C - Consciousness

Question 1

What is consciousness?

Answer 1

Info of which currently aware

“Characterised by the experience of perceptions, thoughts, feelings, awareness of the external world, and often in humans … self-awareness”
(Colman, 2009)

Question 2

What is the function of consciousness?

Answer 2

1. Associated with perceiving the environment
2. Crucial role in social communication
3. Role in controlling our actions
4. Allows us to think about events and issues far removed from the present
5. Integrating and combining numerous types of information
6. Bodily self-consciousness

Question 3

Assessing consciousness

Answer 3

Commonly rely on behavioural or introspective measures

Limited due to reliance on intervening processes (attention, language) which may diminish the experience itself

Patients with brain damage may demonstrate knowledge without awareness

Actual conscious experience is much richer than our ability to report it (Lamme, 2010)

Question 4

Global Workspace Theory

Answer 4

• Attention without consciousness and consciousness without attention are both possible (Koch & Tsuchiya, 2012)
• Unseen emotional stimuli can influence attention
• Subliminal fearful faces can produce increased amygdala activation (Troiani et al., 2014)
• Assumption within the global workspace approach that conscious awareness is always preceded by attention is controversial (Pitts et al., 2018)
• Novel objects within visual scenes are rarely detected consciously in the absence of attention

STRENGTHS: All major assumptions have been supported, early processing of seen and unseen stimuli is similar, consciousness is associated with integrated brain activity, close links between attention and conscious awareness, conscious awareness is always preceded by selective attention

WEAKNESSES: Focuses narrowly on processes for visual perception, over-exaggeration of the role prefrontal areas play in conscious experience, integrated brain functioning is not necessarily the neural substrate for consciousness, psychological processes have been neglected

Question 5

Neuropsychological studies of consciousness

Answer 5

Studies show activation in several widely distributed brain areas

Not all areas directly link to consciousness
Rather, support monitoring, reporting of experience (frontal areas)

Anatomical correlates seem localized to a posterior cortical ‘hot zone’, includes sensory areas (Koch et al., 2016)

Question 6

Is consciousness unitary?

Answer 6

Split-brain patients have conscious experience in both hemispheres

Left hemisphere is dominant due to language processing (interpreter system)

Consciousness in right hemisphere is difficult to access due to lack of language

Neuroimaging evidence suggests much less conscious processing in right

Often difficult to interpret findings due to neural plasticity and compensation