Surprise in
Motion
If the octopus didn't move I would not have been aware
of it. My mind had already formed an image of the coral reef and set up certain
expectations my conscious mind was totally unaware of. Even though I was swimming, even
though my eyes were moving both along the trajectory of my body and sliding back and forth
over the whole vista of the reef, the mental image showed a still-life image of unmoving
corals and dead coral rock sprinkled with sudden, bright movements of reef fish.
Although the mask restricts my normal vision slightly,
I could still see a large area of the reef. The amount of information reaching the retina
of my eyes was staggering. From the view of the millions of little cells forming my
retina, there was a constantly shifting array of millions of colors and shifting light
intensities.
A single retina cell will sit quietly with its fellow retina cells
until it detects a change. Some have been pre-set to send off a message to the brain when
there is a shift in light frequency (a change in color) and others are pre-set to send of
a message when there is a change in light intensity (from light to dark). The cell does
not react to a particular level of light or color, it reacts to the change of color or
light intensity. If conditions remain below the trigger threshold (i.e. the change is very
slow), the retina cell does not signal the brain and, of course, the mind does not become
aware of a visual image. Until the cell signals, it might as well not be there as far as
our awareness is concerned.
When it does signal, the committee of cells it communicates with
receives the incoming information and compares it to the information from adjacent retina
cells. The information passed along from the eye cell to the brain cell is the news of a
difference, a change. The eye cell expects conditions will continue at a steady state.
When the conditions change, this comes as a surprise to the eye cell. The change of light
is perceived by a chemical reaction within the retina cell. The cell compares the altered
chemical condition with its memory of the intensity of light just preceding the change. If
the difference exceeds a certain level, the cell reacts by sending off an electrical pulse
to the brain.
Change in Focus
My conscious mind works on changes, too. It was focused on the fish
and corals and thoughts of how the fish interact with the corals. My eyes were focused on
a bright yellow butterfly fish nibbling on the polyps of a coral.
Some of the retina cells
picked up a shift in light intensity when the octopus moved. The message they sent to the
brain cells differed from the signal recorded just prior to the new signal.
The brain
committee had already reached a consensus about that particular field of vision and passed
it along to higher level committees. These integrated the information, compared it to
information coming in from other committees, and reached a consensus as to what the image
meant.
This was then passed on to higher centers again in a chain of relays through
numerous layers of clustered neurons, until the information was assembled with all the
other environmental stimuli as a mental image of the coral vista and my own body moving
through it.
Each cluster of neurons had expectations based on prior perceptions and stored memories of what the world is expected to do.
Each level reacts according to
these pre-set levels of expectations. Some of the expectations are set to conditions
existing the previous 1/24th of a second (the interval it takes for my mind to discern
changes in the environment).
Some expectations are set to memories acquired during my
personal experiences over 5 decades of observations. Some expectations are set according
to genetic memories millions of years old.
When these expectations are not met, the system
reacts. It compares the new condition with expected memory and responds as needed to
survive. At the highest level of data integration, based on personal and genetic memories,
the mind knows dead coral rocks do not move.
This is exactly the kind of difference animal minds are set for.
When something in the field of vision moves that is not expected to move, danger signals
are sent throughout the system.
The whole body reacts. The head musculature is instructed
to turn to face the anomaly. The eye muscles point the eyes at the unexpected signal. The
conscious mind becomes aware of the dead rock. My conscious mind was filled with curiosity
and I moved closer (cautiously because some sea creatures are dangerous) to investigate.
The Neural Web of Expectations
This is all pretty complicated. It's a wonder it works at all.
Imagine the incredible feat of seeing the almost invisible octopus simply by detecting a
proportionally unusual shift in shadow intensity amid the vast field of information
pouring into my eyes as I swim over a coral reef. Yet the smallest fish on the coral reef
can do exactly the same thing with its keen little eyes.
I have watched protozoan ciliates zooming around under a microscope.
They navigate at high speed through three dimensional space and can instantly detect
changes in their environment. Bacteria and even viruses detect changes in solar radiation,
molecular, electronic and even magnetic conditions around them and react as needed to
survive.
Each living being, on all levels, interacts with the environment around it. It sets up an internal filter, like a spider's web. The mesh size is determined
by genetic and personal memories. Beings expect conditions to continue or pass through
regular cycles. If these expectations of cycles are met, the net is undisturbed and
awareness does not appear.
When some aspect of the environment changes more than the
expected amount, the web of memory is struck, awareness awakens. The new event is compared
to memory. Mind has an array of reactions available, tagged onto parts of the memory net,
ready to respond with learned behavior patterns to survive.
This process works for living molecules (DNA, RNA, and other organic
molecules). Awash in a constant flow of moving elements, the molecules have a pre-existing
internal set of conditions: expectations of a steady state. When these conditions change
beyond a certain limit, the molecule reacts - unfolding, exchanging signals with other
molecules, attaching selected elements to key places as it moves.
Societies of creatures follow the same pattern of behavior. A
barracuda hunts for food in a school of glittering sardines. The sardines all look alike
and move together in unison. The barracuda, faced with this wall of repeated shapes, can
not react. But should one sardine be injured, or even momentarily distracted, it changes
its behavior from the norm. It no longer follows the expected cycles of school movement.
Other sardines, and the barracuda, become aware of it. The school of fish respond to the
wayward individual and move away from it. The barracuda explodes forward and eats it.
Our own society does this, too. We all know what happens when an
individual moves beyond the expected cycles of behavior.
The Change in Change
Awareness is the result of to be changing in a direction. Awareness
is the message and the information contained in the message. It is the perceived and the
perceiving. Systems oscillate and predict the cycle will return to the same place with
each oscillation.
But nothing returns to the exactly the same place twice. It is
impossible. Everything is moving through fields of radiation at a very high velocity. The
dead coral rock, and its atoms, is moving at 900 knots towards the
east as the planet spins on its axis. The planet is moving around the sun, the sun
around the galactic center and the galaxy is moving at about the square root of the speed
of light relative to the other galaxies. The same cosmic motion making randomness an
illusion physically prevents any object repeating an exact cyclic trajectory.
Awareness is the offset from expected cycles,
the change in change, the directionality in behavior of beings as they move throughout
this continually changing magic sea.
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