Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!watdcsu!smann
From: smann@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (Shannon Mann - I.S.er)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Here's one ...
Summary: Here's to Oscillations
Message-ID: <5167@watdcsu.waterloo.edu>
Date: 18 Oct 88 13:52:33 GMT
References: <1614@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <1153@buengc.BU.EDU> <1119@leah.Albany.Edu>
Reply-To: smann@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (Shannon Mann - I.S.er)
Distribution: na
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 33

In article <1119@leah.Albany.Edu> gbn474@leah.Albany.Edu (Gregory Newby) writes:
>Research result (unpublished) from a recent conference:
>
>Participants were instructed to watch a string of blinking holiday
>lights (the xmas tree kind, which blink more or less randomly).
>A beatles' song was played (I forget which one).  When polled
>afterwards, most participants reported seeing the lights blink
>on and off IN RYTHM to the music.
>
>Possible conclusion:  consciousness, like most things we can name
>in nature, oscillates.
>
Other possible conclusion:  we unconsciously attach meaning to apparently
randon patterns i.e. we hear the music, we see the lights, we notice that there 
are some of the lights lit on the beat, and disregard the rest as noise.
Hence, we have a pattern where none existed before.  Sounds like pattern-
recognition to me. :-)
Seriously, I believe Neuro-Linguistics uses tapping, or rubbing motions to
influence the pace of communications between two people.  Don't know why,
just seems to work.

>I leave it for your consideration.
>
>--newbs

        -=-
-=- Shannon Mann -=- smann@watdcsu.UWaterloo.ca
        -=-

'I have no brain, and I must think...' - An Omynous
'If I don't think, AM I' - Another Omynous

P.S.  I'd like to know what 'oscillating consciousness' is supposed to mean.