Results for “Guy Leschziner”

Despite our huge scientific advances, we're still very-much at the early stages of discovery. Many of our great questions are also stepping into the realms of philosophy. Do we all see the same way? Do we all perceive the same way? It's a hidden frontier.

Sleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders

From a rather dispassionate, clinical perspective, and if you remove the awful consequences that people experience when something does go wrong, you can see conditions like synesthesia as nature's experiments. We can learn a lot about the underlying functioning of our nervous system.

Sleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders

Smell is an outlier. The way smell works is that the brain essentially sent out a little tentacle into the world, those nerve fibres are the only contact between the central nervous system and the external world. This is the point at which there is no barrier between the brain and the outside world.

Sleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders

There are significant distinctions between what we perceive to be reality and the cold, hard, molecular world we inhabit. Our brains are constantly taking shortcuts to inform us about the world and this introduces an intrinsic error which our brains are filling in.

Sleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders

We have no idea about the world that we inhabit and that what the brain is doing is really creating an entire shortcut that enables us to understand the world without being able to physically really understand the reality in which we inhabit, which is a mind-blowing concept.

Sleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders

Our senses are the conduit between the external world and our interior. When we're born, we have some wiring, but essentially a very limited experience of the exterior. To really understand the world we inhabit, we need to try and observe it. In order to function in the world, we need to have a model of the world upon which we base predictions.

Sleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders

Smell is an outlier. The brain essentially sent out a little tentacle into the world, those nerve fibres are the only contact between the central nervous system and the external world. This is the point at which there is no barrier between the brain and the outside world.

Sleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders

Our brains are constantly taking shortcuts to inform us about the world and this introduces an intrinsic error which our brains are filling in. By the time we 'see' something perceptually, we're a fraction of a second behind real-time.

Sleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders

If our senses are really how we understand the world, and there are differences in those sensory windows, then our internal world will be different. Perhaps these differences explain the diversity of beliefs.

Sleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders

What we perceive to be the absolute truth of the world around us is a complex reconstruction, a virtual reality created by the complex machinations of our minds. We have no idea about the world that we inhabit and what the brain is doing is really creating an entire shortcut that enables us to understand the world without being able to physically really understand the reality in which we inhabit, which is a mind-blowing concept.

Sleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders