to providing stimulus to motivate possibilities for action within the environment.  The animal can decide which way to go, what behaviour to select (run, slow, turn, jump) based on this dynamic visual stimulus impinging on the optic nerves.

A later development in the cognitive psychology of vision and action professed dual visual pathways in the brain (Goodale and Milner, 1992, building on Ungerleider and Mishkin, 1982) that accommodate different streams of visual information processing. One (‘ventral’ or occipito-temporal) for discerning ‘what’ an object or stimulus is – qualities that describe object features – and one (‘dorsal’ or occipito-parietal) that discerns relative positioning of the object in space (describing object location and spatial coordinates). Simply speaking, it could be said that the ‘dorsal’ stream subserves the capacity to coordinate motor actions of the organism with respect to the scene and its constituent objects (though of course both pathways have their key functions in visual perception leading to motor behaviour). 

Loosely tying these strands of theoretical background together, ‘affordance’, as Gibson put it, describes a capacity to act upon the world by virtue of the object and environmental scene features that allow action to be made upon them.  So to reiterate, this is a dynamically coupled systematic approach.  Or if you like, behavioural action is an emergent property of this coupled system.  That is, I, myself as the agent in this environment (my office), have the capacity to act relative to my environment, as a function of this interrelationship with the objects within that environment and the spatial elements of this scene.  So it is well within my action potential to rise from my chair (affording sitting currently), navigate across the room from behind my desk, and stroll out (or dash, hop, twirl) into the corridor and seek out the nearest toilet facility.
 
But none of that is intrinsically derived either from myself operating in isolation as an independent and isolated individual being, nor the environment in and of itself (the toilet does not beckon me against my volition – my homeostasis has a key part to play in that).  And so to the point with relevance to environments, motivated action, and potential to seek adventure.  I wish to use this forum to elaborate upon certain scientific principles and theoretical (and applied) frameworks that inform my perspective on adventure psychology. This includes brain functions, and cognitive psychological models concerning the mechanisms by which we process information from the environment and translate that into actions.  This ultimately drives our capacity to perform efficiently and optimally. 
 
The concept of affordances, couched in an understanding of how the brain organises the sensory information flooding it at every turn, helps to define which elements of the environment preferentially determine what ‘I’ want to do next. Be that to sit still, close my eyes and try to avoid engaging with the outside world. Or else to use the environment and sensory stimulation to arouse my interests, ignite my enthusiasm, and disrupt my homeostasis to the point I career out into the world (to climb the mountain, dive in the sea, slide down the white slope) in an attempt to restore equilibrium to that system. Dynamic equilibrium in fact. Hereafter, the ‘natural’ state of being may well be to remain active and engaged, and making full use of my vestibular and proprioceptive capacities, balancing on a figurative tight rope straddling two pinnacles. 

​This mode of action could well grant access to an epic vista and an emotional thrill that I would not be able to see from any other vantage in a more sedentary (homeostatic) state. In due course I will elaborate further on different aspects of the scientific influences I incorporate into a grander perspective of ‘CognitvExploration’. 
 
References:
 
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin

Goodale MA, Milner AD (1992). "Separate visual pathways for perception and action". Trends Neurosci. 15 (1): 20–5. doi:10.1016/0166-2236(92)90344-8. PMID 1374953.
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Ungerleider, L.G. & Mishkin, M. (1982). Two cortical visual systems. In D.J. Ingle, M.A. Goodale & R.J.W. ​