Tag: insomnia

Mental Perturbance and Insomnia in the Pandemic: Ideas and Strategies

Matt Galloway The Current

On Thursday, Dr. Elliot Kyung Lee, medical director of the Sleep Disorder Clinic at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, and I were interviewed by Matt Galloway on The Current (CBC National radio) regarding the pandemic, insomnia and mental perturbance. You can listen to the episode on this CBC page which also includes an article about the interview.

In this blog post, I’d like to elaborate on the concepts of mental perturbance and insomnolence that were discussed. I’d also like to put the sleep tips in context.

Preamble: Replacing worry with curiosity

Continue reading Mental Perturbance and Insomnia in the Pandemic: Ideas and Strategies

We Will Present Three Research Posters at the World Sleep Congress in Vancouver, September 2019

Recently, I’ve been blogging mostly about my cognitive productivity R&D and Discontinuities: Love, Art, Mind. However, I’m also actively doing R&D on sleep onset, insomnolence and perturbance (“emotion”). My colleagues and I will present three posters at the World Sleep Congress which will be held in Vancouver in September. Continue reading We Will Present Three Research Posters at the World Sleep Congress in Vancouver, September 2019

AISB-2017 (Bath) Symposium: “Computational Modelling of Emotion: Theory and Applications”

At AISB 2017 (April, in Bath, England) there will be a symposium on Computational Modelling of Emotion: Theory and Applications. The symposium chairs are Dr. Dean Petters (Psychology) and Dr. David Moffatt (Computer Science).

Dr. Sylwia Hyniewska and I will submit a paper on emotion as perturbance, using insomnia and limerence as windows onto this phenomenon. Continue reading AISB-2017 (Bath) Symposium: “Computational Modelling of Emotion: Theory and Applications”

Presenting Preliminary Results on the Cognitive Shuffle at CogSci 2015 in Pasadena

This afternoon, we will present preliminary results on the cognitive shuffle at CogSci 2015 in Pasadena (that’s the annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society). This is research with Professor Nancy Digdon from MacEwan. I’m looking forward to receiving feedback from our peers on this research.

Continue reading Presenting Preliminary Results on the Cognitive Shuffle at CogSci 2015 in Pasadena

Meta-painting & Science of the Human Mind: An Epistolary Response to Lam Wong’s 21 Elements

Preface

This epistolary essay was written in 2014 (with some later updates) as a response to Lam Wong’s 21 Elements: Relation, Perception and Meaning painting exhibition of Sept. 2014 in New Westminster. I blogged about the exhibition prior to writing this essay.

In 2014, Lam Wong’s 21 Elements: Relation, Perception and Meaning book was published. That book contains photos of all the paintings in his exhibition. A chapter of 21 Elements, written by Lam, which includes pictures of several of the paintings from his book, are available in this PDF.

Photos of the paintings from 21 Elements are available on Lam’s website.

A version of the essay below appears in the second edition of 21 Elements, published in 2022. That’s a limited edition print.

A version of the essay below, interleaved with photos of the paintings, will appear in Discontinuities: Love, Art, Mind. The letter reflects many of the themes of Discontinuities, including, of course, affective epistolary communication.

Contents

  • Attentively developing expertise through time
  • N-ary relations in art and meta machinery
  • Perception: The construction of conjectures
  • Rational faith and love in the dark
  • Language of cognitive-affective mind
  • Perturbance: Loss of control of mental processing of motivators
  • Attachment, acceptance, love and happiness
  • Universality of affect
  • Using visual art to improve ourselves
  • Consciousness, the great integrator (or integration)
  • To the tune of Kevin Shield’s Goodbye

Meta-painting & Science of the Human Mind: An Epistolary Response to Lam Wong’s 21 Elements

Shadows of shadows passing. It is now 1831, and as always I am absorbed with a delicate thought. It is how poetry has indefinite sensations, to which end music is an essential. Since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception, music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry. Music without the idea is simply music. Without music or an intriguing idea, colour becomes pallor, man becomes carcass, home becomes catacomb, and the dead are but for a moment motionless. Edgar Allan Poe

Dear ______,

I had the pleasure of attending, on several occasions, Lam Wong’s 21 Elements: Relation, Perception and Meaning exhibition and of discussing his art with him. As a result, I am moved to share my reflections with you.

Continue reading Meta-painting & Science of the Human Mind: An Epistolary Response to Lam Wong’s 21 Elements

Insomnia Workshops: Designed to Promote Cognitive Productivity

I don’t usually blog about my workshops and presentations. But I thought I’d mention two workshops for School District 23 ( Okanagan) that I will give in Kelowna next Friday:

  1. Reading to learn with tablets and laptops.
  2. Getting more and better sleep.

The first workshop is based on my book, Cognitive Productivity: Using Knowledge to Become Profoundly Effective, which itself is based on extensive research.

The second workshop is based on my research on sleep onset and insomnia, which is described at SFU, on mySleepButton and elsewhere.

Continue reading Insomnia Workshops: Designed to Promote Cognitive Productivity

Sleep Onset, The Cognitive Shuffle and Productivity: Our Presentation at the 2014 SFU Learning Together Conference

Sheryl Guloy and I will be giving a presentation on the cognitive shuffle and cognitive productivity on Friday May 9 at the SFU Learning Together 2014 Conference. That’s an annual conference put on by the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University.

The title of our presentation is:

Decreasing sleep-onset latency for better cognitive performance in faculty and students: Super-somnolent mentation and the new “cognitive shuffle” technique compared with monotonous imagery training.

Continue reading Sleep Onset, The Cognitive Shuffle and Productivity: Our Presentation at the 2014 SFU Learning Together Conference