Conciousness

Question 1

The easy problem

Answer 1

Access to information
How to we store and use info and systems

Question 2

The spotlight of consciousness

Answer 2

Have spotlight in brain that you can direct at diff things for the goal you are trying to achive

Question 3

The Hard Problem

Answer 3

Subjectivity
Experience

Question 4

Congenital insensitivity to pain

Answer 4

Has to do with mutation in voltage gated Na+ channel
Expressed in pain sensing neurons
These people don’t make these channels
They do not experience pain
Cannot explain the feeling of pain
Pain is an experience

Question 5

What is it like to be a bat?

Answer 5

What’s it like to see with your ears?
Cant know unless you’re a bat

Question 6

How does consciousness cause voluntary action?

Answer 6

How does a thought, cause an action potential

Question 7

The readiness potential precedes voluntary movements

Answer 7

Activity before voluntary movements builds up and then drops back down after movement is made
READINESS POTENTIAL

Question 8

READINESS POTENTIAL

Answer 8

Activity before voluntary movements builds up and then drops back down after movement is made
Known about this since 1960’s

Question 9

Benjamen Libet

Answer 9

The readiness potential precedes voluntary movements but when does the person become consciously aware that they’ve decided to move?
Recording supplementary motor area, pre supplementary motor area
Recorded EEG: look at dot as you are about to move and move hand whenever you want
- Have measure of when hand moves
- Have measure of when readiness potential started bc EEG
- Have subjective from participant of when they became consciously aware of their decision to move

Question 10

Benjamin Libet takeaway

Answer 10

Feeling of consciousness precedes movement but follows the beginning of the readiness potential by about 500 msec

Question 11

Why do we feel that our thoughts cause our actions? - Daniel Wegner

Answer 11

Priority: The thought precedes the action
Consistency: The thought is consistent with the action
Exclusivity: There are no other potential causes

Question 12

Wegner’s model of apparent mental causation

Answer 12

Unconscious cause of action leads to :
1) Unconscious cause of thought -> thought
2) Actual causal path -> Action
————————————> Time

Question 13

Why would we have evolved to feel like our thoughts are causing our actions?

Answer 13

Important for our ability to interact with social beings
Be responsible for something and know who did what
Intuition that has evolved to keep yourself and others accountable

Question 14

Voluntary action can become UNCOUPLED from the feeling of personal agency

Answer 14

Table turning
Hypnosis
Spirit possession, speaking in tongues
Ouija boards, spontaneous writing
Facilitated communication

Question 15

Table turning - Truth

Answer 15

Participants in their party trick were so committed to their belief that what they were doing was real that their sense of their own agency had been uncoupled from their conscious

Question 16

Facilitated communication

Answer 16

Non-verbal people, Autistic people
Therapist holds autists hand over keyboard and they are asked to type something.
Autist always types what therapist was told to type regardless of their instructions
The therapists control what happens but aren’t realizing that

Question 17

Steve Grand

Answer 17

You are not the stuff of which you are made