If you stabilise a retina using adequate instruments, the organ ceases to transmit signals to the primary visual cortex, and one gradually becomes blind. From the standpoint of the sense organ, the same object never appears similar to itself twice. Two chairs are never exactly the same. In other words, one is constantly discovering a visual field. Everything you feel, you feel for the first time.
Perception is really exploration and, if we can perceive anything at all, it is because we are constantly matching incoming sensory signals to available mental models. You rarely fail to recognise objects in your surroundings. The world is always already meaningful, and it is sometimes beautiful.
The process by which a mind adapts to its world is so effective that people constantly mistake one for the other. When a large part of thought matches a large part of world, one might consciously feel what we call aesthetic emotions.
Historically, aesthetics is the science of how perception meets cognition, the science of how you know what you see. The majority of aesthetic emotions are unconscious. They occur every time you see something. When you see something important enough, you might experience these emotions consciously.
This happens through bodily changes such as tears, heartbeat increase, sweat — or shivers. The strange thing with shivering is that humans seem to shiver both when they are perfectly capable of predicting the behaviour of external objects in real time, when it all fits together so well, and, surprisingly, when nothing at all can be predicted, when the situation goes out of control. I propose that psychogenic shivers correspond to an event where the measure of the total similarity between all sensory signals and available mental models reaches a local peak value.
This can be expressed mathematically in terms of the rate of change of a function of conditional similarity. In this context, any change in learning corresponds to an aesthetic emotion. When the function reaches a local maximum, its derivative tends toward zero, and learning slows down. Ten years ago, Perlovsky predicted that such an event should involve knowledge about other minds and about the meaning of life. We know that psychogenic shivers can be inhibited by an excitant, the opioid-antagonist naloxone.
Naloxone is what you would inject in a clinical setting to a patient who is victim of an overdose; it is the antagonist of morphine. It does not come as a surprise that most of my subjects state that they relax after they experience an aesthetic shiver.
Besides a clear analogy with the sexual drive, what does this tell us about the exploratory drive? I argue that stories that provoke the shivers might bring about this relief of tension by allowing humans to overcome conflicts among fundamental parts of the mind.
Such stories might help us to deal with internal contradictions, where both elements are equally resistant to change. Leon Festinger, who in invented the theory of cognitive dissonance, named this a dissonance of maximum amplitude. Learn more about the health care services we provide at Bon Secours and find a provider near you. Sign up to receive regularly scheduled updates from us packed with healthy news, tips, research, recipes, and more — right to your inbox!
Dec 29 What causes shivering? Ways to stop shivering Stop thinking about it. This might be easier said than done but distracting your mind by focusing on something else can help. Wear a hat. Most of your body heat escapes through your head, so keeping a hat on in cold temperatures is one of the easiest things you can do to stay warm.
Wear warm gloves and socks. Your hands and feet are often the first parts of your body to become cold, so it is important to keep them warm. If you are planning to play in the snow, consider wearing gloves or socks that are also waterproof. For people who have diabetes , this will be known as hypoglycemia , and it can be severe.
People with diabetes should check their blood glucose regularly to prevent their levels from dropping too low. Anxiety is a mental health condition that can affect the body as well as the mind. It can cause physical symptoms, such as nausea, increased heart rate, and shivering or shaking.
Treatment for anxiety may include therapy, medication, and lifestyle changes. Activities that might help a person to manage their anxiety include exercising, listening to music, and spending time with supportive friends and family. Sepsis is an overwhelming response of the body to infection, and it often occurs in connection with lung, skin, gut, or urinary tract infections.
One of the symptoms of sepsis is shivering. Other symptoms include confusion, feeling sweaty or clammy, pain, raised heart rate, and shortness of breath. Sepsis is a medical emergency. People with sepsis will need prompt treatment with antibiotics in a hospital. Shivering is usually temporary. If it occurs due to a fever, low blood sugar, or a strong emotion, it should resolve once a person treats the underlying cause.
They can:. Other causes of shivering may be due to an underlying medical condition. If a person is concerned, they should note any other symptoms and seek medical advice. Shivering can be a more severe symptom for older adults or people with an underlying health condition.
Older adults are often less able to regulate their body temperature so they may become cold more quickly. Keeping warm in cold weather is essential for good health. Fever increases the heart rate and makes breathing faster.
This can be serious if a person has a heart or lung condition. Sepsis happens when an infection triggers a potentially life threatening immune response throughout the body. Here, learn to spot it and what to do…. Antibiotics include a range of powerful drugs that kill bacteria or slow their growth. They treat bacterial infections, not viruses. If used….
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