#arousal — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #arousal, aggregated by home.social.
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Who wants to come and sit on my lap?😉 (All genders welcome😘)
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CW: Ace
I just started reading "Ace: What asexuality reveals about desire, society and the meaning of sex" by Angela Chen and I'm already more confused than before.
Ever since I'm taking estrogen and antiandrogens I lack sex drive. I always said about myself that "I was always asexual in my head, but my body only turned asexual with the hormones". What I mean is that I never found sex particularly appealing in my head. I was always to some degree scared of it and disgusted of it. But I still wanted to have sex - especially with my first love.
Now the book tells me, that asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction (towards specific persons) not the lack of sex drive. I never thought about that before, but that makes sense to me.
But now I am thinking: I don't have sex drive, but do I have sexual attraction? I do find some people sexy - it's the first thing I notice about them actually and the first thing I judge about them.
Angela Chen describes sexual attraction as "sex drive towards someone" or "sex drive caused by someone", so by that definition you can't have sexual attraction without sex drive, right?
So what I experience, physical attraction - seeing someone, finding them appealing and wanting to be close to them - is not sexual attraction, because I don't want sex?
So I am asexual after all?
Maybe it'll all make more sense when I continue reading the book...
#ace #asexuality #asexual #sexuality #SexDrive #sex #SexualAttraction #attraction #arousal #desire #confusion #queer
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Jazz musicians reveal role of expectancy in human creativity
Have you ever wondered how creativity works in the brain? It's a complex and multifaceted concept, and while we don't fully understand it yet, many believe that it involves real-time combinations of known neural and cognitive processes. One interesting model of creativity comes from musical improvisation, like in jazz music, where musicians spontaneously create novel sound sequences. Many researchers believe that creativity involves the integration and combination of known neural and cognitive processes in real-time, allowing individuals to generate novel ideas or solve problems in innovative ways.
One area that has received particular attention in the study of creativity is musical improvisation, which involves the spontaneous creation of novel musical ideas in real-time. In this study, the authors investigate whether individuals with training in musical improvisation, such as jazz musicians, might process expectations differently than individuals without this training. To test this hypothesis, they compare jazz improvisers, non-improvising musicians, and non-musicians in a domain-general task of divergent thinking (which involves generating a large number of creative ideas in response to a given prompt) and a musical task involving preference ratings for chord progressions that vary in terms of their level of expectation. While participants completed these tasks, their brain activity was recorded using electroencephalography (EEG).
The results of the study showed that jazz musicians preferred unexpected chord progressions in the musical task, and that unexpected stimuli elicited larger early and mid-latency EEG responses (ERAN and P3b) in jazz musicians, followed by smaller long-latency responses (Late Positivity Potential). These EEG responses were also significantly correlated with behavioral measures of fluency and originality on the divergent thinking task. These findings suggest that expectancy may play a role in creativity, and that individuals with training in musical improvisation may process expectations differently than those without this training.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2017.09.008
#creativity #musicalimprovisation #neuralprocesses #divergentthinking #expectancy #EEG #ERP #P3b #LPP #ERAN #divergentthinkingtask #chordprogressions #fluency #originality #expectation #jazzmusicians #non-improvisers #non-musicians #real-time #mentalprocesses #opennesstoexperience #improvisationtraining #artisticexpertise #neuralunderpinnings #deviance #unexpectedevents #P3 #noveltydetection #arousal #engagement #MismatchNegativity #auditoryprediction #comparison #musicalsyntax #learning #experience #emotion #meaninginmusic #motivatingevents #affectiveappraisal #sensorydomains #motorcontrol #languageproduction #music #jazz #musicians #chords