Quotes About Gating

Neuroimaging in the brain shows that once the areas of the brain that process incoming sensory data are sensitized to incoming data, that is, once the gating channels are opened more widely, the sections of the brain that gate that particular type of sensory data stay open. The baseline gating level increases even if the degree of sensory stimulus is not increased. The metaphysical background of the world begins to emerge into sensing on a regular basis.

Altering sensory gating parameters are most easily accomplished in one of three ways, and we've already talked in some depth about the first one: 1) having a task that demands a greater focus on incoming sensory data flows. The others are: 2) regenerating a state similar to that which occurred during the first few years of life, or 3) by altering the nature of the gating channels themselves by shifting consciousness (which is somewhat different from re-generating developmental stages).

In essence, when sensory gating channels are narrow, as they commonly are, we only perceive a very small part of the world around us. Only a tiny bit of the radiance of the world can shine in through the narrow aperture that is left; the rest of it is gated out.

which in turn could lead to a breakdown in cognitive integrity and difficulty in distinguishing self from nonself. 4 We need some sort of gating, and some control over gating, in order to function within the sea of sensory communications in which we are embedded.

Children who begin working at an early age with music have, as habit, much less pre-attentional or unconscious gating in the neural network that attends to sound. Gating, in general, develops over time and with exposure, the pre-attentional self learning to gate whatever is not important to the conscious mind. Children, by nature, have much less gating than adults—gating

Gating activity outside of the normal bell-shaped curve for the population of the United States is, generally, considered to be pathological. The more widely open gating channels are, the more likely someone is to be defined as clinically abnormal and to be labeled, one way or another, as having "stimulus filtering difficulties" or "gating deficits.

The neural networks responsible for sensory gating begin to process data as soon as the child is born .

As Kisley et al. comment about their research: "The correlation between sensory gating and conceptual age was significant."6 By age eight the gating channels begin to take on what will be the default state in adulthood. This further solidifies, narrowing more, at the onset of puberty and generally is in place by the end of adolescence.

But studies of sensory gating show that it is never invariant . . . in anyone. Gating parameters tend to move across a spectrum in all people (and to be variant across populations as well).

What is more accurate is that unconscious gating defaults act in concert with environmental and cognitive demands and the needs of the cerebral cortex and thus are continually in flux depending on circumstances and environmental inputs.