# Connectome-specific harmonic waves and meditation

**TL;DR**: meditation is a process for altering the harmonics of brainwaves to produce good brain states.

Pulling together a few threads:

*   The theory of [connectome-specific harmonic waves](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10340) suggests one thing that happens in the brain is that [oscillations in neuron activity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_oscillation) (brainwaves) interact to form [harmonics](https://misciwriters.com/2017/06/20/setting-the-tone-how-physics-can-help-us-understand-musical-harmony-part-2/) (correlated brainwaves that form patterns) that [may explain](https://opentheory.net/2018/08/a-future-for-neuroscience/) certain aspects of brain and thereby mental activity.
*   [We can of course look at what happens with these harmonics in people on LSD](https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/06/18/connectome-specific-harmonic-waves-on-lsd/).

*   Probably related: [people "hallucinating" all the time](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/11/lots-of-people-going-around-with-mild-hallucinations-all-the-time/)

*   Meditation and psychedelics [do](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01475/full) [similar](https://maps.org/news-letters/v11n2/11243pal.html) [things](https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/03/health/psychedelics-anxiety-depression-meditation/index.html) to the brain.
*   Psychedelics can cause people to perform a process we might call "[annealing](https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/08/27/carhart-harris-friston-2019-rebus-and-the-anarchic-brain/?fbclid=IwAR3mDgJ4F839svoFPd3N0zRdZVdfwOzdI1eEA-RRR_hKPRwXU5qqPibEZcc)" by analogy to the metallurgical process ("normalizing" would also work as a metaphor, as would "quenching + tempering" in the case of bad trips/trauma with after care). I've also been using the annealing metaphor talk about what happens during meditation (no links, all in person), [as](https://www.artofliving.org/us-en/the-significance-of-hatha-yoga-how-It-heats-and-cools-your-body) [have](https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/12/22/what-is-love-neural-annealing-in-the-presence-of-an-intentional-object/) [others](https://opentheory.net/2018/12/the-neuroscience-of-meditation/).

*   Related metaphor: [meditation as reinforcement learning](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/chHhuCvmZqYLM32gz/machine-learning-analogy-for-meditation-illustrated) (cf. [simulating annealing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_annealing))

*   "Good" is grounded as "minimization of prediction error". Explanation:

*   Neurons form [hierarchical control systems](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/06/book-review-behavior-the-control-of-perception/).

*   cf. a grounding of [phenomenological idealism using control systems](https://mapandterritory.org/form-and-feedback-in-phenomenology-d44f4e5c72b3), and [its implications](https://mapandterritory.org/introduction-to-noematology-fac7ae7d805d)
*   cf. [the hierarchy is recursive](https://mapandterritory.org/unstaging-developmental-psychology-fcdc5f9ba894) and [reasserts itself at higher levels of organization](https://mapandterritory.org/phenomenological-complexity-classes-8b41836437b9)

*   Those control systems aim to [minimize prediction error](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/04/god-help-us-lets-try-to-understand-friston-on-free-energy/) via negative feedback (homeostatic) loops.
*   The positive signal ("good") of the control system [occurs when prediction error is minimized](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/20/translating-predictive-coding-into-perceptual-control/).

*   By extension "bad" is when prediction error is maximized and "neutral" is when the threshold for signaling good or bad is not crossed (having a neutral signal reduces jitter).

*   [One way to reduce prediction error is with symmetry](https://opentheory.net/2017/05/why-we-seek-out-pleasure-the-symmetry-theory-of-homeostatic-regulation/). This means that we usually think [symmetry is good](https://opentheory.net/2017/04/stov-explain-like-im-5-edition/).
*   [Meditation](https://www.mindandlife.org/remembrance-things-come-predictive-nature-mind-contemplative-practices/), and anything that sets up harmonic neuronal oscillation, makes brain activity more symmetric, hence better or good.

I think we can infer a lot from these observations, but I'll leave those for another post.