From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu May 15 2003 - 01:49:36 MDT
On Wed, May 14, 2003 at 10:10:53PM -0700, spike66 wrote:
> What if one injects a sedative into one
> carotid artery, and one hemisphere of ones brain
> is asleep, and one had half an erotic dream, what
> would happen?
I think I have a partial answer to that. The supraspinal
erectile control system
(http://www.ahc-net.at/uprima/ed2/ed2_4a.htm) is on the highest
levels controlled by lateralised structures like the amygdala.
But the medial preoptic area and even more the periaqeductal
grey matter are medial. Hence they will likely (and this is an
assumption, I would like to see some evidence) be activated if
one side of the brain gets aroused, and pass it on downwards.
Once PAG gets active, it inhibits the the nucleus
paragigantocellularis (love that name) which seems to act as a
kind of lock on the spinal reflex systems, and the rest runs
itself. On the other hand, the lateral preoptic area seems to be
very involved in erection during REM sleep.
However, the amobarbital method seems to cause a state
corresponding to deep sleep or even lower in the affected
hemisphere, so we might need some other regimen to bring on
dreaming. Which incidentally is usually accompanied by ascending
activations from the brainstem, which might be experienced as
very odd by the awake hemisphere. Fascinating.
Transhumanist relevance? We need to learn how to control and
enhance our midbrains, and allowing lateralized emotions might
extend our emotional repertoire in a fascinating way.
> If the market and google form two members of the
> holy trinity, what is the third?
Evolution?
> How did the diet thread get so huge?
Too much calories? I mean, too much carbohydrates. No, it ate
refined sugars! Absolutely not, it was due to meat. What about
caloric restriction?
> If we somehow accidentally discovered a seventh
> quark flavor, wont the physicists be majorly screwed
> up? Would they attempt a cover-up? Would we call
> it still-more-strange?
The X-quark? The truth is in there (in the hadrons).
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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