I just finished this morning’s session with the vOICe. My performance was less effective than the last few sessions, so far as reach and grab, or reach and get close. I only had visual qualia a few times. More than once, I “saw” it, and then reached for the wrong spot, only to find that it was where I’d “seen” it. But the visual qualia came and went so quickly that it was difficult to localize the target. What’s more, when I started, I kept seeing several targets on different spots of the bed, ghost images.

I could avoid posting about sessions that don’t go well, but somewhere out there, someone else who is training with the vOICe, or considering using it needs to know that some days will go better than others. What’s more, gaining facility could take months, or years.

If you consider neural network entrainment, one could assume that today was about testing the model that my brain has built up so far.

I’m using the vOICe and my own experience as part of the overall research efforts, attempting to find ways to improve my ability to use my own mind and brain in a more optimal fashion. However, because I’m trying a number of different things, if I do suddenly find myself learning at a considerably faster rate than the average, it will be difficult to tell which thing or combination of things caused that, or if I just happen to luck out and be unusually good at learning this task, just because of the way I’m wired, regardless of my approach. I could also end up being slower than most, but still be better than I would have been without the experiments. Or perhaps the experiments might be counter-productive. There are so many confounding factors.

Meanwhile, I find that my instinct is to inhibit my emotional reaction, to try and hold down my level of frustration. This is something I do more or less automatically. Yet those with savant syndrome often have trouble regulating their emotions. That’s also true when one considers the tortured artist, mad scientist, or even children. Perhaps, the neural chemical reaction associated with frustration helps to refine the neural patterns that are being build up as my brain models the process. Perhaps I would learn better if I did get upset, so long as the frustration doesn’t interfere with my motivation and push me away from continuing to practice. All respect to Shawn Achor and the positive psychology folk with their “happiness advantage,” but just because something feels unpleasant, doesn’t mean that what’s happening is “bad.”

Oh, for a budget, and willing participants.

Meanwhile, more Tetris effect. In fact, as soon as I was done and sat down to turn on my computer and write this, I started to hear the sounds of the vOICe, so at least some automatic processing is still going on. Here’s one place where some insight strikes me as useful. I could fight it—try and push the back of the head noises completely out of my head. Instead, on the theory that more processing is better, I do my best to let it run.

It’s called, the Tetris effect.

People who have played the game Tetris often find that they will start to see those falling blocks as they doze off, as they are just waking up, or even when they blink from time to time as they go about their lives. Though named after one rather addictive video game, the effect isn’t limited to that game. In fact, just about any activity can leave echoes playing in your mind. If you spend the day playing on the beach, you can find yourself feeling as though your body is being pushed and pulled by waves as you fall asleep that night, an echo off the sun and fun you had while playing in the shallows and serf. In similar fashion, a day on a small boat can leave the solid ground seemingly shifting and rolling under your feet, or if you play drums all damn day, just about every sound you hear starts to seem like it’s part of a persistent and complex rhythm.

Here’s a two-and-a-half minute YouTube video that both covered the subject, and made me smile.

The Tetris Effect

This morning, I was working with the vOICe, yet again. As I mentioned in the first post on the subject, I was getting some of those visual qualia again. This time, sometimes when I saw the target, where I saw it was rather far away from where the little white cube actually was. Both the occurrence of visual qualia and the accuracy of said qualia correlated with how well I was able to trust the back of my head. That is to say, the harder I tried, the worse it went.

After spending roughly 30 minutes with it, I moved on with my life. Later, I was on my computer, looking up something entirely different. That’s when I noticed that in the back of my head, I was hearing the sounds of the vOICe, including the beep like sound that corresponds to the presence of the cube. In fact, once, as I leaned back in my chair, puffing my air out through my lips, letting my mind rest for a moment after reading whatever the hell I’d just been reading, I noticed that I both heard it, and sort of saw it, in the same rather vague shadow like way that I see the target when I get visual qualia. For a moment, the “sight” of the cube moved up and down and side to side, and the sound of the cube did the same within the sound scape. It’s much like having a song stuck in your head, or seeing scenes from a movie you’ve watched recently behind your eyes.

I suspect this is my brain, replaying the sensory memory in order to train my neurons to be able to model the real-world phenomenon. A quick Google search just before I wrote this and I find that most researchers seem to think the same thing.

Go brain go!

I was chatting on Twitter back and forth with @seeingwithsound about the vOICe. My Twitter handle is @lobbyandlab if you’d like to join the conversation. I mentioned that my echo location seemed to have improved since I began working with the vOICe. @seeingwithsound replied that though it was only anecdotal evidence, he’d noticed that his sensitivity to subtle sounds seems to have increased.

Wherein it is still anecdotal evidence for you and the rest of the internet, it is direct evidence for me.

Quiet things seem to be subjectively louder. I’m not certain that’s an accurate way of phrasing it–what I do know is that I’ve been mildly surprised by a soft sound from time to time. It happened this morning when I rolled over in bed, and heard something that made me stop and go, what was that? It turned out just to be the sound of one blanket rubbing against the other, a sound that normally doesn’t intrude its way into my awareness. Another time I was unconsciously tapping my toe, and again, my focus was involuntarily drawn to the surprisingly loud seeming sound of my sock-clad foot moving around in my shoe.

Presumably, there has been an increase in the firing rate of some of my auditory nerves, or those that receive auditory nerve signals. I may also have formed more connections, so that more neurons are firing in concert for a given mild sonic stimulus.

I wonder if anyone has figured out how the brain judges the relative volume of sounds. I’ll have to look it up.