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This Week in Neuroplasticity: Data Stream Waves & How Music 'Moves' Us
Data Stream Waves, from Jim Sogi
Daily Speculations (Jan. 14, 2010) — Surf has been between consistently 15-25 feet and even higher on occasion for several weeks here with glassy perfect conditions. When it gets big, there are only a handful of guys out. Many don't have the right equipment. You need a big wave gun to handle the big drop and high speeds. I've been able to catch some of the biggest waves I've ever ridden. You really need to be in top shape. Old guys have some advantage (or maybe less disadvantage) in big waves where physical speed is not as important as experience and strength. Also, good surf equipment is expensive. A big wave gun might be close to a grand, but gets used only a few times a year. Some guys on standup boards are getting some big ones. It's a new way of catching waves, but they get really creamed if they get caught. The boards are not maneuverable enough to negotiate the twists and turns of the wave.
Watching all the waves made me want to ask others about data stream. One can measure the speed of one's Internet connections, but my sense in watching the ticks is that the data, or perhaps the executions themselves, are coming in waves and sets of waves. The price swings have certain wave characteristics, and none of the Prof's good studies on Fourier models will convince me otherwise. For those of us further than 50 yards from the exchange and that might possibly have nothing better to do all night than watch the ticks. Out of curiosity do the data come in waves over the cable and fiber and air? Electricity surges, as I understand.
The question of the stream is of purely academic interest, but the entirely different question of execution waves might be a source of profit if understood. If Globex has an algorithm, and if the autobox executions are using algos as well, some sort of wave pattern is likely to result mathematically. This is not volume, but rather rate of execution, or bunching or clustering.
Sine waves, tides, surf, all by definition will pass through the 0 or unchanged. During this extended flat period despite the slow up drift, the zero or unchanged mark seems to have more fascination for the market than the scene of the crime. The question and hypothesis is whether the deviation on either side of unchanged might be measured or predicted and the probabilities thereof. (1)
Story Source:
http://www.dailyspeculations.com/wordpress/?p=4312
How Music 'Moves' Us: Listeners' Brains Second-Guess the Composer
ScienceDaily (Jan. 16, 2010) — Have you ever accidentally pulled your headphone socket out while listening to music? What happens when the music stops? Psychologists believe that our brains continuously predict what is going to happen next in a piece of music. So, when the music stops, your brain may still have expectations about what should happen next.
A new paper published in NeuroImage predicts that these expectations should be different for people with different musical experience and sheds light on the brain mechanisms involved.
Research by Marcus Pearce Geraint Wiggins, Joydeep Bhattacharya and their colleagues at Goldsmiths, University of London has shown that expectations are likely to be based on learning through experience with music. Music has a grammar, which, like language, consists of rules that specify which notes can follow which other notes in a piece of music. According to Pearce: "the question is whether the rules are hard-wired into the auditory system or learned through experience of listening to music and recording, unconsciously, which notes tend to follow others."
The researchers asked 40 people to listen to hymn melodies (without lyrics) and state how expected or unexpected they found particular notes. They simulated a human mind listening to music with two computational models. The first model uses hard-wired rules to predict the next note in a melody. The second model learns through experience of real music which notes tend to follow others, statistically speaking, and uses this knowledge to predict the next note.
The results showed that the statistical model predicts the listeners' expectations better than the rule-based model. It also turned out that expectations were higher for musicians than for non-musicians and for familiar melodies -- which also suggests that experience has a strong effect on musical predictions.
In a second experiment, the researchers examined the brain waves of a further 20 people while they listened to the same hymn melodies. Although in this experiment the participants were not explicitly informed about the locations of the expected and unexpected notes, their brain waves in responses to these notes differed markedly. Typically, the timing and location of the brain wave patterns in response to unexpected notes suggested that they stimulate responses that synchronise different brain areas associated with processing emotion and movement. On these results, Bhattacharya commented, "… as if music indeed 'moves' us!"
These findings may help scientists to understand why we listen to music. "It is thought that composers deliberately confirm and violate listeners' expectations in order to communicate emotion and aesthetic meaning," said Pearce. Understanding how the brain generates expectations could illuminate our experience of emotion and meaning when we listen to music. (2)
Story Source:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100115204704.htm
Adapted from materials provided by University of Goldsmiths London.
Journal Reference:
- Pearce MT, Ruiz MH, Kapasi S, Wiggins G, Bhattacharya J. Unsupervised statistical learning underpins computational, behavioural, and neural manifestations of musical expectation. NeuroImage, 2009; DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.12.019
Scientists Map Brain Pathway for Vocal Learning
ScienceDaily (Jan. 16, 2010) — Scientists at Duke University Medical Center have identified neurons in the songbird brain that convey the auditory feedback needed to learn a song.
Their research lays the foundation for improving human speech, for example, in people whose auditory nerves are damaged and who must learn to speak without the benefit of hearing their own voices.
"This work is the first study to identify an auditory feedback pathway in the brain that is harnessed for learned vocal control," said Richard Mooney, Ph.D., Duke professor of neurobiology and senior author of the study. The researchers also devised an elegant way to carefully alter the activity of these neurons to prove that they interact with the motor networks that control singing.
The study, supported by an NIH grant, was published online in Neuron on Jan. 13.
Vocal learning isn't a simple process. "One challenge the brain faces when trying to learn a new behavior is that it only receives feedback about performance tens or even hundreds of milliseconds after it has generated the motor commands controlling that performance," Mooney said. "The challenge is pushed to an extreme if the brain has to use this sensory information in a retrospective way and still make corrections with millisecond precision, as humans and songbirds do when they learn to vocalize."
The problems that juvenile birds solve when they learn a song from a tutor bird are similar to the problems humans solve when we learn to speak, and birds and humans exploit similar neural systems to reach this solution, Mooney said.
The major question of this research was how the brain encodes and harnesses auditory feedback to shape the vocal performance in juvenile birds that are learning to sing.
In a painstaking experiment, lead author Huimeng Lei, Ph.D., used fine microelectrodes to locate neurons that become active in the pupil's brain when it hears its own song, Mooney said. "This was a very difficult procedure that had to be exquisitely accurate. Huimeng was able to get the recordings working just right to locate the feedback-sensing neurons."
Once the scientists knew they had located the correct set of neurons, they passed a brief pulse of electricity through the implanted electrodes to alter neural activity associated with one of the notes that the pupil was learning to sing.
"We think that the stimulation alters what the pupil bird perceives, and it is this altered perception that results in the note becoming distorted (as it sings the song back)," Mooney said. "In contrast, if we stimulated directly in the motor network (which produces the note) we would trigger an immediate distortion of the targeted song syllable."
Because birds sing their song with millisecond precision, the scientists could determine how precisely the brain learned to assign perceived error to the part of the song where the stimulation occurred. "The acoustical features of the stimulated region of the song grew distorted over time," Mooney said.
Three findings of interest emerged. First, the distortion in the bird's singing was delayed and showed up anywhere from hours to weeks after the bird first heard the electrical noise pulse in its song.
Second, the distortion always came in the same place in the pupil bird's song. This means the distortion was temporally precise and occurred at the exact point in the song where the electrical "noise" was introduced. "The brain somehow is learning to associate the stimulation with a certain part of the performance, and then alter the performance accordingly," Mooney said.
Third, by disrupting neural activity at different stages of the learning process, they determined that the distortion effects were strongly age-dependent. The target portion of the song degraded very quickly in the younger birds, sometimes within an hour. The older birds who experienced electrical interference kept singing properly for a while, but slowly their singing degraded, over a period of weeks.
"Because we are directly injecting an electrical pulse into the auditory feedback pathway, the changing ability of the brain to respond to the perceived error in performance likely reflects changes in the motor network itself," Mooney said.
Song precision is vital to songbirds because females select mates based in part on the temporal precision with which they sing. Temporal precision is also highly important in human speech, because acoustical features of two speech sounds may differ on the millisecond level.
This study lays the groundwork for scientists to improve human speech. For example, people whose auditory nerves are damaged may benefit as scientists explore how to stimulate auditory feedback pathways in the human brain that are important for speech learning. This is especially true for older children and adults who have been deaf and who need to learn speech well past the prime time for vocal learning, Mooney said.
This study also opens the door to exploring how the brain compares performance-related feedback to a sensory model, which is the basis of imitation, Mooney said.
"Imitation is the wellspring for much of human culture," he noted. "Because it would be impossible to use humans in experiments about initial vocal learning, songbird tutors and students provide a beautiful substitute system so that we can study the detailed brain mechanisms that underlie this relatively complex type of learning." (3)
Story Source:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100113122259.htm
Adapted from materials provided by Duke University Medical Center.
New Computer Vision System for the Analysis of Human Behavior
ScienceDaily (Jan. 16, 2010) — A consortium of European researchers, coordinated by the Computer Vision Centre (CVC) of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), has developed HERMES, a cognitive computational system consisting of video cameras and software able to recognise and predict human behaviour, as well as describe it in natural language. The applications of the Hermes project are numerous and can be used in the fields of intelligent surveillance, protection of accidents, marketing, psychology, etc.
HERMES (Human Expressive Graphic Representation of Motion and their Evaluation in Sequences) analyses human behaviour based on video sequences captured at three different focus levels: the individual as a relatively distant object; the individual's body at medium length so as to be able to analyse body postures; and the individual's face, which allows a detailed study of facial expressions. The information obtained is processed by computer vision and artificial intelligence algorithms, which permits the system to learn and recognise movement patterns.
HERMES offers two important innovations in the field of computer vision. The first is the description of in natural language movement captured by the cameras, through simple and precise phrases which appear on the computer screen in real time, together with the frame number in which the action is taking place. The system uses an avatar to talk and describe this information in different languages. The second innovation is the possibility to analyse and discover potentially unusual behaviour -- based on the movements it recognises -- and give off warning signals. For example, HERMES sends a signal to the control centre of an underground station after capturing the image of someone trying to cross the tracks, or alerts a medical centre if an elderly person living alone falls.
Seven different sub-projects have been developed by researchers working on the HERMES project:
- Cameras system: static cameras were used to supply a full scene, and high resolution active cameras -- pan-tilt-zoom sensors (horizontal and vertical inclinations and zoom) -- were used for the automatic tracking and close-ups of individuals. To do this, optimisation techniques were applied to the information contained in the images.
- Movement analysis of objects and individuals in the images. The information obtained is used to guide the active cameras towards where the action is taking place. These tasks were carried out using different tracking techniques.
- Movement analysis of a person's body in order to extract information from different parts of the body, analyse these actions and describe or predict behaviours. In this case, techniques based on pattern and silhouette recognition were used.
- Analysis of facial movements to understand emotional states of an individual, attitudes and possible reactions. In this sub-project new techniques were created and used for the tracking and aligning of 2D and 3D faces.
- Integration of software and natural language with the aim of describing what is happening in the scenes recorded using a conceptual representation scheme.
- Full integration of system, software and hardware to work in real environments and in real time. The system was designed and put to use in real life situations to test its functioning.
- The generation of virtual sequences based on the description of behaviours in natural language and the interaction of real and virtual worlds in the same sequence, using increased reality techniques.
The application advantages of HERMES are obvious, mainly in the fields of intelligent surveillance and the prevention of accidents or crimes. However, researchers consider that there is much to be gained with the use of this tool in sectors such as marketing or psychology. (4)
Story Source:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100113104300.htm
Adapted from materials provided by Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Neural Thermostat Keeps Brain Running Efficiently
ScienceDaily (Jan. 15, 2010) — Our energy-hungry brains operate reliably and efficiently while processing a flood of sensory information, thanks to a sort of neuronal thermostat that regulates activity in the visual cortex, Yale researchers have found.
The actions of inhibitory neurons allow the brain to save energy by suppressing non-essential visual stimuli and processing only key information, according to research published in the January 13 issue of the journal Neuron.
"It's called the iceberg phenomenon, where only the tip is sharply defined yet we are aware that there is a much larger portion underwater that we can not see," said David McCormick, the Dorys McConnell Duberg Professor of Neurobiology at Yale School of Medicine, researcher of the Kavli Institute of Neuroscience and co-senior author of the study. "These inhibitory neurons set the water level and control how much of the iceberg we see. We don't need to see the entire iceberg to know that it is there."
The brain uses the highest percentage of the body's energy, so scientists have long wondered how it can operate both efficiently and reliably when processing a deluge of sensory information. Most studies of vision have concentrated on activity of excitatory neurons that fire when presented with simple stimuli, such as bright or dark bars. The Yale team wanted to measure what happens outside of the classical field of vision when the brain has to deal with more complex scenes in real life.
By studying brains of animals watching movies of natural scenes, the Yale team found that inhibitory cells in the visual cortex control how the excitatory cells interact with each other.
"We found that these inhibitory cells take a lead role in making the visual cortex operate in a sparse and reliable manner," McCormick said.
James Mazer was co-senior author of the paper with McCormick. Bilal Haider, a Yale graduate student, was lead author. Other Yale authors of the paper were Matthew R. Krause, Alvaro Duque, Yuguo Yu and Jonathan Touryan.
The work was funded by the National Eye Institute and the Kavli Foundation. (5)
Story Source:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100113122255.htm
Adapted from materials provided by Yale University.
Journal Reference:
- Bilal Haider, Matthew R. Krause, Alvaro Duque, Yuguo Yu, Jonathan Touryan, James A. Mazer, David A. McCormick. Synaptic and Network Mechanisms of Sparse and Reliable Visual Cortical Activity during Nonclassical Receptive Field Stimulation. Neuron, 2010; 65 (Issue 1): 107-121 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2009.12.005
(1) University of Goldsmiths London (2010, January 16). How music 'moves' us: Listeners' brains second-guess the composer. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 17, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2010/01/100115204704.htm
(2) Duke University Medical Center (2010, January 16). Scientists map brain pathway for vocal learning. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 17, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2010/01/100113122259.htm
(3) Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (2010, January 16). New computer vision system for the analysis of human behavior. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 17, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2010/01/100113104300.htm
(4) Yale University (2010, January 15). Neural thermostat keeps brain running efficiently. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 17, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2010/01/100113122255.htm
(5) (2010, January 14) Data Stream Waves, from Jim Sogi. DailySpeculations. Retrieved January 17, 2010, from http://www.dailyspeculations.com/wordpress/?p=4312
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Chopshop,
An article I read from the WSJ some time back described how we interpret and process music within the context of Christmas themes- the ultimate "stick in your head" music.
I am an absolute music junkie. I've got 25k+ tracks in my iTunes with at least another 100 or so CDs still to add, and I've taught myself to play guitar. As infatuated as I am by music, I'm even more taken by how the same sounds receive various interpretations depending on the listener.
In western music, we only have a 12 note chromatic scale. Pop music (each song with a shelf life of about 6 weeks) congregates around the tonic/major 3rd/perfect 4th/perfect 5th/major 6th, as if any deviation would cause spontaneous combustion. Yet blues junkies (like myself) find their sweet spots in the sour notes (flat-3, flat-7, and especially the flat-5/tri-tone), and the best tracks command respect for decades. Even more rare are the really dark and evil tones (the flat-2 and the flat-6), which were featured so extensively in the first two Metallica albums.
If I haven't lost you yet, you may even want to check out a lesson that I copped a few years back that discusses the chromatic scale and how we interpret each tone.
If I've captured your attention, I'd be interested in your thoughts.
thanks for leaving a great comment / link, Unscarred.
music is psychology, marketing, mathematics ....
different personalities respond different to various types / grouping / clusters of sound(s) while also responding differently to the presentation the music, artist etc.
why does R. Kelly sound so good ? whether you like the music or not, kinda hard to argue that anyone has ever been smoother or more musical.
why does pop music preside over the socio-cultural realm of pax americana ?
I was lazy on January 17th and failed to complete an r-tickle that I had begun ... take a look at what the top song was for each January 17th during the past decade and match it up against a weekly / monthly chart of the S&P 500 (for those not intimately aware of the Socionomic hypothesis).
http://www.joshhosler.biz/NumberOneinhistory/01/0117.htm
even Marla couldn't write this any better ... don't need to though since social mood already does, all over the walls, all day long, every day, january decemeber the same. all ya gotta do is simply listen to what it whispers. whaddya think saatchi & saatchi and simon cowell really do ?
THE 2010s
2010
TiK ToK
Ke$ha
THE 2000s
2009
Just Dance
Lady GaGa featuring Colby O'Donis
2008
Low
Flo Rida featuring T-Pain
2007
Irreplaceable
Beyoncé
2006
Grillz
Nelly featuring Paul Wall, Ali & Gipp
2005
Let Me Love You
Mario
2004
Hey Ya!
OutKast
2003
Lose Yourself
Eminem
2002
U Got It Bad
Usher
2001
Independent Women Part I
Destiny's Child
2000
What a Girl Wants
Christina Aguilera
They have the absolutely most brilliant job in the world- let people do all the hard work of finding out what society wants at any given moment, then manufacture a B.S. product to pacify them until the prevailing trend is dead.
It doesn't get much better than that.
Aside from music, where I really notice this is in the movie business. I fully understand that nothing original gets released anymore (because everything pretty much that could be done, has been done, and it's been that way for years), but everything today needs to fit nice and neat into their pre-existing genres, targeting their specific demographics to ensure that various revenue goals are hit, etc.
And look at the very carefully selected composition of ensemble casts... Sad.
It almost serves as a characature of society that we possess such a simple-minded existence, but it really speaks to our ability (or lack thereof) to produce any original thoughts on our own. Perhaps there is much to be said for the statement that "we like what we like."
But take a movie like Twilight- it got panned by all the critics, and everyone from People Magazine to the person on the street says that these kids couldn't act their way out of a paper bag. (Even the studio producing the film wanted to replace those kids, but couldn't, since the original film created a built-in audience.) Yet, because the franchise was on the verge of being a "teen sensation," the film does $70M during its opening weekend. (Multiple sequels are currently in the works.) We certainly are not a fickle society that demands excellence; but as discussed prior to, at least we're consistent.
Great food for thought, excellent post, thanks for the follow-ups, and I hope to see more in the future.
Poof. A bunch of left brainers chasing leverage. Big wave crashing.
The right brain is a thermostat, while the left brain is a clock, measuring off the tick tock of cause and effect.
Actually time goes the other way though. The earth doesn't travel the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. Time, like temperature, is an effect of motion, not the basis of it.
Physics is still just chasing particles, because our left brain makes distinctions, while our right brain makes connections.
great read on time / temp, brodix.
beautiful.
as per physics / quantum, try this new gem (beware ~ not an 'easy' read):
Lewis Little's Theory of Elementary Waves (TEW)
TEW is a causal, deterministic theory of physics which provides a comprehensive, non-contradictory, and rational explanation of quantum and relativity phenomena.
In TEW there are REAL waves, and REAL particles; no ghost-like existents and none of the 'weirdness' associated with 'Standard Quantum and Relativity (SQUARE)' theory such as: wave-particle duality, space-time, quantum teleportation, metaphysical uncertainty, entanglement, superposition, etc.
Experimental results are completely understood - but without reference to the contradictory formulations of SQUARE. TEW does not alter the current quantitative predictions of SQUARE. However, please note: TEW is not simply an alternative 'perspective' on the current theory or an alternative approach to the mathematics or formalism of physics. TEW claims to provide an actual model of physical reality.
The physics is not the maths
TEW does for quantum and relativity what Copernicus did for Astronomy when he unravelled the convolutions of a geo-centric model in favour of the current, helio-centric model of the solar system. The complex geometry of the 'Geo-centrists' worked as well as the Copernican model (well, sort of). However one was merely a floating, mathematical construct, the other was a mathematics derived from a true picture of the solar system.
An immediate consequence of TEW is the establishment of a physical basis for the constancy of the speed of light, and therefore a new understanding is given to Relativity. Dr Little is currently designing experiments which will highlight the differences between TEW and SQUARE.
Chopshop,
I agree waves need more respect. If we view light as its own wave;
http://freespace.virgin.net/ch.thompson1/People/CarverMead.htm,
it would do a far better job of explaining the universe than always seeing it as photons. An expanding wave, which only grounds out as a photon on point of contact would explain redshift far better than recessional velocity. With gravity, we understand the light is bent, not that the source actually moves. Redshift as an optical effect explains why all the sources appear to move directly away from us. If space actually expanded, wouldn't the speed of light have to increase proportionally? Then we wouldn't be able to detect the expansion.
Recently they have discovered galaxies at the very edge of the visible universe, whose light came from the ultra blue end of the spectrum, redshift all the way down. So they say they are young because they only give off ultra blue light, but obviously any light from the red end would have already fallen off the spectrum and just been more black body radiation. Could go on, but off to work and it's not a science forum.
We really are delusional about a lot of things.
there's more limbic tissue in your spinal cord than in your cortex.
aka Neural Arborization and Neural Sprouting so people get the idea. We don't necessarily grow new neurons after a certain age, but we definitely grow new connections between the existing ones (maybe why Einstein, et al were so "smart" more connections per neuron than typical?)
Altered instantaneous axis of rotation of a spinal motor unit results in dysafferentation (altered communication between joint proprioceptors [golgi tendon organs/muscle spindles] and brain) and can lead to upper motor neuron lesion if severe enough or around long enough leads to cortical degeneration, association area dysfunction, pathophysiology...
Thanks chopshop, maybe giving us some of your specific insights as to behavioral patterns and trading practices would be fun?
Speaking of music ...
get to understand this chart - and the "transition" will make more sense. When the sins run their course, the tangents and cotangents take over.
Deflation -> Poof -> Hyperinflation adjustment -> Deflation
poetry. good show.
regarding trading, you are exactly right. first you must know yourself; once you are able to do that you can control emotions and be disciplined in your trading.
any thoughts on how video games train the brain to react?
I agree Chop, neuoplasticity will be the biggest, most exciting thing for study in the next ages. As perfect as we are made, the mind is an unlimited source of education. We have now proven the new meaning of renew your mind. Thanks for sharing.
I agree, I AM MOVED by the music of our lovely Marla and Jana. As for the markets, although moving, seems to produce a possible opposite and equal reaction, I'm coming to realize....MUSIC can produce the desired effect I crave. Nice job Chop. We would have appreciated your summation of the matter presented and/or your use of these topics.
thanks for not only taking the time to read & process but also for sharing your thoughts / questions, Ruth & Careless Whisper.
didn't wanna tinge the r-tickles themselves with my own take; each deserves to be discussed on its merit as a standalone.
personally: i am extraordinarily passionate about the topics involved and how we each relate to the perceived world around us. my religion of sorts is something of a mix of Fibonacci, Socionomics and Neuroplasticity (simply for lack of a better descriptor). while i could wax on / wax off about TICK data streams etc and the "waves" within mr. mkt and social mood like mr. miyagi til daniel-son comes home, don't have too much to add outside of personal opinion as per the four science-y pieces that could fit within the confines of a single r-tickle.
if folks like yourself show an active interest in learning more about ... will certainly delve much, much deeper into the structural / temporal nuances of the brain / mind and how / why it directly relates to our daily lives, which is most easily distinguishable within the confines of financial instruments.
life, in all ways, shapes and forms, is marked not only by similar patterns of development but also by many of the same structural (mathematically nuanced) underpinnings.
the brain itself may very well be the single most complex "thing" we humans have yet encountered.
whether surfing the waves of the ocean, the NYSE TICK, music, social mood, and on and on ... if "it" is a robust, complex growth organism ~ "formological" ~ then that 'system' almost always has at its core an inherent / innate structure, which guides its progress & regress.
the human mind is one of the most fascinating 'robust, complex, growth organisms' that we are aware of; most likely the most fascinating.
w/o getting into triune brain studies, chaos theory, power law, non-recurring fractals, quantum physics, elliott wave, socionomics, behavioral linguistics and game theory ... the very long & short is that the human brain offers unparalleled insight into the very structure of life itself, which we (collectively) very loosely understand and have even less formal quantification of.
to relate back to investing / trading ... if you don't understand how you yourself think, let alone why, how in the hell can you have any control over your own emotions and over-eager "left brain" ? the dividing gulf here lays between those who are systematically disciplined in their trading endeavors versus those who haphazardly invest based upon their emotions and ephemeral sense of what others think.
my favorite area of personal / off-peak study is neuroplasticity ... simply put: neuroplasticity exercises revolve around teaching / training one's self to actively engage, sense, feel and 're-wire' one's own neural synapses to better increase personal control and employment of one's brain / mind.
Now, when thinking of those broker-dealers / qualified institutions who co-locate their servers on an exchange, draw a simple parallel between these "systems" and their "neural networks" / "genetic algorithms" and those individuals who actively practice good mental hygiene via neuroplasticity exercises ... each are actively "speeding up" their reaction time while also furthering their respective ability to not just see ‘clearly’ but rather to process information ‘cleanly’, w/o emotional influence and an otherwise over-bearing left-brain dominance.
sorry to rant n ramble here, the topicality involved is (rather clearly) extremely nuanced and even more technical. the field of neuroplasticity, much like the other aforementioned theories / areas of study (triune brain, chaos theory, power law, non-recurring fractals, quantum physics, elliott wave, socionomics, behavioral linguistics and game theory) is still in its very infancy as has yet to gain much (if any) acceptance from academics who are stuck way too far within a narrow tunnel of 'left-brain' dominance.
bottom line: like any other muscle, we all must actively engage and train our own individual minds to enable ourselves to break free of the repressive shackles of our own reptilian processes / mammalian constructs, which are simply a simple product of our basal ganglia(s). neuroplasticity can, without any question whatsoever, help each and every individual to better control their own brainwaves / thought processes and in the process help one become just a bit more pro-active instead of so very, very re-active.
do you recall how you felt during the 3.6.09 MOC (mkt on close ~ 3:30 – 4:04 EST)? did you notice that the INX had plotted a daily high wave candlestick and that the bkx and xbd had each broken out, rather decisively, from 2 – 4pm with exceptionally bullish hourly candlesticks and innumerable signatures of explosive character change?
or, more likely, were you still emotionally reeling from a relentless assault on your sensibilities from all angles, which essentially culminated in warren’s 2009 letter to shareholders ?
in mkt speak: 'it' can help you see the forest instead of remaining trapped within the trees that surround you.
from wiki:
I'm not sure I understand what I just read, but is this presented as an argument explaining the value of quant trading?