Separation of a person’s consciousness and subconscious with maximum narrowing of the field of active attention. Fixation and deepening of the emerging trance. Sharing a single consciousness and a strong woman Divided consciousness

Under certain conditions, each hemisphere of a split-brain patient appears to function as an independent information processing unit, resulting in results that resemble the behavior of two separate individuals. As Sperry described:

“Each hemisphere... has its own... “personal” sensations, perceptions, intentions and thoughts, cut off from the corresponding experience of the other hemisphere. Each left and right hemisphere has its own memory and cognitive experiences that cannot be reproduced by the other hemisphere. In many ways, each of the disconnected hemispheres appears to have a separate "self-awareness."

However, shortly after commissurotomy, most casual observers would not have noticed anything unusual in the behavior of most split-brain patients. In fact, the patient, having recovered from the operation, would probably be able to undergo a routine medical examination in a year or two without any difficulties, if no outsider knew that he had undergone the operation. Speech, language understanding, personality, motor coordination - all this is surprisingly preserved in patients without the corpus callosum and other commissures.

What allows the two separate hemispheres to act ■as a single unit during the daily activities of these patients? A whole series of unification mechanisms (some of them have already been considered by us) apparently compensates for the absence of commissures. Conjugate eye movements, as well as the presence of projections of each eye to both hemispheres, play an important role in creating the unity of the visual picture of the world. Eye movements triggered by one hemisphere to...<бы обеспечить прямое видение предмета, служат также и для того, чтобы сделать информацию доступной для другого полушария. Таким образом в значительной мере предотвращается конфликт, который мог бы произойти из-за восприятия двумя полушариями различных половин поля зрения.

Rice. 2.11. The degree of brain separation after anterior cerebral commissurotomy. The structures of the midbrain remain connected by the commissures of the quadrigeminal (Sperry R. W. The Great Cerebral Comissure, 1964).

In connection with studies in which chimeric images were used, the participation of ipsilateral fibers along with contralateral ones in the sense of touch was mentioned. This organization gives the hemispheres another means of becoming aware of stimulation on both sides of space. Information coming through the ipsilateral pathways is usually not complete and adequate enough to enable the patient to name the object he is holding in his left hand. However, the ipsilateral pathways still provide the hemispheres with partial information.

Information becomes available to both hemispheres thanks to another factor - transmission along commissures located in the deep areas of the brain. A significant part of the brain located under the cortex is not divided during commissurotomy. During a split-brain operation in a person, the bundles of fibers connecting the cortical regions of the brain are cut. The main fibers connecting the hemispheres are cut, but other, smaller commissures remain intact. These commissures connect paired structures that are part of the brain stem. They are shown in Fig. 2.11.

One of these structures, the superior colliculus, is involved in determining the position of objects and in tracking

behind their movements. In visual perception of the external world, the superior colliculus is thought to be responsible for the “where” aspect rather than the “what” aspect or fine detail. The left and right superior colliculi communicate through the commissures connecting them, so that each hemisphere receives information about the location of objects, regardless of which part of the visual field they fall into.

The brain stem is also thought to play a role in the process by which both hemispheres are involved in emotional responses. It is believed that changes in the emotional state caused by the presentation of something to only one hemisphere partially spread to the other through the pathways of the brain stem. However, it is difficult to identify the ways in which emotional changes spread, since emotions include too many external changes that are controlled and perceived by both hemispheres. In addition to the possibility of direct transmission of the emotional “background” through the commissures of the brain stem, obvious changes in the activity of the body caused by the reaction of one hemisphere can be perceived by the other through the mechanism of cross-prompting.

A more thorough assessment of the contribution of the structures of the brain stem and its commissures to the processes of perception, emotions and other types of human behavior is a task for future research. Split-brain patients, with their undoubted unity of mental activity, would serve as an extremely useful source of such information.

Partial commissurotomy

After split-brain surgeries performed in the early 1960s, several surgeons attempted to reverse the course of intractable epilepsy by less radical operations than cutting all the forebrain commissures. The idea was to limit the operation to the areas of the corpus callosum and anterior commissure - the most likely routes of transmission of epileptic discharges in a given patient. If the source of epileptic discharges is localized in a specific area of the brain, they believed, then cutting only those fibers that connect this area to the opposite hemisphere should help curb the spread of seizure activity.

This is exactly what Van Wagenen tried to do in his first split-brain operations in the 40s. However, his operations did not always prevent the seizures from spreading. The success of full commissurotomy inspired neurosurgeons to try partial surgery again two decades later. The results turned out to be quite acceptable both with media

Split-brain research

Qing and from a scientific point of view. The growing number of subjects with transection of only certain parts of the interhemispheric commissures has given researchers the opportunity to study the functions of individual areas of the commissures.

One of the questions was what types of information were transmitted through the individual commissure areas. To answer this question, Gazzaniga and colleagues studied a group of patients who had a partial commissurotomy performed by Dr. Donald Wilson. Work with these patients indicated a high degree of specialization of functions within the commissures of the human brain.

Parts of the anterior region of the corpus callosum are responsible for transmitting somatosensory, or tactile, information. The posterior third of the corpus callosum, called splenium(sple-nium), carries visual information. It has recently been discovered that the anterior commissure also appears to carry visual information in some, but not all, patients.

After cutting the anterior half of the corpus callosum, the patient will not be able to say what is in his left hand, but will say what image flashed in the left field of vision. Tactile information does not reach the speech left hemisphere, while visual information does. After cutting only the posterior portion of the corpus callosum (splenium), sensory disconnection may or may not be evident, depending on whether the patient's anterior commissure is capable of transmitting visual information. Identifying objects using touch will remain normal in any case.

After partial commissurotomy, patients have an interesting ability to determine the correspondence of objects using vision and touch, despite the fact that the transfer of information of one or another modality is disrupted by the operation. For example, the patient is asked to hold an object hidden from view in his right hand. He then looks at the image flashing in his left field of vision and decides whether the objects are identical.

If the tactile or visual area of the commissure is cut, the patient copes well with this task. In the first case, the left hemisphere apparently bases the decision on a comparison of tactile information with visual information transmitted from the right hemisphere. In the second case, the right hemisphere makes a choice by comparing visual information with tactile information transferred through the corpus callosum from the left hemisphere.

Partial commissurotomy has proven to be a very effective procedure for alleviating the condition of some patients with epi-

lepsy. In addition, it is of significant interest from a research point of view. It has helped and will continue to help further clarify our knowledge about the role of various parts of the interhemispheric pathways and the areas of the brain connected by them. Since the anatomical projections of the fibers are known, it is possible to assess which areas are connected by fibers that are not affected by the partial commissurotomy. Then the patient's ability or inability to perform a lateralized task and carry out the transfer necessary for this can indicate which areas of the brain are involved in solving this task.

What is the function of the cerebral commissures?

We began this chapter by reporting on the mystery surrounding the functions of the corpus callosum. Are we now any closer to understanding it? A simple answer would be to say, “Yes, we know that the interhemispheric commissures carry information received by one hemisphere to the other.” While this is true, this answer is not meaningful or complete. We want to know at least about the nature of the information carried and how it is used by the hemispheres.

Some researchers have proposed that the corpus callosum transmits primarily sensory information and provides complete representation of all sensory inputs in each hemisphere. We do not know, however, whether separate representation of the surrounding world in each hemisphere is really necessary. After all, animals and split-brain people are very good at navigating normal environments, outside of sophisticated laboratory tests.

It is possible, then, that the corpus callosum carries more complex, processed information and performs a function other than simply providing dual representation of sensory inputs. However, before discussing these issues further, let us briefly consider the possible basis and significance of asymmetries in human brain function. It seems likely that understanding the role of the commissures will require an understanding of the nature of interhemispheric asymmetry.

Model of brain asymmetry

It was postulated that the functions of the left and right hemispheres diverged during the process of evolution. Areas of the left hemisphere became better at creating rapidly changing motor patterns, such as those associated with fine control of hand movements and the vocal apparatus. They also became more adept at handling rapidly changing

Split-brain research

Further thought led to the idea that the left hemisphere specializes in sequential information processing and is therefore the more analytical of the two hemispheres. This one is analytical? the way information is processed is believed to relate to. all input information, not just speech. Visual information, for example, will be processed analytically by breaking it down and transforming it in terms of characteristic details.

In contrast, areas of the right hemisphere became better at simultaneously processing the kinds of information needed to perceive spatial patterns and relationships. Their specialty was said to be the execution and development of processes considered fundamental to vision and visual memory. Subsequent reflections led to the idea that the right hemisphere, when processing all types of information, is more capable of synthesis than the left.

Although some of these concepts describing the functions of the left and right hemispheres are vague and will require further work to clarify, it is clear that differences in this regard do exist. Some researchers believed that the fundamental incompatibility of the mechanisms underlying these two ways of processing information explains their evolutionary development in different hemispheres.

The question that immediately comes to mind is how do the two hemispheres share control of behavior in everyday settings? The first possibility that researchers have considered is that one hemisphere (usually the left) is dominant in controlling behavior. The original concept of hemispheric dominance was based on this idea. This was supported by the results of early studies of split-brain patients, which showed that the left hemisphere takes over control of the response in situations where the two hemispheres simultaneously receive different input signals. What went unnoticed was that these tests typically included linguistic stimuli (such as words) and often required a verbal response. Under such conditions, it was not at all surprising to discover the “dominance” of the left - “speech” - hemisphere.

Another idea - the idea of constant competition between the hemispheres in the control of behavior - is the result of subsequent data obtained on patients with split brains. When a wider range was used

Chapter 2

tests, including tasks that could be better performed by the right hemisphere, revealed interesting results. For example, in studies with chimeric images, as we have seen, it is not always possible to predict which hemisphere will control the response, despite the fact that the nature of the instruction implies the “involvement” of one hemisphere. These kinds of observations have led to the assumption that there is a finely balanced relationship between the hemispheres, with one or the other taking control, depending on the task, as well as other, as yet unidentified factors.

Some researchers have suggested that the corpus callosum and other commissures, which serve to integrate verbal and spatial modes of thinking into unified behavior, play an important role in achieving harmony between the hemispheres in the normal brain. How is this harmony achieved? Is it simply a matter of providing both hemispheres with the same information, or is there a more complex system of inhibition or suppression of activity in the hemispheres involved?

Commissures as inter-sectoral integrators

This brings us back to the question of the role of cerebral commissures. There is no definite answer to this question yet. At present, the corpus callosum and other commissures are probably best viewed as conduits through which the hemispheres exchange information and perhaps “settle” problems associated with conflicts between independent processing elements. Since commissures are simply bundles of nerve fibers, they cannot control anything on their own. But they can serve as channels through which the hemispheres are synchronized and doubling of effort or competition is prevented.

This integration may be accomplished simply by the corpus callosum serving as a sensory window and providing separate and complete representation of all sensory inputs in each hemisphere. However, it seems more likely that normally more complex, already processed signals are transmitted through the commissures, informing each hemisphere about events in the other and, to some extent, controlling the corresponding operations in them. This allows the whole brain to integrate the abilities of the individual hemispheres.

In the early stages of evolution and the development of symmetrical bodily organization, the constant transfer of sensory information from one side to the other was probably essential

Split-brain research

function of interhemispheric pathways. It seems likely, however, that with the development of asymmetries in brain function, these pathways began to play a more leading role.

If this is true, then why do we not see evidence of any serious impairment in split-brain patients? We have previously discussed at least part of the answer to this question, namely the fact that the separation of the hemispheres in these patients is never actually complete. Another possible explanation is that the commissures play their most important role during early development after birth. Damage to them at a later stage may not be so significant, since the differences and relationships between the hemispheres have already been established.

What happens if the interhemispheric commissures are damaged at birth? Although split-brain surgery has never been performed on children, there are several case reports of congenital absence of the corpus callosum, which could provide insight into its role in development. Unfortunately, these cases are difficult to interpret. It is impossible to find out whether any violations are a consequence of the absence of commissures, or whether they are simply other manifestations of abnormal development, expressed primarily in the underdevelopment of commissures 1.

A review of the data obtained from split-brain subjects led us to the conclusion that hemispheric specialization is not an all-or-none phenomenon, but rather represents a continuum. Recent studies of split-brain patients have found that each hemisphere is capable of handling many types of tasks, but one often differs from the other in both its approach and efficiency.

Almost any type of human behavior or mental activity, however, clearly affects not only the special functions of each of the hemispheres, but also what is common to both of them.

1 Cases of underdevelopment of the corpus callosum without other symptoms are extremely rare. A large body of evidence indicates that language functions in these individuals are distributed more bilaterally than in neurologically normal individuals. This finding could have been predicted based on our knowledge of brain plasticity. It was also found that in individuals with underdevelopment of the corpus callosum, the intelligence quotient (IQ) is usually at or below the normal level. Although it is tempting to see a causal relationship between mental ability and the development of the corpus callosum, it is clear that this cannot be done on the basis of these data.

Chapter 2

In studies of split-brain patients, speech continues to emerge as the most pronounced and profound difference between the left and right brain. Some researchers are convinced that all other interhemispheric differences are manifestations of verbal asymmetry. They argue that the area of the left hemisphere that specializes in language functions can no longer cope with the processing of spatial information previously performed by either side of the brain. The right hemisphere then appears to be specialized for spatial orientation, although its specialization is actually the result of a "deficit" of the left hemisphere rather than a "superiority" of the right. This idea provides an interesting perspective on the problem of the development of lateralization, although it is extremely difficult to “confirm” in the usual sense of the word.

Chapter 3

Fortunately, most people are neurologically healthy and have two intact hemispheres connected by intact commissures. What do the data on the left and right brain obtained from brain-damaged and split-brain patients tell us about the role of the two hemispheres in the rest of humanity?

We have already looked at some of the problems that arise when trying to draw conclusions about the functioning of the normal brain from clinical studies. We have seen that a specific deficit that develops as a result of damage to specific brain regions does not necessarily mean that that region controlled the impaired function. We also noted the amazing adaptability of the brain, which complicates the interpretation of data obtained from studies of brain-damaged and split-brain patients.

Because of these difficulties, it is impossible to draw firm conclusions about the functioning of the normal brain solely on the basis of what we have learned from clinical brain damage. The clinic can tell us what to look for, but in order to make accurate conclusions about normal brain function, it needs to be confirmed in studies of normal brains. The challenge is to develop ways to study the contribution to behavior made by each half of the brain in an intact system.

The study of asymmetries in normal people was carried out using several methods. One of the oldest and most widely used techniques takes advantage of the natural separation of visual pathways. This disconnect clearly divides ours. the visual world into two fields, each of which is projected onto one hemisphere. By presenting material to the left or right of the gaze fixation point for a very short time, researchers are able to lateralize the inputs, that is, present stimuli to only one hemisphere. Due to the presence of interhemispheric connections, this unilateral presentation lasts only a fraction of a second, but this is apparently sufficient to allow comparison of the abilities of the hemispheres.

The auditory system is structured in a similar way: it was found that the simultaneous supply of various auditory information

formation in each ear leads to initial lateralization of auditory stimuli. Information presented to the left ear is projected first to the right hemisphere, and information presented to the right ear is lateralized to the left. This procedure, called dichotic listening, has allowed researchers to study similarities and differences in the way the hemispheres process speech, as well as other types of auditory information.

More speculative, but still interesting, approaches to studying asymmetry in normal individuals have involved careful observation of behavior while performing various tasks. For example, recording eye movements of a person in one direction or another was used to show which of the hemispheres is more active when solving a particular problem or in the process of an intellectual game. In experiments using a different technique, researchers observe the results of performing several tasks simultaneously. The idea is that if the performance of one task interferes least with the performance of another, then they are likely controlled by different parts of the brain, and in some cases perhaps by different hemispheres.

In this chapter we will review data obtained from studies of normal people using these techniques.

Asymmetry and vision

The study of visual asymmetry in normal people often resembles the setting of experiments on split-brain patients. Visual stimuli flashing briefly in the left visual field are projected first to the right hemisphere; stimuli flashing in the right visual field are first projected to the left hemisphere. In patients with split brains, this initial lateralization is maintained subsequently, since the connections between the hemispheres are severed. In normal people, the connections are intact and can transfer information presented to either hemisphere. However, it has been found that when a person performs certain tasks, differences can be detected depending on whether the task is presented in the right or left visual field.

Field of View Differences- result.reading skills or a sign of intersex asymmetry?

In the early fifties, Mortimer Mishkin and Donald Forgays showed that normal right-handed subjects were better at identifying English words when they were flashed.

Study of asymmetries in the normal brain

They appear to the right, and not to the left, of the point of fixation of the gaze. However, if people who could read Yiddish were presented with words from this language in the same way, a slight advantage in the left visual field was found. The authors concluded that improving reading skills is associated with the creation of “a more efficient neural organization that develops in the appropriate hemisphere of the brain (left for English, right for Yiddish).” In other words, skill acquisition in a particular direction results in written English words being processed better in the right visual field, while Yiddish words (a language read from right to left) are processed more accurately in the left visual field.

This explanation enjoyed wide popularity for several years, although it did not address the question of why the right visual field advantage for English words is significantly greater than the left visual field advantage for Yiddish words. However, a decade later, the publication of results from work on a Californian group of split-brain patients indicated a possible reason for the lack of parallelism in the magnitude of the differences.

Split-brain patients, as we have already seen, demonstrate pronounced differences in the ability to reproduce English words presented in the left or right visual field. These differences were interpreted as reflecting functional differences between the hemispheres in terms of language functions. Perhaps, the researchers suggested, the asymmetries found in split-brain patients also contribute to understanding the differences in visual fields observed in normal people. Mishkin and Forghase's data could then be explained by the simultaneous action of two factors: a visual field advantage resulting from acquired reading skills in a particular language, superimposed on a right visual field advantage resulting from differences between the left and right brains.

This interpretation was tested in later studies that examined visual field asymmetry by presenting English and Yiddish words written vertically to minimize the possible influence of reading direction. When the influence of reading direction is reduced, the two-factor interpretation predicts a right visual field advantage for words in both languages based on functional differences between the hemispheres. These are exactly the results that were obtained.

These data, as well as a number of others that we will discuss later, supported the idea that field differences

Normal people's vision reflects the asymmetry of their brain. This is an extremely important finding because it means that the left-right brain differences found in clinical studies also exist in the normal brain and that these differences can actually be studied in normal people.

Why does lateralized presentation lead to asymmetric task performance?

Before focusing on other data that support the conclusion that visual field differences reflect brain asymmetries in normal individuals, we must address a fundamental issue. If functional differences between the hemispheres even exist in normal people, then why were they reflected in different task performance when the two visual fields were stimulated? Despite initial lateralization or unilateral presentation, all input information has access to both hemispheres. A very short time of presentation of a stimulus on one side of the gaze fixation point provides an initial direct flow of information to only one half of the brain, but through connections between the hemispheres, information about the stimulus can be transmitted almost instantly to the other side. Why then do we find visual field differences in task performance?

The answer appears to be that the hemisphere that receives stimulus information directly has an advantage over the hemisphere that receives the same information indirectly, through interhemispheric commissures. The reasons for this advantage are not entirely clear, but several possibilities have been suggested.

It is possible that transmission between hemispheres results in some loss of clarity of information. Rice. Figure 3.1 schematically illustrates this point. It is also possible that only certain types or levels of information pass through the commissures. The dynamics of a completely intact brain may be such that cross-connections serve more to inhibit processing duplication than to convey raw information about a sensory stimulus.

Although there is uncertainty about the exact cause of the hemispheric advantage, researchers have hypothesized that information presented in only one visual field is processed most efficiently by the hemisphere that receives it first. Asymmetries of visual fields appear in tasks for which the hemispheres initially do not have equal abilities. It can be expected that in conditions when

Yes, information is directly presented to a hemisphere specialized for a specific function, the performance will be better, that is, more accurate or faster than under conditions where the information first goes to the other half of the brain.

Perhaps the strongest evidence in favor of this model of visual field differences is that these differences appear to reflect asymmetries between the hemispheres, similar to the differences found in studies of brain-damaged and split-brain patients. While a number of word and letter tasks show a right visual field advantage in normal individuals, a left visual field advantage is shown for stimuli thought to be processed by the right hemisphere.

For example, several studies have shown that people recognize faces presented in the left visual field faster than faces presented in the right visual field. Another study showed that subjects more accurately recall the location of dots on a card if the material was first presented to the right hemisphere. These data strongly support the notion that visual field differences reflect interhemispheric differences: a right visual field advantage reflects a left hemisphere specialization for language functions, and a left visual field advantage results from a right hemisphere specialization for processing visuospatial stimuli.

Rice. 3.1. The question of the quality of information presented through commissaries is complex. A hemisphere that receives information indirectly under lateralized presentation conditions may be at a disadvantage due to any of several possible reasons, including loss of time, restrictions on the types of information transmitted, and inhibitory processes between the hemispheres.

78____________________________.___________________ ; _______________Chapter 3

It should be noted that studies using nonverbal stimuli have not produced results as consistent as studies using words and letters. In some studies using geometric shapes and nonsense shapes, no differences were found between the two visual fields; other studies have reported differences in task performance. However, most studies that have noted differences between fields show a superiority of the left visual field. The problem is that many studies using stimuli that experimenters expect to be processed by the right hemisphere do not show any differences between visual fields. This is reminiscent of the problem that researchers working with split-brain patients encountered when they began to look for evidence of special functions of the right hemisphere. The functions of the right hemisphere turned out to be much less perceptible than the functions of the left. A similar picture emerged in studies of neurologically normal subjects.

Asymmetry and hearing

To study interhemispheric differences, techniques were also used to lateralize auditory information. Doreen Kimura, working at the Montreal Neurological Institute, noticed that under certain conditions, subjects more accurately identified words presented to the right rather than to the left ear. Kimura used a dichotic listening technique in which subjects listen to two different messages presented simultaneously so that each ear receives only one message. She wanted to compare brain-damaged patients with normal subjects in a test of an information overload task.

Dichotic listening

The stimuli Kimura used consisted of pairs of single-digit numbers, such as “two” and “nine” 1 . The members of each pair were recorded on separate magnetic tape tracks; the beginning of their sound coincided. The subjects listened through headphones to trials consisting of 3 pairs of numbers, quickly following one after another. After each trial, they were asked to reproduce, in any order, as many of the six numbers presented as possible.

1 In English, numbers from 1 to 10 are perceived by ear as monosyllabic words of approximately equal duration. - Note ed.

Study of asymmetries in the normal brain

Kimura found that patients with left temporal lobe damage did significantly worse than patients with right temporal lobe damage. However, regardless of the location of the damage, subjects usually more accurately reproduced numbers presented to the right ear. The same right ear advantage was found in normal control subjects.

Data on overall worse task performance in patients with damage to the left hemisphere could be predicted. The dichotic listening task taps speech comprehension and production abilities, which are functions primarily of the left hemisphere, and may have been impaired to some extent in patients with left-sided damage. What was surprising, however, was the detection of hearing asymmetry.

Some anatomical information explains why this asymmetry was unexpected. Unlike the retina, one half of which projects contralaterally to the brain, and the other ipsilaterally, each ear sends information from all its receptors to both hemispheres. Thus, complete information about a stimulus presented to the right ear is initially represented in both hemispheres. The same applies to the left ear. Even if speech processing could occur in only one hemisphere, we could not expect to see any evidence of asymmetry, since each ear has direct access to both hemispheres.

Model of auditory asymmetry according to D. Kimura

To explain her data, Kimura drew on animal studies indicating that contralateral projections from the ear to the brain are more powerful than ipsilateral projections. She also suggested that when two different stimuli are simultaneously presented to different ears, the difference in the power of the pathways increases so much that transmission along the ipsilateral pathway is suppressed. By accepting these assumptions, the advantage of the right ear can be explained.

Under conditions of dichotic presentation, a stimulus applied to the left ear can reach the left hemisphere in one of two ways - through the ipsilateral pathway, in which transmission is suppressed, or through the contralateral pathways to the right hemisphere and then through the interhemispheric commissures. A stimulus applied to the right ear has a simpler path: it reaches the left hemisphere along the contralateral path. Because it comes to the left brain

Warning:

If you are doing tulpamancy and you already have a tulpa with a formed personality (you can conduct a dialogue, exchange emotions, etc.) - read this text at your own risk. It can make your tulpa feel “pretentious,” “illusory,” and create fears that you are actually just “playing” them, like an actor. This text raises questions that we do not want to ask ourselves, it perhaps reveals our self-deception. However, no one is going to convince you that tulpamanship is a meaningless fantasy game. That's not what the text is about. However, you may interpret it that way, and you have been warned. The text deals mainly with the tulpa's personality, without touching on its visualization.

Now let's begin.

PRACTICE

It all started when I realized one fact: we think very quickly. It seems to us that some thoughts arise suddenly, out of nowhere, however, if you connect your short-term memory and make an effort to remember the path that our brain took to generate this or that thought, this path can be traced. It will be difficult to formulate, but it will be possible to perceive. Our thoughts are processed tens of times faster than we formulate them and put them into words. We must formulate most of our thoughts so that it is easier for them to work with short-term memory - thoughts that are not formulated in time are forgotten very quickly. In other words, we mentally pronounce what we come to as a result of mental activity. And this mental recitation takes up most of the thought process.

This refers, of course, to thoughts in the form of replicas, and not to the creation of imaginary objects. However, I was precisely interested in how certain ideas appeared in my head while thinking.

One way or another, one day I began to think about how the thinking of an “autonomous person” works, and I decided to try to observe the emergence of thoughts in A.

And that's where it all started, because I realized that Can do it. A.'s thinking could be traced in exactly the same way as my own. To say that I was unpleasantly surprised is to say nothing. It was a gut punch because I began to worry - was my servitor, after all, just an imitation of an autonomous personality? Is all my experience useless for those who are trying to create a “truly autonomous” personality?

However, I did not rush to conclusions.

Now I believe that any successful tulpamancer, once they become proficient at tracking their own thoughts, will most likely be able to trace the thoughts of their tulpa. Like me, many successful tulpamancers may have the impression that their tulpa is actually a glove puppet that they themselves speak for.

I realize that I am giving my opponents a great argument about the difference between a servitor and a tulpa. Indeed, my path to creating a servitor involved deliberate imitation until the servitor had developed enough that my intervention was no longer required. But later new interesting facts surfaced. Namely, the gap in the success of tulpamancers. More and more reports began to appear that some practitioners have been trying in vain to hear the “independent” tulpa for months. And then I thought - what if the “lucky tulpamancers” managed to deceive themselves? What if tulpamanship isn't what it seems? What if the tulpamancer's mindset allowed the brain to trick them into creating a "supposedly autonomous" personality whose thinking they could follow, just like I could?

But for some reason I did not despair. On the contrary, I realized that I needed to change my perspective of thinking, and very quickly I understood exactly how to do this.

THEORY

In judgments about human consciousness, it is useful to consider such a concept as “unconscious state”. It occurs before our birth, after our death, during coma, deep dreamless sleep, or as a result of a concussion. In an unconscious state, our consciousness is absent, but with its appearance we remember everything about ourselves. We are us. Every morning when we get out of bed, we get up the same person, with the same habits, with the same character and with the same memory.

But what is “I” among all this? If I don’t have habits or memories, will “I” stop being “me”?

We can talk about such a concept as personality. Personality is a set, or rather a system of certain mental characteristics that make us who we really are. If our memories change, we may decide that we are an Egyptian priestess or Soldier Jake, but this will not change our personality. If our personality changes, what others recognize in us as “I” will go somewhere. “He became a completely different person.”

However, is this completely true? Could a change in memory lead to a change in personality? Are memory and personality the same thing? I'm sure the answer is that personality is part of memory. Personality is contained in memory as a certain set of data. Thus, if we are in an unconscious state, and the brain ensures its own integrity, our personality does not disappear anywhere, and upon restoration of the conscious state, the brain “reconstructs” us according to the memory of our own personality stored in us.

Consciousness that can be absent and present is the so-called “stream of consciousness”. Stream of consciousness is a process in the brain, just like a heartbeat is a process in the heart, or your browser is a process in your computer. A process does not exist without the passage of time. There can be no consciousness if the flow of time stops for it. The stream of consciousness is certainly not the only process in our brain.

So, our three main components are “memories”, “personality” and “stream of consciousness”. We will build on these concepts.

TULPA

If we go back to tulpamanship, what does this mean for us? What is a “tulpa” within these concepts?

Look at the title of this post, I wrote it for a reason. The essence of a tulpa is, first of all, its personalities. Tulpamanship is perceived by many as separating the stream of consciousness and creating an additional stream of consciousness. This is wrong.

It is not difficult to prove this, but there is one problem: the entire theory being built is difficult to verify. Please take this into account. So, it is not difficult to prove this. Two streams of consciousness, firstly, means that you can do two things at the same time, you can think two thoughts at the same time. And when I say “at the same time,” I don’t mean: “think, and then imagine that the second stream of consciousness was also thinking something at that time.” And I don’t mean “quickly switch from one thought to another and back again.” One stream of consciousness can do all this, and that's what it does while you think that you and your tulpa are thinking about two things at the same time. Perhaps if you have a tulpa, you may have noticed that they rarely interrupt you and you rarely interrupt them. This is not only from your mutual feelings and respect. The fact is that you cannot, while “listening”/“formulating” her response, simultaneously think about the answer, you cannot think about the answer to her phrase before the tulpa finishes this phrase, and this is mutual between you. If you want to refute this, you will most likely simply “stage” the interruption. And tracking your own thoughts will allow you to distinguish the dramatization from reality.

In fact, the mindset of a successful tulpamancer allowed him to deceive himself. Listening “supposedly” silently to cues, expecting the tulpa to become independent, he quietly learned to construct it in such a way as to leave it without any attention.

But does this mean that the tulpa does not really exist, that it is just a prank of its own consciousness?

The point is that the stream of consciousness in itself does not make “me” “me.” Just because I'm unconscious doesn't mean I don't exist. The stream of consciousness, one might say, projects me onto the world around me (and in the opposite direction too). What “you” really is is stored in your memory. Not in the memories of events that have happened to you, but in that section of memory that remembers exactly how to act, what behavior corresponds to your idea of yourself.

And we have a very large memory.

It seems to me impossible to achieve a division of the stream of consciousness simply because this would require a second brain. This can be compared to a processor with only one core. Although it provides multitasking, it does it like this: it switches from one task to another God knows how many times per second, bam-bang-bang-bang-bang. This is the maximum we can achieve with a single brain at our disposal. Simply because the structure of our brain does not provide for the creation of a new “processor”. Gentlemen neuroscientists, correct me if I'm wrong.

One way or another, precisely because some tulpamancers believe that they can create a parallel stream of consciousness in the brain, simply by wishing it, they try to listen to the tulpa for days and months without much success, and when the brain tries to use the main stream of consciousness to construct a new personality, it turns on inner skeptic. “Eh, no, brother, you thought it yourself, not your tulpa.”

Nothing will work out that way. The tulpa will ultimately be the personality stored in memory. In memory there will be everything in order to use your consciousness, superimposing this personality on it, and not your own. However, you will be aware of this. The brain will easily allow you to do so in such a way that the tulpa’s “internal tools” are completely hidden from you; a certain “defense mechanism” will appear that will distract you from perceiving exactly how the tulpa is using your stream of consciousness. It sounds harsh, but that's basically how it goes. It is this “defense mechanism” that allows both me and tulpamancers to perceive their tulpas as independent individuals, refusing to study their mental activity.

But will the tulpa be what she should be - a separate, independent interlocutor with her own opinion, with her own reactions, will she be able to surprise you with an idea that would not have occurred to you? All this is embedded in the individual. Ideas themselves, of course, are not embedded in the personality, but the personality determines the possibility of their generation and perception. To generate an idea, the tulpa will be forced to use your stream of consciousness. But it is her personality that will do this, and due to the fact that your personalities are different, it may be that the tulpa will be much more “creative” and her personality will be able to perceive and generate many more ideas than yours.

As for memories, you can work with them in any way. Usually the tulpa is given all the memories of the “host” so that it can receive some of the impressions and knowledge that we have, and also some “own” memory is allocated, to which we, thanks to the same defense mechanism, will not have access.

Thus, the tulpa will be almost as complete as my direct reader is. Perhaps the brain will provide the ability to generate a “false memory”, creating the feeling that the tulpa was doing something until it became conscious. However, in reality, all of this memory will be created the moment the tulpa “connects.” As I already said, we think very quickly, and since we have absolutely no need to formulate and remember exactly how this memory will be created, then in a few seconds we can create what we will then describe for hours, if, of course, there is enough vocabulary.

Thus, a tulpa or servitor is a person separate from us who uses our stream of consciousness to process information, generate ideas and improve. We ourselves do exactly the same thing with our stream of consciousness.

One of these structures, the superior colliculus, is involved in determining the position of objects and in tracking

Partial commissurotomy

Split-brain research

Partial commissurotomy has proven to be a very effective procedure for alleviating the condition of some patients with epi-

What is the function of the cerebral commissures?

Model of brain asymmetry

Split-brain research

Gypsy “charm” is built on verbal and behavioral adjustment to the client’s behavior, where through conversation a smooth transition from normal states to trance is ensured by including in speech all the occurring phenomena both in the external world and in the client’s state and behavior. In this case, scammers use the following psychotechniques, described in this section above - in the basic algorithm of Ericksonian hypnosis:

· “Fantasies.”

· "Representation".

· “Induced hallucinations.”

· “Memories” (“Age Regression”).

· “Information overload.”

· “Breaking patterns.”

· “Splitting of the conscious and unconscious” (as an integral part of the influence and as an independent technique).

· "Catalepsy".

· “Anchor techniques.”

Of course, the crooks themselves most often have no idea about these names when they use them in practice. They act based not on a scientific basis, but on “the way their mother taught them.” You will need to re-read the sections on all of the above to understand how exposure occurs in the context of a scam scenario. If the scammer is experienced, then the “charm” of the “sucker” is inevitable.

Fantasies, imaginations, inspired hallucinations and memories

Gypsies have long noticed that human illusions and hallucinations, which form the effect of "enchantment", are most easily induced in sensitive individuals with a developed imagination, especially in children, adolescents and young women. It is enough to “start” a person’s process of mentally imagining a situation (to fantasize) or ask him to remember something that is familiar to him. The method of inducing trance through evoking memories, fantasies and ideas is one of the most commonly used by scammers. The standard approach is to encourage the victim to recall images and pictures from childhood or situations with signs of a natural trance (for example, a tiring long-hour evening ride on an intercity bus). By performing such hypnotic phenomena, they try to immediately obtain deep hypnosis. The task of the street hypnotist is to use his questions to force the client to remember something “trance-like” in detail.

Elderly people remember better the events of the past, middle-aged people better remember modern events, young people remember their childhood and the circumstances of the last two or three years. Therefore, gypsies start conversations that are appropriate to their age with representatives of different generations. With old people, they are ready to discuss their youth (the conversation usually begins on the topics of films, artists, singers of those years, the birth and marriage of children, etc.) and health issues. With middle-aged people - today’s problems in the family, at work, or something pleasant from their last vacation (sun, beach, swimming, barbecue, novels), religious ideas, sexual sensations. With young people - the search for love, issues of study and future career. If the object of influence is a child, then his trance arises from one fixation of the eyes (on the face of the swindler or some object), and then all the words of the hypnotist can be perceived as suggestions.

Young children - on average up to 4-4.5 years old - are in a state of trance about half the time. Childhood can be called a brilliant natural trance. It is the openness of the subconscious at a young age that makes it possible to amazingly mobilize the internal capabilities of the brain. The impressionability of children is like a sponge. At this time of life, they are able to absorb and retain a huge amount of information. Everything that children hear during this period is recorded in their subconscious for the rest of their lives.

Another interesting and quick way to induce hypnosis in reality is that the gypsy catches the moment when someone enthusiastically talks about something that worries him or greatly worries him. In crowded places, especially while waiting (for example, at a bus stop), it is not difficult to provoke such conversations. Then she joins this person and, actively sympathizing with him, empathizing with him, with her words and questions she specially warms up and more and more details the narrator's problem, deeper plunging him into a world of experiences and memories. Then, continuing to stimulate these images, imposes a hallucination close to his worries. Having achieved the appearance of a vision in the “sucker”, the gypsy develops it to a deep trance and receives a reliable control rapport. Thus, immersing himself in his problems, a person surrenders to alien influences; it is enough for a gypsy to join him, help him imagine a situation or image (hallucination) that is well known to him and use this for her own purposes.

Breaking patterns

Very often, at the very beginning of a contact, a criminal hypnotist tries to puzzle the “sucker” with something unusual and logically dead-end and, taking advantage of the momentary suspension of logical-analytical thinking, instantly transfer his consciousness to the right-hemisphere mode of imagination, feelings and emotions. In this case, as a rule, the fear factor is introduced into the conversation - a powerful key to the depths of the subconscious. Gypsies very often surprise their future victim with an unexpected statement or a dead-end question and immediately after hypnotic manipulations with the right hand they begin to threaten her: if she doesn’t give her “damaged” money (ring, bracelet, chain, etc.) - she will turn ugly, become old prematurely, gets into an accident, doesn’t make it home, trouble happens to the children, mother, etc.

Gypsies also often use the confusion technique, in particular at train stations, where people are usually in a state of calm anticipation. Suddenly, a heart-rending scream is heard, shocking everyone. Attention is reliably drawn to a fight between two gypsies. While stunned spectators watch the ensuing battle, other gypsies (often children) steal their things. When people come out of their shock stupor and discover that they are missing, it’s too late to look for the crooks: according to the “scenario,” one of the fighters should run away, and the other should catch up with her.

Gypsies also use a similar technique to get out of sticky situations, for example, when they are caught red-handed for banal theft. They lift their skirts and scream heart-rendingly. Those around you freeze in shock and regret that you ever contacted them.

Using a similar technique of sharply shouting “kiya!” Karatekas also use it.

All of the above examples have a common property - the use of extreme stimuli, sudden embarrassing actions, paradoxical and unusual behavior, breaking already begun stereotypical behavior, etc. Street hypnotists are constantly improving the techniques of breaking the pattern and confusion and have introduced many original elements into them. In addition to the already listed sudden dead-end questions (with no answer) and strong external irritants, unexpected actions are used (for example, you “gilded” a gypsy’s pen, and she suddenly... handed you change or a “receipt” - an ordinary piece of paper).

Information overload and confusion

Gypsies load all channels of perception. The environment around the client is created in such a way that the fraudster’s presence blocks vision, hearing, smell, and touch. She stands very close, literally blocking the sky, and overloads her vision. He inadvertently touches you, plucks your hair, and sometimes even openly feels you - this is how the sense of touch is involved. All this is applied synchronously - to enhance the effect.

Gypsies (and other scammers) love to use their famous “bewitchment method.” It lies in information overload the client’s consciousness, triggering the mental inhibition mechanism. The client's attention can be steadily held by various and many interesting stories, incidents, and instructive tales. The technique is that suggestive commands or behavioral attitudes are constantly woven into the text of stories, in which the listener’s consciousness “gets stuck.” It happens that the gypsies also use the method of “overlapping realities,” but much less frequently.

In addition to inhibiting the psyche with excessive information, gypsies also use technology excessive speed of information flow. People can only assimilate incoming information at a certain speed, and if this speed is increased, then the client’s consciousness does not have time to process new words, and they go straight into the subconscious, bypassing “censorship.”

The goal of the gypsy is to under no circumstances allow the client to think about the meaning of what is being said. Always speaking very quickly and very quietly, the gypsy will easily distract attention by deliberately confusing the “king” with the “jack” when talking about your future spouse. By the time you understand the difference between them, the logic of the argument will already be lost. The cheat skillfully inserts instructions like “come”, “open”, “give” into the meaningless muttering.

To have an even greater impact, the gypsies work in “teams,” when several gypsies at once from several sides begin to speak loudly and at close range. And not only talk: they all touch the person and grab him in such a way that he is not able to notice anything. His vision is overloaded with the gesticulations and movements of the gypsies, his hearing and attention are overloaded with words and sounds, and his kinesthetics are overloaded with a hundred touches and grasps. When he finally escapes from the gypsies who have settled on him, we can say with one hundred percent certainty that his pockets are completely empty, and one of the scammers has already disappeared with the loot. Among them, this is one of the most popular and fastest ways to rob a person. It is useless to look for things and money with the police - you will only get stress or a heart attack. Only those who are well acquainted with the Gypsy baron have a chance to return something (and the Gypsies, as we know, have a very closed society; outsiders are not often allowed into it).

Catalepsy

Sometimes in gypsy hypnosis the method of trance induction is used through catalepsy(fixation of posture). This secret is used with elderly or tired people, they are asked to sit down, relax and calm down, and then in a conversation they subtly increase the emerging symptoms of drowsiness. Sometimes street hypnotists use situations where a tired or tipsy person is already sitting on a bench, yawning.

Working with "anchors"

Knowing the methods of working with “anchors”, or “old reactions”, it is not difficult to understand why gypsies often stimulate the future victim to “pour out their soul”. This is necessary to extract different emotional reactions and fix them with the corresponding “keys” (as the gypsies call “anchors”). The “bundle” of these keys can then be used in any way you like. It is necessary that the victim does not like something - one emotion, previously marked with a “key,” is activated; you need to like it - another “anchor” is used, “hooking” another reaction. The gypsy is not interested in the content of what the client will remember - the main thing is that it is accompanied by the most vivid emotion possible, which can be immediately recorded with a “key” as the desired reaction. A sympathetic and trusting split-second touch of your hand to the client's right hand, shoulder, or even leg is often used as an “anchor.” To the kinesthetic anchor is added the simultaneous fixation of the desired reaction by voice, gaze, tilt of the head, characteristic gesture, etc. This is how a reliable “key” is prepared.

An experienced gypsy checks any “anchor” several times during a conversation until she makes sure (by the client’s emotions, eye movements, facial expressions, gestures, breathing) that it works flawlessly. Then, with the help of a proven “anchor,” he builds a strategy for putting a person into a trance state. It must be said that the gypsies are well aware that strong emotions are, in fact, a ready-made trance with a narrowed state of consciousness in which a person can be effectively controlled. Therefore, sometimes they simply inflame the “sucker”’s emotions to the limit, and then the person automatically enters a state of “ecstatic trance” with the same increased controllability. By the way, similar methods of controlling a person through emotions have long been used not only by gypsies, but also by psychotherapists, musicians, lawyers, directors and preachers.

Splitting the conscious and unconscious

The signs by which gypsies learn about the onset of “charm” (that “the process has begun”) do not differ from those described in the chapter “Operational Hypnosis.” This is a slight freezing, concentration of the gaze (“absent” or “cloudy” look), a characteristic expression of the eyes (they become as if “in love” (in gypsy - “cow”), dilation of the pupils, slight paleness or redness of the skin of the face, smoothing of wrinkles , clearly unconscious involuntary movements. Breathing becomes rarer and deeper, similar to the breathing of a person in a dream. In some cases, deep freezing, numbness and immobility can be traced, the skin becomes moist, sweaty, and deep muscle relaxation occurs.

As in any other trance state, under gypsy influence there is a reorientation of a person’s attention from the external world to internal experiences and sensations.

It was already mentioned above that street hypno-scammers, narrowing consciousness and inducing a trance, then (or simultaneously) try to separate consciousness altogether, as well as “put the conscience to sleep” and thus deal only with the person’s subconscious. This is done by offering something necessary or very beneficial, as well as with the help of intonation. For example, having intrigued a person with a phrase about allegedly seeing his fate and offering to “tell the whole truth that was and will be,” the scammer begins, telling this distracting “fateful” story, to narrow it down details human consciousness as described in the previous paragraph. Then the separation of consciousness and unconsciousness begins. The gypsy pronounces with one intonation, for example, the following words: “Now you are doubting...” and on the other - “...but your intuition suggests something else, because you feel in your soul that you agree with me” etc.

Thus, during the conversation, with the help of a simple trick, she splits the consciousness and subconsciousness of the victim several times. Actually two different dialogs are installed: one with consciousness and a completely different one with the subconscious. The gypsy completely switches to the intonation of the subconscious, usually only after 2-3 splits. At the same time, the analytical consciousness of the “sucker” goes away, and a trance with managerial rapport arises.

In addition to “sincere” intonations, to fix and enhance the splitting of a person’s mind and subconscious, experienced street hypnotists use confidential gestures and touches, some turns and shakes of the head, etc. This allows not only to ensure a transition to a dialogue only with the subconscious and at the same time not to cause "sucker" no suspicions, don't scare him off.

For a fraudster, trance is not an end in itself, but only a tool to enhance reactions. When inducing a trance, the gypsy again uses the “pleasant - pleasant - profitable” technology described above, i.e. in this situation, she first fixes his attention on what is really happening in all the senses (vision, hearing, sensation, smell, etc.) - in everything that already exists. Then, splitting consciousness, it “broadcasts” trance sensations. Seeing all the external signs of an approaching trance, she informs her victim about them and thereby sharply deepens the rapport. At this stage, there is a verbal transmission of those states that simultaneously:

· beneficial to the fraudster;

· actually observed by the client;

· indicate the onset of a trance state in the client.

As a result of such hidden suggestion, increasingly pronounced signs of an even deeper deepening of trance are observed. The spoken words “in passing” do not arouse suspicion - after all, the gypsy seems to be simply stating what is happening in reality. In fact, this is a trap for consciousness. The technique of speaking out loud any observable signs of the victim’s altered state for 2-3 minutes provokes the onset of an effective trance.