Chapter 5: Theorising consciousness Flashcards
Homunculus fallacy
If consciousness is a stage with a homunculus as the actor and an audience present, do the audience members also have a homunculus (iteratively)
Global workspace
Internal system used to store mental images across different specialised processes
Solutions to homunculus fallacy
Dennett - replace audience’s intelligence with explicit algorithms
Baars - replace audience with other unconscious processors
What is consciousness according to William James?
Consciousness is an organ developed specifically to direct a nervous system too complex to self-regulate
Which regions of the brain are not as well connected?
Sensory areas tend to only be connected to other related areas
Which region of the brain is more developed for connections with other regions?
The prefrontal cortex connects to all major hubs reciprocally, usually with interconnections as well
Role of the thalamus
Attention, vigilance, synchronisation
Role of the basal ganglia
Decision making and motor control
Role of the hippocampus
Episodic memory and recollection
Why is one of the signatures of consciousness an increase in activity in the prefrontal and parietal lobes?
These areas have the most long-distance connections to other regions
- more common and prominent in humans
- dendrites are larger and more numerous at the front of the brain compared to the back
FoxP2 gene
This gene has two mutations specific to humans relevant for modulation of language networks
How does facial recognition work?
- short connections clean incoming image from retinas
- compressed image sent to thalamus then V1 in occipital lobe
- image transmitted to face clusters in right fusiform gyrus
- image transmitted to necessary part of cortex
How can there be so many possible differentiated conscious states from a limited number of assemblies?
Each state is made up of a combination of independently activated local assemblies
Selfridge’s pandemonium model
The brain is a hierarchy of daemons specialised for tasks and each one competes for their own interpretation to be the main one.
What is one limitation of Selfridge’s pandemonium model
It assumes and organises for a strict feedforward hierarchy - in reality, neural systems have several recurrent loops and bidirectional projections