So it goes

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber. -KV
By Arthur Salm
UNION-TRIBUNE BOOKS EDITOR
April 15, 2007

Listen: Kurt Vonnegut has come unstuck in time.

The American novelist, short-story writer, essayist and would-be curmudgeon died Wednesday at 84 – the age at which he dispatched his fictional alter ego, Kilgore Trout – several weeks after suffering head trauma from a fall.

Fans will recognize the first line, above, as a variation on a line from “Slaughterhouse-Five,” Vonnegut's masterpiece. His protagonist, Billy Pilgrim – “unstuck in time” – ricochets from childhood to old age and back again, from his experiences as a POW in the Second World War to a humdrum life as an optometrist to animals-in-a-zoo-like captivity on the planet Tralfamador with the adult film star Montana Wildhack.

The semi-autobiographical novel opens with “All this happened, more or less,” and it did – the part about being a prisoner of war, at least. Vonnegut survived the firebombing of Dresden, and the unspeakable carnage he witnessed in its aftermath imbued him with a horror of war in all its forms and heartfelt contempt for those who wage it.

It's comforting to imagine the rumpled, latter-day Mark Twain (to whom he has been compared, to neither's detriment) zipping forever, Billy Pilgrim-like, among various stations of his eventful and productive life.

Right now – whatever, in Vonnegut's way of thinking, that means – he could be a young man toiling away as an advertising copywriter; taking in three of his sister's children after her and her husband's tragic deaths; typing a second draft of his breakthrough novel “Cat's Cradle”; absent-mindedly leaving one of his still-smoldering unfiltered Pall Malls in an ashtray, burning down half his East Side Manhattan brownstone, consuming most of his archives (he almost died from smoke inhalation); or – fingers crossed! – frolicking with an adult film star in a pressurized dome, if not on Tralfamador, then maybe on the asteroid 25399 Vonnegut, named in his honor.

Or appearing on “The Daily Show” in September 2005. Speaking on humans' place in the evolutionary scheme of things, he told (is telling?) host Jon Stewart, “Our planet's immune system is trying to get rid of us, and it should.”

But it was always clear, from the gentle nature of his fiction to the warmth that radiated from the cracks and creases in his crusty person and persona, that Vonnegut could never qualify as a misanthrope. His life was not without its tragedies – in addition to the untimely death of his sister, his mother committed suicide – but the bitterness of his later years, unlike Twain's, was not all-consuming.

Though a pessimist to his core, he must have harbored some hope for humanity, as he served for a time as the president of the American Humanist Association. Humanism, he once explained, “is trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”

And behave decently, and honorably, he did, despite his self-effacement about things such as his Purple Heart (“a ludicrously negligible wound”) and his AHA presidency (“that totally functionless capacity”). And write well – make that, brilliantly – he did, too, from the early, straight science fiction of the 1950s (“Player Piano,” “The Sirens of Titan”) to the high-watermark novels of the '60s like “Cat's Cradle,” “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” and “Slaughterhouse-Five,” to his lesser (by comparison, remember) fiction beginning with 1973's “Breakfast of Champions.”

All this happened.

Or maybe, is happening.

Wired for sound

: How the brain senses visual illusions

Wired for sound: How the brain senses visual illusions
In a study that could help reveal how illusions are produced in the brain's visual cortex, researchers at the UCSD School of Medicine have found new evidence of rapid integration of auditory and visual sensations in the brain. Their findings, which provide new insight into neural mechanisms by which visual perception can be altered by concurrent auditory events, will be published online in the April 12 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience.
When subjects were shown a single flash of light interposed between two brief sounds, many subjects reported seeing two distinct flashes of light. Investigating the timing and location of the brain processes that underlie this illusory effect – the illusion of seeing two flashes in the presence of two auditory signals, when only one flash actually occurs – can reveal how information from different senses are integrated in the brain.

The study of 34 subjects was carried out in the laboratory of Steven A. Hillyard, Ph.D., UCSD professor of neurosciences. "This type of perceptual illusion has been described before," said first author Jyoti Mishra, graduate student in the Hillyard lab. "The surprising finding we made is that the illusion depends on a rapidly timed sequence of interactions between the auditory and visual cortical areas."

"This is part of a set of new findings by scientists in the field that show how integration of multiple sensations can happen much more rapidly than we thought before," said Mishra. "We show physiological evidence that visual and auditory stimulation might not be processed separately, then merged together, as previously assumed, but that an almost-simultaneous integration of the sensations may actually take place in the brain."

The UCSD scientists measured event-related potentials (ERPs), brain responses that are directly related to the perceptual experiences induced by sensory stimuli, using an electrophysiological or EEG recording procedure that measures electrical activity of the brain through the skull.

"In subjects who reported seeing a second flash, the ERP measurements showed a boost of activity within the visual cortex of the brain immediately after hearing the second sound," said Mishra, adding that the second sound amplified the brain activity stimulated by the first sound. Perception of the second illusory flash was also marked by a rapid enhancement of processing in the auditory cortex of the brain. By observing the auditory boost, the researchers could predict when subjects would report seeing the visual illusion of a second flash.

"Our results provide evidence that perception of the illusory second flash is based on a very rapid and dynamic interplay between the auditory and visual cortices of the brain – on a time scale less than one tenth the blink of an eye." Mishra said. Interestingly, the pattern was very different between individuals who did or didn't see the second flash, indicating that the brain's wiring and the strength of integration between the different sensory cortices may differ between individuals, or even vary over time. "It suggests that there are consistent differences in the neural connectivity that are possibly shaped during one's development and through experience," she said.

Next, the researchers plan to look at whether or not attention affects these illusory sensations. These studies could shed light on how people deprived of one sensation often compensate by developing another – for instance, blind people with a more acute sense of hearing.

Source: University of California - San Diego