The Science of Taste

This week I feel like I had a breakthrough with my independent studies as I met with Gail at Fertile Ground and discussed my direction moving forward with my internship.

This image shows a new organization of the depictions I have been creating for the last few quarters to show how to be. Last week I was hoping to organize some ideas that were inspired from Shepherd’s book on neurogastronomy. The dotted lines running through the stacked boxes and the number 4 and the number 5 separated from the infinity symbol attempt to show the tunnel vision of focus on a desired way of being. The flower in the middle shows the potential growth and how your being might create a buzz is shown above the middle circle.

Let’s begin with the stacked boxes on the left.

As described in the week two post, this depiction created by Dr. Alan Watkins shows how we physiologically sustain thinking and our actions to accomplish a desired task which is reflected in our behavior. How we go about sustaining our physiology depends on how we sustain our emotions . 

beyond ourselves. This picture above represents the 4 in the original image. The following picture describes the pitfalls of an extended moral centrality and reliance upon a group for reinforcement of behavior, rather than using the ability to reflect in what that behavior actually does for others amongst that shared group. When a person reflections upon their actions amongst a group after being with them, not as a form of reinforcement, it contributes to that person’s sense of being and allows for a person to expand on how their behavior exists beyond themselves. Not until the past few days have I realized how rewarding cooking with other people can be when the recipes hold complexity that would not be enjoyable to attempt individually. The ability to exist beyond the sense of self in effort to sustain other’s physiological self and providing emotional support for the words unspoken by sharing a space has become internalized as powerful mode of social resilience.

Now that we have looked at how physiology, moral centrality, and integrity exist in our way of being it is importance to look at how that may change over time. 

This image represents the the number 5 in the space between the circle with the infinity loop and the growth that leads to our being. The difference between the first physiology image and this one is that there are lines to represent whatever added bullshit we have that prevents us from truly being happy and existing in a sustainable joyous way that benefits others beyond our immediate selves. This section describes the fear in our human attempt to bend backwards to correct for a cultural malformation that has impacted us all in varying ways, and our different perceptions of how it has affected us can be celebrated in sharing the enjoyment of sustaining positive emotion as described in 4 through cooking, music, theater, or any form of creative expression that nourishes the emotion of performers and viewers. Emotion exists in our subconscious as a representation of the physiological signals that are getting sent to the brain that can only be processed through feeling. If I have created an intuitive crutch, for example a set of jokes that turn an unprocessed aspect of my life into immediate comedic relief, I am able to trick myself that that quirk could not use some attention to live a happy, more complete life

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This lopsided depiction of The Adaptive Cycle that describes human and environmental interaction over time is a helpful tool to show how the use of the intuitive crutch can trick the mind.

There is a quote from Michel Foucault’s The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical perception that describes the deceit of the rational thinking of the human brain, “Death left its old tragic heaven and became the lyrical core of man: his invisible truth, his visible secret.”

After reading the assigned portion of The Lives of Animals did I uncover the rational mode of thinking is synonymous to my idea of the intuitive crutch. It can be used to process emotion through creativity, but relies upon the logic of a shared environment and not until a new perception of the immediate environment is created can other environment’s logic be used to sustain a healthier, more conscious way of thinking.

As described in my notes between winter and spring quarter, with no idea of the context,

“The intuitive crutch can be unknowingly used by tactful or incidental decreased conscious awareness of behavior in effort to seek acknowledgement for suffering, which means increased conscious awareness and connection with the intuitive self is essential, how?”

If the conscious self can learn and develop behaviors to preserve the emotional integrity of the intuitive self through controlling for the wildcard rational way of thinking, then being is revealed to the conscious self as incredibly simple, and eventually it won’t need constant reflection. The box on the far left represents how we can sustain our physiology in an emotionally sustainable way that rewards ourselves and connects us with others through forms such as cooking, music, and theater while the infinity symbol on the right shows how intentional breathing and meditation can lead to more integrated forms of self preservation through qi gong breathing and integral consciousness training. Distress can be composted, grown, and harvested to sustain the farmer through dance – a celebration – of peaceful relations between the mind and body set the tune of music, rhythm, and release – and when the sense of self is developed, it can be tested, and challenged through tactful invitations of perceived danger through any meaningful way to the individual, for me, I have noticed there’s some beauty in the traditions of martial arts and chess.

Last week I was stumped by the concepts of contrast enhancement and lateral inhibition in space and time as described in Gordon Shepherd’s Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters.

“He [Hartline] further showed the mechanism that produces them [Mach bands]: lateral inhibitory connections between the receptor cells. Through these connections, the strongly excited cells at the border more strongly inhibit the weakly stimulated cells, and the weakly stimulated cells more weakly inhibit the strongly excited cells. The mechanism is called lateral inhibition. The effect is called contrast enhancement, because the difference between the light and dark areas is enhanced at their boundary. In a general sense, contrast enhancement also is a kind of feature extraction, the enhanced response to specific spatial features in a visual scene. This is contrast enhancement in space.” (Shepherd: 61)

“Hartline’s laboratory also showed that there is contrast enhancement in time. When there is an abrupt increase in illumination, a single cell responds with a large increase in impulse firing, which rapidly declines to a steady level somewhat higher than before. The overshoot in impulse frequency is called the phasic response, in contrast to the steady tonic response. It shows that the nervous system is sensitive primarily to a change in the environment rather than to an unchanging steady input. This contrast enhancement in time is the counterpart to contrast enhancement in space. After the initial increase in stimulation, lateral as well as self-inhibition comes to counterbalance the higher level of steady stimulation.” (Shepherd: 61/62)

I hope to eventually be able to explain human behavior in the context of lateral inhibition and contrast enhancement in space, and why it is a kind of feature extraction. Until I get there, these are my thoughts.

I have not started reading my assigned text Thinking, Fast and Slow and I hope to revise this understanding as the quarter progresses. These two beautiful blobs represent two modes of thinking, often understood as higher consciousness and lower consciousness. I believe the “lower consciousness” is actually your brains “fast” emotional mode of thinking and the “higher consciousness” is the brains “slow” intellectual mode of thinking, designed to reflect on the emotional mode of thinking’s sentience. Lateral inhibition describes the checks and balances system of the brain, as Shepherd states, the mechanism, and the effect is called contrast enhancement, which I think can only be thought about as moving through time.

The effect of contrast enhancement can be understood in the terms of emotional consumption. If something wants to shine more brightly than others, it could consume the emotion of its surroundings to create a sharper contrast of itself amongst everything else, or it could try and shine brightly and positively affect everyone’s mood by a powerful individual presence. How that happens can be understood in two different ways.

The first way is to self reflect.

The second way is to seek an understanding through others.

The first way to reflect is inspired by an event that jolts the person into a phasic response through an overshoot in impulse frequency in contrast to a steady tonic response which might be described by the second way of seeking an understanding. After the initial increase in stimulation, lateral as well as self-inhibition (could be described by using lenticular logic) comes to counterbalance the higher levels of steady stimulation.

So let’s look at the effect of contrast enhancement in both approaches, starting with self reflection.

In the emotional reaction following the phasic response, a person can self reflect and find balance through understanding both methods do not exist in absolute indifference (look at a yin-yang symbol, to a small degree one exists within the other). How one finds a balance through their understanding of lateral and self-inhibition will affect how they exist beyond themselves.

In the second emotional response, a person can seek an understanding through others rather than self reflection. Over time, an understanding will be found and the principle behind their actions will exist in some way beyond themselves as interpreted by the people they affected. As that person continues to deflect accountability, the use of lenticular logic persists as shown in the diagram above to defend their sense of being formed through this emotional response following the phasic response. Think about a part of Shepherd’s quote in the context of preserving the natural environment,

The overshoot in impulse frequency is called the phasic response, in contrast to the steady tonic response. It shows that the nervous system is sensitive primarily to a change in the environment rather than to an unchanging steady input.”

and what the health of the environment might represent to someone altering their perception of how they exist in the context of their environment.

Earlier in the week I began understanding contrast enhancement in the context of humans through internalizing that humans are supposed to be emotionally blinded by their children to offer the opportunity for change and understanding of what the previous generation has done in order to adapt to their understanding of the environment as the next generation comes of age The blinding process is supposed to encourage an increased understanding of the “higher consciousness” brain’s mode of thinking. But are human’s nervous systems doped on electronics getting encouraged? Or having a phasic response? Contrast enhancement in time exists for all organisms, that’s what natural selection is. Natural selection amongst humans is a mythical origin story that has formed from the fallacy of thought that humans are often believed to be superior, or greater than nature, which was not apparent until we completely destroyed that sense of self through the natural environment. Natural selection amongst all species is very real, but how that species separates itself through contrast enhancement determines whether or not that species will die off or evolve in its ability to co-exist with other organisms.

If the importance of self-preservation is internalized after the phasic response with a similar amount of emotional intensity, you can end up developing a wonderful system to preserve the self, but because you know the importance of the concept so well you might find security in your knowledge or approachof understanding of how to preserve the self which could be blinding if you are in a state of emotional need and seeking affirmation. If this occurs your perception will be altered because you may have become emotionally invested in that knowledge itself rather than applying that knowledge to your brain’s emotional way of thinking because of how you formed a sense of identity through your culture through the use of an intuitive crutch (an immature phasic response reinforced over time).

This picture represents an undeveloped sense of self formed in an oppressive culture seeking affirmation between both modes of thinking in the brain. How this unidentified self finds balance again affects how it exists beyond itself. Seemingly, why can’t a good intentioned person apply their understanding to themselves if previously internalized ideologies stand in the way of the ability to honestly reflect on who they are? If the culture that you formed your sense of identity in and other members consumed by that culture attacked you because you represented what it was denying and couldn’t understand it, and you couldn’t understand why you were being attacked and loved simultaneously, then over time many will feel they don’t deserve to feel happiness if they persist through it. How we understand the phrases attacked and loved depend on the person’s understanding of their experience and the context of how their experience shaped their perception. That is why the use of the intuitive crutch itself persists so heavily today.

This week I also thought about the concept of genius. As previously stated, the “slow” mode of thinking in the brain is an inhibitor to the “fast” mode of thinking, and the balance in between can be described as the line that is present in all of the hand drawn diagrams. This happens in moments until the genius concept is applied to preserving the body’s physical and emotional state to sustain that level of thinking. If this is done repeatedly across time, you can rewire your brain to manufacture something in the physical realm that simulates existence beyond the perceived world as exemplified by John C. Lilly’s use of hallucinogenic drugs and his creation of the sensory deprivation tank. The intellectual capacity of utilizing both modes of thinking was exemplified by the mind of Einstein and his capacity to use both modes of thinking simultaneously. If you think too emotionally and develop through the “fast” systematic mode of thinking that includes the rational mode of thinking, you can end up rewiring the emotional attached side of your brain to be your own version of higher consciousness – an intuitive crutch. This can be used with good or bad intention because as you seek to sustain emotion, whatever state it may be, you develop or sustain emotional crutches on a personal and large scale. This is how caste systems are manufactured – manifest destiny through consistent tonic responses.

This week I also thought about what this means in the context of experiencing “the other”:

People that leave their sense of self to experience “the other” with the intention to return back to their sense of self are doing so by “thinking fast” and bring their systematically developed modes of thought with them, which may or may not have already been developed and wired into the brain over time to incorporate the comfort of what they are leaving to enjoy the experience of leaving their sense of self even more, while seeking for confirmation of how good (they are) their ability to convince themselves through other people is. If they seek out the other in the most honest way, without reflecting on how their intense phasic response is transmitted their culturally assisted sense of self, (as shown in the image below)

they are only reinforcing their belief that they have left themselves and become what they dreamt they could be, but over time only dream up ways to reinforce the belief in the false sense of self. Social media reinforces this falsehood that we need to represent well and be this magnificent image in other’s eyes. As this continues to happen, a person might know that what they’re doing isn’t correct, but the emotional immaturity to get rid of their “progress” allows for someone to pity their growth which affects how they continue to satisfy a state of need through developing a prosthetic heart (negative human innovation to confirm one’s sense of brilliance).

Meditation and Rice

How much you fill your rice cooker with rice is an act based on your hunger. The reflection of your state of hunger can be understood by how much water you decide to add to it. Too much water, and you have watery rice, and you don’t deserve that do you? We all are more than willing to self-pity over watery rice, but it is easier to stir the rice and continue to wait patiently. When filling the bowl of rice with water it is wise to note if you are scared of burning the rice. If there is a lot of water in the bowl, maybe decide to stir the bowl more than once before you decide the rice is cooked. If impatience overcomes the meditation and watery rice is eaten without accepting why the rice might be watery, it might be reflected in how much spice was applied to the rice. If the rice is cooked with patience, I bet your spices will provide a near perfect season to your meal.

Finding your spice

I love thyme. Why? It smells good. How you go about tasting thyme determines how much the smell of thyme can transfer to your sense of taste – if you focus too much on how good thyme smells it might affect how you concentrate on the scent itself, which can affect the quality of the desire to taste the smell of thyme. When I desire thyme too much, I end up flavor blasting my rice and all I taste is thyme. I have to remember, how strongly my impulse to concentrate on the scent itself can affect the quality of the desire to taste the smell. You might think you want all of your rice to taste like thyme, but thyme only reflects the rice itself, and sometimes that can taste a way that doesn’t line up with our own perception of our spice.

Week 2

The hundred pages I covered this week in Gordon M. Shepherd’s book was comically informative. I took four quotes from the text to outline my mode of thinking throughout the first two sections of the book. The first quote,

“The reason for this [olfactory pathway probably being the most heavily modified pathway in the brain] appears to be that our perception of food smells is heavily dependent on our behavioral state: whether we are hungry or full, angry or sad, craving for something or repulsed by it, suspicious of a new food or eager for novelty. The smell image has to be modified by the behavioral state.” (Shepherd 2014: 98)

follows Shepherd’s description of the constant modification of the olfactory pathway relative to other modified pathways in the brain. This quote instantly reminded me of Dr. Alan Watkin’s presentation of how to sustain a high level of thinking through the depiction of how our physiology affects our thinking. This depiction shows how our physiology sends various electromagnetic signals from our body’s organs to our brain (understood by scientists as emotion, or energy in motion) and how that is consciously understood by us as thinking about how we feel. Emotion is interconnected with feeling just like feeling is interconnected with thinking. The capacity of our body to perform an action towards a desired task is reflected in our behavior. Our behavior can be described as a symptom of our human condition.

The following depiction of Dr. Alan Watkin’s presentation includes my input of intuitively processing emotion and satisfying the “need” to process emotion with a crutch. Food can help alleviate a need to processemotion by reducing physiological stress. “Food” such as chemically engineered flavor packets or other chemically induced fast foods can also be used as a direct means to satisfy a temporary need by providing immediate stimulus at the cost of a food hangover of sorts. If the smell image has to be modified by behavior, which exists as a symptom of human functionality, shouldn’t the emphasis on eating be placed on why not what?

The second quote,

“In the same way, [comparing smell and color] we postulate that our smell world would also be only a smear of shades of inchoate sensations set up in our noses if we did not have the circuits in our smell pathway that select specific types of molecule stimulated activity to give them a quality we can identify as distinct from all the rest.” (Shepherd 2014: 87)

describes how the brain perceives molecular stimulated activity in our smell pathway by creating a quality to identify a distinction between other smells. Relating this to the first quote, if a person’s environment supports their behavior and does not support or provide an emphasis on the importance of distinguishing quality to identify certain behaviors as distinct from the rest, then the smell world is but a smear of shades of inchoate sensations. The nose knows.

In the next quote Shepherd describes the exact physiological processes that enable the system to improve its ability to understand input patterns to allow for an increased ability to discriminate between more similar smell molecules.

“This system [interactions between the olfactory cortex and olfactory bulb] learns. The basic cortical circuit has the ability to improve its performance with repeated exposure to different smells. The recurrent excitation strengthens the cells activated by input from the olfactory bulb. The lateral inhibition enhances the contrast between activated and less activated cells. Finally, the synaptic strengths change so that the system can store these changes as a memory and match them to the input. These changes with learning enable the system to improve its ability to match an input pattern to a stored pattern, so that finer discrimination between more similar smell molecules can occur” (Shepherd 2014: 103)

The quote mentions the basic cortical circuit has the ability to improve its performance with repeated exposure to different smells. This increased perspective can help enable the system to improve its ability to match an input pattern to a stored pattern. If different smells are hidden from a young nose, and the young learning system is enabled to match an input pattern to an existing stored pattern this only allows for reinforcement of the same smells. If an individual’s environment promotes an emphasis on what to eat rather than how to eat then the olfactory pathway’s storing of the smell as a memory after the odor image is affected by behavior might be affected if the person’s perception of their behavior is not entirely honest. So let’s be honest, if your behavior stinks would you want to smell it?

“The olfactory cortex microcircuit functions to take an input reflecting many diverse stimuli and construct out of it a coherent odor object. This is an analogy with how the visual system takes an input of different shapes and sizes and constructs a “visual image”. An important aspect of such an object is that seeing only a small part of it still enables the system to “fill in” the missing parts.” (Shepherd 2014: 103)

The ability in the olfactory cortex microcircuit to recognize patterns allows for the system to complete an incomplete image even if only a small part of the incomplete image is available. If our perception of food smells are heavily dependent on our behavioral state, and there is a strong sense of need to satisfy emotion, couldn’t that influence how we seek to satisfy our need to eat food? Over time couldn’t that influence how we learn to smell? Over time couldn’t that influence how we learn to “fill in” the missing parts? If it becomes a part of our behavior, wouldn’t it be easier to change the perception of the behavior itself?

Food creates culture.

Flavor is our perception.

Quit tasting.

Smell.