Consciousness on/off switch?

I'd have to read it, when/if it becomes freely available. Most interesting bit to me is that they claim to have measured increased synchrony via EEG when the claustrum was stimulated and behavioral changes were observed.

Yes, that bit was interesting too. The comment by another scientist was that she was still awake, which was odd. I found it on a philosophy of mind discussion on facebook, one of the commenters seemed to think it was major breakthrough. On the contrary, I think the fact that there was increased activity makes consciousness more of a mystery IMHO.
 
Interesting. Though the fact that this procedure also produced amnesia would seem to imply that the experiment cannot distinguish between lack of consciousness and lack of memory during the time period involved.
 
Yes, that bit was interesting too. The comment by another scientist was that she was still awake, which was odd. I found it on a philosophy of mind discussion on facebook, one of the commenters seemed to think it was major breakthrough. On the contrary, I think the fact that there was increased activity makes consciousness more of a mystery IMHO.

I'd like to find out a bit more about this part mentioned in the article: "...too much synchronisation seems to be bad. The brain can't distinguish one aspect from another, stopping a cohesive experience emerging..."
 
Interesting. Though the fact that this procedure also produced amnesia would seem to imply that the experiment cannot distinguish between lack of consciousness and lack of memory during the time period involved.
If the subject stares into space without any conscious reactions, that suggests it is more than just memory.

~~Paul
 
I'd have to read it, when/if it becomes freely available. Most interesting bit to me is that they claim to have measured increased synchrony via EEG when the claustrum was stimulated and behavioral changes were observed.

Isn't this the opposite of the NDE and Psychedelic experience, where a flood of experiences correlates with a low amount of brain activity?

Though, IIRC, there was a study that had high brain activity when someone was on psychedelics.

Bruce Greyson mentions the low amount of activity of NDEs in one of his lectures, will try to dig that up.

And on the lack of a hippcampus, I recall Nbtruthman posting something about alterations/corrections of the hippocampus possibly suggesting memories are not stored in the brain?
 
Isn't this the opposite of the NDE and Psychedelic experience, where a flood of experiences correlates with a low amount of brain activity?

Though, IIRC, there was a study that had high brain activity when someone was on psychedelics.

Bruce Greyson mentions the low amount of activity of NDEs in one of his lectures, will try to dig that up.

And on the lack of a hippcampus, I recall Nbtruthman posting something about alterations/corrections of the hippocampus possibly suggesting memories are not stored in the brain?

I've only got the NS article to rely on... but they talk about 'synchrony', so I'm assuming this to be increased synchronisation between different spatial areas and frequency ranges from EEG recordings. That's quite different to qualitative measurements showing reduced activity during fMRI/Psychedelic drug studies, or even EEG power measurements, so I don't think there is any conflict.

The article mentioned that "...too much synchronisation seems to be bad...". I would like to read more about that, but can't find anything. It seems like such an observation might be in conflict with Borjigin's rat study conclusions... which might cause me some problems, so I'd like to clear it up.
 
I think what we can conclude is that this probably raises more questions about consciousness than actually answers it.
How so?
Seems to me that picking up the brain area where consciousness switches off and on advocates strongly for consciousness being a mere neurological feature fully ingenieered by brain fonction.
 
How so?
Seems to me that picking up the brain area where consciousness switches off and on advocates strongly for consciousness being a mere neurological feature fully ingenieered by brain fonction.

I think it certainly shows you need a human brain for human type consciousness. However, the study was very limited. It was one person, part of her brain was missing, she was still apparently "awake" during the experiment, and her brain activity was highly synchronised near to normality.
 
Seems to me that picking up the brain area where consciousness switches off and on advocates strongly for consciousness being a mere neurological feature fully ingenieered by brain fonction.

I think that consciousness is strictly a brain function has already been established, but this study does not prove that consciousness is a productive function and can not continue after brain death, because the brain can be a filter of consciousness and as you can close a filter, you can close the brain, which is suggested by the near death experiences, apparitions, mediumship, etc.
 
I think that consciousness is strictly a brain function has already been established, but this study does not prove that consciousness is a productive function and can not continue after brain death, because the brain can be a filter of consciousness and as you can close a filter, you can close the brain, which is suggested by the near death experiences, apparitions, mediumship, etc.

Did you mean to say I think that consciousness as not strictly a brain function has already been established due to mediumship, NDEs etc?
 
I wonder if that might conceivably be useful as one strategy among many for waking people from coma. It's really not too much different from the conundrum posed by coma and anesthetic. Anesthetics have been "switching consciousness off" very effectively for many decades, though that might be more in the way of a sledgehammer than a piano tuning hammer.

Much harder to switch off, I think, is "pre-consciousness" or a proclivity towards consciousness, that seems contained in life itself. Without a brain it is exceedingly unlikely that you could have a conscious mind, but some primitive form of awareness may still in principle be possible.
 
I wonder if that might conceivably be useful as one strategy among many for waking people from coma. It's really not too much different from the conundrum posed by coma and anesthetic. Anesthetics have been "switching consciousness off" very effectively for many decades, though that might be more in the way of a sledgehammer than a piano tuning hammer.

Much harder to switch off, I think, is "pre-consciousness" or a proclivity towards consciousness, that seems contained in life itself. Without a brain it is exceedingly unlikely that you could have a conscious mind, but some primitive form of awareness may still in principle be possible.

Hmmm, that's pretty much the position Copthorne Macdonald takes:

'If reality is this second way, then the role of the neuronal system is not to mysteriously create awareness and mind from alien substance. Rather, it is to organize a pre-existing propensity for awareness into useful, functional awareness, and provide for its modulation by useful information.'
 
As I get it one can swith consciousness off - and what remains is a "lifeless" but biologically functional hull. Isn't that, by itself, quite interesting and also what a dualist would expect?
I can't see any problems for dualism/idealism here. Even if we understand what enables/disables consciousness, we have no idea where it comes from.
 
Back
Top