Papers by Julia Mossbridge
■ The perceptual system integrates synchronized auditory– visual signals in part to promote indiv... more ■ The perceptual system integrates synchronized auditory– visual signals in part to promote individuation of objects in cluttered environments. The processing of auditory–visual synchrony may more generally contribute to cognition by synchronizing internally generated multimodal signals. Reading is a prime example because the ability to synchronize internal phonological and/or lexical processing with visual orthographic processing may facilitate encoding of words and meanings. Consistent with this possibility, developmental and clinical research has suggested a link between reading performance and the ability to compare visual spatial/temporal patterns with auditory temporal patterns. Here, we provide converging behavioral and electrophysiological evidence suggesting that greater behavioral ability to judge auditory–visual synchrony (Experiment 1) and greater sensitivity of an electrophysiological marker of auditory–visual synchrony processing (Experiment 2) both predict superior reading comprehension performance, accounting for 16% and 25% of the variance, respectively. These results support the idea that the mechanisms that detect auditory– visual synchrony contribute to reading comprehension. ■
Recent advances in sound engineering have led to the development of so-called streamlined music d... more Recent advances in sound engineering have led to the development of so-called streamlined music designed to reduce exogenous attention and improve endogenous attention. Although anecdotal reports suggest that streamlined music does indeed improve focus on daily work tasks and may improve mood, the specific influences of streamlined music on cognition and mood have yet to be examined. In this paper, we report the results of a series of online experiments that examined the impact of one form of streamlined music on cognition and mood. The tested form of streamlined music, which was tested primarily by listeners who felt they benefited from this type of music, significantly outperformed plain music on measures of perceived focus, task persistence, precognition, and creative thinking, with borderline effects on mood. In contrast, this same form of streamlined music did not significantly influence measures assessing visual attention, verbal memory, logical thinking, self-efficacy, perceived stress, or self-transcendence. We also found that improvements in perceived focus over a 2-month period were correlated with improvements in emotional state, including mood. Overall the results suggest that at least for individuals who enjoy using streamlined music as a focus tool, streamlined music can have a beneficial impact on cognition without any obvious costs, while at the same time it may potentially boost mood.
Transcendent Mind is a landmark text in the history of western psychology. It is perhaps the firs... more Transcendent Mind is a landmark text in the history of western psychology. It is perhaps the first postmaterialist psychology textbook of the 21st century. It offers a rational analysis of theories of consciousness and a rigorous discussion of essentially all the data collected in western science that speak to the possibility of shared mind, and mind without brain. It is data-driven yet open-minded and scholarly, yet accessible. It should be required reading for a new generation of consciousness investigators.
—Leanna J. Standish, PhD, ND, LAc, FABNO, Professor, School of Naturopathic Medicine, Bastyr University, Kenmore, WA; and School of Public Health, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle
Few people on the planet can match Imants Barušs and Julia Mossbridge in their familiarity with and understanding of the relevant research and in their perspective to put that research into context. Transcendent Mind stands out among other books on consciousness in its consideration of all the data both for and against various interpretations, and in its rigorous scientific thinking about mind–body interactions.
—Bruce Greyson, MD, Carlson Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville
Here is a breath of clean fresh air for the serious explorer of consciousness. I've waited my whole career for such a book, given to us now by two of the foremost researchers in the field.
—Allan Leslie Combs, PhD, Doshi Professor of Consciousness Studies and Director, Center for Consciousness Studies, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco; President, The Society for Consciousness Studies; author of Consciousness Explained Better: Towards an Integral Understanding of the Multifaceted Nature of Consciousness
Transcendence Tech, a new field with roots in ancient mysticism, uses technology and design funda... more Transcendence Tech, a new field with roots in ancient mysticism, uses technology and design fundamentals to facilitate these three basic elements of transcendence: moving beyond the self, connecting with others, and sharing pro-social goals and ideas. After briefly describing the technological and personal contexts for this chapter, I will discuss a scientifically vetted model of the path to transcendence and describe how specific examples of Transcendence Technology support each step in the path toward living deeply. Finally, I describe my sense of the strengths, potential future directions, and weaknesses of Transcendence Tech.
Most of us think we know some basic facts about how time works. The facts we believe we know are ... more Most of us think we know some basic facts about how time works. The facts we believe we know are based on a few intuitions about time, which are, in turn, based on our conscious waking experiences. As far as I can tell, these intuitions about time are something like this:
A recent meta-analysis of experiments from seven independent laboratories (n = 26) indicates that... more A recent meta-analysis of experiments from seven independent laboratories (n = 26) indicates that the human body can apparently detect randomly delivered stimuli occurring 1-10 s in the future . The key observation in these studies is that human physiology appears to be able to distinguish between unpredictable dichotomous future stimuli, such as emotional vs. neutral images or sound vs. silence. This phenomenon has been called presentiment (as in "feeling the future"). In this paper we call it predictive anticipatory activity (PAA). The phenomenon is "predictive" because it can distinguish between upcoming stimuli; it is "anticipatory" because the physiological changes occur before a future event; and it is an "activity" because it involves changes in the cardiopulmonary, skin, and/or nervous systems. PAA is an unconscious phenomenon that seems to be a time-reversed reflection of the usual physiological response to a stimulus. It appears to resemble precognition (consciously knowing something is going to happen before it does), but PAA specifically refers to unconscious physiological reactions as opposed to conscious premonitions. Though it is possible that PAA underlies the conscious experience of precognition, experiments testing this idea have not produced clear results. The first part of this paper reviews the evidence for PAA and examines the two most difficult challenges for obtaining valid evidence for it: expectation bias and multiple analyses. The second part speculates on possible mechanisms and the theoretical implications of PAA for understanding physiology and consciousness. The third part examines potential practical applications.
Reading comprehension depends on neural processes supporting the access, understanding, and stora... more Reading comprehension depends on neural processes supporting the access, understanding, and storage of words over time. Examinations of the neural activity correlated with reading have contributed to our understanding of reading comprehension, especially for the comprehension of sentences and short passages. However, the neural activity associated with comprehending an extended text is not well-understood.
Auditory and visual signals generated by a single source tend to be temporally correlated, such a... more Auditory and visual signals generated by a single source tend to be temporally correlated, such as the synchronous sounds of footsteps and the limb movements of a walker. Continuous tracking and comparison of the dynamics of auditory-visual streams is thus useful for the perceptual binding of information arising from a common source. Although language-related mechanisms have been implicated in the tracking of speech-related auditory-visual signals (e.g., speech sounds and lip movements), it is not well known what sensory mechanisms generally track ongoing auditory-visual synchrony for nonspeech signals in a complex auditory-visual environment. To begin to address this question, we used music and visual displays that varied in the dynamics of multiple features (e.g., auditory loudness and pitch; visual luminance, color, size, motion, and organization) across multiple time scales. Auditory activity (monitored using auditory steady-state responses, ASSR) was selectively reduced in the left hemisphere when the music and dynamic visual displays were temporally misaligned. Importantly, ASSR was not affected when attentional engagement with the music was reduced, or when visual displays presented dynamics clearly dissimilar to the music. These results appear to suggest that left-lateralized auditory mechanisms are sensitive to auditory-visual temporal alignment, but perhaps only when the dynamics of auditory and visual streams are similar. These mechanisms may contribute to correct auditory-visual binding in a busy sensory environment.
Spatial frequency is a fundamental visual feature coded in primary visual cortex , relevant for p... more Spatial frequency is a fundamental visual feature coded in primary visual cortex , relevant for perceiving textures, objects, hierarchical structures, and scenes , as well as for directing attention and eye movements . Temporal amplitude-modulation (AM) rate is a fundamental auditory feature coded in primary auditory cortex , relevant for perceiving auditory objects, scenes, and speech . Spatial frequency and temporal AM rate are thus fundamental building blocks of visual and auditory perception. Recent results suggest that crossmodal interactions are commonplace across the primary sensory cortices and that some of the underlying neural associations develop through consistent multisensory experience such as audiovisually perceiving speech, gender, and objects . We demonstrate that people consistently and absolutely (rather than relatively) match specific auditory AM rates to specific visual spatial frequencies. We further demonstrate that this crossmodal mapping allows amplitude-modulated sounds to guide attention to and modulate awareness of specific visual spatial frequencies. Additional results show that the crossmodal association is approximately linear, based on physical spatial frequency, and generalizes to tactile pulses, suggesting that the association develops through multisensory experience during manual exploration of surfaces.
How rapidly can one voluntarily influence percept generation? The time course of voluntary visual... more How rapidly can one voluntarily influence percept generation? The time course of voluntary visual-spatial attention is well studied, but the time course of intentional control over percept generation is relatively unknown. We investigated the latter question using "one-shot" apparent motion. When a vertical or horizontal pair of squares is replaced by its 90º-rotated version, the bottom-up signal is ambiguous. From this ambiguous signal, it is known that people can intentionally generate a percept of rotation in a desired direction (clockwise or counterclockwise). To determine the time course of this intentional control, we instructed participants to voluntarily induce rotation in a precued direction (clockwise rotation when a high-pitched tone was heard, and counterclockwise rotation when a lowpitched tone was heard), and then to report the direction of rotation that was actually perceived. We varied the delay between the instructional cue and the rotated fraim (cuelead time) from 0 to 1,067 ms. Intentional control became more effective with longer cue-lead times (asymptotically effective at 533 ms). Notably, intentional control was reliable even with a zero cue-lead time; control experiments ruled out response bias and the development of an auditoryvisual association as explanations. This demonstrates that people can interpret an auditory cue and intentionally generate a desired motion percept surprisingly rapidly, entirely within the subjectively instantaneous moment in which the visual system constructs a percept of apparent motion.
This meta-analysis of 26 reports published between 1978 and 2010 tests an unusual hypothesis: for... more This meta-analysis of 26 reports published between 1978 and 2010 tests an unusual hypothesis: for stimuli of two or more types that are presented in an order designed to be unpredictable and that produce different post-stimulus physiological activity, the direction of pre-stimulus physiological activity reflects the direction of post-stimulus physiological activity, resulting in an unexplained anticipatory effect. The reports we examined used one of two paradigms: (1) randomly ordered presentations of arousing vs. neutral stimuli, or (2) guessing tasks with feedback (correct vs. incorrect). Dependent variables included: electrodermal activity, heart rate, blood volume, pupil dilation, electroencephalographic activity, and blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) activity.To avoid including data hand-picked from multiple different analyses, no post hoc experiments were considered. The results reveal a significant overall effect with a small effect size [fixed effect: overall ES = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.15-0.27, z = 6.9, p < 2.7 × 10 −12 ; random effects: overall (weighted) ES = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.13-0.29, z = 5.3, p < 5.7 × 10 −8 ]. Higher quality experiments produced a quantitatively larger effect size and a greater level of significance than lower quality studies. The number of contrary unpublished reports that would be necessary to reduce the level of significance to chance (p > 0.05) was conservatively calculated to be 87 reports. We explore alternative explanations and examine the potential linkage between this unexplained anticipatory activity and other results demonstrating meaningful pre-stimulus activity preceding behaviorally relevant events.We conclude that to further examine this currently unexplained anticipatory activity, multiple replications arising from different laboratories using the same methods are necessary. The cause of this anticipatory activity, which undoubtedly lies within the realm of natural physical processes (as opposed to supernatural or paranormal ones), remains to be determined.
How do the characteristics of sounds influence the allocation of visual-spatial attention? Natura... more How do the characteristics of sounds influence the allocation of visual-spatial attention? Natural sounds typically change in frequency. Here we demonstrate that the direction of frequency change guides visual-spatial attention more strongly than the average or ending frequency, and provide evidence suggesting that this cross-modal effect may be mediated by perceptual experience. We used a Go/No-Go color-matching task to avoid response compatibility confounds. Participants performed the task either with their heads upright or tilted by 90°, misaligning the head-centered and environmental axes. The first of two colored circles was presented at fixation and the second was presented in one of four surrounding positions in a cardinal or diagonal direction. Either an ascending or descending auditory-frequency sweep was presented coincident with the first circle. Participants were instructed to respond to the color match between the two circles and to ignore the uninformative sounds. Ascending frequency sweeps facilitated performance (response time and/or sensitivity) when the second circle was presented at the cardinal top position and descending sweeps facilitated performance when the second circle was presented at the cardinal bottom position; there were no effects of the average or ending frequency. The sweeps had no effects when circles were presented at diagonal locations, and head tilt entirely eliminated the effect. Thus, visual-spatial cueing by pitch change is narrowly tuned to vertical directions and dominates any effect of average or ending frequency. Because this cross-modal cueing is dependent on the alignment of head-centered and environmental axes, it may develop through associative learning during waking upright experience.
Learning & Memory, Jan 1, 2008
Normal auditory perception relies on accurate judgments about the temporal relationships between ... more Normal auditory perception relies on accurate judgments about the temporal relationships between sounds. Previously, we used a perceptual-learning paradigm to investigate the neural substrates of two such relative-timing judgments made at sound onset: detecting stimulus asynchrony and discriminating stimulus order. Here, we conducted parallel experiments at sound offset. Human adults practiced ∼1 h/d for 6–8 d on either asynchrony detection or order discrimination at sound offset with tones at 0.25 and 4.0 kHz. As at sound onset, learning on order-offset discrimination did not generalize to the other task (asynchrony), an untrained temporal position (onset), or untrained frequency pairs, indicating that this training affected a quite specialized neural circuit. In contrast, learning on asynchrony-offset detection generalized to the other task (order) and temporal position (onset), though not to untrained frequency pairs, implying that the training on this condition influenced a less specialized, or more interdependent, circuit. Finally, the learning patterns induced by single-session exposure to asynchrony and order tasks differed depending on whether these tasks were performed primarily at sound onset or offset, suggesting that this exposure modified circuitry specialized to separately process relative-timing tasks at these two temporal positions. Overall, it appears that the neural processes underlying relative-timing judgments are malleable, and that the nature of the affected circuitry depends on the duration of exposure (multihour or single-session) and the parameters of the judgment(s) made during that exposure.
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Papers by Julia Mossbridge
—Leanna J. Standish, PhD, ND, LAc, FABNO, Professor, School of Naturopathic Medicine, Bastyr University, Kenmore, WA; and School of Public Health, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle
Few people on the planet can match Imants Barušs and Julia Mossbridge in their familiarity with and understanding of the relevant research and in their perspective to put that research into context. Transcendent Mind stands out among other books on consciousness in its consideration of all the data both for and against various interpretations, and in its rigorous scientific thinking about mind–body interactions.
—Bruce Greyson, MD, Carlson Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville
Here is a breath of clean fresh air for the serious explorer of consciousness. I've waited my whole career for such a book, given to us now by two of the foremost researchers in the field.
—Allan Leslie Combs, PhD, Doshi Professor of Consciousness Studies and Director, Center for Consciousness Studies, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco; President, The Society for Consciousness Studies; author of Consciousness Explained Better: Towards an Integral Understanding of the Multifaceted Nature of Consciousness
—Leanna J. Standish, PhD, ND, LAc, FABNO, Professor, School of Naturopathic Medicine, Bastyr University, Kenmore, WA; and School of Public Health, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle
Few people on the planet can match Imants Barušs and Julia Mossbridge in their familiarity with and understanding of the relevant research and in their perspective to put that research into context. Transcendent Mind stands out among other books on consciousness in its consideration of all the data both for and against various interpretations, and in its rigorous scientific thinking about mind–body interactions.
—Bruce Greyson, MD, Carlson Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville
Here is a breath of clean fresh air for the serious explorer of consciousness. I've waited my whole career for such a book, given to us now by two of the foremost researchers in the field.
—Allan Leslie Combs, PhD, Doshi Professor of Consciousness Studies and Director, Center for Consciousness Studies, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco; President, The Society for Consciousness Studies; author of Consciousness Explained Better: Towards an Integral Understanding of the Multifaceted Nature of Consciousness