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NEW PAPER — Loss of the Primal Eye in evolution, REM explained as phasic transients, and the emergence of DREAMING in E1 animals. MA dissertation Philosophy, University of Leeds 1995/1996.


There are a number of reasons why dreaming has been, and remains, an important area to philosophy. Dreams are ‘pure’ experiential phenomena not (seemingly) requiring input from the outside world via the special senses. As Aristotle puts it, “If all creatures, when the eyes are closed in sleep, are unable to see, and the analogous statement is true of the other senses, so that manifestly we perceive nothing when asleep; we may conclude that it is not by sense-perception we perceive a dream”. A major part of this dissertation is concerned with issues raised in Owen Flanagan’s (1995) article, Deconstructing Dreams: The Spandrels of Sleep. The Primal Eye/MVT account of consciousness gives p-dreaming a more central explanatory role, and I argue that p-dreams are not epiphenomena in the way Flanagan claims. An important omission from Flanagan’s account is any discussion of important dreaming-related phenomena. I look at lucid dreaming, hypnosis and other mental phenomena in relation to the evolutionary loss of the primal/ median/ parietal eye, and postulate that REM rapid eye movements are ‘phasic transients’ considering the E1 brain which includes the lateral eyes, as a consciousness-producing circuit. A brief account of Primal Eye/ Median Vision Theory is that capacity for abstract/ centrally evoked mentation is a direct result of the evolutionary loss of the primal eye. E2 (earlier hardwired brains with both primal and lateral eyes) have evolved over millions of years into E1 brain circuits analog(ous to infinite-state) types of self-regulating plastic circuits, with no primal/pineal eye, but retaining lateral eyes and the pineal gland. Loss of this ‘lockstep mechanism’ median/primal/ parietal/pineal eye not only allowed new sleeping mental phenomena such as dreaming; but also heralded in new types of waking mental abstraction freed from E2 involuntary primal eye direct (electro-chemical) responses to changes in the physical environment. These include daydreams, visualisation with both lateral eyes closed, self-volition or self-determined choices, and so on.

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A new study has uncovered significant differences in how male and female mice process threats, even as they exhibit similar behavioural responses. The discovery suggests that including both male and female subjects in neuroscience research will lead to more accurate conclusions and ultimately better health outcomes. Understanding the influence of sex on brain function can help explain why males and females develop certain psychiatric disorders at different rates or with different symptoms, the researchers said. ‘Unless we thoughtfully and rigorously integrate sex into biomedical research, a huge amount of the population may be underserved by scientific knowledge,’ said McGill University Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Neurogenomics Rosemary Bagot, who led the study. ‘Our work shows that sex is an important variable to consider, even if initial observations don’t necessarily show clear sex differences,” said Bagot. “If males and females are using different brain circuits to solve similar problems, they may be differently vulnerable to stress and respond differently to treatments.’ How brain circuits process threats and cues The study focused on two related brain circuits and their roles in processing information about threats and the cues that predict them. The researchers trained mice to recognize a sound that signalled a threat and another sound that meant safety. By observing brain activity, the team saw how communication between different brain areas processed these signals. Then, they temporarily turned off each brain connection to see how it affected the mice’s reactions, helping them understand how the brain handles threats. ‘We found that even though male and female mice respond similarly to threats, the brain circuits underlying these responses are not the same,’ Bagot said. For female mice, a connection between two specific brain areas (the medial prefrontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens) played a key role. The study found that in male mice, a different connection (between the ventral hippocampus and the nucleus accumbens) was more important for handling the same situation. It was previously assumed that similar behavior meant similar brain function. Now, the researchers are exploring how sex impacts brain circuits in processing threats, focusing on the role of sex hormones and different learning strategies. This research is supported by funding from CIHR. About the study Sex-biased neural encoding of threat discrimination in nucleus accumbens afferents drives suppression of reward behavior by Jessie Muir, Eshaan Iyer et al., was published in Nature Neuroscience.

Dr. Tim Brown.

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