Jaynes’s explanation is that the non-dominant hemisphere hears the hypnotist’s voice and decides to obey (usually because the person believes that this is how hypnosis really works, hence the cultural dependence), overruling the dominant hemisphere.
This theory seems the prediction that you shouldn’t get a similar hypnotic effect if the sound get’s processed by the left and by the right ear.
How strongly do you believe that?
Some evidence: In ancient Egypt seeing hallucinations of other people was perfectly normal; the hallucinations were called “ka”.
Plenty of people I know have internal family systems type hallucinations that speak to them. Given different cultural norms they likely also coud be called “ka” or do you have an argument for why what the Egyptian hallucinate was something different or why you think that their society had more people having those hallucinations?
Furthermore internal family systems voices often have a clear direction from which they are coming. When some come from the right and others of the same person come from the left, why should we believe that they come from the “non-dominate hemisphere” (which probably is either left or right).
If Jaynes’s theory is true, it could have been a historical tool to turn off the bicameral (hallucinatory, pattern-matching) thinking, and turn on the consciousness. In other words, if you are a modern human interested in Buddhism, studying koans is probably just a waste of time: the abilities they promise you already have
I don’t think you get to the purpose of koans. Koans often point to phenonomogical primitives that the student doesn’t has access to and provide a tool to learn the new primitives.
This theory seems the prediction that you shouldn’t get a similar hypnotic effect if the sound get’s processed by the left and by the right ear. How strongly do you believe that?
I don’t know how the sound is processed in brain. For example in vision, each hemisphere gets half of input from each eye. So “which eye” doesn’t matter, but “left or right from where you are looking at” does.
When some (voices) come from the right and others of the same person come from the left, why should we believe that they come from the “non-dominate hemisphere” (which probably is either left or right).
This would suggest that inputs from both ears are processed by both hemispheres. If not, then I admit this is a serious argument against Jaynes’s theory.
The halves are neither mirror images nor contain completely exclusive functions. However there are significant similarities. Each half receive sensory information though, curiously, from the opposite side of the body. Thus the right eye goes to the left brain and vice versa. The exception is the nose: the right nostril goes to the right brain.
I thought this was very widely known—which I say not in order to make you feel bad (there’s no shame in not knowing things) but to suggest why Viliam didn’t find it necessary to provide references when he said that each hemisphere gets input from both eyes’ view of one half of the visual field.
Or take a look at this diagram from a book about the visual field. Or this online book.
Thanks.
but to suggest why Viliam didn’t find it necessary to provide references when he said that each hemisphere gets input from both eyes’ view of one half of the visual field.
I don’t ask for reference to claim that it was wrong for Viliam that he didn’t provide references. I rather ask because the belief I had in my mind conflict. Likely because sources like the ChangingMinds website making a wrong claim (if I take your link to be trustworthy).
But if it’s the visual field that’s link that doesn’t raise my basic confidence in the claim that hypnosis focuses on a single hemisphere. Timeline therapy would be a good example. Some people orient their timeline in a way that if you ask them to visualize an event that happend in the past it will be on the left side and if you ask them to imagine an event of the future it will be on the right side.
Different people have a different spatial layout for this but it generally doesn’t happen that someone visualize both his past and future in the same direction.
Generally entities accessed by hypnosis do have a location and there are effects of moving that location around but they are not all located to one side, and if I would meet a person for whom everything is on one side I would hypnotize that the person has a pathology.
I’m personally wary of drawing strong conclusions about underlying neuroscience when thinking about hypnosis, particularly because I’m exposed to hypnotists talking about neuroscience who might have access to empiric experience of what hypnosis does but who don’t have real neurosicence knowledge.
I can’t quickly find a source for each hemisphere receiving only a part of the visual field, but the optical nerves coming from each eye cross before reaching the brain, so it’s not “one eye, one hemisphere”. (That doesn’t mean “the left one goes right and vice versa”, but “they join, and then they split again”.)
I can’t quickly find a source for each hemisphere receiving only a part of the visual field, but the optical nerves coming from each eye cross before reaching the brain
The nerves cross in the ChangingMind descriptions. That’s how the left eye surplies the right hemisphere and vice versa. I don’t see how they join in the sense of sharing information while the cross.
This theory seems the prediction that you shouldn’t get a similar hypnotic effect if the sound get’s processed by the left and by the right ear. How strongly do you believe that?
Plenty of people I know have internal family systems type hallucinations that speak to them. Given different cultural norms they likely also coud be called “ka” or do you have an argument for why what the Egyptian hallucinate was something different or why you think that their society had more people having those hallucinations?
Furthermore internal family systems voices often have a clear direction from which they are coming. When some come from the right and others of the same person come from the left, why should we believe that they come from the “non-dominate hemisphere” (which probably is either left or right).
I don’t think you get to the purpose of koans. Koans often point to phenonomogical primitives that the student doesn’t has access to and provide a tool to learn the new primitives.
I don’t know how the sound is processed in brain. For example in vision, each hemisphere gets half of input from each eye. So “which eye” doesn’t matter, but “left or right from where you are looking at” does.
This would suggest that inputs from both ears are processed by both hemispheres. If not, then I admit this is a serious argument against Jaynes’s theory.
Where did you get that idea? A quick googling gives me http://changingminds.org/explanations/brain/parts_brain/left_right_brain.htm:
Skeptics question : http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/32988/does-the-right-eye-feed-information-to-the-left-brain-hemisphere-while-the-left
If you look e.g. at the start of the Wikipedia article on the visual cortex you will find:
Or take a look at this diagram from a book about the visual field. Or this online book.
I thought this was very widely known—which I say not in order to make you feel bad (there’s no shame in not knowing things) but to suggest why Viliam didn’t find it necessary to provide references when he said that each hemisphere gets input from both eyes’ view of one half of the visual field.
Thanks.
I don’t ask for reference to claim that it was wrong for Viliam that he didn’t provide references. I rather ask because the belief I had in my mind conflict. Likely because sources like the ChangingMinds website making a wrong claim (if I take your link to be trustworthy).
But if it’s the visual field that’s link that doesn’t raise my basic confidence in the claim that hypnosis focuses on a single hemisphere. Timeline therapy would be a good example. Some people orient their timeline in a way that if you ask them to visualize an event that happend in the past it will be on the left side and if you ask them to imagine an event of the future it will be on the right side.
Different people have a different spatial layout for this but it generally doesn’t happen that someone visualize both his past and future in the same direction. Generally entities accessed by hypnosis do have a location and there are effects of moving that location around but they are not all located to one side, and if I would meet a person for whom everything is on one side I would hypnotize that the person has a pathology.
I’m personally wary of drawing strong conclusions about underlying neuroscience when thinking about hypnosis, particularly because I’m exposed to hypnotists talking about neuroscience who might have access to empiric experience of what hypnosis does but who don’t have real neurosicence knowledge.
I can’t quickly find a source for each hemisphere receiving only a part of the visual field, but the optical nerves coming from each eye cross before reaching the brain, so it’s not “one eye, one hemisphere”. (That doesn’t mean “the left one goes right and vice versa”, but “they join, and then they split again”.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optic_nerve
The nerves cross in the ChangingMind descriptions. That’s how the left eye surplies the right hemisphere and vice versa. I don’t see how they join in the sense of sharing information while the cross.