Consciousness

Brain-Mind ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 158-179
Author(s):  
Paul Thagard
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Sensory Inputs ◽  
Neural Representations ◽  
Internal Processing ◽  
Made In

Progress is being made in understanding how brain mechanisms generate conscious experience. Simple conscious experiences such as sensations of colors, shapes, and sounds require only neural representations as patterns of firing that result from sensory inputs and internal processing. More complicated conscious experiences, such as awareness of reading in a chair in a room, require the amalgamation of sensations and images into more complex representations through binding into semantic pointers. Recursive binding—bindings of bindings of bindings—can produce the most complicated kinds of conscious experience of which humans are capable, taking people from feelings to awareness to self-awareness. Consciousness is limited because recursive binding and competition among the resulting semantic pointers depend on processing by many neurons.

scholarly journals Animals' consciousness and human self-consciousness

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maximos Skandalis ◽  
Stefanos Skandalis
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Reference List ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Human Element ◽  
American Zoologist ◽  
Neuronal Mechanisms ◽  
The Given ◽  
Evolutionary Continuity

Introduction: Consciousness consists of states of sentience, feeling or awareness while awake, not in comma and alive. The current neuroscientific trend suggests the correlation of conscious experience with certain corticothalamic circuits, thus constituting part of the brain function. Animals show signs of consciousness but distinctive human element appears to be self-consciousness, the acute sense of self-awareness. Objectives: Our aim is to clarify whether animals are conscious, and if so, what the level of their consciousness is and what neuronal mechanisms are underlying in what is supposed to be human’s unique feature of consciousness. Methods & Results: A search of the literature in relevant journals (e.g. Nature Neuroscience, American Zoologist) and manually from identified articles’ reference list was conducted. Experiments (including mirror tests, language learning and comprehending tests, exposure to social competition environments, etc.) as well as the given of similarities in neuroanatomical architecture of mammals, behavior and the idea of evolutionary continuity propose that animals are conscious but the level of that remains to be investigated. On the other hand, humans feature, in addition, self-consciousness, being able to perceive and explain their emotions and actions. Conclusion: The claim that animals don’t share the state of consciousness is a remnant of the human’s high belief of being a privileged species amongst others. Nonetheless, the particular characteristic of self-consciousness seems to be exclusively attributed to human kind. However, further research should be made to understand deeply the neuronal background of the enigmatic as it is now features of consciousness and self-consciousness.

scholarly journals Challenges for theories of consciousness: seeing or knowing, the missing ingredient and how to deal with panpsychism

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1755) ◽  
pp. 20170344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor A. F. Lamme
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Complex Phenomenon ◽  
Significant Progress ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Cognitive Access ◽  
Visual Consciousness ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Made In

Significant progress has been made in the study of consciousness. Promising theories have been developed and a wealth of experimental data has been generated, both guiding us towards a better understanding of this complex phenomenon. However, new challenges have surfaced. Is visual consciousness about the seeing or the knowing that you see? Controversy about whether the conscious experience is better explained by theories that focus on phenomenal (P-consciousness) or cognitive aspects (A-consciousness) remains, and the debate seems to reach a stalemate. Can we ever resolve this? A further challenge is that many theories of consciousness seem to endorse high degrees of panpsychism—the notion that all beings or even lifeless objects have conscious experience. Should we accept this, or does it imply that these theories require further ingredients that would put a lower bound on beings or devices that have conscious experience? If so, what could these ‘missing ingredients’ be? These challenges are discussed, and potential solutions are offered. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access’.

Consciousness, awareness of insight and neural mechanisms of schizophrenia

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tereza Touskova ◽  
Petr Bob
Keyword(s):  
Information Integration ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Synchronous Activity ◽  
Self Monitoring ◽  
Mental Integration ◽  
The Brain

AbstractAccording to recent research, disturbances of self-awareness and conscious experience have a critical role in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, and in this context, schizophrenia is currently understood as a disorder characterized by distortions of acts of awareness, self-consciousness, and self-monitoring. Together, these studies suggest that the processes of disrupted awareness and conscious disintegration in schizophrenia might be related and represented by similar disruptions on the brain level, which, in principle, could be explained by various levels of disturbed connectivity and information disintegration that may negatively affect usual patterns of synchronous activity constituting adaptive integrative functions of consciousness. On the other hand, mental integration based on self-awareness and insight may significantly increase information integration and directly influence neural mechanisms underlying basic pathophysiological processes in schizophrenia.

An empirical study of self-perceived employability: Improving the prospects for student employment success in an uncertain environment

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 199-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eivis Qenani ◽  
Neal MacDougall ◽  
Carol Sexton
Keyword(s):  
Public Investment ◽  
Student Employment ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Student Debt ◽  
Employment Success ◽  
Perceived Employability ◽  
Global Labor Market ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Made In

Employability of graduates has taken more prominence in recent years due to the bleak economic situation, the impact of student debt, and an increasingly competitive global labor market. Given the substantial individual and public investment made in higher education, it is particularly important that graduates are employable upon graduation. The focus of this study is students’ self-awareness through a measure of their expectations of gaining employment. Through the use of regression analysis, we examine the relationship between students’ expectations of finding employment upon graduation and a series of related variables and identify those factors that serve as boosters to self-perceived employability. Findings point out to the increasingly important role university can play in developing and enhancing graduates’ employability.

scholarly journals Mapping Perception of Place through Emotion, Memory, Senses, and the Imaginary

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Joanna Gardener ◽  
William Cartwright ◽  
Lesley Duxbury ◽  
Amy Griffin
Keyword(s):  
Design Thinking ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Artistic Expression ◽  
Sensory Inputs ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
Collective Experience ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Emotion Memory

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> This paper reports on a research project that has a focus on the perception of place, collective experience, and shared perceptions. It aims to demonstrate how mapping can be used to bring depth and meaning to places through portraying emotions, memory, sensation, and the imagination. This study explores how maps can be developed to create a deeper understanding and explore perceptions of place. It draws upon the diverse experiences of a participatory study of a single, shared place, the Edinburgh Gardens in North Fitzroy, Melbourne, Australia. This participatory study expands upon a previous research study of the Edinburgh Gardens, which focused on the influence of time in the perception of place. While time plays a significant role in changing perceptions of place, emotions, sensory inputs, and memory also play vital roles in shaping these perceptions.</p><p> The intent of this study was to look for shared experiences, synergies, or differences between different participants’ visits to the park, while examining how people perceive, move through, and understand the place and their emotional connection to it. Through a three-part participatory study, <i>1. Memory</i>, <i>2. Experience</i>, and <i>3. Reflection</i>, the data collected informs a series of emotional maps of the Edinburgh Gardens.</p><p> The first part of the study, <i>Memory</i>, asked participants to recall and describe a memory of an experience they had at the Edinburgh Gardens. Questions included why the event was significant, were they with other people, how long did they stay, and could they remember any smells or sounds or think of any colours associated with the experience. Participants were also asked to draw a map of the gardens as they remembered them (Figure 1). The second part of the study, <i>Experience</i>, asked participants to go for a walk in the park and capture their experience in real-time (Figure 2). This included many of the same questions as Part 1, while also asking them to record their route as they moved through the park, via a GPS walking app and pen and paper (Figure 3). The final part of the study, <i>Reflection</i>, asked participants to reflect and compare the visits to the park.</p><p> The intention of this participatory component of the research programme is to visually explore emotional connections to place by creating prototype maps of place perceptions. The study focuses on the making of place and examines how places are perceived through deep mapping and associated spatial narratives. In creating these prototype maps, it investigates how the cartographic sciences, design thinking, and artistic expression can inform one another to spark new ideas and generate new ways of thinking about approaches to cartography and in turn, the possibilities that emerge when these disciplines work together.</p><p> Through a practical and theoretical investigation into emotional cartography, this study explores perception of place and the representation of shared perceptions through mapping. Furthermore, it illustrates the role memory and conscious experience have on feelings and emotions attached to perception of place. Through creating prototypes of emotional maps, we are able to see the crossover between scientific cartography and artistic expression and appreciate how these different disciplines can be engaged to shape new approaches to cartography and reveal the map’s ability to impart emotion and evoke a sense of place.</p>

scholarly journals The non-linear mixed representations in somatosensory cortex support simple and complex tasks

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramon Nogueira ◽  
Chris C. Rodgers ◽  
Randy M. Bruno ◽  
Stefano Fusi
Keyword(s):  
Somatosensory Cortex ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Barrel Cortex ◽  
Broad Class ◽  
High Dimensional ◽  
Complex Tasks ◽  
Sensory Inputs ◽  
Neural Representations ◽  
Non Linear

Adaptive behavior in humans, rodents, and other animals often requires the integration over time of multiple sensory inputs. Here we studied the behavior and the neural activity of mice trained to actively integrate information from different whiskers to report the curvature of an object. The analysis of high speed videos of the whiskers revealed that the task could be solved by integrating linearly the whisker contacts on the object. However, recordings from the mouse barrel cortex revealed that the neural representations are high dimensional as the inputs from multiple whiskers are mixed non-linearly to produce the observed neural activity. The observed representation enables the animal to perform a broad class of significantly more complex tasks, with minimal disruption of the ability to generalize to novel situations in simpler tasks. Simulated recurrent neural networks trained to perform similar tasks reproduced both the behavioral and neuronal experimental observations. Our work suggests that the somatosensory cortex operates in a regime that represents an efficient compromise between generalization, which typically requires pure and linear mixed selectivity representations, and the ability to perform complex discrimination tasks, which is granted by non-linear mixed representations.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rowland Stout
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Practical Rationality ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Metaphysical Question ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Way

We can think of occurrences as completed events or as ongoing processes, a distinction that corresponds linguistically with the use of perfective and progressive aspects. The philosophy of mind has tended towards an ‘event’ conception of experience and action, but this has both distorted the conception of the causal roles of these aspects of mental life and misplaced the subjectivity of action and experience. Only processes can be present to the subject in the way required for conscious experience and for the practical self-awareness Anscombe describes. Also it has been argued by Michael Thompson that practical rationality must present actions in a processive way. This leaves open the metaphysical question of how to understand process and processes, a question engaged with by several authors in this book.

scholarly journals Gradual progression from sensory to task-related processing in cerebral cortex

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (30) ◽  
pp. E7202-E7211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott L. Brincat ◽  
Markus Siegel ◽  
Constantin von Nicolai ◽  
Earl K. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Information ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Neural Population ◽  
Motion Direction ◽  
Population Activity ◽  
Shape Information ◽  
Sensory Inputs ◽  
Neural Representations ◽  
Current Task ◽  
Cortical Regions

Somewhere along the cortical hierarchy, behaviorally relevant information is distilled from raw sensory inputs. We examined how this transformation progresses along multiple levels of the hierarchy by comparing neural representations in visual, temporal, parietal, and frontal cortices in monkeys categorizing across three visual domains (shape, motion direction, and color). Representations in visual areas middle temporal (MT) and V4 were tightly linked to external sensory inputs. In contrast, lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) largely represented the abstracted behavioral relevance of stimuli (task rule, motion category, and color category). Intermediate-level areas, including posterior inferotemporal (PIT), lateral intraparietal (LIP), and frontal eye fields (FEF), exhibited mixed representations. While the distribution of sensory information across areas aligned well with classical functional divisions (MT carried stronger motion information, and V4 and PIT carried stronger color and shape information), categorical abstraction did not, suggesting these areas may participate in different networks for stimulus-driven and cognitive functions. Paralleling these representational differences, the dimensionality of neural population activity decreased progressively from sensory to intermediate to frontal cortex. This shows how raw sensory representations are transformed into behaviorally relevant abstractions and suggests that the dimensionality of neural activity in higher cortical regions may be specific to their current task.

Liminal Manifestation and the Elusive Nature of Consciousness

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 264-296
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Eshleman ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Rule Out

This programmatic essay sketches a few reasons for the elusive nature of conscious experience. It proposes that while neither introspection nor phenomenologically refined reflection delivers direct ‘observational’ access to intrinsic features of conscious experience, intrinsic features of consciousness, nonetheless, manifest themselves in our experience in a liminal way. Overall it proceeds in two movements. Negatively, it argues that implicit self-awareness renders any notion of reflective access methodologically superfluous but existentially irresistible. Positively, it argues that ‘reflective’ access to the liminal dimensions of conscious experience should be construed in purely semantic terms, tied to indirect experiential acquaintance. It concludes by suggesting that what goes by the name mental transparency, even its strong versions, does not rule out liminal manifestation: mental transparency is not mental invisibility.

Abnormal time experience, bizarre delusions and verbal-acoustic hallucinations in schizophrenia

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (S1) ◽  
pp. S32-S32
Author(s):  
G. Stanghellini
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Auditory Hallucinations ◽  
Conscious Awareness ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Stream Of Consciousness ◽  
Temporal Experience ◽  
Time Consciousness ◽  
Time Experience ◽  
Competing Interest ◽  
Basic Level

The integrity of time consciousness is the condition of possibility of the identity through time of an object of perception as well as of the person who perceives it. I will present our findings about abnormal time experience (ATE) in people with schizophrenia. These data may support the following hypothesis: if the continuity of temporal experience disintegrates (of which ATE are experiential manifestations), overarching meaningful units are no longer available, thereby creating temporal gaps, e.g., in one's stream of consciousness. In some cases, thoughts that are no longer experienced as embedded in one's stream of thoughts are experienced as, e.g., thought interferences, blockages, insertion or withdrawal. These symptoms cannot be explained as a mere disturbance of attention or comprehension at the level of semantic combinations. Rather, the disturbance could be searched for at a more basic level where the temporal coherence of conscious awareness is constituted. A failure of the constitutive temporal synthesis may create micro-gaps of conscious experience. In the most severe cases, thoughts or other mental phenomena that are no longer embedded in the continuity of basic self-experience may appear in consciousness as “erratic blocks” and experienced as being inserted, or, if further externalized, as auditory hallucinations (“voices”). This coheres with the hypothesis that a breakdown of temporality may be bound up with the breakdown of prereflexive self-awareness.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his declaration of competing interest.

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