Questions:
How to do it with your brain:
A specific mental movement that can be trained as a habit that I learned in the context of limiting in-flight work: Label non-sanctioned work "bullshit". Internally declare it emphatically and emotively: "That's bullshit!!" This simple, charged internal speech is accessible to both system 2 and system 1 and can flow between them in either direction.
This is an extremely local notion of "bullshit"! It is a judgement of the triple: (you, <work item>, this moment). It is not an overall j... (read more)
Life Ascending claims that the neurons out in front may act as a "'waveguide'" to funnel photons more efficiently to the light-sensitive bits.
This topic is treated in much more depth in Live Cells as Optical Fibers in the Vertebrate Retina, which I read as marveling at how the darn thing works at all.
See also Near/Far Thinking