Buhner, Stephen Harrod. _Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm: Beyond the Doors of Perception into the Dreaming Earth_. Rochester, Vermont: Bear & Company, 2014. # Progressive Summary # Key Points > You must not extend perception further than the society wants it to go. This is why schizophrenics and drug users have such difficulty integrating into society. Our cultural norms are limited maps of reality, static descriptions that always lag behind the fluid wildness of the world. ## Gating All sensory pathways in the brain converge on the hippocampus (or hippocampi). > It is this organ that is concerned with orienting us—in both physical space and the rich field of meanings through which we move every day of our lives. It is the part of us that works most deeply with meanings, with the meanings that are embedded within every sensory input we receive. From here, all sensory inputs (except for smell) are channeled to the thalami for routing to different parts of the cerebral cortex. Gating, or sensory filtering, is done at every step of this pathway. There are deep, unconscious parts of our brain that are attuned to specific features relevant to our survival - protection of the self, deep sense of wonder, sexual interest in the room - and they determine how much information to let through to consciousness. (An analogy to "needs" in NVC?) This happens at speeds as fast as 50 milliseconds (thousandths of a second) to 250 milliseconds (in the hippocampus). Gates close or open depending on the novelty, intensity or contrast in the incoming stimuli. Neurotransmitters help control the gates. During sleep, the thalamus prevents any stimuli from reaching the cerebral cortex. Our sensory gates are open at birth, and then as we get older, our culture teaches us to narrow the gates so that we can function in our society. # Comments # Quotes